Hanoi 2

Friends: Autophobes will be happy to hear that Hanoi, or at least it's central district, is virtually car-free. Unfortunately, it is not free of all internal combustion engines, as its streets are clotted and clogged and overwhelmed by a non-stop flow of motorbikes with only a sprinkling of bicycles. As with the bumper-to-bumper traffic of Bangkok, all that traffic initially appeared to be outrageously perilous, especially since few intersections have a stop light or stop sign or traffic cop and no one pauses before entering an intersection, just weaving their way right through. But all are surprisingly adept at avoiding contact. Bicycling with Hanoi's legions of motorbikes is no more treacherous than bicycling with Bangkok's bumper-to-bumper automobile traffic. Though the traffic in Hanoi flows faster, it is much much more enjoyable to be hobnobbing with lone figures astride two-wheeled vehicles, though they be motorized, than slinking along with enclosed four-wheeled metal boxes.

We have yet to see an accident or ever suffered the skip of a heart beat. It's actually fun to submerge ourselves in Hanoi's mongrel mass of perpetual motion. It's even fun to walk through it from one side of the street to the other. The traffic throbs along at not much more than ten miles per hour, and even though there may be a dozen or more two-wheelers buzzing along shoulder-to-shoulder, spanning the road, a pedestrian can step out into the current and everyone will micro-swerve just enough to let him pass through. It is a marvel, another of those experiences that has to be seen to be believed.

Watching and participating in the traffic flow is just one of the many delights of this vibrant and most unique city. As with the traffic, the Vietnamese are an energetic and bustling people. The amount of street life is boggling. There is loads of room for it, as there are literally no parked cars in the town center. Unfortunately, that can't be said of the motorcycles. They all park on the sidewalks and don't leave much room for walking. Parking for bicycles is often hard to come by. One frequently has to shell out 1,000 dong for the privilege, a little over six cents. Sidewalk and curbside sellers are crammed into any open space. Chief among them are people with little barbecues cooking fritters or corn on the cob or noodles or shish-kabob or a wide assortment of mystery foods. There are hundreds of small shops that open out on to the sidewalk with their goods spilling out on it. The years of deprivation and shortages are long past. There isn't a great amount of affluence, otherwise the motorbikes would be giving way to the automobile, as has happened in Thailand, but there is so much economic activity, it is obvious that people have money to spend. It was seemingly a great economic step forward when the motorbike started overwhelming the pedal bike here. If you wish to enjoy this car-free city, don't tarry long. The bicycle has been virtually suppressed in Thailand, as is happening here. And everyone with a motorbike aspires to an automobile. Seeing how industrious the Vietnamese are, the automobile will all too soon take over this country too.

We looked at half a dozen hotels before finding one to our liking. Laurie was determined that we have a room with a balcony. When we settled on one, we also used its services to book a two-day tour to Halong Bay and an overnight train to Hue. And for a modest fee they secured our visas for Cambodia. The woman who made all these arrangements flew into a minor panic when we told her we couldn't pay just yet, as we didn't have our credit card with us. It was back at the hotel we spent our first night at, awaiting a vacancy at her hotel today. The two hotels were only a few blocks apart and we were prepared to move right in, but there is such fierce competition between hotels and booking agents, she feared someone else might steal us from her before we finalized these transactions. She wanted to give us a motorcycle escort, as we rode our bikes back to the hotel where we had spent the previous night, to retrieve our belongings. She feared we might be enticed to stay at that hotel or some other hotel might grab us and offer a better deal. Her franticness was almost comical, but the competition among hotels is so cutthroat, she had very real reason to be concerned. We insisted help wasn't necessary, that we could easily carry all our gear on our bikes, but she insisted on not letting us out of her sight. To assure her we'd be back, Laurie left her passport.

So we're off to Halong Bay tomorrow morning for a couple of days on a boat looking at the spectacular karst (limestone) formations in the Gulf of Tonkin, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We've been receiving conflicting reports on whether the water will be warm enough for swimming. We were able to swim 200 miles south of here outside of Vinh, but it is sweater weather in Hanoi.

We've spent two days exploring Hanoi. It is a city of lakes and divided by the mammoth Red River. Only two bridges span the river. They are each a mile long, one for bicycles and pedestrians and the other for motorized traffic. The lakes range from less than a mile in circumference to many, many miles. They make decent landmarks, but we've still gotten disoriented here more often than anywhere we've been. The narrow streets form quite a labyrinth. At least there are plenty of readable signs, though the streets frequently change names. We've worn out our maps, folding and unfolding them. We're frequently offered assistance by the pedicab drivers, who'd love to give us a lift, and guys on motorbikes, who take passengers. But the level of harassment has been very minor, and frequently, when we do get harassed or someone tries to beg from us, someone comes along and reprimands and shoos away our harasser. People have come to our rescue everywhere we've been in our week in Vietnam, whether at the beach or at the Internet or out and about town.

There is an extraordinary amount of good will here. People seem to be continually on the alert to come to our assistance, as if they all work for the tourist bureau. It is a quality that ought to be enjoyed quick, before it is lost. It doesn't take long for a people who have recently begun receiving visitors after years of isolation to transform from being very helpful to wanting to take advantage of them. I saw the transformation in Guatemala between 1979, when I first visited, and in two subsequent visits over the next ten years, all by bicycle. The first time was with my long-time compadre Crissy. We had been wintering in Mexico in the small fishing village of Puerto Escondido, a couple hundred miles north of Guatemala. We regularly met travelers who recently been to Guatemala.  All raved about how warm and welcoming the people were.

