SITESEEING: Hoi An and Environs

2/11/09
35.89 km

Wow, Hoi An is lovely and WOW Hoi An is set up as a tourist destination. It is a town of craftsmen and craftswomen! Every kind of hand craft is represented from wood to stone to ceramic to paper to cloth to paint to sculpture and much much more. It's a place to go to do some serious shopping and buy some serious gifts! I admit, I bought a few! The silk work is sooooo lovely!!! I wish Sharon were here to pick out gifts for women friends of ours!

So, there was a festival on the 15th day of the Chinese calendar in the old town of Hoi An. All the streets are closed to motorized vehicles (thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!) and everywhere there are lamps and candles and colorful lights. There were traditional music and dance performances and boat rides down the river with little floating lanterns in the channel. It was really lovely and I'm so glad I made it!

I spent a day just laying low and taking it really easy cuz I felt like doing it! I spent a day seeing the sites in the old town and checking out all the art and I spent a day on the bike exploring the islands and penninsulas and the beaches nearby. All very lovely and quiet and mellow and my timing was good or I chose the right routes and didn't see any other tourists. The beach was a tourist trap mess and, putting the pieces together, it looks like Vietnam has plans to turn My Khe beach from Da Nang to Hoi An into Cancun because there are major HUGE resorts being built up and down the beach with really fancy names. This is about a few years out! I ended up riding though through the tourist trap and kept on riding along the beach and ended up at the historic port where I found a nice quiet bench to sit on, have a cold drink and take a short nap in the shade. Very lovely.

RIDE DAY: Long Co to Hoi An, VT

2/9/09
Day: 72.04 km
Cume: 1976.5 km
Avg: 17.5 kph
Max: 52.5 kph
Time: 4h6m
Highs: Hai Van Pass ROCKS now that Hai Van tunnel is open! with only fuel trucks and scant motor bikes who can't afford or don't like the tunnel, the lush mountains of Hai Van Pass, waterfalls every few kilometers, gentle grade and great (sad) views of lovely Long Co, acceptable downhill, unbelieveable 30kph tail wind between DaNang and Hoi An
Lows: ZUphill headwind on the way up Hai Van for a good portion of the way, the hockers on the top of Hai Van Pass (OMG: I decided to only speak Spanish, they were so ruthless), downhill not as exciting as all the reports I read about it, stayed about 30kph the whole way and didn't see those killer blind hairpin turns (sorta disappointing, cuz I was looking forward to a real rusher), wanted more time at Hai Van but couldn't stand the hockers trying to sell me coffee (running up to me and surrounding me with shouting)

1) I decided not to take the 5000 dong shuttle through the tunnel because I had read so much about this pass, I just had to see it and experience it for myself
2) I was so sad to leave Long Co, but will need to bring Sharon back to stay a while (especially to go back and see my friends and walk that beach again)
3) Yes, I decided to ride right through DaNang because there was a special festival going on in Hoi An this evening (the 15th day of the Chinese calendar each month is a lantern festival)...as my governor back home wisely said, "I'll be back."


Hai Van Pass. Hmh. 8%, 9.5 km up and same on the down. The book said killer scary adrenaline junkie hairpin turns on the way down to DaNang (such a disappointment). But, I did it and kicked it's butt and was so happy I did it because it's SOOOOO LOVELY up there! The mountains rise up verdant green with waterfalls tumbling down all the way from the top and you can see the falls all the way! Such a trip! The top was a disappointment...as I was riding uphill to the top, a crowd of cafe hockers came out of their stalls and started running down the road toward me shouting, trying to be friendly and then tapping on my bike and panniers as I rode by and didn't pay any attention to them (I have a new policy on hockers that they don't get my business). I stayed a scant few moments to shoot three photos and then rode off amid a shower of shouting and jeers from the hockers. Bummer. They didn't mention anything about this in the book.

DaNang is at first glance quite industrial. I found my way to the coastal route along the sand and cut down the horns and traffic by 60 or 70 percent, it was GREAT! I rode this route all the way to Hoi An with a brief stop to chat with my brother at a computer cafe in DaNang.

