Ho Chi Minh Choppers
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2005
1
7
24
Trip End
Aug 02, 2005
Central Highlands,
Vietnam
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
We had heard about the so-called Easy Riders from other Travelpod members and from Lonely Planet. Alex had to spend some time convincing Amy that this was a good idea. We met our two drivers just as we exited the bus in Dalat. They told us they were Easy Riders and we interviewed / grilled them until we were sure that they were the real thing. You have to hand it to them -- they had a very good marketing presentation. They had books where previous tourists had written glowing reviews of their travels with these guides and they walked us through our tour using a map.
April 1
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So the next day, the drivers loaded up our backpacks on to their motorcycles, Amy climbed no the back of Mr. Hung's motorcycle, and Alex climbed aboard Mr. Tan's....and we were off...
We learned very quickly that we were going to be well taken care of. Our drivers were very careful when taking us to restaurants to check out the kitchen, make sure the food was freshly cooked, wiping off our chopsticks (which were always pre-enjoyed), and ordering us "safe" dishes. The food was always wonderful, but the typical Vietnamese restuarant is, well, filthy. We learned the best way to keep your stomach is to not look down.
And we're off...
The floor was often filled with bones, scraps, rice, goop, and the occasional rooster or dog feasting on these castoffs.Mr. Hung and Mr. Tan were also sensitive that we were not moto-cross racers. Though they had rigged our backpacks on the bike to make a backrest for us, they stopped very frequently at interesting sights to allow the blood to flow back to our butts. The first few times that they dropped us off and told us to meet them a few hundred yards down the road - as we saw them drive off with all of our possessions - was a bit disconcerting! But it was a welcome relief! After a couple days, though, our bodies got used to it all.
Our first stops were the Pa Ra Dai Lake, where they grew hydrangas that had blooms larger than Amy's head, a pagoda, and the Dalat Crazy House (tourist trap). We then toured a few "factories", which were fascinating. Our first factory produced silk cloth from growing silk worms and harvestng the silk thread from its cocoon to spinning the silk and creating the cloth. This was Amy's favorite factory. We also went to a chopsticks factory, which was a bamboo and tin hut where workers cut bamboo trees into thousands of chopsticks. Upon entering the factory, Alex quickly spotted approximately 675 OSHA violations -- spinning blades without safetys, no safety glasses for people using huge saws, and this wood chopper that the operator grazed his fingers dangerously close to tens of thousands of times a day. Our guide summed it up by saying, "Here they make thousands of chopsticks per day.
BBQing up some wild boar
You could make one set of chopsticks and then have no fingers."We also stopped at a farmer's house, who was growing tea, coffee, and was making rice wine from his still in his barn. He invited us up to his balcony for tea. His wife was the first to say something like, "You married, but no children??" Apparently in Vietnam, they expect a baby (preferably male) 9 months after the wedding. We tasted some rice wine -- not bad, but a little strong for 10:00 am.
Our drivers took us to various indigenous villages that they called "minority peoples". It was a little strange for us just to trapse around people's villages and often walk right into their homes, but they did not seem to mind and often looked at us like we were movie stars. The coconut candy that we handed out sometimes helped smooth things over with the locals. That day, we saw the M'nong Gu and M'nong Lam, who lived in longhouses.
Our day ended at Lac Lake, where we saw fisherman rowing their log canoes filled with nets back to the shore under the sunset.
April 2
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We started out again in the sweltering heat and visited some important sites in the Vietnam War, stopped and talked to some workers cutting granite by the side of the road, and stopped at a pottery factory before lunch.
For lunch we picked up some comfort food (pringles, etc.) and headed to the jungle for a picnic lunch near a stream called Gia Long. Somewhat against our will because of the stifling heat, Mr. Hung showed us the way to two other waterfalls in a separate park -- Dray Sap and Dray Nu.
Cashew Pickers
We got sort of lost but tagged along with a group of Vietnamese school children, or they directed us, to the falls. We looked a little ridiculous in our long sleeve shirts and pants in the heat, but we didn't want to risk sunburn. We made our way to Buon Ma Thuot, the capital of the central highlands, where we settled for the evening. On the way, we stopped at a sugar factory, where they were heating sugar "honey" from sugarcane to create white and brown sugar. The temperature in the factory was about 20 degress F above the outside temperature. Trudging through the jungle that day made us feel what an absolute hell it must have been for American soldiers (and Vietnamese for that matter) fighting in the the broiling jungle, carrying combat gear in unknown surroundings.
April 3
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Our third day was cooler, which made our long ride on the motorcycles (over 250 km) enjoyable. Our drivers were very conscensious about stopping about every 45 minutes to show us something interesting, to introduce us to some locals, or to just let our behinds rest. The Vietnamese were very surprised to see a pair of Westerners on motorcycles speeding through their villages. Children and adults alike gave us hundreds of smiles, waves, and "hellos" along the way.
We stopped at a rubber plantation and a coffee field, where Mr. Tan described how these crops were introduced to Central Vietnam after the war as a means for poor farmers who were relocated from the North to make a living on something other than rice.
John (CHiPs)
This massive relocation to the Central Highlands after 1975 seemed to have two purposes. The first was to give some Northern farmers a chance at a better life. The second seemed to be a concerted effort to "Vietnamize" the local "minority people", so that they would inter-marry with the ethnic Vietnamese. Because of the strategic importance of the Central Highlands, it seems like the government has gone through great efforts to control these indigenous people and to get them on the side of Ho Chi Minh's style of Communism.Another crop that was introduced by the VC government was black pepper. We visited a black pepper farm and it was fascinating to see how it is grown on vines that wind up a pole, produce green pepper corns, which are then picked when they turn red. They are picked and left to dry on tarps for 3 days until they turn black, as we are used to seeing them.
