Save Will

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Arrived in Hanoi by sleeper bus feeling disheveled, greasy, and tired. The weather was gray and a tiny bit rainy. Wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. A motorbike taxi driver offered to take me to the Old Quarter, so I went with him. He took me to a travel agency there. Spoke with the agent inside and decided to go to Ha Long Bay first to ensure I had enough time to see it.

Booked transportation to Cat Ba island in Ha Long Bay at the travel agency and then went in search of breakfast. Someone showed up on a motorbike to take me to the bus, and I went with him, and then boarded the bus to Ha Long City.

At the pier, I boarded a tour boat and was stuck with them all day. The weather was still gray and a little rainy. Saw some of the stone karst islands in Ha Long Bay. Went with the boat tourists to see a large cave in one of the karsts.

The boat landed on Cat Ba island just after sunset in the dark. I boarded another bus and dozed a little until we arrived in Cat Ba City on the south shore. I went to the nearest hotel, followed by a couple I had met on the boat, and we checked in. We walked the strip along the hotels and waterfront and then chose a restaurant for dinner.

After dinner, I shopped around for a day cruise of the islands.

The next day, I boarded a tour boat bound for the Ha Long Bay islands and spent the day cruising around, snapping photos of karsts, kayaking around karsts, and gazing at karsts. It was a day of karsts all around. Did I mention there were karsts? The sky was gray, but it didn’t rain. At the end, the boat returned us to Cat Ba Island, and I went to the same restaurant as before for a delicious dinner and a quiet evening alone.

The next day it was still cloudy and gray, so I decided that I’d had enough of Ha Long Bay, having seen karsts to my heart’s content the day before, so I booked transportation back to Hanoi by bus for the same day and departed around noon.

Hue, Vietnam

After Hoi An, I went to Hue. At this point, I was worried about running out of time, since I could only stay in Vietnam for thirty days. I stayed in Hue for two days. It was lightly raining the entire time, so I wore my poncho and gritted my teeth.

The first day, after I checked into my hotel, I walked to the Imperial Citadel and spent all afternoon exploring the ruins (bombed by the Americans) and the buildings still standing.

The second day, I hired a private motorbike guide to take me to three emperor tombs and a pagoda in the surrounding area.

Bought an open tour bus ticket for Hanoi.

Hoi An, Vietnam

After Dalat and the six-day Easy Rider motorbike ride with Hien, I went to Hoi An. Hien dropped me off at one side of Hoi An and we parted ways. Stayed in a cheap hotel for $9 per night for several days.

Browsed several shops and bought five paper lanterns in assorted colors, a dirty metal gong, a couple dirty coins, a few small paintings on scraps of paper, a marble tea box, and a marble candle box. I shipped them home the long way.

Found a really nice, good, and cheap restaurant on the edge of town. Ate at a couple restaurants along the river.

Did a tour of the My Son ruins an hour outside of town.

Wanted to rent a motorbike and ride to the nearby Marble Mountains, but the timing didn’t work out.

Hoi An’s shops, streets, and riversides are decorated with lit lanterns at night, and at night people buy lit candles in paper boats and set them afloat on the river. People go to the riversides at night and stroll and shop and snack and listen to Vietnamese music. It was the most pleasant place I experienced in Vietnam.

From Dalat to Hoi An, Vietnam

For six days, I rode on the back of Hien’s motorcycle as we wound our way through the back country from Dalat to Hoi An. My pack was wrapped in a plastic bag and tied to the back of the bike, Hien sat in front with his pack, and I was sandwiched between them.

The weather was nice and warm for several days, but then grew cool and rainy toward the end. The cool wind blowing on your face and body masks the intense sunshine beating down on you. I wore long-sleeved shirts to protect my arms, but my left wrist and hand became burned and sensitive to the sun, so I wore gloves and a bandana around my neck. I also bought a face mask for the dust that buses and trucks would sometimes kick up into the air. Hien had a poncho for me when it started raining. Thank god I still had my jacket!

