Vietnam Day 8: Back to Hanoi

Today's post will be a short one, because it was mostly riding the highways back into Hanoi. However, a couple things of note did happen, which I want to share: The boat ride, the highway and the hotel situation.

Just a couple of bros in very natural poses

The Boat Ride: As promised, after breakfast, Huan took us out on his boat. A long, flat boat made of aluminum, Cassidy and I sat in the middle under an aluminum awning. Huan sat at the back next to this giant ancient looking engine. He then proceeded to pull out a crank and actually spun the thing up by spinning the crank in the engine for a few rotations. I know this is basically what a pull start does, but to see an engine started this way was actually pretty cool. It kind of justified every video game where I was sent on a mission to find a crank to start up a generator, or open some new expansive door.

Anyways, with this massive thing making an ungodly racket, Huan sat down on a cantilever and maneuvered the engine into position and slowly trolled us out of his little cove and into the lake proper. We passed other boats, fishing, hauling goods (like foliage or building supplies) from one place to another. We passed fish farms and many little islands - the same ones we rode by the previous day - on which grew banana trees, cinnamon, or fruit.

After Cassidy dipped his hand in the water and felt how warm it was, Huan offered for us to go swim, but we declined - I think once you get in the mindset of a long day or riding, you just kind of want to do that thing. So, after about an hour passed we were back home, gearing up for the final day of the guided tour.

Front of the boat

The Highway - Is madness. And as we close in on Hanoi we shifted from rural, less busy roads, to the outskirts of the city which were busy with a lot of people, school children and farm animals, and then finally just jam-packed city congestion. You just had to be hyperaware and go with the flow. Even though this was probably more dangerous than the mountain roads, I felt a lot more at ease bobbing and weaving here (it is kind of fun). As an example of how things could go on these roads, about 2 hours out of the city, we all had to slow down because a group of shepherds were moving about half a dozen buffalo down the highway in our lane in the opposite direction of traffic.

My bike setup

Eventually we made it back into the city and said our goodbyes. Huan was a great guide and we bid him "how-me-dune" the phonetic spelling of the "thank you" in his people's tongue (one of the 56 ethnic minorities in Vietnam).

Note: for most of the riding, I captured a lot on go-pro but this will take some time to download and sort through and edit before posting.

The Hotel Situation: Because we had spent another long day on the road (about 6 hours) we had booked ourselves a nice room near beer street so we could live in comfort but also see the night activity of Hanoi before travelling south.

However, the hotel was a complete shitshow. The entrance, I will grant, was beautiful. But after paying cash, we were ushered through a doorway, into an alley and then immediately into another building, this was where our room was!

That eye-contact style toilette situation

Upon opening the door, we were faced with...a calamity. There were burn marks in the headboard, the old plumbing from a previous toilet was still visible in the middle of the floor, the bathroom was part of the same room as the beds, basically, with a barely opaque sliding glass door. Cass sat down to do his business and as I laid on my bed, I was front and center to a pixelated image of him taking a poop. No sir. Then there was the "balcony." Once the balcony door was opened, you found yourself in the middle of several buildings just a few feet away. In fact, Cassidy went out there and was immediately greeted by the man in another room on his balcony who tried to start a conversation.

We went for a walk and decided to eat the $100 bucks and find another place. We longed for our original room above the coffee shop, and actually ended up finding a nice hotel on the same street - about a 7 min walk away. This time though, after confirming they had room, we asked them to show us the room first and we approved. So we hoofed it back to our original hotel and just...left.

Do not regret it at all.

That evening, we went out to beer street and found ourselves at a club. Honestly, it was a lot like a dance club back home, except we couldn't understand what everyone was saying. But we watched people and had a good night. We were back in Hanoi.

Your boys be clubbin

Vietnam Day 7: Out the Mountains

Fresh, clean clothes were what welcomed me the morning of our seventh day. Prices vary a bit in each town, but most places will do your laundry for about 1.50/kg. You drop them off in the evening and in the morning, all your stinky motorcycle clothes are ready to get dirty all over again!

Lunch break stop, in a region famous for it's marble

Today, we left SaPa. We could have taken a route straight down the mountain again, but our guide, Huan did what a good guide does and detoured us through villages and off-road dirt tracks all the way down. This is where having a guide really shone through for us: we could have used google maps to set our course for this trip, but to have someone knowledgeable in the side paths and intersecting village roads was well worth the price.

Quick break at the lakes edge

During our descent, we cross paths with locals, more dogs, and even crossed a few small bridges. I was also happy to feel the air begin to warm as we reached lower altitudes, and set off south towards Huan's family home.

One of several bridges crossed

I could sugar-coat this and say this was a glorious day of riding but the truth is it was a tough one for me. Km-wise it would be our longest day at about 220km, which at our speed meant were riding for close to 6 hours. My ass was sore from the vibrations of the bike, I was a bit tired from the sharing of family rice-wine the night before and I constantly felt like I had to pee (which I did - thanks to too much delicious Vietnamese coffee).