So few travelers ventured to Guatemala, the locals treated them as if they were guests they wanted to please. That was exactly the response Crissy and I received. It was shocking to meet such kindness and cordiality, especially after spending so much time in Mexico. Years of big-shot Americans flaunting their money and treating the Mexicans with less than respect, had understandably made them wary and not always so friendly. In Guatemala people offered us water without us asking and whatever assistance we needed and were happy to have their picture taken. On my second visit, I met a young Guatemalan who had recently returned from the United States, where he had worked as an undocumented laborer for several months. He could earn more in three hours than he could in a week in Guatemala. He was most staggered that he could earn enough money in two weeks to be able to buy a car. It wasn't much of a car, but it was still a car. Owning a car is utterly unimaginable for the average Guatemalan laborer earning two dollars a day working in the fields. When he and everyone he knew gradually learned how rich the backpackers and tourists were, not only from first-hand reports of the few Guatemalans who went to America, but also from witnessing the spending habits of the wealthier tourists who came after the backpackers, it greatly altered their perception of them and how they responded to them. Their shift in behavior was glaringly evident when I biked through Guatemala five year after my first visit. The prevailing attitude switched from one of "What can I do for you," to one of "What can I get out of you." I saw it happen to Puerto Escondido too. Once Puerto Escondido was discovered, in less than a decade, it went from a town with one restaurant serving food from north of the border (spaghetti) to dozens of restaurants serving all manner of Western food. The locals lost their charm and cordiality with it. The Vietnamese are in the middle of that process.

I was surprised to see more than a dozen buildings of ten stories or more sprouting up across Hanoi when I climbed to the top of the one hundred foot Flag Tower, built in 1812. I knew of three such buildings in the town center, but wasn't aware of the others. The Flag Tower is part of the Army Museum. Across the street is a small plaza with a statue of Lenin on a pedestal. The focus of the museum was more on Vietnam gaining freedom from their French colonizers than on the "American War." The American War lasted just eight years, from 1965 to 1973, while the era of French control began in the 1850s and lasted more than a century. The American War was referred to as, "The resistance war against the U.S. for national salvation" and "The U.S. War of Destruction in North Vietnam from 1965-1973." There was quite a bit of military hardware in the courtyard surrounding the museum. Just about every visitor to the museum wanted their photo taken in front of a Mig Jet, that shot down nine U.S. jets. There was also some B-52 wreckage and various U.S. military vehicles that had been captured. By far the most impressive item was a bicycle with 370 kilos of cargo strapped to it.

There was a similar bicycle, though not so heavily laden, at the vast and modern Ho Chi Minh Museum near his mausoleum. It, too, placed greater emphasis on Vietnam ousting its French oppressors than on the war instigated by the United States. It contained a considerable amount of Ho's writing, much of it championing Marxism-Leninism. Ho wrote, "We won great victories first and foremost thanks to the irreplaceable weapon, Marxism-Leninism." There was no update to the caption, "In today's world only the Russian Revolution has been successful."

Of the few people at the Army Museum, most were Westerners, while Ho's museum was thronged with visitors, practically all Vietnamese. It is an impressive, largely glass, modern two-story building. Unfortunately, none of the many video displays were working. Ho issued a declaration of independence from France on Sept. 2, 1945 and served as Vietnam's first president until his death in 1969. He is quite revered. His photo is on every denomination of bills, which go much higher than those of Laos. Laos peaked out at 5,000 kip, a mere fifty cents. Vietnam has bills of 500, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 and 100,000, all the way up to almost seven dollars.

We also visited the former prison where many American pilots were incarcerated, including John McCain. The prison is in the heart of the city. Only a wing of it remains, as the tallest building in Hanoi, the Hanoi Towers, rises right above it. The prison was built by the French in the late 1800s. Much of its history concerns the incarceration of Vietnamese political prisoners. Ho was never imprisoned, or at least there. A sign at the entry to the prison warned "No frolicking." There was just one cell devoted to the American prisoners. One photo identified McCain. The introduction said the Vietnamese, "Brought down thousands of aircraft and captured hundreds of American pilots...Having committed untold crimes on our people, but American pilots suffered no revenge once they were captured and detained. Instead they were treated with adequate food, clothing and shelter." There were half a dozen photos of groups of prisoners behind big spreads of food and being read letters. One showed half dozen prisoners standing in a chapel. Eagle-eye Laurie noticed one had his middle finger pressed to his chin, but not too flagrantly, as another finger was slightly extended along side it.

Not all our sight-seeing was restricted to the War. We also visited Hanoi's Temple of Literature, a walled-in courtyard with several buildings that date to 1076. It was originally erected to honor Confucius.

In all our wanderings we failed to find any peanut butter. We could have purchased M&M's and Tang and Prego spaghetti sauce and Snickers though. The best find of the day was a used book store willing to trade Laurie's Kafka for Lonely Planet's guide to Cambodia.

Later, George

Hanoi !!

Friends: And here we are in Hanoi. Bangkok to Hanoi via northern Thailand and the mountains of Laos, some 1,500 miles. This has become a significant journey. Five days in Vietnam and we have to keep reminding ourselves this is the Vietnam of all those movies and books and tales of friends who served here. Fortunately, neither of us knew anyone who earned a spot on the Vietnam War Memorial. If we let our thought drift back to that distant past, we can feel the nightmare this place was at one time. There is no evidence, though, of all the carnage of that time, other than the occasional glimpse of an older guy lacking a limb.


There is no animosity to speak of, rather the opposite. Several times a Vietnamese of my age, in his 50s, has approached me, offered his hand and then walked away, without saying a word. I don't think it has anything to do with how far we have traveled by bike. Rather, it is assumed I'm another returning vet who has come back for some sort of catharsis, and they wish to let me know they appreciate that I've returned and that there are no hard feelings. Some simply ask if I've been to Vietnam before, a polite way of asking if I'm among the six-and-a-half million Americans who served in the military here.

As we closed in on Hanoi my thought began dwelling more and more on where we were. The last 20 miles before the outskirts of this city of three-and-a-half million were on a divided four-lane highway with little traffic. There wasn't much need for horn blasts, though an occasional driver couldn't resist, even from the opposite direction across the divided highway, as some sort of welcome. With such relative calm, our thought could wander. We had a minor skirmish going ourselves warding off the chills from a cool wind from the north and an all day drizzle that had our speed below ten miles per hour. Each kilometer post with Hanoi written on it wouldn't let us forget where we were headed.