I'll stay in Hoi An for a few days to get the feel and explore.

RIDE DAY: Hue Siteseeing and Hue to Long Co, VT

2/4/09-2/7/09
Days: 83.59 km
Cume: 1904.4 km
Avg: 16.1 kph
Max: 48 kph
Highs: Leaving Hue and actually getting back into the coutryside, two mellow passes, felt like a short day (2/7/09), arriving at an empty Long Co Beach and feeling at home with the waves crashing and the salty sweet scent in the air
Lows: SOOOOOOOOOOO MANY HORNS AHHHHHHHHH, 5 yr old boy aims a big rock at me with a mean face and shouts in Long Co Village (interesting)


Hue was a lovley place to ride and walk, even with all the traffic. I ended up staying a few days to take in all the scenary and just to chill out. I took a boat trip down the Perfume River (aptly named for all the sweet blossoms on trees and shrubs throughout the area) to see the amazing tombs of the former emperors and a couple of temples. Really, I just enjoyed walking in the citadel at night and just checking out the scene, walking on the AMPLE public parks along the river on both sides, watching the light show projected on the bridge each night and just ambling around. I was lucky and met a French man on the boat who is also a cyclist and who gave me some good route information on the roads I intended to ride which he had just come down by bus. Brilliant and sooo helpful!

I was happy to leave Hue after a few days of the traffic and speed of the city and return to the country. Highway 1 is unbelieveable, busy, narrow, loud, fast and crazy. I can see why cyclists like to ride down it, because of the scenary, but I don't get it because of the speed and noise and fear factor of the big trucks and buses driving wherever they please (including on the shoulder of the opposite side of the road). It really is incredible how the Vietnamese drive. I'll save comment for my rant that I promise I'll transcribe soon.

Riding into Long Co, though, made it all worth it. From talking with locals, it had been cloudy for fifteen days and the day I arrived, it was sooooooo sunny. I stayed at a fancy and empty resort with an ocean view and the sounds of ways crashing all night long ($10 and slept with the windows open!). The head of the front desk took a liking to me and showed me a few spots within the resort where I could get good ocean views, hang out and read and not be bothered by hockers on the beach. The beach was sooooooooooooooo lovely and EMPTY! I came two months prior to the start of their real season and there was nearly noone at the resort and on the beach. I went for sunrise and sunset walks and decided to stay two nights (I'd have stayed a week if Sharon was with me!). I made friends with a couple of fishermen from the village after I helped them and a handful of other guys to flip over a few of their hand woven bamboo boats to be re-coated with tar. I really wanted to help them do the tarring, but due to some miscommunication, I missed out. They invited me in for tea and snacks and I returned later hoping to help them do some tarring with a six pack of local beers. They thought I was crazy but happily invited me back in and we just sat around and enjoyed each other's company.

I met another gentleman who owns a little restaurant and shop on the street and he invited me to a "party" during one evening after I had lunch at his restaurant and conversation that lasted like an hour and a half. His little brother was so excited to show me his foreign currency collection he has been working on for two years and he was so proud of his American quarter collection after having collected all but six of the state coins! I promised him I'd send the ones he was missing, especially since he's missing the coin from great state of California. When I went back to his shop during the evening not knowing what to expect, Michael brought out a HUGE basket of oysters, fired up a small fire and bar-be-qued oysters until a half hour past I had hit my limit! SO AMAZING! Fresh oysters from his sister who, I guess, has a fishing boat. When I tried to give him money, he told me absolutely not and then drove me back to my hotel on the back of his motor bike. He and I and his two brothers laughed the night away listening to 80's music! One of his brothers likes Michael Jackson and he hates it! We were both singing along while Michael looked on disapprovingly! So much fun! Long Co, so sweet, so kind! Such a relief from chaotic city life!

