Travel Diaries #40 - Hanoi to Saigon [part 2]
My trip continues, and as I still ebb and flow between the push and pull of the Known and the Unknown, I start to lose track of days, and ease into a sense of freedom
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Part 2 of my trip from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City by motorbike.
Note: the above photo is not my own, I got it from Vietnam Coracle, which is an outstanding independent motorbike and travel guide for Vietnam, and helped me immensely over the course of many road trips to places left travelled (I wouldn’t have found this route through Vietnam without him, which made all the difference to my trip). Check him out if you’re ever going anywhere.
7.
I want to visit Dong Hoi but I want to maintain my breadcrumb trail to the back of beyond, far away from the kind of civilisation I know, so I make a day trip. It’s a pleasant trip down into the valley, an hour and a half on the bike is like popping to the shops for me now. Despite the wonders of mountains, and more mountains, and jungles and the untouched, there’s something equally beautiful about driving on flat dual carriageways through suburbs of large towns, the kind that are flanked by obscene strip malls for miles in American towns, or the N4 coming in through Liffey Valley. There are wonders here too, the delight of the exotic, curious houses and graveyards with overground tombs and the lives of normal people, unaware that any of it is interesting to anyone.
I get some spicy seafood, spice not being a feature of northern cuisine, bar a token bowl of chopped chilis they leave on the tables as condiments; the less said about seafood and fish up there the better. The menus here are different. Like Hanoi there are also small artificial lakes here, though they are different too, their waters not slime-green that reflects grey skies, but an inviting cobalt blue, like the ocean, like the sky.
There are canals, a river, colourful fishermen’s coracles lined up by the water, and on the sandbar the local equivalent of Malibu beach, with mansions and posh cars. Most of the town was destroyed – as in, absolutely levelled out of existence – in The War, leaving behind a single set of gates, a church, a tree, and nothing else. I visit them all. I find nothing else.
There is an ocean from which the seafood came, and it is wonderful, warm, pristine, heavenly to swim in, a luxury I’ve barely enjoyed the whole time I’ve been in this country, and next to the ocean there are palm trees and the white sand is red-hot. Men chug by in fishing boats casting nets.
I wanted to visit Dong Hoi because my friend Catherine mentioned it the last time I saw her, when I visited Hoi An with my family the previous year. She was driving to Saigon with her friend. She’d had enough of the ex-pat scene in Hanoi, and maybe Vietnam in general, and was heading off to teach English somewhere else, or maybe back home to the States. She went backpacking in Central America a couple of months later and was found dead on the coast of Panama, murdered by a stranger. She’d told me that time that Dong Hoi was ‘pretty’, or maybe it was just the next stop on their way south, away from Hanoi.
I get a coffee at a western-style café in small hostel overlooking the beach. I’m not staying though. I head back into the mountains.
I need to keep going.
I am possessed by a determination to go off the edge of the map, to be free.
The Duc Tuan motel already feels like home.
***
I back up home to Long Son is at the golden hour, where every plant and corner of the road has a life and history of its own. I go for dinner at the only place in town again, where the attractive woman, for the second night in a row, makes the best beef, eggs and rice I’ve ever had in my life. I have a handwritten account of the meal in front of me, though I remember nothing of the beef, even now, though the egg I can still taste, and had you asked me before reading of the best egg I’d ever eaten, I would have instantly recalled this one, in the Vietnamese village of Long Son, cooked by the attractive woman who lives around the corner from the Duc Tuan motel.
Some foreigners have checked in and join me for dinner. They live in Saigon but they’re not English teachers. Aaron is a half-Vietnamese, half-Chilean, American gynaecologist, Nico is from Belgium and has been running his own furniture production company here for ten years, Tom is their friend from the Netherlands. They played football with an Irish friend of mine from Hanoi. The fact that they’re not English teachers instantly makes them the most interesting ex-pats I’ve met in the last 18 months.