I could feel a welling of emotion not unlike what I felt after the seven days I spent in a courtroom attending the trial of the SUV road rage murderer of a messenger friend of mine. When the first degree murder verdict was given after two days of deliberation I felt empty. And when reporters asked for my reaction afterward I found myself choking on the emotion of the moment. I could feel a similar welling now. But only because I dug for it. We have seen nothing so far in our five days here that would cause them. Maybe when we start going to the various museums and memorials devoted to the war, such feelings will be stirred. What minor hostility we have experienced wasn't from anyone who knew our nationality. We have yet to encounter another American here, just Europeans among the Western set, so the locals do not assume that foreigners are Americans. People always seem pleased, however, to learn that we are Americans.

We arrived in Hanoi less than five hours ago, an hour before dark. It took us most of the last hour of light to find a hotel, as the first two recommended by Lonely Planet were full and several others we checked weren't up to our standards, at least when we had options. The traffic hasn't been as horrendous as we had been warned, especially compared to that of Bangkok. The majority of it is motorbikes. They clog the streets wheel-to-wheel and shoulder-to-shoulder flowing at a similar steady speed as if they were a steadily moving current of water particles. They are so dominant, a Dutch couple traveling by bicycle we had dinner with last night told us that there were no bicyclists in Hanoi, just motorcyclists. We couldn't believe that to be true, and it wasn't. But there are so few, we could understand that by Dutch standards, there appeared to be none. Bicycles once dominated not so long ago, but with affluence, they have been choked out by the motorcyclists. There are still a handful of bicyclists, so the motorcyclists have experience in accommodating those of us on pedal bikes.

We found a hotel in the old city. We are eager to explore its narrow, windy streets and its many shops and sidewalk sellers. There is at least one building of 20 stories or so, unlike the capital of Laos, which didn't have a building of more than three or four stories, other than a monument or two. But like Ventiane, it could be a capitol city free of American franchises. We have seen none so far in our wanderings. Maybe there will be a McDonald's or KFC or some such thing near the skyscraper, not that we are interested other than as a symptom of its Westernization. Thailand had plenty. In fact 7-Eleven was its most popular grocery store in any town of more than 10,000 people. We were always happy to see one, and in fact were eager to, as they were air-conditioned and had a self-serve drink machine that dispensed crushed ice just like back home. We were hoping there'd be 7-Elevens in Laos and Vietnam as well, but so far we have yet to find one.


We've had nine straight days of biking since Ventiane and are looking forward to several days of rest. We plan to take a two-day trip via bus to Halong Bay, 100 miles away. That seems to be what every traveler does in Hanoi, just as everyone who visits Chang Mai takes a three-day trip to visit the hill tribes. We're nearing the half-way point of our two-and-a-half months away and are beginning to feel the pressure of time to do all we'd like before we return from Bangkok the day before Christmas. We're hoping to meet up with the Aussie cyclists we spent a couple days with in Laos and also the Dutch couple we dined with last night in Ninh Binh. They were just a week in to a six-month bike ride from Hanoi to Singapore. This was their dream trip. It was inspired by a one-month bike tour of Northern Thailand two years ago. They knew that wasn't long enough. We closed down the restaurant, breathlessly gabbing away, extolling the bicycling life. Our conversation was so animated and lively, I was aware of others in the small restaurant of travelers listening in, as I would have too, and then resumed our gab-fest over a prolonged breakfast this morning before we set out in the rain, they south and us north.

The few of us who travel by bike are instant friends and share a camaraderie as if we've known each other for years. I've had many a tour when I never encountered another touring cyclist or just for a few minutes on the road as we passed going in the opposite direction. The handful we have met on this trip has each been one of its highlights. We delight in checking out each other's gear almost as much as we love hearing about each other's love for what we are doing. The Dutch couple had super-insulated water bottles that even had a temperature gauge built in to them. They registered 45 degrees after spending the night in the refrigerator. They also had two kickstands on their bikes, one on the rear stay and the other on the front low-rider rack to prevent the front wheel from swinging around. They were enthralled by my spare tire stuffed between the spokes of my front wheel. I have yet to meet another cyclist who knows that trick. They don't have to worry much about dogs as the husband is a police officer who trains police dogs--Belgian shepherds, as they are meaner than German Shepherds.

Dogs are the least of a touring cyclist's worries in Vietnam. The few that are to be seen are remarkably well-behaved. If they're not, they could well end up in the frying pan. I was startled today to actually hear a dog barking, but it was a puppy who didn't know better. The honking motorists, unfortunately, more than make up for the lack of dog barking. They yelp at will with their horns, and, as with dog barking, it is contagious and competitive, and for many, once they start, there is no stopping them. It is beyond annoying. It is infuriating. In India it nearly made me cut my planned three-month trip short. Vietnam is no where near as aggravating as India. The incessant horn-blowing was just one of the travails of traveling in India. Almost as aggravating were the swarms of people who continually mobbed me. We had been warned the Vietnamese could swarm as well and give us no peace. But those warnings all came from people who had been here a while ago. The locals have become accustomed to Westerners and are no longer so curious. We still attract people here and there but only a thimble full by India standards. We drew the attention of several young men this afternoon when we stopped on the divided highway into Hanoi under an overpass, the first we had encountered since Bangkok. We wanted to get out of the rain and have a bite to eat and there'd been no place to stop for miles. A couple of guys on motor bikes pulled over to check us out, and several guys from some nearby fields came over. They were shivering and were surprised we were in shorts. A couple of them were bold enough to put their hands on my legs to see if they were cold. They weren't at that point, though after 15 minutes or so we had cooled off enough for Laurie to have goosebumps, which a couple of them pointed out. Another stroked my beard. But these were gentle, friendly gestures that we didn't mind.

Vietnam continues to surprise and enthrall us. One must ever have his camera at the ready to capture the odd sight or moment. I could have shot a dozen rolls already just of all the wide-ranging loads we have seen carried on bikes. As we sat sipping our fourth smoothie in little more than 12 hours two towns back at one of the typical intersections without stop sign or stop light or traffic cop in the middle of a town with a non-stop stream of all manner of traffic converging from all four directions, I wished I had a video camera to capture the spectacle of it. No one slows their speed, but all still pass through unscathed. We saw pony and cattle-pulled carts along with scores of bicyclists, some carrying a half-ton load on a front-loaded transport bike, and all the usual motorized vehicles and pedestrians, too, some carrying a pole on their back with two overloaded baskets at either end, too wide to be on the sidewalk, trotting along in the road. It had to be seen to be believed. We could have spent all day watching it without becoming bored.

