At breakfast Andy couldn't figure out how his hands came to be stained green. He looked quizzically around the room trying to figure the cause. A few moments later he dashed from the bathroom pulled down his new shorts to reveal his blue-green butt. Pulling back the covers of the bed revealed the same colored stain on the bedsheets, obviously he'd slept in the new shorts. Bu had apparently left his mark on Andrew. We wound our way through the streets of Hoi An just after a late (8:30) BikeBrats breakfast. I'd refined my Vietnam breakfast this morning. The Ho Chi McMuffin now sported a cube of laughing cow cheese along with the egg and bacon on a French roll.
With a full stomach I said goodbye to the third town in a row that I'd found a special bond with. My sweet-and-sour feeling would dissolve into pure sour in just a few kilometers. We were buzzing along against the wind back up to Danang at a good clip along a potholed road. Andy was drafting me and we'd make our destination in just over an hour at the current rate when \"it\" happened. As we passed a petrol station I spied an adolescent \"waving\" at me. A second look revealed that he was actually chucking a good-sized rock at me.
I braked hard to avoid it when I heard the sickening cry of Andrew as he realized he'd be unable to stop before piling into me. His front pannier caught my rear wheel and he fell to the pavement wondering why the f\_\_\_ I'd stopped so quickly. While I mopped up Andrew the kid fled. We put his bike back together. (He'd broken one of his pannier straps) Explained to the bewildered onlookers in rather bad and angry Vietnamese what had happened and headed off. My rear wheel was rather worse for wear. It now wobbled rather severely, attracting the attentions of all the other cyclists on the road.
When we finally reached Danang we sought refuge at our favorite haunt, Chez Christie's. Coincidentally Mark was there for lunch. He escorted me to a bike repair shop to fix my hobbled wheel. The shop was a typical Vietnamese affair. An umbrella, box of tools, a pump and a graying guy situated on the sidewalk at a street corner. As limited as his resources were my mechanic deftly repaired the wheel and sent me on my way. With nearly all restored from our morning's mishap we headed to the train station. We'd be meeting Wendy in 36 hours in Hanoi and were both looking forward to seeing Vietnam through another's eyes.
When we arrived at the train station we hoisted our bikes up the front stairs and began to push them into the terminal when we heard a chorus of angry shouts from the railway personnel in attendance. At first I thought we'd committed a capital offense from the sound of their voices and would spend the next ten years in a re-education camp before being executed. Soon their tone softened and they directed us to the baggage office where we could surrender our bikes to be loaded on the train. Together the bikes and the bag we checked cost more than one of us did.
*Doi moi* (Vietnamese *Perestroika*) seemed to have reached new levels when the baggage agent offered to exchange dollars for us from the railway till. We'd have obliged her by changing money but her rate was not even close to the bank rate. Consequently we went to a nearby hotel to seek some money for our voyage. This is when the day's second disaster was realized. We asked the desk clerk if she could exchange traveler's checks and before she could reply \"no\" I wondered aloud if Andrew had retrieved his passport. His answer was unequivocal and negative. We were just about to board a train, Andy's passport was 30km away and we had a meeting with Wendy in just a few hours.
We enlisted the help of the hotel staff, located Andy's passport back in Hoi An, and arranged to have it forwarded to Hanoi \--all within five minutes, thus averting the near disaster. There would be no averting the next one.... We entered the train station waiting room and were lulled into a false sense of security by the comfort of the waiting lounge. It sported some of the most effective air conditioning in Vietnam, a huge fish tank, comfortable seating, a refined and well-dressed clientele and, most important for two hungry BikeBrats, a well appointed snack bar. When the stationmaster called our train we found our car and stepped aboard.
We had some difficulty finding our berths because they all seemed occupied. After wandering back and forth three or four times the conductress arrived to settle matters. She directed us to our cabin, showed us our berths and immediately started shouting at the people who were occupying them. Matters improved slightly. The family of three that were in my bed moved across the cabin and up to the other bed and the random dude in Andy's moved down to occupy the lower with the two guys that were already there. The cabin itself was about two meters wide, three meters high and just over two meters long.