Alone with your thoughts on the bike you can get into your head about things and I started getting pissy with Huan (even though it really was my fault for not letting him know how I was feeling). So, when he checked in at lunch I told him as much: that I wanted to go slower so I could see things, that I needed a few more breaks, and that I was still a bit gun-shy about corners after my fall.

He responded as good as I could hope for and said there were some nice scenic areas to stop at for pictures in the second half of the day as we would be following the Thac Ba Lake until we reached our next homestay - at his home. He explained on one of these stops that the lake was man-made in the 1970's, and his family had had to relocated when the hydroelectric dam installation flooded the area. Now, as we travelled the road, the lake-side and innumerable islands are dotted with cinnamon, eucalyptus, and fruit orchards (bearing huge pomelos).

That night we stayed at Huan's family home (and homestay). He is of the Dao people, known for their traditional stilt houses. The entire first floor is open, traditionally for the living quarters of animals (such as buffalo, chicken and pig) but is now a beautiful place to gather and eat, talk and share stories.

The homestay is simply wonderful. it is quiet and our room is separate from the house with floor to ceiling glass that overlooks the nearby water. Other rooms for rent sat perched over the families 4 rice fields, a sugarcane patch and a karp pond. Again, I hope the pictures below will do it some justice.

We spent the night talking and eating and were introduced to his children who are 7 (I forgot the boys name) and 9 (his daughter Cho) and his lovely wife Sam Sung (I probably butchered the spelling of that). His daughter in particular liked when I would try and say certain words in Vietnamese and we had fun while I tried to parrot her, learning a few phrases like "good morning" (phonetically something like chow bouy-ee sang) or milk coffee with ice (cafe sue-ah da-ahh). Huan's wife also taught me how to say one more cup of rice wine, but I had had too many rice wine cups at that point to remember the phrase.

It was a really nice way to spend our last night on the motorycle trip, and we went to bed with promises of a boat ride the next morning after breakfast.

Vietnam Day 6: The Sprint to Sapa

After breakfast we geared up expecting rain.

And rain is what we got.

View from our room

Leaving our homestay, I was nervous. Because of the previous day's accident.

It caused me to start to doubt - my ability to handle the bike and/or the ability of the bike itself. But, We were in the middle of a motorcycle trip. And so, biking is what we were going to do. Ultimately, I took it easy and even though the rain did not cease for hours we eventually made our way winding through valleys and hills dotted with villages and endless agriculture.

Stopped off in a tea field

We were on our way to Sapa.

We had all agreed that today we wouldn't stop for lunch but instead take a couple of short breaks so that we could get to Sapa early and start to explore the city and maybe take a more relaxing day after the unfortunate, weather that we'd been having recently.

At a gas station stop, Huan mentions our lack of gloves and to which Both Cassidy and I replied that we wouldn't need them, but he said that things got cold when you went to Sapa because we were going to climb up and up into the mountains, high enough, that we would probably be above the clouds and maybe we get some sun.

Maybe not warmth, but at least Sun.

After a brief detour, which brought us through A village In the lower mountains, We started to ascend To Sapa. I don't know exactly how to describe this other than a switch back road that sometimes went from single Lane to double lane, all while motorcycles, cars, trucks, and transport vehicles are trying to go up and down. I would love to tell you that the drop off at the edge of the road was scary, but once we started to get higher up, We couldn't see the drop off because fog enveloped us so much so that there were times when Cassidy's tail lights - no more than probably 15 meters ahead of me - became invisible. It was the most disorienting riding that I've ever done.

Very low visibility

My only comparison would be blizzards in Northern BC, and I would say that even whiteout blizzards often provided more line of sight than what I was getting with this fog. It really felt almost supernatural. At one point the traffic stopped entirely as a transport truck tried to get around a corner with cliff on one side and a cliff on the other (and another transport truck in the way).

You go slow and eventually you climb and climb and climb, and Huan was right - the climb over the fog and suddenly a wide expanse of mountain and rice fields and villages are revealed.

And it was all just wonderful. It was green, vibrant and in flux. Like a lot of places in Vietnam so far, The roads were constantly being fixed, or upgraded. You would be driving along, and then you might come across a mud pit, or the ditches were being replaced (for the rainy season I think) or the road was just have washed out.

The city itself is just a beautiful, French, mountain tourist town, reminiscent of Whistler. I learned the main attraction is Fanispan, the peak of the nearby mountain which is the highest peak in Indochina apparently. We didn't have time to make the journey. Perhaps next time.

Instead we walked around and drank beer, watched the other tourists and just relaxed. Cass and I both enjoy simply people watching so we end up doing a lot of that.

In the evening, we went to a restaurant nearby, The Sapa Rosemary Restaurant and Cafe, which had the best duck I have ever had. It turns out that one of Huan's old motorcycle guide friends had bought the place 4 months ago with his wife, (Zoe) and he came out to share a bottle, than another, then a third of his family's rice wine. We talked and laughed and cheers'd until the late hour of 8:30.

Sleep fell fast.