Later, George

Thanh Hoa, Viet Nam

Friends: The first rain of our travels, along with a head wind, made us decide to abort a bit early today here in Thanh Hoa, a vibrant city of 100,000, rather than continuing on to Ninh Binh, another thirty-five miles down the road. It means we are ninety-five miles from Hanoi rather than sixty. But we are happy to be here, even though when we returned to our hotel, after a late afternoon stroll, we surprised a couple of rats who were perched upon our sack of food hanging from a bungee cord draped over a rafter in the ceiling. So now we have to decide whether we want to upgrade from our five dollar room to perhaps a more rat-proof fifteen dollar room.

Last night we had our grungiest room of the trip and felt lucky to have found it. We had reached a city shortly before dark that seemed sizable enough to have a hotel, especially since it was at the intersection of two significant highways, including Highway 1. We asked several people at the main intersection of the town if there was a hotel nearby. All told us there was no hotel in the city. But we had been told by the Dutch cyclists we met a couple of days ago, that there are four categories of hotels in Vietnam, and that the two lesser categories are such marginal hotels not everyone is aware of them or would recommend them to travelers or tourists. They told us to be persistent and to keep asking, as someone might eventually know about such a place.

We had yet to encounter anyone who spoke English, so we continued down the road in search of a likely suspect. I saw several well-dressed men by an impressive looking building. There were no English speakers among them, but one, who turned out to be a police official, understood what we were looking for and said yes, there was a hotel and that he'd take us there. He hopped on his motorcycle and led us back a block to the very intersection where we had asked several passersby about accommodations. At that very corner, across the street, he led us into a three-story building. The lobby was quite commodious, but upstairs was a series of bare bone cubicles for workers. There was a lone room available. Without the backing of the police official, I doubt they would have let us stay, as it was men only--there were about twenty-five of them who shared a lone toilet and shower down the hall from our room. Laurie was given quite a few dirty looks and was even smacked in the head by one fellow in the hallway as she walked behind me as I escorted her to the toilet. The stench in the bathroom from a floor level urinal with several decades of encrusted urine on its ceramic tiles was strong enough to level Tacoma.

Later that night, as we were walking back to our cell after dinner, a most charming and demure twenty-year old girl invited us to join her at a friend's nearby restaurant. She was another of the many Vietnamese women we have encountered who had a smile bright enough to light up Las Vegas, smiles unlike any. Everyone smiles in Thailand, but not with the luminosity of the women here. We can't say the same for the men though. Ho and her friends were eager to meet and quiz a couple of Americans. Ho served as translator. Laurie and I pass as husband and wife with a couple of children, sparing us the complications of explaining our friendship and our unconventional lives. The older adults were quite pleased to learn that Laurie and I were the proud parents of two children. They positively beamed that our trip had been a gift from them. The next day, as we were biking in the rain, Laurie said, "Next time we ought to say we have six children and they are all honor students and exceptional athletes." Concocting their bios occupied us for many miles.

Biking Highway 1 has been an extraordinary experience. It forms the backbone of Vietnam, running its length for over one thousand miles from Hanoi to Saigon. It carries a river of traffic of Amazonian proportions, much of it non-motorized. It is two lanes wide with a nice wide shoulder for all the bicycles and animal-pulled carts and other slow-moving vehicles, while right along side of us buses and all varieties of trucks, from 18-wheelers to pick-ups, roar by. There are also plenty of motor bikes and even an occasional automobile. It is a non-stop riot of people and product. It is a thrill to be a part of it. Through the larger towns and many of the cities, the cyclists multiply to beyond critical mass proportions. The bikes are all of the one-speed persuasion, but, unlike India, they are not clones. There is great variety to the type and color and even a greater variety to what they are transporting. We passed four guys, each with three 55-gallon drums lashed to their bike. When I stopped to photograph them, they waved and smiled broadly. I was only going to photograph the first pair, but as the others passed, they gestured that they wanted their picture taken too.

There are as many women bicycling as men, and plenty of boys and girls as well. The women especially seem to be enjoying themselves as they pedal along. Their eyes brighten even more when Laurie passes. Yesterday, two thirty-year old sisters rode alongside us for half an hour. One chattered away in Vietnamese and I chattered back in English. She too had a megawatt smile that had to be seen to be believed. She was as delighted and gleeful to have our attention as the small children of Laos. It is rare to see such genuine and unfettered warmth. Many of these women carry loads that dwarf the loads Laurie and I are carrying. And they can nearly maintain our pace. Though they aren't traveling the distances we are, they easily could.

When we paused for a couple of hours at a beach ten miles from Vinh yesterday, four women pored over Laurie's bike as if it were a holy relic. No one on this trip had admired it with such respect and intensity. One even pointed out that her handlebars needn't tightening.

We haven't gotten used to all the horn-blowing from the trucks and buses barreling past. Some of the horns are of ultra, off-the-charts, decibels. When a train passed us the other day and tooted its horn, all the trucks responded like a pack of barking dogs, proving they had a much louder bark than the pipsqueak toot of the train. I've yelped in genuine pain several times when the pitch and intensity and the angle of the noise hit my left ear drum just wrong. Some of the trucks can be heard from way down the road, blasting their horn like a sharpshooter blasting at a flock of geese. Unlike India, where every driver assaults every moving object along the road with their horn and where all horns sound pretty much the same, as the bulk of the traffic is an identical Tata lorry, there is a great variety to the horn blasts here. When one isn't in the midst of the cacophony, listening to the range of sounds can be fascinating, almost symphonic. But when one is their target, it is murder on the ears.

