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Cindie's
Vietnam #2 Daily Journal
Travel Writing, Blog, Travelogue
Cau Ganh,
to Lang Son, Vietnam
February 18. -
April 2, 2005
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| Feb 18 |
Cau Ganh - Sa Huynh. Road paved with a nice shoulder,
terrain flat except for a few hills. Traffic moderate to heavy, noise
level high. Tailwind the first 80 km and a headwind the last 18. I
think this may be unusual. We were up early because we knew we
would have a long day. We thought we would have a head wind all
day but it turned out that we had a tailwind for the first 80 km.
The riding is pleasant between town but the towns are chaotic and noisy.
The price of food is much higher here and I can not even bargain.
During the heat of the day we stopped for a cold drink. The people
are always touching our sweaty skin, not something I like them to do.
The women seem to be enamored with Tim, it must be his curly hair or
size. They are always poking at him or squeezing his arms. I
often think that he just reminds these ladies of the men who were here
in the past. The owner of the store said that he fought for the
south. Something I did not think about much. Fighting a war
and then loosing. We pulled our guys out and went home, they had
to stay and face whatever consequences there were.
We found a guest house in Su Huynh, not the government hotel, that
let us roll our bikes in the room. It was a nice change to leaving
them with the scooters. We went to dinner at the restaurant nearby.
While we were eating a man who spoke fluent English came up and said
that he was an interpreter for the third division of the marines.
He said that he and his family were taken to a re-education camp after
the war. He seemed like he wanted to tell us more but he was
called away by a group of men. I could have talked to that man for
hours. Again, I never thought about what happen here after we
pulled out. I did not even realize that the south continued to
fight the north after we left. The boat people left Vietnam with
the south collapsed. |
98 km |
| Feb 19 |
Su Huynh - Quang Ngai Road paved, traffic moderate (it
is Saturday) terrain flat, head wind from the start. It was a blustery
morning and we started out with a head wind that stayed with us all day.
We stopped in a small town for lunch started riding and then it started
raining hard, we decided to stop for a coffee and jumped into a small
cafe, well actually some ones living room. They were very inviting
and made us tea, coffee and gave us cookies. We flew home made airplanes
around the living room, I thought, how many people would do this with
total strangers. They were a kind and generous family who did not have a
lot but shared it all with us. The weather cleared and we were
sailing down the road again. |
63 km |
| Feb 20 |
Quang Ngai- Well we picked a good day to take a day
off. It rained all day. We pretty much rested all day and
prepared to leave in the morning. In the early morning we heard
our neighbor getting sick. I did not think anything of it.
By mid-afternoon I felt queasy. I was violently ill by dinner
time. I had a slight fever and felt awful. I went to sleep
after taking some aspirin. |
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| Feb 21 |
Quang Ngai - I was so weak I could not get out of bed.
Tim worked on the web page and ate some bread. By mid afternoon I
was feeling better and decided to eat dinner so I would have the
strength to ride on. |
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| Feb 22 |
Quang Ngai - Tam Ky. Road paved traffic moderate
to heavy, terrain flat with rice patties on both sides of the road.
We saw and accident near the town of Tam Ky, we are not sure what happen
but something landed on a thatched hut and flattened it. I could here
someone moaning but could not see where they were. Scary.
The drivers here are crazy, they seem to take more chances then they
need to. We stopped for lunch and sat down to have lunch, we ate
and inadvertently left our Lonely planet bike book and map behind. We
had a nice hotel in Tam Ky for $10 a night, hot water, and air
conditioning. |
61 km |
| Feb 23 |
Tam Ky - Hoi An all parameters are similar to
yesterday, the 7 kilometers into Hoi An were very pleasant. The
government has been building by passes around the larger cities and when
we came to an intersection we did not know which way to go for Hoi An,
there were no signs. We asked and were pointed to the left, it did
not make sense to me but we rode that way anyway. It turned out to
be the right was and we found the turn to Hoi An a couple of kilometers
down the road. We arrived in Hoi An before noon. We looked a
couple hotels by the bus station and decided to ride into town.
