Nov
Nov. 17: Between taking care of the Roadmonkey group here and finding time to eat and sleep, there is very little time for me to sit down, choose the words and photos worthy of the experience here and post them in a pleasing format. But here we go, starting in chronological order from where I last left off…
Nov. 8: Dien Bien Phu to Muong Lai: Having failed to, I think, properly convey the mud and rain saturation that northwest Vietnam can dispense on the visitor, I offer you this close up of my Oakley trail shoes. They served me well, for 10 days, before Mud Slide No. 7 finally submitted them. Bummer. Them were good Vietnam shoes. Maybe I can shred them for garden mulch….
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lotus pond, Mai Chau, southwest of Hanoi.
Nov. 8, evening: We received, and eagerly accepted, an invitation for dinner at the suburban Son La home of a close family friend of Roadmonkey’s Vietnamese expedition guide, Quyet Tran. We arrived after dark, buying flowers and beer at the corner shop before sitting down on floor mats and eating spring rolls, boiled chicken and vegetable and beef hot pot, family style. As the honored guests, we were plied, again and again and again, and yet again, with homemade rice wine, the flavor of which varies in Vietnam between prison hootch and fragrant cherry-blossom grappa.
On this night, the firewater went down rather easily, if far too often. As you can see in this photo, one of the Vietnamese guys, an employee of the family patriarch, poured himself several too many thimble-sized glasses of liquor, producing in him a recitation of what clearly was his only remembered English phrases, rather shouted to all and sundry: “Tenkyu-verymuch!” and “Gude Afta-noon!”
After a dozen rounds of this, he was escorted by his associates to a back room, for a restorative nap.
Eating & drinking with passion: "Tenkyu-verymuch!"
Nov. 9: We spent two nights in Son La, to ride through the spectacular valley, which to my eyes seemed similar to the high-desert Chilean landscape in size, scope and refulgent afternoon light. We peddled past Ox-pulled carts driven by mere children, and I thought this is about as close you get in modern Vietnam to stepping back in time.
A river runs through it: Son La regional beauty.
Later Nov. 9: We spend the night in Mai Chau, a White Thai village area about 7km off the main highway to Hanoi. Below, a shot of our exit from Mai Chau, through a back “road” that winnowed into a footpath straddling rice fields.
Happily sunned and diesel exhausted: (from left) Conrad, Kim, Linh, Lauri and Paul.
The way the lodging works in Mai Chau is this: you arrive and set about picking one of the rentable “guest houses” – ie, a wooden house on stilts with a large communal room featuring stuffed fabric matresses, pillows, blankets and bamboo floors – and begin bargaining with the owner, who lives in the room below or beside the communal room, for a per-person price. We stayed at Guest House No. 19, run by Mr. Hùng and Ms. Mếch, a jovial husband 7 wife team that cooked up a tasty dinner of green veggies, vietnamese spring roll, chicken and beef dishes and, upon our request, several plates of khoai tây chiến (french – or do you say freedom? – fries). Drained by the day’s ride, followed by hot showers, food and cold Tiger beer, we hit the sack early and hard, each body entombed in diaphanous mosquito netting.
Sleeping like the dead, in a Mai Chau wood-stilt guest house.
Getting to know the children at Ba Vi orphanage.
Roadmonkeys assemble playground components at Ba Vi.
Nov. 12: The Ba Vi facility director, Ms. Phương, has the power to get things done fast, and she wielded it with efficient strokes in the days leading up to our arrival. She had, for instance, the concrete platform poured and finished in three days, after waiting more than a week for the torrential rains to end. As you can see below, the concrete was barely dry as the Roadmonkey crew began building the playground, purchased from a company in Hanoi with money we’d raised, $50 at a time, through three summer fundraisers, in New York and Washington.
Roadmonkey begins building the Ba Vi playground, for orphans and local school children.
Nov. 12 twilight: We made rapid progress on the playground construction, taking lunch breaks to eat together with the Ba Vi staff and visit with the orphans.
Workin' it: The Roadmonkey playground for the children of Ba Vi takes form.
Nov. 13: With no time to shilly-shally, our group organized ourselves in to a pretty impressive construction crew. Thank god we found some conical hats (sported nicely by Roadmonkey co-leader Brent Wexler, in between the slides in the photo below), as the sun-baked afternoons kept us running to the water jug.
After a ceremony and playground dedication, we cut the red ribbon, officially opening the Ba Vi playground, the biggest, coolest, and certainly most colorful playground any of saw during our 500-mile journey through northwest Vietnam. And how cool is that?
Why we came to Ba Vi, part 2.
Nov
Xin chào, các bạn và quí vị,
We’ve arrived in Ba Vi, Vietnam, in the cooler elevated region west of Hanoi, after another four days or so of mountain biking and living fully each day in northwest Vietnam. Once again, we’ve been out of email range for an extended period, so this post will attempt to catch you up, visually and otherwise, on where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to. Thanks to whomever turned off the daily rain deluge; we haven’t seen rain since Nov. 8, and we are mos def not complaining.
Nov. 7: We departed our rustic lodge in Muong Lai, where sweaty shirtless Vietnamese guys in matching sneakers played furious badminton matches in the rain-kissed courtyard. The open-air hotel lobby, filled with teak tables and chairs and which doubles as a drinking area, held an impressive array of jars filled with rice wines flavored with scorpions, worms, cobras and our favorite: giant lizard (see photo). By that point, one of us was sporting a shiner and bruised ribs after flying over the handle bars during a rapid downhill descent two days earlier, another of us had come down with a chronic migraine and a stomach virus and a third and fourth were also on the road to Chunkytown, if you know what I mean. The expedition was going native, right quick.
