Breakfast in Bangkok, Supper in Saigon

Good bye, Vietnam!

Good morning, Vietnam! : 19 July 2004

We spent last week on the back of motorcycles, riding through the central higlands of Vietnam. Now, we're relaxing in Hanoi. We almost stayed at the Hanoi Hilton. No, not the infamous P.O.W. camp, but an actual Hilton hotel. But at the last minute, we changed to the Hanoi Sheraton, so I guess the lame joke I'll tell at cocktail parties will have to always include the word "almost!" Ba and his bike The ride through the highlands was awesome! The whole thing started with a minor problem when we arrived in Nha Trang: the place was totally booked. It turns out that we're in the summer school holiday, and Nha Trang is the place to be for Vietnamese families on summer vacation. Of course, we arrived on a Friday, which didn't help. So, instead of spending a weekend by the beach, we decided to head up to the beautiful mountain town of Dalat. We had been thinking, due to our short time in Vietnam (relatively speaking!) that we may have skipped Dalat. Boy were we glad we didn't! It's a beautiful town. Founded by the French during their colonial period, it was largely untouched by the wars, and remains a lovely place. Also, it was a wonderful relief to be out of the heat of the rest of the country. It was actually almost cold! We spent a few days in Dalat, where we ended up at the fanciest hotel in town, kind of by accident. We ended up going on a tour around the area with a colorful group of guides that call themselves the "Easy Riders." These are an independent group who ride you around on the back of their motorcycles, entertaining you with both their driving and their stories. Ba was my driver and Mui was Andrea's. Both of them had fathers that actually fought with the South Vietnamese Army in the American war, so it was a very interesting mix of pride in their country and their people, and criticism of the Communist government. Anyway, the day trip around Dalat was so fun we decided to stick with them for a tour of the Central Highlands. This is an area that is very much off the normal tourist trail, and doing it with the Easy Riders was about as far away from the backpackers as we could get. The first night, we slept on mattresses on the floor in a long house on Lak Lake after partying with the villiage chief and his family! Our trip took us to all sorts of places. Some of them were certainly touristy, like the waterfalls and National Parks. Very relaxed Others were certainly not, including stopping at local villiage markets and small factories and shops. Along the way we met all kinds of great people, some of whom had never even seen a western person before. By the third day, we started hitting some of the heavy battle areas during the American war. Of course, 30 years on, there's not much left but a bunch of monuments to great Communist victories. We did see some little remnants, including a dead American truck tire and part of an M-79 shell casing. The biggest remnant we saw was an old airfield outside of Pleiku. On day four we started following the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Well, sort of. What used to be a footpath through dense jungle is now a nice 2 lane paved highway through farmland. Until we got higher up into the mountains, where the original jungle still remains. And, that jungle was really cool! Winding our way through the jungle hills on the back of motorcycles, with occasional rain showers, was an amazing experience. And, trust me, there's not a single Western backpacker up here! After five days of this, we finally arrived back on the coast, at the town of Hoi An, a quaint little town 30 km down the coast from Danang, known for its interesting architecture and the plethora of shops that will custom tailor cheap knock off clothing. It was great to finally be off the back of a motorcycle (great for the butt, anyway), but we were sad to say goodbye to Mui and Ba, and it was really weird to be in a place where everyone you see walking on the street was a Western backpacker! We felt kind of sorry for the backpackers, actually, because most of the "traveller" types never actually do anything more exciting than their large tourbus up the coast to all the backpacker highlights. Meanwhile, we'd just spent 5 days on the back of bikes seeing local people who were actually friendly, and not just trying to sell us stuff. We had literally seen 5 white people in the 5 days, when another Easy Rider group happened to cross paths with us on the second day at the Virgin Falls. Real jungle waterfall Unfortunately, the first thing I did upon arriving in Hoi An was get violently ill with food poisoning. Turns out that Ba and Mui had done such a good job of protecting us along the way that the very first meal we ate without them was, well, less than healthy. So while I spent the evening and next morning lying around the hotel room throwing up and feeling awful, Andrea got to look around the town, and picked up some cheap clothes. We're now in Hanoi, relaxing in a nice hotel and catching up on sleep and the last season of Six Feet Under on HBO. We have two different day trips planned for local sights here in the north, but you'll have to wait until after they happen to hear about them!

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