The town was quite different than other Vietnamese towns we have seen
before. The buildings were ornate, small narrow streets, and
tourists and vendors everywhere. We looked around and found a
cheap hotel and went out to lunch. When we returned we had a
note on our door. Mary Ann the women that we met at the Jun
village, almost three weeks ago was staying in the same hotel. She
had just returned from China beach. She showed us a nice restaurant and we
ended up eating there the entire time we were in Hoi An. |
55 km |
| Feb 24 |
Hoi An. It was a hot day and we spent the afternoon in
the internet cafe. I am beginning to feel like I am floating from
one cafe to another. The internet is extremely slow and difficult
to retrieve and send email. The local sites are fine but once we
try to access web sites in the USA it slows to a snails pace. Very
frustrating. While we were at the internet cafe, we met Linda and
Jerry from Colorado. They are bike touring here in Vietnam for
about a month. We decided to meet for dinner. We took them to our
favorite restaurant and we had a great dinner. They were very
generous and treated us to dinner. We talked about bikes and
touring in Vietnam. They plan to leave tomorrow for a tour through
the central Highlands, we are interested to hear about their trip
because they will be traveling near Komton, an area that is closed
except for tours with permits. We were not allowed in the area
without a permit. |
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| Feb 25 |
Hoi An. Spent the day working on email and web
work. It was very hot again. |
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| Feb 26 |
Hoi An - China Beach. It was a short day but we
took the time to take photos and visit some areas of town before we
left. We rode to China beach (only 20 km away) and asked for Hoa's
Place. He is not in Lonely Planet yet, so everyone who arrives
there gets there by word of mouth. Hoa's was full so we stayed in a
hotel right next door for 7 dollars a night. We planned to stay one
night. We saw China Beach, it goes on for 30 km and no one was
there. We visited Marble Mountain, a nice Buddhist sanctuary built in
the marble peaks. We also decided to stay one more day. Hoa
is a great host, we met interesting travelers and the beach was too nice
to pass up. |
40 km |
| Feb 27 |
China Beach. We took the day off to check out the
beach. What a beautiful beach it is, it goes on forever without
interruption. I am surprised that luxury resorts all along the
shore. |
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| Feb 28 |
China Beach - Lang Co. It was a cloudy day but a good
day to ride. We had a head wind all the way to Hang Via pass. The
pass was not too bad the traffic was heavy and made the ride up and down
the pass unpleasant. |
60 km |
| Mar 1 |
Lang Co - Hue. We knew today was the last day we
would ride for a while. Soon we would be on our way to Hanoi and taking
care of business. As we rode through this small town kids came out
to say hello. One group of boys walked past Tim and one of them
raised his hand in anger, I could see it on his face, and hit Tim in the
thigh. Then all the boys ran down a nearby alley. It was a
shock to both of us that this kid would hit him. Tim slammed on
his brakes and turned around after the boys. I chased one down the
street while Tim chased the culprit down the alley. I think the
boys were surprised to see Tim ride his loaded bike down the alley.
Tim later told me that he did not know what he was going to do if he
caught the boy, he really just wanted to scare him. In the mean
time I had corned the one boy in the field. Without any ability to
speak each others language we managed to communicate to the parents of
one boy that the other boy hit Tim while we were riding past. We
pointed at him and I could tell that he was spilling the beans about the
other boy who ran down the alley. The whole scene was bazaar to
me, such anger in such a young boy. We pedaled down the road
bewildered by the sudden burst of anger. We had lunch at a small
restaurant and the family was very accommodating and pleasant. |
62 km |
| Mar 2 |
Hue. |
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| Mar 3 |
Hue. The Citadel. |
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| Mar 4 |
Hue - Hanoi. Train ride in hard sleeper. |
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| Mar 5 - 29 |
Hanoi. We stayed in Hanoi to move our web page to
a new server and prepare our taxes. We also met up with Mary Ann
again. It was a pleasure to hang out in Hanoi with her. We
went to the Water Puppet show and browsed the restaurants. One
weekend, Mary Ann and I went to visit the markets near Bac Ha. While in Hanoi I had time to
reflect on Vietnam. It has been a difficult country to travel
through. The people are very different in the north and south, it
is almost as if it is still two different countries. The south is
hot and the north is cold, the people are warmer in the south as well.