The longest I had ever ridden on a motorbike before was about an hour in the Mekong Delta. I was unprepared for a six-day ride. After the first couple days, I would feel weary toward the end of the day. After a couple more days, I would feel weary after only a few hours of riding. I started to take breaks between lunch and arriving at the hotels. It was about that time that I wished I had only done a three day trip, but after it was all over I was glad I stuck it out. (The alternate title for this post is Buns of Steel.)

Hien is supposedly the first one to provide this kind of motorbike guide service. He was discovered by a Lonely Planet writer some years ago, and since then the market for motorbike tours has taken off and there are many other so-called Easy Rider guides to choose from. In typical Vietnamese fashion, all the motorbike guides claim that they’re the original Easy Rider, and there’s almost no way to figure out who’s telling the truth. I found Hien through a review on TripAdvisor, and it all just kind of worked out. According to several guidebooks, Hien actually is the original guy, and his web site has pictures of the guidebook pages to prove it. He charged me $75 per day, which is really steep, and it’s also $10–$15 more than the competition’s prices. Based on his excellent reviews, I figured that he was worth the premium. Several times he pointed out how other guides passed up places and things that he took the time to show me and tell me about.

Hien fought for the south in the American War, and afterward he couldn’t get a job because he was blacklisted by the northern communist government. He’s been an Easy Rider for about twenty years now, and seems to have taught many other Easy Riders which routes to take and places to see. He’s somewhere between middle age and old age, and has thinning, graying hair; skin like crinkled paper; and a toothy, white smile. He’s very sociable with other Vietnamese, seemingly able to strike up conversations with anyone, and carried shampoo and candy as bribes to allow me to get close to the local people for pictures. He was good at pointing out things that would make great pictures like overloaded motorbikes and colorful outfits. We didn’t have great chemistry, so there were lots of quiet meals shared between us.

There are many minority villages in the back country that speak their own language and farm the surrounding land. Even Hien couldn’t speak to a lot of them. It being a communist country, everyone — even the poorest of the poor — had televisions and satellite dishes, which is just bizarre. The government builds a small modern building in a lot of these villages; I guess it’s their point of contact with the people there. Some minority people didn’t like the more modern (non-squat) toilets that the government installed for them, so they made their own makeshift squat toilets nearby. The government essentially bribes these people not to slash and burn the jungle around them.

I saw too many things to list here, but I will say that the thing that struck me the most was the beautiful land. There are so many beautiful hills, valleys, fields, gorges, rivers, and sunsets there that I’m running out of room to store all the pictures I took of them. It is truly a beautiful country. The effort it takes to get out there to see it is worth it.

Dalat, Vietnam

I rode an open tour bus from Saigon to Dalat. It took about six or seven hours, and we arrived in the evening. I passed the time listening to podcasts, watching My Cousin Vinnie on my laptop, and chatting with a Thai girl, Pla, sitting next to me. She was going to Dalat for a weekend vacation with her two friends. She was really friendly and invited me to join her and her friends in their taxi after we arrived at the bus station. Having no plan, I agreed and went with them to their hotel. I got a room, and then joined them for dinner and walking around the night market area.

I was dismayed to find that Dalat’s climate was much cooler than Saigon’s. Perhaps I had gotten rid of my long underwear and cardigan too soon.

The girls did a city tour the next day, and I joined them for that as well. The tour wasn’t great, taking us to several touristy places, but we rode a cable car that gave us a great view of the city and the surrounding hills and forest. The city itself is interesting to see, being cleaner and more colorful than Saigon, a welcome change.

When we got back, I e-mailed an Easy Rider guide named Hien about whom I had read good things on TripAdvisor about doing a six day ride from Dalat to Hoi An, a city north of Dalat and the central highlands. Fortunately, he was going to return to Dalat that day and could meet me the next morning. I changed hotels to something cheaper and was sorry to say goodbye to the girls. Hien and I met the next morning. We agreed on the tour and the price, and then we were off.

Mekong Delta, Vietnam

I headed south from Saigon to the Mekong Delta to see some floating markets and river life.