There were only seven of us in the matchbox-sized thing so the situation was entirely serviceable -- not! It was not nearly as cramped as it was filthy. The floor may never have been cleaned, the walls were smeared with all kinds of stains and no one knows for sure what indignities the sheets may have suffered over their undoubtedly long lives. Just when I was growing to accept a very uncomfortable ride to Hanoi the ticket controller arrived and tried to shoo the extra passengers from our cabin. It looked like he might have some success when the father of the family in the upper bunk lost his temper and began shouting at full volume.
He appeared to have won the skirmish because the controller left the room tail between legs and all family members still in the cabin. Our \"booby-prize\" was a set of clean sheets that were tossed to us by some member of the train staff while dad had his meltdown. Dad and the random passenger did finally part just about bedtime leaving just Andy, me, mother and child and the extremely placid old man in the lower across from us. The gyroscopic fan did its level best to keep us cool when the train stopped to let oncoming ones pass. In spite of its efforts and the breeze through the window while we were moving, the better part of the night was spent moist with sweat.
In spite of the heat, the dust and the crying of the aforementioned child, we managed to get a few hours sleep before the dawn light bathed the coastal hills in warm yellow light. Our view of Vietnam from the train was filtered through the metal mesh of the guards over the windows. Designed to keep rocks from flying through the windows they made me feel like a form of livestock on its way to market or a prisoner in transport. As the sun rose so did the temperature. Andy and I lounged in our underwear to beat the heat, reading about Hanoi and playing backgammon to while away the hours.
Mercury reaching its apex for the day, we arrived in Hanoi. The moments before reaching the station we watched our fellow passengers transform themselves into businessmen, changing from their pajamas to slacks and shirts. We observed masses of bicycles, motorbikes and trucks lined up at the railroad crossings. Crowds pushed forward to the front of the gates there and truncheon-bearing guards beat back the most aggressive ones. Arriving in the station we felt as though reborn. No longer were we prisoners of our hot dirty little box, we were BikeBrats once again. We were, still, minus our bikes, which took an inordinate amount of time to materialize despite the huge tariff we'd paid for their passage.
We spent the next two hours patrolling the tree-lined park-filled streets of Hanoi for a place to stay and ice cream to cool our bodies. We stumbled upon an unmarked little factory churning out ice cream bars by the thousands. Hanoians lined up by the tens to buy the treats from staff that were surely relics of the communist regime. Despite the stark nature of the shop and the staff we slurped down a couple of delicious cones and bars each before resuming our search for accommodation. Imagine flying into the airport in Hanoi, a woman alone, a child of the sixties who equated Vietnam previously with Walter Cronkite, MIAs, and napalm and seeing rising above the sea of dark hair....Fred Felman!
This was my introduction to Vietnam and my brief foray into the life of the BikeBrats. Flying over Vietnam into the airport in Hanoi brought a lump to my throat. This country is astonishingly beautiful, fields of rice and vegetables broken up by villages and cities full of lakes and trees. It made me sad and embarrassed to have been alive during the era of America's participation in the destruction of this country. It is hard to make sense of why we would see a need, especially 30 years ago, to get involved in a conflict in a locale so disconnected from the rest of the world.
I feel very far away from America here. I can only imagine what the U.S. boys felt so far from home and during a time with so much less of an ability to connect. It is a city of profound contrasts of the old and the new. There are very few cars and the bike repair shop for the hordes of cyclists is an old man sitting on the sidewalk with a bicycle pump! There are no fast food shops yet...thank god! But every one seems to be cooking pots of bubbling creations and setting up small tables in front of their homes.
And then as a monument to the growth of tourism here is the magnificent five star Sofitel Hotel in the middle of town. It is still somewhat easy to stand out here as there are not the huge packs of tourists and perhaps because we have rented junker bikes (yes I can proudly proclaim that I rode with the brats!) and cruise the streets with the masses thinking we are blending in with our straw hats. The images are somewhat surreal...walking down the street with Fred wearing his Castroville T shirt and a man walking by fist in the air proclaims \"Viva Fidel!\".