Binh (pronounced ‘Bing’ anywhere north of here) shows up just as we finish dinner. He appears like a Jehovah’s Witness on the threshold of the covered outdoor yard dressed like a dustbowl preacher. In his breast he clutches a soft cover copybook. I immediately get the feeling we’re about to be scammed, and it turns out later I’m not the only one.
He introduces himself as “the local English teacher”, though something is off, and not just the fact that his English is absolutely brutal. I can’t tell if he’s drunk or a beggar with an intellectual disability, and although he spends the next five hours in our company, by the end of it none of us become any the wiser.
“It is especially my pleasure to speak to you native English speakers!” he exclaims with the rasping fervour and passionate, almost sexual, earnestness of a religious preacher. He speaks with placeholders that are perhaps common in his native language but don’t translate as naturally in English – an unthinking “um, yes?” in between every sentence as he deliberates on what to say next, though as he waffles on it seems less and less like he’s doing much thinking, and more like he’s conditioned himself with a repertoire of phrases that he brings out for every group of foreigners he finds passing through his mountain village, eating on this patio, regardless of what they say to him.
Binh has about six trains of thought going at any one time that he repeats incessantly in woeful English with as thick an accent as you can get, even for these parts. He doesn’t seem capable of adapting these to our conversation, and he immediately adopts the wrong names for us (the best of which is calling Nico ‘Icon’) though he never forgets them. Each time he begins a conversation he addresses us with a fact he somehow knows about our countries:
“It is my great pleasure to welcome you native speakers of English to my country, especially of America – great governor Donald Trump; Ireland – independence United Kingdom; and Belgium – Brussels”
Without ever saying much he makes intermittent dramatic outburst and proclamations which he might have learned from movies:
“I love you all more than I can say!”
Binh tells us that our host Lop, the father of the attractive lady cooking the best in the eggs in the world, and a man he keeps referring to as The Gentleman, is the “head of the local authority”, and that he’d “like to thank you for coming here to his village in frontier area of Vietnam” even though The Gentleman hasn’t said a thing, instead giving Binh glances which, although maintaining his serene sense of peace and gravitas, indicates to us that Binh probably doesn’t make much sense when he’s speaking Vietnamese either.
Aaron can speak enough Vietnamese to learn some fascinating things from The Gentleman, who really is happy to welcome us to his home village located on the edge of the DMZ and has lived here for 55 years, right through the war and all that came with it.
Our scam detectors go on alert when Binh shows us his foreign currency collection in his copybook and asks us to add to it.
“Thailand, UK, Malaysia, HK, Vietnam and Switzerland!” he states as he points to them one by one, repeating this about 50 times over the next while, and always calling Switzerland Belgium.
“It is my grrrrreat hobby and also it is my life!” in repetitive outbursts.
Binh tells us he treks 6 hours through the mountains to where the border with Laos becomes irrelevant to teach English to children of families who have nothing, descendants of those people who first saw inexplicable bombs dropping by their millions for decades and must have thought that the gates of hell had opened and that it had conquered heaven. He says he went to university in Hue, graduated in 2000 and began working as a translator for the US embassy, and has two children. His notebook is signed with messages and email addresses of all the foreign visitors he’s met here in the village.
“I want to share my country’s feelings!” Binh roars.
The Gentleman cuts him off quietly after his second beer.
Every so often he lets out a roar of “OOOOoooohhh!” like his team have missed a penalty in a shootout, pumping his hand in the air with his other palm on his heart.
The Gentleman is 60 years old but looks 50. He brings out an object which looks like a large grenade but is actually a 19 litre container of rice wine. We drink several rounds of shots with considerate gestures and toasts, and are invited into a secret karaoke room attached to the house. Binh sings My Heart Will Go On.
He is a terrible singer.
“I love you more than I can say!” he tells us, again.
8.