Today was Saturday, which may explain why at times we went a couple minutes or more between horn blasts. Any respite is a relief. But it's still not as bad as India, where 99% of the trucks blasted their horns and with greater venom than here. There is much, much more traffic on Highway 1 than I encountered in India, but not even half of the Vietnamese drivers toot, and many of those only moderately. But the loudest of the Vietnamese are louder than the loudest of the Indians and their loudness is compounded by the faster speeds they drive here. Vehicles couldn't drive much faster than twenty-five miles per hour in India as the roads were so horrendous. Highway 1 here is smooth enough in most places to allow speeds of fifty miles per hour or faster and when horns are launched at those speeds, the noise is hurled with ever greater ferocity.

I am happy to report we had no one grab at our bikes today, nor did we have anyone veer at us from the opposite lane to give us a little fright, as has happened, nor did we have anyone zip by us as closely as they could. It looks like all those untoward incidents of our first day were isolated, very localized incidents. I wouldn't say they were freak occurrences, as they were clearly premeditated and seemed as if they would be common on that isolated stretch. I can hardly remember any such incidents in all my previous tens of thousands of miles of touring over twenty-five years on five continents. I have been stoned by kids, and by kids who meant it, in Guatemala and Morocco, and haphazardly in Bolivia. We're not prepared to call Vietnam a cyclist's paradise, but it has been a most unique and interesting experience our first three days that we are happy to be having.

We had a most rewarding stroll about Thanh Hoa this afternoon and evening. There is an abundance of food vendors and sidewalk cafes, unlike Vinh where it wasn't so easy to find a place to eat. We even spotted a blender, our first in nearly a week, and had the two best smoothies of the trip, one after another--one of papaya and the second of soursop, a fruit we had never sampled before, but was a sensational discovery. It was berry-like with a hint of lemon flavor. We'll have another tomorrow morning for breakfast before we leave town.

Not so pleasant, however, was the sight of several dogs caged for sale to be eaten in the market. That was nothing compared to the semi-truck that pulled in to a gas station we had stopped at that was transporting hundreds of them, half a dozen to a cage, each with the most devastating hang-dog expression imaginable. My photo will be sure to bring gasps of horror. Dog-eating is more common in the north of Vietnam than in the south. There is a town six miles north of Hanoi famous for its dog restaurants--sixty along a one-kilometer stretch. We made a note of it...so we can avoid it. There is a certain lunar phase when it is popular to eat dog. Even before seeing today's critters, there wasn't much of a chance that we would have been indulging.

Tomorrow we will pass by some spectacular limestone formations.

Later, George

Vinh, 2

Comrades: We awoke at six a.m. this morning to the clamour of non-stop horn honking from the early morning traffic. An hour earlier our sleep had been interrupted by someone knocking on nearly everyone's door announcing the bus to Hue. I was surprised to notice from our fourth floor room that all that horn blowing came from just a tiny proportion of the traffic on the main boulevard below. Nearly 95% of the traffic was two-wheeled--motorized and unmotorized. The occasional car and truck needed to blast its horn to clear the way. The more distinctive horns could be heard from blocks away. Laurie looked out and said, "This is out of control."

Before heading out of Vinh towards the coast we indulged once again in the Internet. It is ten miles to a beach that is said to be the third best beach in the north of Vietnam. That's not saying too much, as all the better beaches are in the south. If it is inviting enough, we may linger before beginning our assault on Hanoi. We were able to find an ATM machine last night. We both withdrew one million dong (15,000 to the dollar).

I am happy to report that Vietnam has ice, not always in cubes, but ice nonetheless. The ice at the first restaurant we stopped at, twenty miles into the country, was a palm-sized hunk that the waitress/cook broke up by smashing with the bottom of a soft drink bottle--not the most sanitary method, but one learns not to be too concerned about sanitation in places such as this. She was the nicest, most ebullient person we've met on the trip. It was a great welcome to the country after the somewhat surly customs officials. The people so far have alternated between being very friendly to dour and outright hostile. She communicated with us entirely in pantomime and a bright smile and dancing eyes. She even invited Laurie back to wash her face, smudged with dirt from all the dust stirred up by the traffic on the road.

We'd had two encounters in Laos with Vietnamese who were also most outgoing and energetic. They were proud to tell us they were Vietnamese, as if they didn't want us to think they were Laotian. One was a family that ran a restaurant where we and a couple of Australian cyclists, Andrew and Ilias, we had teamed up with had a fabulous lunch. We were treated as if we were world-famous adventurers. They couldn't do enough for us, bringing out more and more food, and topping it off with whiskey. Whenever we said thank you in Laotian, they corrected us with the Vietnamese version.

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Later that same day we were rescued by a Vietnamese gentleman who spoke fairly fluent English. The four of us had ended up in a town without a guest house shortly before dark, even though we had been told earlier in the day that there was one to be found. We were struggling to communicate with someone who spoke no English who seemed to be telling us we could sleep in his restaurant. The English-speaker came along and said he might be able to find a place for us. He did, right across the street in a house with an empty upstairs room that had three beds with bare slats and springs. We all had sleeping pads and sleeping bags. The Aussies didn't have a tent so they were truly desperate for a place to stay. Laurie and I could have headed out and camped, as we had already done twice in Laos, but we were enjoying the Aussies' company too much to abandon them.



The other Aussie, Andrew, modeling the peasant hat both he and Illias wore on their bikes to shield the sun.

The previous night we had ended up at the same guest house. Our dinner together was one of the more memorable meals of our trip. It was the usual noodle soup, not much more than a snack for touring cyclists. Each of us guys had a second bowl and didn't leave a morsel. As we lingered and talked the restaurant was closing. The family invited us back in to their quarters to join them for their meal. There were two large bowls of sticky rice, which we rolled into balls and then dipped into one of three meat dishes and a bowl of long greens.

One of the meat dishes was full of insect parts in a stew. Another had a small cranium of an indeterminate animal. Only one of the family spoke any English, but not enough to explain what we were eating. One of the Aussies tried out a variety of animal noises to see if any matched the animal parts. He also imitated shooting with a rifle to see if they had hunted it. It could have been dog or rat or bat but it wasn't. All the dishes were beyond my spicy threshold, so I just marginally dipped the rice. The greens, too, were nothing like any of us had seen. Here we were, eating insects and weeds with a Laotian family in the back of their restaurant and loving it.