Tomorrow, the famed Hai Van Pass. I'm ON!


the ocean surges
thrown against the shore
by a bright full moon
I think I see fishing boats
small black dots on rough waters

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fog fails to eclipse
the glowing sea basked
in full moon glow


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these fishermen
who live and die by the sea
launch into dark surf


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KIDNAPPED in Phong Nha For Siteseeing With New Friends

Waking up in breakfast in Phong Nha and getting all geared up to roll out to head closer to the DMZ, I went downstairs in my hotel to get some breakfast. After such a huge day yesterday, I was famished! Upon ordering, a woman walks up to me and knows right away I'm from San Francisco (by the way I speak)! Her name was Lihn and she was making her yearly visit with her husband to Vietnam to visit family and distribute aid to poor rural communities, schools and orphanages she collects through a non-profit she runs in her spare time ****ADD LINK****. She stopped me and basically told me that I was welcome/invited to come travel with her and her family!

This turned into one of the most pleasant and hilarious days as I traveled around with Lihn and Huong and their family and friends. Had I not met them, I would have not known that Phong Nha, which I rode into in the dark, is actually a world heritage site and contains some spectacular caves! The family loaded my bike in the mini-bus they chartered for their trip and off we went to the caves! Splendid splendid caves and excellent light displays--one cave at the top of 450 TALL stairs that we all mountaineered up and one in a cave under the mountain reachable by boat! AND, unlike Kong Lor, the boats used no motors and paddled the boat like a giant gondola through the cave! WOW, what a great experience!!!

****EDIT ADD PHOTOS HERE*************

Afterwards, we had some lunch and head out southward. They said they'd take me as far as I like and just give them the word when I wanted to jump out. We drove through the DMZ visiting a few places along the way and I decided, due to the time and how much I was enjoying myself spending time with their family, to travel with them to their final destination of the evening, Hue. This saved me three days of riding!

I am sooooooo thankful to my new friends for all the good times and the endless good humor and cheer they shared with me! And I'm so very grateful to Lihn and Huang especially for answering my many thousands of questions I had been storing up since entering the country!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to My French Comrade from Hue

I don't know if you'll actually look here (I didn't get your e-mail address), but I hope you do. I need to thank my French friend who I met on the boat in Hue who gave me road suggestions for the South. You were totally right about taking the bus to Kom Tum and cylcling to Dalat. The conditions were exactly as you said and I wouldn't have liked riding that section between DaNang and Tom Kum! Too dry, too steep! You were totally right! I would NOT ride the road again from Kom Tum to Buon Na Thout, though. Very narrow and busy and boring scenary (see subsequent post I'll write about drivers in Vietnam, I've been preparing my rant). I'm really happy now that I'm pedaling in the mountains and nearing Dalat and things are starting to get quiet and lovely!

AND, thanks for the suggestion of the Family Inn in Buon Na Thuot! Again, you were totally right on. The family was super nice, the room was decent and the price was right! And, there was market and food right across the street! Thank you thank you thank you for the great suggestions and please send me an e-mail so I can send you a personal note (if you actually read this).

To the rest of you, now you know where I am today!

RIDE DAY: Huong Khe to Phong Nha, VT

2/3/09
Day: 126.6 km
Cume: 1820.5 km
Avg: 16.1 kph
Max: 59.5 kph
Time: 7h50m (long day!)
Highs: The sun came out a little to wash away the grey, majority of the day was spent riding on the Ho Chi Mihn Highway through the mountain in Wilderness through a National Park, unbelieveable limestone mountains all around rivaling the King's Road in Laos, HUGE LUSH jungle, got a good nap in at lunch stop, lots of hellos and kids following me on bike and on foot, approving glances and nods from adults, felt really good after a long day in the mountains
Lows: The sun came out a little to heat things up!, 3k at 10% grade + 5k ascent at 90km into ride, BAD BAD road signs, TERRIBLE map, arrived after dark (fortunately on a country road, there was very little traffic and a few motor bikes helpfully followed me for the last 5k to light my way) 30 minutes after sunset, a lot of shouting and hollering for the roadside along with the hellos


This was a long but tremendously rewarding day. There is just nowhere to stay and/or eat through much of this section of ride. It was literally Wilderness (with a capital "W"). I could have camped and would have had water but would have had no food for some time, so I decided to push on to the bitter end. The riding was killer, lots of ups and downs, a couple of long ones. The mountains were insanely beautiful, but due to the grey skies, all the photos look mute and uninteresting, but this national park truly rivaled the King's Road in Laos. I got my first taste of Vietnamese style rice farming with oxen and plough rather than the tractors of Laos and Thailand. WoW! It's all very new still, so I'm just in awe of everything, especially the kindness I see from people along the roadside. Very very friendly.