In the morning we swim in the river behind the restaurant, where we once again eat well. Water buffalo and children wash themselves and women ferry sacks of peanuts across in a boat. A man gets us to assist him crossing the river in his boat made from US airplane wreckage.
The lads are travelling in the opposite direction so I bid them goodbye. Although I am riding partly to get away from the ex-pat world of Hanoi for several weeks, they have renewed my faith in foreigners, other people just like me.
I set off south for Khe Sanh.
As I settle into the flow of the road I realise I have no idea what day it is. I occupy myself on the drive by thinking on it for a while, though no matter how hard I try I can’t think it through. I try counting the days from when I left Hanoi, though every time I get close I lose count. This continues for a long time.
I literally cannot tell what day it is until I stop and check my phone at some point down the road.
The landscape is more open and varied. I am more alone than even yesterday. It is the most glorious road I’ve ever been on. Laos is nearby. I cross more bridges than I can count. I pass gangs of men carrying bamboo from the mountain forests. The older ones stare, the kids wave “Hellawwww!” Men in army fatigues stop their scooter as I’m taking pictures of a waterfall and ask “Where?!” I pass an eerie deserted village that looks like a famine heritage memorial. There is nobody around. There is nothing around here, nothing for miles. I’ve been driving for hours. I find a wonderful sense of freedom and work out my relationship with God, the consciousness and the afterlife. I wonder where the landmines are.
I’m driving into a storm. If I break down I’m spending the night with the hill tribes, which I’m not sure I’m ready for, nor are they. I don’t think even Vietnamese people (known comparatively as Viet Kinh, who make up the majority population, as opposed to those here whom I presume are one of the 56 ‘ethnic minorities’ who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves Vietnamese and try to maintain their own culture, language and traditional way of life. Or maybe they’re just honest to god country folk who are naturally wary of ‘outsiders’, like people from Garrymore) would be welcome here.
They’re streaming down from the bamboo forests and I assume it’s because they know it’s going to rain. The clouds are over the mountains and I have to drive straight through them both.
The rain comes, so heavy I can’t see 50 metres in front of me. I’m driving on a road carved out through some sort of canyon and appear to be directly under the middle of the cloud, the world still turning as I lean into the bends, this way and that. At least I’ve reached the crest of the hill, and as I learned yesterday, knowing that “it’s all downhill from here” brings relief and hope. I just hope I don’t get struck by the visible forks of lightning, or don’t crash as they regularly blind me. I have my yellow fisherman’s poncho on again and wonder how much of a target I am.
The riding here is incredible though, there’s no choice of comfort and it is liberating.
The rain is torrential.
Before too long I come across a building – some kind of ranger station – and drive up to the front door to sit on the porch. Two men in their 40’s invite me in and offer me tea and conversation, though they speak no English and I don’t understand anything they say. They’re quite friendly but don’t allow me to take photos of the place. The rain stops and I get going.
The air is cooler and the drive restores energy. I stop at a lake down from the mountains on the way into Khe Sanh. The surrounding hills look like Achill or Killarney. There’s a boat made from more US army wreckage. The scene is reminiscent of a Ghibli movie or a Zelda game.
I arrive to Khe Sanh just as the sun is going down, check into a terrible hotel and go out to dinner. There’s a loud booming nightclub across the road. I think I see some foreign tourists walking in.
I stay where I am and I write, and write, and write.
9.
I visit Khe Sanh Combat Base and walk around through old sandbagged tunnels. In display cabinets are old cigarette packets and ID cards of 17-year-old American soldiers collected from the earth around, where the US army got bombarded for several months at the start of the Tet Offensive. I get the sense that it was an experience of hell on Earth. A wandering black-market salesman finds me and offers to sell me one of the old war medals he claims to have found in the field for a dollar. I figure there’s at least a 50% chance it’s real, so I buy one.