Two days later when we came to the intersection where we went our separate ways, we encountered a Dutch couple, husband and wife, who had been on their bikes fourteen months and had come through Africa before flying from South Africa to Bangkok. This was almost a once in a generation confluence of cyclists from three different continents meeting on a fourth continent. We were the first touring cyclists the Dutch had had more than a passing conversation with in all their time on the road. They'd met none in Africa. Lucky for us all, we met at lunch time. It was a lunch that could have gone on well into the night, but Laurie and I broke it up after three hours. We concluded the meal with a couple of shared watermelons.

After two days together it was hard to say goodbye to the Aussies. We had shared many good times and laughs and had come to know them as well as friends we have known for years. They were both in their early thirties. This was the first tour they had undertaken. One had been a courier in Sydney and also participated in Sydney's Critical Mass. He said it was fairly tame, as it was a virtually sanctioned ride, escorted by a dozen velocops. The other Aussie was unemployed other than busking every Friday and Saturday night. He was a singer/rapper. For a year he saved all the coins he earned to pay for this trip.  When he went to take it to the bank it weighed over 150 pounds. With luck we'll cross paths in Cambodia. They aren't doing as many miles as we are, and will head straight to Saigon, rather than swinging up to Hanoi as we will.

Sorry for the semi-incoherence of this. I've already lost one lengthy email. Now I'm just slopping it out, rushing to get as much down as time allows. Much has happened since my last communication from Laos five days ago. Our second night of camping in Laos, the day before we crossed into Vietnam, was interrupted at three a.m. by an invasion of biting red ants. It took us several minutes to find their entry point, though all we had to do was follow their neat and orderly file with the crumbs they had scavenged from our dinner. Once we found it we sealed it with duct tape and doused it with mosquito repellent. Then we crushed all the ants in the tent. We would have slept through the invasion if the ants had restrained from attacking us and had simply been content with our crumbs. They were voracious enough to eat through my heavy-duty Ziploc bag into my stash of nuts. I didn't appreciate that at all. I wasn't about to lose them. Later in the day I dumped the nuts and ants in my Tupperware bowl and set them out in the hot sun. The ants quickly fled.

Later, George

Vinh, Vietnam

Comrades: The port city of Vinh was the start of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the most bombed city in Vietnam during what the Vietnamese call "The American War." This city of 200,000 has been completely rebuilt. Only two of Vinh's buildings survived all the bombing. Which two we don't know, as we didn't arrive until after dark this evening. We came nearly ninety miles today from Laos and I won my first bet of the trip from Laurie, and the first bet that she would accept. I've continually been offering bets when she expresses pessimism about whether there will be a cold drink in the town ahead and such, but she has never been willing to wager. But today, as we climbed out of Laos on the roughest road of the trip, actually forcing us off our bikes at times, she said, "I hope the road in Vietnam is better than this." I said, "I bet it will be." She wanted to know the stakes. "How about one of those peanut clusters Vinh is famous for."  That she accepted, and we shook on it as we pedaled along.

It took better than an hour to get through customs, mostly from run-arounds on the Vietnam side, before we were allowed to begin our descent from the 2,400 foot pass separating the two countries. We knew in an instant that I had won the bet, and though Laurie wasn't happy about losing, she was happy that she could crouch down over her handlebars and let it fly. Her neck was happier yet, as the past two days in Laos on a bumpy, but paved road, it was getting jarred good. Before we embarked on this trip I would have been happy to have been told we could find roads as good as the rough stretch out of Laos, but we had been spoiled by fairly good roads our first 400 miles in the country.

Our first sixty miles in Vietnam today gave me flashbacks to the horrors of biking in India. We were afflicted by more horn blasts than we had had in 1,200 miles through Thailand and Laos. Most of our previous toots had been greetings of friendliness. Not here. As in India, horn blasts are like blanket-bombing, unleashed recklessly at all and sundry. Fortunately, few reach the decibel levels of those of India and the horn-tooting is not as universal, but each approaching vehicle has my ear drums cringing in anticipation of assault. I jerk my head ninety degrees whenever a vehicle passes to avoid a direct line of fire should there be one. I will have to put cotton in my left ear if it persists.

After we descended to the flats and began to have more company on the road I heard Laurie shout, "Let go, you're slowing me down." It was one of those rare times I had gotten ahead of her. I turned to see a pack of teen-aged boys bicycling alongside her. And then I felt someone grabbing on to my bike. I disengaged my foot from my toeclip and he instantly let go. I then dropped back and rode beside Laurie as the boys circled and taunted us with a non-stop barrage of the two English phrases they knew--"What is your name?" and "What time is it?" I would have just ridden away from them, but Laurie was rationing her energy for our long day and didn't care to sprint. This went on for fifteen minutes before they turned off. Laurie said she had read in one of our guide books that such grabbing would happen. None of the several cyclists we have met who bicycled here, however, had mentioned it. Hopefully this will not be a regular occurrence. If it were, we surely would have heard about it. It is the first time I have experienced such a thing.

Not long after that incident we came upon a cluster of younger boys along the road who lept to their feet as we approached. We expected a chorus of "hellos" as we had been receiving here, though not with the exuberant glee of the Laotians. But instead, one threw an orange at Laurie. Somewhat stunned, she said, "I've never had that happen before." She didn't want to think ill of the boys and added, "It was just innocent fun, you have to remember." A while later a barefoot, feral-looking boy on a bike came rushing to the road as we approached and shouted, "Money," and thrust out his hand. He rode after us screaming "money, money" for a minute or two. These less than friendly outbursts all occurred on a narrow country road that is a tributary to the main Route 1 that links Saigon and Hanoi. When we joined up with Route 1 at the end of the day we had no more such incidents, just plenty of traffic to contend with.

It took us better than an hour to find an Internet cafe in Vinh, not until after ten p.m. and we are now closing the place down. Hopefully we'll find another before we reach Hanoi in three days.

Later, George

Ventiane 2

Friends: While Laurie went shopping on our rest day in Ventiane I stopped in at a prominent Buddhist Temple near the largest and most holy of Laos' Stupas. There were more than the usual one or two monks in their bright orange dress milling about. As I casually roamed about, pushing my unladen bike, a monk in his late teens smilingly approached and asked in fairly good English, "How are you?"