Across the street, a group of children were picking cashew fruits (the nut grows on top of the fruit) so we crossed the street to make friends with them. These children were a lot of fun. One four or five year-old boy ignored our offers of coconut candy as he fixed the adult-sized bike, which he some how rode around, though he could barely reach the pedals. This group of kids was a lot of fun and we took some great pictures of them. This was the type of experience that we cherished on this motorbike trip -- that is the ability to reach out to people, especially kids, on the side of the road, have our guides translate so that we could converse when them, and get to know a little about their lives.
After visiting "Beach Lake" and driving for a good portion of the day, we stopped at the Bana minority village.
Lac Lake
This group builds a central meeting house that has a roof several stories high. The house is assembled with no nails, just bamboo and thatch. During our "tour" of the village, an elderly man performed a little music for us on his bamboo xylophone that he had made. It was quite amusing and endearing. He couldn't speak Vietnamese, only his tribal language and a little French! Our final stop before dinner was an orphanage attached to a Catholic Church in the village. Our visit was fun and heartbreaking at the same time. One little girl ran full speed up to Amy and clasped on to her leg until Amy picked her up. She stuck close to Amy for half of our visit there. Alex had so many kids play with his cheap Target digital watch that the button that turned the light on popped out! These children either had a deceased parent, had some type of physical problem, or had parents who were simply too poor to support them. The ages ranged from tiny little babies, probably only days old, to 20-year olds. We donated a fleece jacket that Alex did not want to carry around anymore, left a small donation, and purchased some crafts that some of the older children made. This was probably our most memorable stop of the 5-day trip.
Dinner in Kon Tum was amazing. We had BBQ wild boar and venison. Our drivers took care of cooking the meat on the tabletop BBQ and we had several "Saigon" beers to wash down the spicy meat. Alex really liked the fish sauce and chili sauce that made the marinated meat even more tasty.
Our new friend at the orphanage
Dinner turned out to be rolicking fun after a long day on the road. According to an Australian couple that was also on our same tour with other Easy Riders, after we left, a man came in with a sack and dumped out a recently trapped and killed wild boar on the restaurant floor and the whole place began to celebrate as they butchered the meat. Glad we missed that, though at that point it probably would have been pretty funny. April 4
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Back on the road and a very welcomed change in weather. We headed up from Kon Tum to the Ho Chi Minh trail, close to where Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam meet. In the morning, we went to the factory with the harshest of working conditions: a brick factory. One man dug mud into a machine that turned out a long string of solid mud brick, like play-doh. A woman then cut the mud into bricks and stacked them on palates that other women would pick up to lay out for drying. Heat and smoke puffed out of nearby two-story kilns where bricks were fired. On our way out of the factory, we heard a tiny baby crying in a hammock, attached to the kiln. The baby belonged to the woman who cut and stacked the bricks, but she could not attend to it because of the constant flow of brick mud that sputtered out of the machine at her. Another 5 year old boy went over to the baby and swung it violently in the hammock. This factory was a sad visit. We'll pass on jobs at the brick factory.
Equally distrubing was the stop that we made to the scrap metal dealer who specialized in buying bombshells dropped by the American Air Force in the jungle.
Ponch (CHiPs)
A band of guys playing cards outside the scrap dealer's place forage for these bombshells and bring them back to the dealer. Our driver explained that this work was especially dangerous because the method of searching for these ordinances involved tapping for metal in the ground and was prone to cause landmine explosions. On a lighter note, we saw some people harvesting tapioca and boiling it for export. Our drivers applied some peer pressure and we walked across some horrendously built foot bridges that the minority tribes had built to span rivers. They were loosely held together by random planks, bamboo, and the kind of wire that we use for clothes hangers.
After lunch, we arrived at a rustic area of the Ho Chi Minh trail and walked through a village on a portion of the original trail. Portions of the original trail have been paved over to create the highway but there are some portions where the highway and original trail diverge. Motorcycling through the jungle rain was exhilirating and soothing to our sunburn.
We passed by a disused American airport and "Charlie Hill", an area of vigorous fighting and loss of life in the Vietnam War by both sides. At this site, a woman was dipping bananas in a curry batter and frying them to sell. We graciously declined when we saw one of her roosters come over and stick his entire head into the batter and suck down four or five big swallows of the batter. His head was covered in curry when the shopkeeper kicked him out of the batter.
Silk Factory
The Australian friends of ours who were traveling the same route with Easy Riders that day were a little upset when we told them this story -- they actually ate the curry fried bananas after we had left!Best quote of the day by Amy Hood: "Well, I opened the wardrobe in our room and the cockroaches were actually burrowing in the mosquito netting...so we are not going to use any. Oh, there is a lizard back there too."
April 5
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We had a great time with the Easy Riders, who had become our friends, but we were now anxious to make our way to Hoi An. Before we arrived, we stopped at a rice paper factory, where an old woman excitedly showed us her trade. We also hit one more "Minority village" and our adventure came to a close.
As a reward to Amy for dealing with Alex's request to spend five days on a motorcycle in rural Vietnam, Amy had made reservations at a luxurious resort called the Hoi An Riverside Resort. Dirty, stinky, sunburned, grimy, and with no clean clothes whatsoever, we pulled in to this luxurious resort. You should have seen the look on our Easy Riders' faces.
The resort was beautiful. Alex went to the salon and got a professional shave and face massage and Amy got a facial. We got our laundry done, though some of it should have been burned. We had a candlelight dinner on a quiet river in Hoi An with delicious gourmet Vietnamese food and watched a man float down the river in his log canoe placing floating candle paper lanterns on the river.
PS...If you are thinking of taking an Easy Rider adventure from Dalat yourself, email us and we will get you in touch via email with our guides, Mr. Hung and Mr. Tan, who were both excellent.
