Passes and plankton

Around the unshaded fluorescent bulb seven pale green gekkos are perfectly still. On the dirty white wall there is a silent tension, a guarded stillness foreshadowing action. Below are aluminium tables with jugs of tea and chairs. A glass cupboard on a counter top with various toppings for rice. A moth is drawn to the bulb and suddenly there is a flurry, the gekkos attempting to anticipate its point of collision with the wall and intercept it. Another bug and the frenetic dance begins anew.

It is around half past six and Aaron and I are starving after 280km on the road, a distance which takes our sum total travelled to around 1500km. What is doable in a day or two of driving has taken us eleven days, albeit not all of them on the road.

Hai Van pass (credit to Mr. Weston)

From Kham Duc to Ho Lake—the latter chosen simply on the strength of its name—the highway changed from rutted dustbowl of construction to fertile valley. Earlier still from Hue it was coast-hugging and salt-drenched. The air thick with brine and the highway broad, flat and expansive like an American boulevard. We stopped in Hoi An for two nights.

At our hostel in Hanoi we had met two Estonian girls who came into our dorm as Aaron and I were in bed and about to go to sleep the night before we first took to the motorways of Vietnam. Hearing of our plans they said they might join us in Hue and ride south with us. Little did we expect that four days later we would meet them, and one day after that they would have bikes. A test run with with a trip to the Thien Mu Pagoda before planning to leave the next morning. So we were four over the modest 120 kilometre stretch from Hue to Da Nang.

Religion (more Weston credit)

The reality of four second hand bikes compared to two is less glamorous highway roaming motorcycle gang and more double the breakdowns and pit stops. Not to mention the forgotten passport, the keys that fell out of the ignition mid-ride, and the difficulty of synchronising the movement of four people through Vietnamese highway traffic.

Hue Grandma

In the driving rain the going was even slower and newly purchased rain jackets much needed. At the start of the climb through the Hai Van pass we were briefly trapped by boom gates as a freight train chugged past. The cliffs fell away on the left to the sea, carpeted with forest. On the right more forest and a steep climb up through which the highway serpentined. The rain slacked and the views were spectacular. We climbed into a cloud which, in the winds at the crest, rolled past us at an even clip and out to sea.

A herd of goats trotted along the lane in the opposite direction, their chaperone wizened and strolling opposite, crook over his shoulder. Later a herd of cows moving with us, indifferent to the stunning vista off to the side.

Thien Mu Pagoda, Hue

 Not far from the top of the pass Anna’s bike wouldn’t start. She was out of petrol. Marta wasn’t much better off. They had trusted the guys who had sold them the bikes that the tanks were full. We stopped. With no plan of action we milled around. Two passing men stopped to investigate. We showed them the empty tank and they set about filling an empty bottle of water with petrol by detaching a fuel hose that linked to the engine and siphoning some off. One of them did this first to his bike. He refused to take any money for the 500ml of petrol. With a cigarette drooping from his lower lip he then drained some of Aaron’s tank, and reallocated it, spilling some in his casual ease. He and his friend motored off.

Traffic

At some point during the descent into Da Nang I was on my own. I turned and went down the highway in the direction from which we’d come and saw Aaron, Anna and Marta going in the opposite direction, but by the time I’d found a point to u-turn on the divided road, they were long gone. Trying to catch up I was caught in Da Nang’s peak hour traffic. I pulled over for a text message conference—one eagerly studied by the locals who eyed me on the side of the road and tried to offer me some pho—and decided to meet at the hotel. With the address on my phone I arrived to find a bar full of old men and no hotel. Tweaking the address after further research, I ended up on the peninsula in the backstreets. The sun was setting and none of my electrics were working. In the dark I found the address. No hotel. With my phone on flashlight setting and jammed between some wires behind my speedo, I had a small indication of my existence on the unlit streets. I eventually found a hotel and got the others to meet me there. Lacking a phone with maps, they had to keep asking locals for directions.

Hoi An Pageant

From Da Nang to Hoi An we detoured via a temple with an enormous religious figure, the name of which google doesn’t seem to know. As Aaron and I rested in the shade some tourists sent their children over to have a photo taken with us. Then a steady stream of older women.

Vistas

Midnight swimming in Hoi An on a beach pitch black and deserted. Seven hours ago we had been here having dinner. Tea lights dotted on the sand amongst reed mats and vendors set up replete with tiny red plastic chairs and tables. We had brought some red wine, opened by jamming the cork down and into the bottle with a chopstick. The softened and eerie illumination of a fluorescent lantern placed under the table and a candle on top. Now the only light came in flickers and bursts from plankton, agitated in the passage of limbs, swirls and eddies in the liquid black. We bodysurfed, staring at the waves out of the corner of our eyes to try and try and pick out the best before they were upon us.

Vistas

The next night we came upon some kind of International Ladies Day pageant. We arrived just in time for a musical number, a doughy man in a snug white suit and white shoes flatly belting out a power ballad and jiving to the guitar solo. The speakers were aggressively loud and the first time he tried to start singing the microphone was not on. His foot tapped nervously. Later in Kon Tum outside a Honda dealership an alfresco concert had stopped traffic, motorcycles in the lee of the road division and pedestrians spilling out onto the asphalt. I have no idea what was taking place.

Yom

Rumble in the Bronx was on. The original sound played softly overlaid with Vietnamese dubbing all done in the same woman’s voice. Aaron and I were having a coffee in the fisherman’s village south of the Hoi An old town. Two locals had come over after we had sat down to shake our hands and have a coffee. The one sitting next to me kept clasping my upper leg and squeezing. Slapping it approvingly. As we paid I was informed the old woman working there thought I was beautiful.