I get on the road after getting some mediocre phở xào bò and an oil change. Around 11am, as usual, and in a tradition which has continued almost every day since my original departure from Hanoi, I find it impossible to leave on time, or early, though a trend has emerged of always arriving to my destination as the sun is setting, no matter how far I’ve travelled or what time I left, and so I’ve started to consider that, like wizards in the Lord of the Rings, motorcyclists always arrive when they intend to.
In retrospect I wonder if I developed my no-doubt-at-times-infuriating timekeeping sense from road trips like this.
I pass by a great dam. To the left is the main road to Hue, a distance of about 130km. In keeping with the mood of the trip so far, I go right. The country is barely 50km across at this point, though I’m still keen to avoid the main north to south highway and to try as much as possible to take the roads-less-travelled.
The road pulls high into the air and runs along a deep, lush gorge of the Dak Rong river. The highway is in good condition and the slightly temperate elevated weather is reminiscent of more western landscapes I’ve been to, perhaps North American even. It hugs the hillside and loops left and right though always powering forward before dropping down to the level of the riverbed. On the far bank of the river the most improbable sights against the gigantic, rather imperceptibly-scaled green cliff that rises back up the other side. Individual wooden huts – presumably homes – on the jungle cliff-edge, God knows how the inhabitant accesses it, or leaves in the first place.
Along the river villages of wooden huts. Naked kids play on the road and rush out to wave at the lone traveller. Everyone is naked, actually, and look incredibly happy for it bathing in the cool waters. Compared to the remote villages I passed through on the way to Khe Sanh, the people here seem more excited to see passing traffic, and in these parts they tend to be able to spot a white guy from 100 yards, even wearing a full helmet-sunglasses-and-facemask getup, though I guess my exposed limbs stand out a mile. There is also the sense in the air here that, while still isolated, this stretch of road is that little bit closer to and connected to, modern Vietnamese civilisation and the nearby town of Dong Ha, and the city of Hue.
I stop in a dusty village with nothing going on for a drink of water. Across the road a guy picks up a live chicken by the neck and begins to make dinner. The road to A Luoi goes up into the clouds and through more gyroscopic mountains, the earth beneath me rotating like a compass against layers of mountains, the valley floor hidden so there’s no sense of a secure base.
The mountains shimmer and rise and fall and gorges snake through layers of peaks like dragons, each catching the sun in different ways, each containing its own spirit, perhaps the origins of shamanic visions.
In A Luoi, as if to steady myself in spite of the euphoria I buy my first pack of cigarettes of the trip and enjoy some banter with the locals who ask me can they buy my sunglasses. I laugh and tell them (a) no, and (b) I only got them that morning in Khe Sanh for 100k. They laugh too.
I sit and enjoy a beer and stand and stretch my neck.
I thought yesterday was surely the best day’s driving I would have, just like I thought the day before was. And now I reflect that today’s driving surely can’t be bettered; I still have some way to go Hue though. I presume I’m over the best of it and out of the mountains, with just a flat highway taking me to Hue, though not for the last time on the trip, I’m reminded over the next couple of hours not to judge the territory ahead by the (Google) map.
The road from A Luoi to Hue is phenomonenal, a steep downhill jam carved through a canyon that doubles back around on itself and ties itself in knots in its own stomach. Three quick turns at a time and I’ve reached the state of spirit to just let go and let the bike max out through it all. It’s like snowboarding again, but with an engine and trucks to dodge. At one stage I pass a delivery guy who’s crashed (benignly) into a truck on a 270 degree bend; I slow down to offer help but am sheepishly waved on with smiles, in the wreckage are an Acme assorted of almost cartoonish goods scattered across the road, including the comical site of an old-timey alarm clock with springs and parts strewn everywhere.
The road is tremendous, exhilarating, nothing I could have expected and see ever again on my travels. I lose myself in the turns and forget about the time.
I arrive to the flat approach to Hue, shattered, enjoying the comforting of flat highway passing tombstones and rice fields.
It’s just about sunset.
I still don’t know what day it is.
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