Vietnam has a two tiered pricing system. One for locals and one
for foreigners. Bargaining is a way of life here. As a
foreigner we have to bargain for everything from bread in the street to
food in a restaurant. A local may pay 5000 dong while a foreigner
would pay as much as 20,000 dong or 4 times more. In Hanoi, price
gauging is taken to a new level. We ate at the same restaurant
four times and each time we paid something different, very annoying to
say the least. We would walk down the street and every 10 minutes
someone would say, Motobike, Motobike and vendors of all kinds selling
fruit, silk, books, and lighters would vie for our attention. We
once tried to buy a small bag of popcorn and the vendor originally asked
5000 dong, we tried to bargain him down and he would not go any lower
than 4000 dong each, even if we bought ten. The vendor refused to go lower he
would not come even close to the local price of 1000 dong each. We
eventually walked away, the vendor did not seem to care, he would wait
until the next foreigner came along. Usually we bargain, have some
fun with it and the vendor still gets a good price, however most vendors
in Hanoi refuse to bargain with the foreigners. One of the rules
of bargaining is to verify the price agreed upon, I took a motor bike to
pick up a package, we agreed on the price of 20,000 Dong (US$
1.33). When we returned to the hotel the motor driver said it was
40,000 (US$ 2.66) Dong, he said it was 20,000 one way. When I
refused to pay him 40,000 he started yelling at me. He thought
that he was intimidating me, a tactic commonly used to end the
transaction quickly. I still refused and went into the hotel and
talked to the hotel clerk who spoke fluent English. We finally
agreed on 30,000 Dong, I was not happy but I had not choice because the
service was already rendered. There were days in Hanoi when I did not
even want to talk to a local because I was tired of bargaining, I
started to feel like a meal ticket.
On the other hand, we met the sweetest lady at the internet cafe.
She was old and her sons ran the internet cafe. At first glance they
seemed to know what they were doing but over time we observed that the
little old lady was doing all the work. She made us great salads
and took care of us the entire time we were in Hanoi, we practically
lived at the internet cafe, it took more than 10 days to move all the
data from our hard drive to the new server. With change comes
problems, and we still continue to work them out. |
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| Mar 30 |
Hanoi - Bac Giang. Riding out of Hanoi was not as
bad as I thought it would be. We crossed the river on the railroad
bridge. There is enough room on each side of the bridge for bike
traffic to go back and forth across the river. We followed a bike
path for another 3 kilometers before we joined the road again.
Traffic was moderate all the way out of town. It feels good to be
back on the bike again although Tim is still feeling weak from the flu
he wanted to ride today. The day is overcast and the humidity high
but the streets are dry. We rode out of town and into the rice
patties. People were friendly and we soon heard the familiar hello
hello. We stopped for lunch and had a bowl of rice noodles and a
coke for 20,000 Dong (US 1.30) far cheaper than what we would have been
charged in Hanoi. We had a nice hotel room for 150,000 dong ($10).
We arrived in Bac Giang and decided to stay the night because Tim was
still feeling a little ill. We found a nice hotel and I went in
search of food for the morning. I went to the market and bought a
kilo of oranges for 7000 dong ($0.50) (in Hanoi they wanted 20,000
Dong). As I was searching for something sweet like cookies I
noticed the meat vendors. I usually steer clear of them because
the smell is to much for me. As I was looking down the tables of
meat cooked and uncooked I saw the head of an animal. At first
glace I thought it was a pig. I have seen cooked pigs heads in
many Latin American markets, nothing new. But this head was
different, all of a sudden I realized it was the head of a dog. Ah man
my stomach did a flip. I can still see that dog in my mind. I ran
back to the hotel as fast as I could. My appetite was gone. I did
not even want to go out to eat anywhere for fear that they would serve
me a bowl dog meat. |
51 km |
| Mar 31 |
Bac Giang. We woke to the sound of rain outside.
We waited and waited for the rain to stop. By noon we realized we
were staying another day in town. I refused to go out and eat,
noodle soup for me. We watched movies on Cinemax. I was
itching to ride but in not in the rain. Although we decided we
would ride tomorrow even if it rained. |
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| April 1 |
Bac Giang - Lang Son. We woke to rain again, this
time we were determined to move on. So at 10:30 am we set off in the
rain. It is hard to roll the bikes out into the rain and start
riding, the rain was a light drizzle. All the locals were riding
in it carry umbrellas. They were surprised to see us pushing on
through the rain. The roads were wet and muddy on the shoulder.
Our nice clean bikes soon looked like we were riding down a dirt road.
I had on gortex booties, with dry warm feet I can ride anywhere.