Eating lunch at an upper class restaurant on the lake with a drag queen eating fried shrimp claiming she is from Norfolk Virginia! Visiting the maseleum of Ho Chi Minh and walking single file without talking past the eery waxy body of Uncle Ho. Buying the local Vietnam water which through some strange translation glitch is called \"La Vile\". And watching Fred consume a minimum of three to four ice creams a day is unreal in itself! It is time for the bikebrats in room yoga class as if we haven't lost half our body weight already sweating like pigs on the street.
I hope I have conveyed my wonder, excitement and gratitude at experiencing Vietnam with brats. Today the theme was rivets, pools, drenching sweat...it was hot as we took a 3 km uphill trek to the Perfume Pagoda outside of Hanoi. To get there we first had to travel over a canal in a metal boat propelled by a local woman rowing us for an hour. Our next step was the \"Heaven's Kitchen\" Pagoda where one of the highlights of my trip occurred...we shared water and took photos with a 96 year old monk. Apparently he gets much joy out of having his photo taken in his full monk regalia (complete with a red crown like hat) with tourists.
We were concerned that the only thing we had to show our appreciation was my Toasted Almond balance bar but again we learned that money makes the world go around. We were surprised to have the monk happily take 30,000 dong out of our hand and tell us joyfully that he will use the money to buy rice wine that night. I guess when you are a 96 year-old monk you have already traveled far enough on the road to enlightenment. Yesterday we tooled around on our trikes generally enjoying Hanoi bike freeway traffic insanity with the masses and then abruptly shifting gears to have a \$35 brunch at the Sofitel Hotel.
We also enjoyed wonderful deep massages at our hotel although Fred was frightened when his massage friend touched his private parts...the real problem was her gender I think, Fred claims he just wanted an innocent massage. Much of our trip involves quickly switching gears from upper class experiences to the real life of a local Hanoian...it keeps us on our toes and never sure of our true place in society. Tomorrow to beautiful Halong Bay for a few days of Vietnamese R&R. I hope we see some of the Chinese junk boats that are in all of the travel brochures. *P.S.
I am happy that I could truly bring something to the brat experience...I have explained to Fred that eating three to four ice creams a day will surely cause flatulence...it is only very annoying when you are in an elevator with him.* The last few days on the road have caused me to examine the definition of life. I define my life by so many factors...love, travel, experience, work, adventure, family, success, Gucci shoes. My friends and family also have very full definitions of life. The individual componets may be different but we all have colorful fabrics that we weave individually and then in concert to create our lives.
We just ended a few days on the road between Hanoi and Halong Bay. We were in buses for 4 plus hours on two different days which made me realize how so much of the world has a very different much narrower definition of \"life\". We drove through mile after mile of dusty villages full of the same stores selling identical goods and rice fields tended by people power and water buffaloes. The definition of life is very different...I am not implying that the Southern California/U.S. definition is a better one, only that our lives leave so much more room for experiencing other lives.
We also realized again how much Vietnam is on the brink, teetering on the brink of the modern age. They have the façade of tourism in place but clearly have not completely grasped the intricacies of planning and the hospitality industry. It is both charming and frustrating! We spent two lovely days at Cat Ba Island and trolling the waters of Halong Bay. There are 3000 islands in Halong Bay and we were all astonished by the beauty. It was a strange feeling seeing island after island after island and having this sense comparable to starring up at the stars on a cloudless night in the desert that the islands never end.
Unfortunately, part of the excursion includes a night in the scummy town of Halong Bay which everyone universally agreed was no great shakes...everyone just wandered around the grimy streets after dinner believing that there had to be some where to go but no one ever found that place. It is hard to comprehend that there are tours arriving here every day... Finally we were relieved to discover that the reason we felt that we were dying from heat exhaustion and dehydration is that these last few days have been the hottest in Hanoi since 1956! I could not understand why the local people kept saying that they were hot, I assumed that this heat was the norm in Hanoi.
The one benefit has been my skin which is well moisturized, soft and supple from the gallons of water I drink every day and the sauna like qualities of the air. I rarely need to utilize the non flush toilets because amazingly the 3 gallons of water I drink leaves my body as sweat and never as urine!!!