My map simply sucks! It has towns in places where they don't exist or it reverses the order of towns or says town are on the road when they're 4km off the road. It's really bad. To compound things, the road signs were changing all day. There is a marker every km that lists the distance to upcoming towns. It wasn't until 15km before the town I was heading to that they actually declared the distance to the town I was heading to! It was strange. One road sign said 50km to Phong Nha, where I knew there were hotels, and then 10km later, it said 45km. I had no idea how far it actually was and then got hit with the killer climb out of the national park at 90km. It was awesome, though, because the remainder of the day was literally dead pan flat or downhill and the downhill was long and awesome. I need to list town names so this is clearer, but don't have my map with me. I'll return here to ****EDIT***** just in case there are cyclists reading this.

Riding after sunset sucked, but due to the terrain and feeling pretty good from having had an afternoon nap, I was able to step it up. When it finally got dark enough, I broke out all the lights and pedaled on at a quick pace. I arrived at Phong Nha at 7:00 or 7:30 exhausted and starving. The hotel proprieter was more than happy to make me be a big plate of fried rice and the BEST spring rolls ever!!! OMG!!! Very different from the states with a crumbly meshed wrapper that was very fibrous and flakey. So yummy! I crashed shortly after finishing dinner.

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a farmer
surfs his plough thru his rice field
his ox licks its lips

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RIDE DAY: Pho Chau to Huong Khe, VT

2/2/09
Day: 57.65 km
Cume: 1693.9
Avg: 18.5 kph
Max: 37.0 kph
Time: 3h7m
Highs: Invited into various homes along the way, lunch and dinner with Vietnamese families who literally called me off the road and invited me into their homes, rolling countryside, fast riding, hundreds of kids on bikes from school, Huang Khe's charm, the choice to stay in Huong Khe, internet $0.20 per hour!!!
Lows: Uncertainty about going on without road/accomidation knowledge, feeling unsure about invitations into home after all the negative feedback I'd received from Lao, Thai and foreigners about Vietnam

This was a really neat day aside from the concern about where and when to stop! I had only ridden 60km which is under my mark of 80km, but had no idea where the next town with accomodations was. When I rode into Huong Khe, there was just something about it that really caught me. It was like a provincial little European town with a huge lake right in the middle of town surrounded by greenbelts. The hotel in town had lovely wooden spiral stair cases, a balcony for every room, wood furnishing and HOT water. It was all surprisingly lovely to me. There were all these little impromptu cafes around the lake with plastic chairs which were all empty except for maybe a person or two having a soda. I didn't know what they were about until night time when they were PACKED with people sipping tea or coffee or beers talking somberly around the lake. It reminded me so much of evenings I spent in Geneva during the summer!

In town, I enquired about fixing and/or replacing my cell phone because it had been acting up. A young man stopped me to talk to me in English, practicing his English like many many other Vietnamese who stopped me along my way. We talked a bit and then he invited me to his home for dinner and tea. I was wary because of all the stories I had heard from other travelers and warnings from both the Lao and Thai people about the Vietnamese. This made me a little tense once at his home, but when I finally settled down, I had the most delightful evening with Hau and his four brothers, sister-in-law, cousins, parents, aunt and uncle with much conversation, cultural sharing and laughter. They even gave me a bag of food to take with me including the interesting rice snack filled with red beans which I still can't remember the name of. Good for me, though, lots of carbs!

So I was pleasantly delighted with Huong Khe, even though the ride day was short.