We peddled on, to my surprise it was not that bad. Hey everything
looks better in amber glasses. Today was the first day that we
rode through karst topography. The immense limestone cliffs went
up at least 300 meters in the air. It was so misty we could not
see the tops of them. We rode through a number of towns with hotels,
it gave us the illusion that there would be hotels all along the way to
Lang Son. We saw a nice hotel only 40 km from the start and
decided to push on to 60 km where we were sure there would be a hotel.
Well we were mistaken, no hotel. We had 4 hours of daylight left
and 40 kilometers to go, the only thing that would slow us down were
hills. Without stopping much and a moderate climb near the end we
made it into town just before dark. We ended the day just like we
started it, in the rain. |
102 km |
| April 2 |
Lang Son. We decided to take a day off, stomach
cramps plagued Tim again. We hope to ride straight though to
Nanning once we cross the border tomorrow. I always wonder what
the next country is going to be like when I am at the border. My
expectations are always wrong yet I still have them. I hope that
some things are different but I suspect that I will have to bargain like
I do here. We are not sure how long we will get on our Visa.
We applied for a double entry 6 month tourist visa in the states.
We have read that they will give us the first 90 days then an extension
of only 30 days. We have even heard that we would only get 30 days no
matter what type of Visa we had. In the end I think it all depends
on who is stamping our passport, so we have to be all smiles tomorrow
and hope for the best. As for the weather, it is cloudy, it is so
wet here that the roads have green moss on them. I think spring is
damp in this part of the world. |
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INDEX #3:
SE Asia / China
11-22-04 to 9-15-06
December 16- January 16, 2004
Cambodia and Angkor Wat
Poipet to Tien Bien, Cambodia |
|
Best Place to see Pictures
Cambodia Thumbnail Pictures
|
(January 16 - February 17 , 2005)
Vietnam #1.
Tinh Bien to Cau Ganh, Vietnam |
Tim's Emailed Newsletters
(Join List)
Best Place to see Pictures
South Vietnam Thumbnails
|
|
May 22 - June 27, 2005
Guizhou and Hunan,
China
Congjiang to
Zhangjiajie National Park China |
|
Best Place to see Pictures
Pictures of Guizhou, China.
|
(July 16 - Sept. 3, 2005)
Inner Mongolia and Shanxi, China.
Beijing to Xian, Shaanxi, China |
|
Best Place to see Pictures
Thumbnail pictures from Inner
Mongolia, China.
|
Full size Picture
Pages
WARNING These pages are very slow loaders
-
Beijing to Jining, Inner Mongolia.
-
Grasslands of Jining, to Wuchuan (near) Hohhot
- Hohhot
to Bautou, Inner Mongolia, China
- Wudang
Lamasary
-
Bautou to Yulin, Shanxi, China with Photos from Genghis Khan's Mausoleum.
- Yulin to
Yanan, Shaanxi, China
-
Chairman Mao's Headquarters and Residence in Yanan, China.
- Yanan to
Xian, Shaanxi, China.
-
Terracotta Warriors #1
-
Terracotta Warriors #2. |
|
|
(Sept. 4 - Oct. 29, 2005)
Sichuan, China
Chengdu, to Zongdian, China
|
|
Best Place to see Pictures
Sichuan Thumbnail Photos
|
Full size Picture
Pages
WARNING These pages are very slow loaders
- Giant Panda
Breeding Center #1
- Red Panda
in Chengdu, Sichuan, China #2
-
Chengdu to Kangding.
- Kangding,
Sichuan, located in Southwestern China.
-
Mugecuo Lake near Kangding, Sichuan, China.
- Kangding
to Xinduqiao
-
Xinduqiao to Tibetan Home Stay.
- Tibetan
Home Stay to 4718 meter (15,475 feet)
- to
Litang, Sichuan, China.
-
Litang Lamasary Tibetan Buddhist Monk Monastery
- Litang
to Sumdo, Tibet
- Sumdo to
Xiangcheng
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Xiangcheng to Derong, Tibet.
- Derong,
Sichuan Province to Tibetan Shangri-La, (Zongdian) |
|
(Oct. 30 - Dec. 24, 2005)
Yunnan, China
Zongdian to Mohan, China
|
|
Best Place to see Pictures
Yunnan thumbnail photos
|
|
(July - Sept. 15, 2006)
Malaysia #3 and Singapore.
Taiping, Malaysia to
Singapore |
|
Best Place to see Pictures
Malaysia #3 and Singapore
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Thailand
Laos.jpg)
