Ok, so it's true, even riding on the back of a scooter with an experienced, ie. possibly drunk, taxi driver in SE Asia is an unsafe proposition. Despite that, we decided, in our infinite wisdom, to rent bikes and head out down the coast from Saigon (ooops, that's Ho Chi Mihn City now...sorry Ho).
So after much haggling and many games of charades to try to explain that we also needed helmets, we were off. The most experienced motorcycle pilot, Paul Andre, lead the assault through the torrid guantlet of traffic in Saigon and out into a deadly game of chicken known as a Vietnam freeway. 6 people/4bikes=silly looking white people with little knowledge of how fast is too fast.
The first of four days on the road we made it to Ho Cock on the coast, and it must have taken us like, oh I don't know let's say seven hours, not exactly sure but the ass-numbness meter came in somewhere around there. Maitland and Deb splurged to stay in a tree house above the beach where they were summarily devoured by ants. Not much else to tell here except riding the bikes on the beach, over rocks, around the sand doing cookies, and even airborne off a few choice jumps. Look mom, no hands! Man, glad they were rentals.
the next day we were off again down the coat for Mui Ne. Beautiful scenery of course, as one can see from the pictures, and best of all, less traffic to challenge our will. We got about 15 km of road under our belts before it was time for a break, actually a planned one.
We had arrived at a hot springs resort, ready for a day of relaxation, reflection, and fun. after fourish hours or so, we had had enough of all that and it was back on the road for more thrills. After several more hours of riding, we stopped for dinner at a place for locals, where Paul later arranged for a motor cycle escort by the owners two daughters and their mother. He later arranged for a date, with their mother, no just kidding, but he did go on one with the cuter daughter. She promised to remember him untill she get marrried. Fare enough.
In Mui Ne we did some sand sledding. It was great fun, except for the end when the local kids offering us their sleds, basically a role of 1/8" plastic, used tears and yelling to renegotiate the price of their services. They were partially successful in the short term, but left most of their customers feeling awful, so I spoke with some of them about how they might be more successful entrepreneurs in the future. Their response went something like this, 'ok, sure, more money now!!!!' Great listeners. It may be difficult for those readers back home, stressed at work, to believe, but their are moments when traveling is damn hard. That was one.
On the fourth and last day together, Paul and Guido decided that they would rather load their bikes on a train back to Saigon than run the gauntlet again. So Maity, Deb, Caroline and I were off on our own adventure to find some volcanoes and a waterfall somewhere on the way back to Saigon.
In the touristy areas of Vietnam, hotels, hamburgers, and other creature comforts of home abound. By dusk, and we found ourselves to be no where near a touristy area. Thanks to the girls dislike of pushing onward through the night (Caroline remembers what happens to me when I bike at night: snap, crackle, pop), we used our phrase book to track down a hotel.
The hotel was really more like a resort, and a huge, spooky, abandoned looking one at that. Much to our pleasant surprise there were people at the reception, and after checking in we quickly took off on the bikes to inspect the weirdness. The compound included many gardens, man-made lakes, and even a zoo, complete with pythons, lemurs, and other exotic animals sadly trapped in tiny prisons. Debbie almost needed to be physically restrained to prevent an "accidental" jail break. That evening we met a older Swiss guy who had just rode his bike across Australia, up through Indonesia, to Vietnam, and was continuing on to Switzerland, to arrive some time in 2007 www.walkabut.com. We spent the next day, the entire hot day looking for some waterfall and lava tubes; however, while we had lots of determination and perseverance, we lacked direction (Vietnam Lonely Planet is stink-o). And though my numerous attempts to act out me crawling through a lava tube was greatly amusing to our group, the rural folk never really caught my drift, but we did have fun getting lost and off-roading the scooters again. What-a-ya gonna do??
Look I realize that I am getting really long winded here, but this is also our only journal, so we won't cry if you just skip to the pictures next time and avoid the 1000 words.
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