I showed the piece of paper with the name of the local delicacy I wanted to try to the old woman who ran a good eatery just down the road from our hotel in Hue. She shook her head, no she didn’t have it. We ordered. She gave us the food and hurried off. Just as we were finishing she came back with some take away plastic bags. She had fetched me the delicacy from another vendor, a kind of translucent pho jelly with fried shrimp inside cooked in a banana leaf and served with a sweet and hot sauce. She loaded portions onto a spoon and fed me. And soft rice pancakes with dried shrimp and fried garlic and onion. She rubbed my facial hair enthusiastically. When we went back for dinner later she hugged me and Aaron and kissed the girls.

Spotlight

Searching for food after 9pm is a struggle in Vietnam. People eat early. In Hue the only thing approaching a vegetarian dish we could find for Aaron was a plate of old and hardening steamed rice with a side bowl of salt and pepper.

The start of the trip from Hoi An to Kham Duc was a chore. We were late on the road after Aaron’s and my socks had been lost in the laundry and Marta’s tailored shoes had needed to be resized. The roads were awful. Clogged arterial highway and rutted paths with unmarked turnoffs that were not marked on google maps. At one point the highway mapped simply stopped in the middle of nowhere. In real life it thankfully continued on. Frequently I could be seen standing astride my idling motorcycle and peering at my phone, twisting it to align the GPS’ directional arrow like I was trying to divine water with a forked stick.

Mo vistas

Down one road a man chased a pig that had escaped from his trailer. A moped going the other way attempted to block the fleeing beast by pulling laterally across the road. Two minor services, one flat tire and one chain tightening passed. We eventually hit lushly verdant hills through which we climbed before coming to a dam. We made it to Kham Duc just in time for my motorcycle to stop working. The engine was dead and I was directed to house number 44. In the backyard a man worked on several motorcycles. His name was Yom. I would spend many hours with him.

Kid on my bike

I fetched two coffees from across the street to pass the time as he worked on my bike. I came back to find he had had two fetched from another café across the street. He worked and sipped. I sat and sipped. Aaron came to watch and in turn have his bike checked out. Yom was keen to snaffle some of his Marlboros, fishing them out of the packet with his teeth, his hands grease blackened. As night fell I played an improvised version of Spotlight with the kids next door using Yom’s head torch, then the flash on my camera. Three hours had passed and my bike had been almost entirely disassembled and rebuilt. The next morning I went back to tweak the idling speed of my motor only to have a crack in my main weight bearing metal structure identified. Yom’s brother arrived to change the oil in his bike. His look was focused as he pieced together the English. “Your moto… very bad.” He nodded seriously. Later he questioned me. “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” “Do you like Vietnam” “Do you have a lover?” He started to tell me about his sister.

Estonians

As the sun moved across the sky it fell on a bird’s cage. It hung across the road from the coffee shop in which I was drinking with some locals who had waved me over as I walked past. They couldn’t speak English but seemed to enjoy a foreign presence. One of the men rose from his seat and walked across. He unhooked the cage from its perch and searched for somewhere shaded to place it. Judging by his several attempts to find a suitable spot, he clearly didn’t do this regularly.

Post-crash filth Weston

Overlooking Ho Lake there is a row of shack houses. Each with its own dog, the slight changes in bark marked our passage down the gravel path. Some children came out to investigate as we sat to watch the sun set over the rice paddies. We took photos and showed them. One ran off to tell his sister who had stayed with the bike they had rode over on, covertly whispering in her ear. They rode off. Later, another child came over and climbed the tree behind us. Once he saw his photo he too ran off. Insects buzzed and birds sang out. The rice paddies unnaturally green, the water gently fractured and the mountains blue. A motor chugged then a loud firing sound. The birds screeched louder.

Highway to Ho Lake

Earlier in the day we had traversed barren dry foothills, dusty shrubs and sun so hot the burn can be felt at 80 km/hr. Buttock pulverising highways. Roadside cafes with blue tarpaulin, rusting corrugated iron, hammocks. The earth became red and the highway through the hills was hemmed with pine trees. Scattered fires and the smell of burning needles so heady it is almost like cardamom. Tractors with open engines and clunking prehistoric gears seem rent from some dystopian agrarian past all redblack rust and black exhaust chug up and down.

Red Earth

The traffic picked up towards Buon Ma Thuot, the trucks and detached semi-trailers ruling the single lane highway. Repeatedly motorbikes would scatter into the dusty shoulder, the buses and trucks trapped mid-over take on the wrong hand side honking and flashing their lights as insurance against their aggressive incompetence. Impatiently trying to overtake one detached semi I tried the inside gravel shoulder, almost crashing as my tractionless wheels slurred.

Ho Lake

Earlier in the day a bike had pulled out of a side street in front of Aaron and tried to cross the highway into the lane going the opposite direction. Braking and dove-tailing, Aaron collided with the brand new Honda, denting its side. Perhaps recognising his wrong or perhaps intimidated by Aaron’s outrage at his near death, he rode off. A smoke and a sugary drink later and Aaron’s hands stopped shaking.

Locals

Sunscreen, sweat and road dirt combine to form a brown grime. My thighs are many shades darker where my shorts end, knees sunburnt. Aaron’s faceguard finishes mid cheek and around his nose. His face is always smeared with grit.

We broke free of the dirty highways and into a valley. Verdant and patchwork with paddies and irrigation. In the late afternoon sun the shadows are long and the air heavy with grass, dung, straw and mud. It is tantalising and beautiful.