I met some volunteers from England and Australia on the bus from the Ben Thanh market to the bus terminal and decided to follow them to My Tho. I took a taxi with them to their hotel, got a room, and joined them for dinner. Afterward, I arranged for a four-hour private boat tour of the nearby river the next day. I was taken to tourist traps on three islands, none of which had anything worthwhile. The only redeeming part was a really cool ride on a row boat down a tiny stream in the middle of a jungle. Ben Tre was just across the river, and probably more of the same, so I decided to skip it.

I rode a motorbike taxi for an hour to Vinh Long and did a “home stay.” I use quotation marks because I had pictured staying the night with a family in their home, maybe sleeping in the guest room they have friends and family stay in, but this was not the case. At least, not unless average Vietnamese families live in hotels and never speak to their guests. As a bonus, there was no air con and the bathroom plumbing stopped working. I’ve since learned that most home stays in Vietnam are like that, i.e. rustic hotels, so if you really want to have the “real” experience, at least do it north of the delta where you won’t miss air con. I met a couple of funny English guys who were doing a bicycle tour and passed the evening with them drinking beers and telling stories.

I hired another private boat in the early morning (early for me is 8) to take me to the Cai Be floating market. When I got there, I was disappointed to find that it was already over. No one had thought to mention to me that I was leaving too late to see anything. At this point, I was embittered on the whole delta and ready to leave, but I decided to give it one more shot.

I continued on to Can Tho, getting scammed into overpaying for the bus ticket by someone who didn’t work for the bus company. I arranged yet another private boat for the next day to see two floating markets, a backwater canal, and a noodle factory. We left at 5 (dear lord!) in the morning and it took us an hour to get there, but holy shit was it worth it! The tour lasted for eight hours and I saw some amazing sights, and even walked across a monkey bridge. It was amazing. That was what I had been looking for.

Satisfied, I arranged for an open tour bus back to Saigon.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon for the lazy…or stubborn) and took a taxi to my hostel, Long Guesthouse, in the Phạm Ngũ Lão backpacker area of District 1. The staff were very friendly and helpful, but there wasn’t a common room, so it was difficult to meet people, which I didn’t like. After a couple days, I chose to switch to another hostel, Saigon Backpackers, that was nicer and had a more social atmosphere. I stayed there for the rest of my time in Saigon.

There were a few sights in the area that I was interested in seeing:

• Notre Dame church (ended up not seeing this one)
• Architecture of the post office
• Cuchi tunnels
• War Remnants Museum
• Reunification Palace

The War Remnants Museum was all about the bad things the U.S. did in the American War, as they call it, most notably Agent Orange. How Agent Orange didn’t qualify as a crime against humanity, I can’t imagine. “Oops”? Truly moving imagery. I came close to crying several times. I think I spent about three hours there. I highly recommend it.

I met lots of people and made friends with a few. I saw a few sights with a few of them, and chatted with them in the dorm or went out for a meal in the nearby restaurants.

One evening, as I was eating dinner with a friend on a sidewalk in the backpacker area, droves of young people suddenly swarmed the road in front of us on their motorbikes. They were celebrating the victory of the Vietnam football (soccer) team. Lots of shouting and cheering and carrying on. At one point a guy stood on something in the middle of the street and fired confetti into the air to the cheers of the crowd. Of course, this was the one time I left my camera in my bag.

(Speaking of football, why is American football called that when kicking it is like five percent of the game? It should be called runball or tackleball or boringball. You know, something descriptive. Zing.)

It was hot hot hot. I showered at least twice a day. If you stepped outside, you started sweating. It was not pleasant. It rained heavily for about thirty or forty-five minutes each day, usually in the late afternoon or evening. Wherever you were when it started, there you were stuck. Fortunately, this usually happened as I was drinking beer with friends under shelter on the sidewalk. It was fun watching the bar proprietors set up the umbrellas and the water quickly become inches deep.

After you’ve lived in a place for several days, you get used to the rhythm of the place. You find a restaurant and a bar you like. You develop a routine. So despite the humid weather, I found myself growing comfortable. But I had run out of things to see and do.