He was the first monk to speak to me in the month we've been traveling in this deeply Buddhist region. He wanted to know about my bike. He gasped at how far it had brought me and the terrain it had crossed. He asked if he could give it a try, even though it was way too big for him. He was a bit wobbly, but it brightened his smile even brighter than it was. He was a student monk attending high school, living here at this temple, one of the few in the country and the only one in Ventiane that housed students. This was Saturday, so he and his fellow monk students had the day off. A couple other monks joined us. They too were passably conversational in English, an extra course they take in the evenings in addition to their high school classes.

They told me of their routine, rising at four a.m. every morning, washing and then praying before going out barefoot and with bowl to receive food from whomever cares to gain merit by giving. I had risen early myself one morning in Luang Prabang to witness the ritual. There are a dozen or so temples there. The monks from each march single file from eldest to youngest down the streets in search of people with large pots of food. There were lone individuals and also clusters of two or three or four people along the street ladling out food to the monks. As each monk passed, they would scoop a single spoonful of food in to their bowl. Each might serve 100 or more monks, and each monk received food from a dozen or more givers. Most of those giving were older woman, but there was an occasional middle-aged man. Merit is an essential aspect of Buddhism. In Chiang Mai locals were urged to recycle as a means of gaining merit.

After half an hour or so of conversation, Monk Bouaon invited me to his room for a drink of water. His room was nicer than many of the hotel rooms Laurie and I have stayed at. He had a World Cup soccer poster on his wall and several dozen books stacked above his bed. He had a fan and a radio. From under his bed he pulled out a stash of individually wrapped coconut wafer cookies. As we talked, we were joined by several other student monks. I learned that Bouaon was actually 22. He hoped to graduate from high school in May and then go to university. He was one of eight children and the only to become a monk. He and his friends all agreed that life in Laos has improved considerably over the last several years, ever since the country has been opened to Westerners. He said the roads used to be so horribly pot-holed, I wouldn't have wanted to have bicycled here then. There is still a shortage of decent jobs. I hung out for over an hour, until it was time for them to tend to some afternoon chores. Though he doesn't have email, he gave me a small business card with his temple's address.

Later in the day I met a retired, 65-year old German cyclist, who had bicycled Laos several years ago with his wife and had loved it so much, they have wanted to return ever since. They confirmed that the roads were greatly improved, and that the people were as friendly as they had been then. I wished they were heading the same direction as Laurie and I, as they would have made for great company. They have been committed touring cyclists ever since their first tour ten years ago, going off on a tour every year since, mostly in Asia. I was hoping he was an even more veteran touring cyclist than he was as I began talking to him and learning of his travels. As I revealed more and more of my travels and how long I had been at it, he said he regrets from time to time that he hadn't discovered cycle touring earlier. He said he rarely meets anyone who has traveled more than he has, then added, "You are the Lance Armstrong of touring cyclists." He told of taking a speedboat six years ago. He hated it, but decided to give it another try, except chartering the boat for just himself and his wife and ordering the captain to go at half speed and not to pick up any passengers. He said the captain was actually able to restrain himself and that going at a slower speed made the experience a real pleasure.

I meandered some 35 miles around Ventiane today on my bike, giving each of the wide, but far from glamorous, boulevards a look. I failed to find an up-scale business district or even middle-scale. There were some outlying areas of semi-affluence, but as far as nice office buildings and shopping areas, Ventiane has none. The sidewalks are all broken and worn. Even the area around the Presidential Palace with the American and French Embassies and guest houses and restaurants and Internet cafes catering to travelers would pass as a slum in most cities. It is a nice place for ex-pats to disappear to.

Laurie encountered an ex-pat we had met in Luang Prabang, the nervous, paranoid type who was full of dire warnings. She was a 40-year old woman who used to work for Microsoft, but fled the U.S. when Bush the Second took office. She told us it would be suicidal to bike the road through the mountains out of Luang Prabang. She warned us to be wary of what we sent by email out of Laos, as she claimed they are all censored. I told her that when I send out mass emails, including one to myself, I received it instantaneously without any censorship. She said she receives reports from friends all the time who say the emails she sends them are full of misspellings of words like religion and communism. "You can't be too careful," she told us over and over in little more than a whisper.

As my thought roamed today reveling in how wonderful these travels have been, it also veered off to considering what regrets I might have. There are always sites I wish I'd seen and fellow travelers I wish I'd spent more time with and pictures I wished I'd taken, but never anything very significant. I somewhat regretted not taking one of the three-day package treks out of Chiang Mai every other traveler we've met seems to have taken. They all include an elephant ride and going down a river on a bamboo raft and getting a dose of opium. For those traveling by bus getting out and doing something physical in the outdoors has been the highlight of their trip. Its not much of a regret, as no one had an experience to compare to ours in Chang Mai being embraced by Esther and her friends. My biggest regret may have been failing to draft a slow-moving motorcycle that had a monkey in a cage on its back. Laurie and I were riding side-by- side when it chugged past us. I didn't react in time to chase after it, which I could have easily done. On my own I'm always on the alert for a slow moving vehicle to latch on to. I keep imagining how that monkey would have reacted with me just a foot or two from its face, pedaling furiously to stay in its draft.

We thought when we reached Laos there would be no more side-by-side cycling on its inferior roads. The roads are a far cry from the quality of those in Thailand, but there has been so little traffic until we came within 30 miles of Ventiane, we have still been able to ride side-by-side and while away the miles and hours in conversation. Many of you have been the subject of our musings as we comment on the emails you have sent. After Laurie heard from a cousin in Nebraska she spent a lot of time with as a kid she told stories of their many adventures and pranks. As nine-year olds they once doused themselves with ketchup and laid down alongside the road in their small town of 700 hoping to get rescued. No one came along before they grew tired. They snuck out one night at one a.m. and roamed their deserted town wondering what it would be like. She said it was years before they ever told anyone. Her cousin and her three sisters and brother still live in Nebraska. Laurie said the postcards she's sending there will be the talk of the town.

I had a good day spotting favorite tasty treats we have discovered along the way. For the first time since Chang Mai I have found those Thai Power Bars that Esther introduced us to--the bamboo sticks filled with sticky rice and coconut milk and beans. I've also found a few women selling apple fritters and a guy with a cart selling meat filled pastries, among my favorite hunger quenchers. I've returned several times to a woman who makes very thick and filling honey dew melon smoothies. I'm restocking my reserves for our push on to Vietnam and the mountains that lay between. Rest days are for eating as much as anything.

Later, George

Ventiane, Laos

Friends: Day seven in Laos and we see our first hammer and sickle. It was on a flag outside an apartment building on the outskirts of Ventiane, the capital. We arrived early this afternoon and in our initial exploration of this city of 140,000 we've only seen a couple more.

We've returned to our old friend the Mekong, which we left five days ago in Luang Prabang. It is now better than a kilometer wide and remains the border with Thailand. There is a bridge about twenty miles out of town, built with Japanese funding less than ten years ago. There isn't another bridge for hundreds of miles. We intend to linger for a couple of days here before heading over to Vietnam a couple hundred miles to the east. I was reminded of Belize City and Calcutta as we made our way into the heart of this city. Everything here is fairly ramshackle and dilapidated and makeshift. I kept waiting for things to improve as we reached the central business district, but it is largely one big shantytown. Every building has been in need of a coat of paint for a decade or two or three. The streets are all in need of resurfacing. Yet, it has its charms. Its not pretending to be anything other than what it is.

There are wide boulevards, thanks to the French. Laos, like Vietnam, was once a French colony. There's little traffic, so the motorbikes ride several abreast. There are some bicyclists, but not a great many. I was able to find several bike shops around the market, as I am in need of spokes. I have gone through the three spares I brought for my front wheel. I still have three slightly longer ones for my rear. My bike survived the much rougher roads of Bolivia earlier this year without a broken spoke, but I've had a spate of bad luck here. It is much more common for spokes on the rear wheel to break from the brunt of the weight, mine and my gear, but my 48-spoke rear tandem hub has been imperturbable over the years. The 36-spokes up front ought to be enough, but my problems go back to the slight pretzeling my front wheel suffered at the hands of American Airlines into Helsinki a year-and-a-half ago. I was able to straighten the wheel then and survive 2,500 miles in Scandinavia with only one broken spoke up front. I thought I needn't be concerned after that. I've put another 3,500 miles on the bike since then without repercussions. I'm not sure when I've broken the spokes, but I may not be as wary of rough spots as I chat away with Laurie. I had to stop at several shops before I found one with the spokes I needed at a tenth what it would cost back home. I also bought a tire. My rear tire had developed a bulge and needed replacing. I've still been flat free the thousand miles we've come. Laurie has had one, back in Thailand just as we were leaving a small supermarket, an easy place to replace the tube.

Our greatest trauma of the trip, other than when speedboating, came last night as our good fortune in finding a place for the night just as it got dark failed us. We reached a good-sized town that we were certain would have a guest house or hotel at our appointed time, dusk, but it had none. As we slowly trolled through the town, looking and asking for a place to stay, a guy on a motorcycle, who was fluent in English, pulled up alongside us and asked the usual "where are you from/where are you going." He told us there were no accommodations to be found in this town, but there was one five kilometers down the road. It is so rare to find an English speaker in a town such as this, unfrequented by travelers, and to have such a person come to us, Laurie was convinced he had to be a "guardian angel," and felt relieved that with such luck, we had no reason to ever be concerned. I could not disagree.

When someone tells us a place is five kilometers away we know it could be anywhere from four to eight kilometers, if we're lucky. By the time we had gone four it was pitch dark. We had bright flashing red lights to safeguard us from traffic approaching from behind, and our headlights could alert traffic coming towards us, but they weren't bright enough to search out hotels unless their signs were obvious and well-lit. We stopped several times to ask if the guest house we had been told about was still ahead. Someone with a smattering of English said it was two kilometers further on the right. I understood someone else to say there was a Vang Veng Resort ahead with a wave to the left.

The road at this point, closing in on Ventiane had widened to include a shoulder, the first in 150 miles, affording us some breathing room from the minimal traffic. We welcomed what there was, as it illuminated the road. We were riding at half-speed in the pitch dark. We could follow the road okay, but we could barely discern what debris or objects might lay about it. We were getting nervous, though Laurie said, "I'm not freaking out yet." As always, she has been an exceptional traveling companion, accepting the bad with the good and not stressing out, even when it would have been easy to. After seven-and-a-half kilometers we saw a neon sign and some flashing Christmas tree type lights up ahead on the left. The sign said, "Vang Veng Resort." There was no indication, however, how far it was down the side road. We climbed a slight hill and then saw more flashing Christmas lights adorning several structures on the shores of a small lake.

A guy came trotting over to us and said to follow him to the accommodations. Around the bend we saw a dozen bungalows with different colored tin roofs laid out in a neat horseshoe. It looked like it could be expensive, at least compared to what we had been paying. How much were we prepared to pay for this? We had yet to pay more than five dollars for a hotel. Moments ago we would have been happy to pay anything for a bed. No response from Laurie. If its too much we could simply ask to camp. She still didn't reply. The guy asked if we wanted a room with air conditioning or a fan. We were glad to have a choice. The bungalows weren't as nice on the inside as they looked from the outside. They had no hot water and came with a squat toilet. The price was 50,000 kip, less than five dollars.

We had the resort to ourselves. It was a most surreal setting. We were the only ones in a dining room with twenty-five tables. There was live music coming from one of the light-bedecked buildings by the lake. When we wandered over after dinner, there were only two men sitting and listening to a three-piece band. It was a newly constructed complex and had yet to be discovered. They must have had cash problems, as we were charged 4,000 kip for a bottle of water that we didn't even ask for and should have cost 2,000 kip at most. At other hotels we weren't even charged for such a bottle. But it was still a pittance and nothing to be upset about, only an incongruity to add to a bunch of other incongruities. The next morning we were charged triple the normal price for eggs and coffee. A kilometer down the road, we came upon that elusive guesthouse on the right hand side that others had told us about.

Later, George