Lounge lizard, Vietnamese style
Nov. 8: Our longest day – 11.5 hours – on the road, from Muong Lai down to Dien Bien Phu, the site near the Lao border of the decisive Vietnamese military victory over the French in 1954, and then all the way back up to Tuần Giáo and then down Highway 6 to Sơn La, the pleasant if kitchy provincial capital seated in a gorgeous valley surrounded by jagged stegasaurus-like mountain peaks.
The way this Roadmonkey expedition was planned, when were weren’t pedaling, we had one 12-seat van transporting people, one “Joe the plumber” type van filled with our mountain bikes, and either me or my co-leader, Brent Wexler, riding the Honda 125cc motorbike. So to get from Muong Lai (see map here) to Sơn La, we got to know each other quite well in between breaks for bathroom and food and panoramic vista photo opps.
the road to Sơn La: let the sun shine in.
But in Vietnam, particularly outside the major cities and towns, “road” is a euphamism for a path precariously carved from a deforested hill or mountainside. And when that path gets rained on for days, it morphs into an orangey sludge-filled Slip-N-Slide that is not fun to drive on a motorbike. And yet, the Vietnamese can get pretty much anywhere they want on a motorbike, regardless of weather, conditions or the formal existence of petty items like pavement. I was on the bike on this particular day, and didn’t fare as well.
The Vietnamization of Oakley trail shoes and (warm!) marino Ibex shirt
Oakley trail shoes: they survived northwest Vietnam, after a washing.
Mudslides are common in the northwest of Vietnam, given the climate, precipitaiton, steep hillsides and incredible human need for wood, which devastates the trees that othewise would anchor the soil that tends to vomit itself by the kilo-ton onto the roads here so frequently.
Traffic back up: We got stuck behind this mud-swallowed lorry, on a not-so-impressive segment of Highway 6, 40km west of Sơn La
Not impressed: Villagers responded to us usually, but not always, wreathed in smiles and choruses of "Hey-lo!"
Driving with class: our van driver - his name actually is Van - taking a GQ break on the road
Nov
Greetings, mon petite Roadmonkeys. The expedition finally made its way to Muong Lai, about 130 miles southwest of Sapa, where we began cycling around Vietnam’s northwest.
Photographs by Pablo Casares, the expedition photographer.
Trainmonkeys: sharing a laugh, after a few sips from Roadmonkey's wine stash, on the train from Hanoi to Lao Cai.
Nov. 2: From Hanoi, we boarded the night train to Lao Cai, a 9-hour overnight journey that our group promptly christened by chugging through seven bottles of red wine (about half the expedition’s supply) before some needed rest. We arrived in Lao Cai at 5 a.m., greeted by darkness and a steady rain. Vietnam, of course, means Viet Rain, so we were prepared.
Nov. 4: From the eco-lodge, we biked back up to Sapa, a region populated with several ethnic minorities, including (Black, Flower and other) Hmong, Black Thai and Dzao. In Sapa, we refreshed ourselves with Vietnamese coffees and pastries and drove in the vans up the Tram Ton Pass, past waterfalls to the peak of the pass. Then it was time to mount the iron horses (aka mountain bikes) and dive-bomb the downslope toward Lai Chau, the relatively new provincial capital to the west.
the road from Sapa: bargaining hard, with hmong school girls
Nov. 5: In the bar of our hotel in Lai Chau, several expedition members drank several “Hanoi” beers with a young Vietnamese woman and her dude, who were quite obviously blitzed. But they offered us some tasty jerky, purportedly made from beef. (We asked, because this region is well known for a special meat delicacy: dog).
Later, we walked around the boulevard of not-yet-broken dreams, newly built by the Party in Lai Chau to highlight its transformation from rural backwater to provincial capital. If our group had any doubt about the capacity for Communist self-visualization, the were disabused of it via billboards like the one below.
awed by Communism
Nov. 5 (still): After motoring west out of Lai Chau, over another mountain pass, we mounted the bikes again (in the front yard of this surprised but graciously accommodating villager) and blew down the curving road, full of switchbacks. One of the expedition members flew over the handlebars, crashing on the road near one particular tight corner. All was well, just a cut and scrape or two.
From left: David, Conrad, Philip, Mike & Paul, ready to roll to Muong Lai
Nov. 5 (still!): On the road from Lai Chau to Muong Lai, we found an old iron bridge with wood slats and decided to roll over it and the churning & chocolately Na River, putting us within a few miles of the Lao border.
the road to Muong Lai: a couple miles from the border with Laos.
Nov. 6: Muong Lai sits at the floor of a valley that will be flooded in 2010 or so, for a massive government hydro-electric project. This town and several others, inhabited mostly by ethnic minority villagers, will be underwater. The villagers will hopefully get advance warning, and move to higher ground. The government is resettling many tribal villages now.
Muong Lai: mellow moment in the Lan Anh Hotel courtyard
building bridges: tossing rocks into bamboo baskets for a new motorbike crossing over this river a few kilometers from the Lao border.
Nov. 6: A day off the bicycles. We instead hiked around Muong Lai and discovered an abandoned Vietnamese Army outpost built in 1960, six years after the decisive victory over the colonial French Army at Dien Bien Phu, about 80 miles southwest of here.
The army outpost has now been commandeered by a vicious band of cows.
After fending off the vicious band of cows, we sat down to eat them. (Not really). At our hotel, after a long day of hiking through nearby villages, we were famished, and ate very well.
Muong Lai: eating like emperors
Check back here soon! We’ll have more from the road.
Nov
Greetings from Lai Chau, 60km west of Sapa!
Sorry for long absence, my friends. The expedition simply hasn’t had an internet connection free over the last 48 hours.
I’ll write more again soon and post photos, but for now, a short update: We have been riding in and out of small rains and thick cloud forests since we left Hanoi. We’re lucky to have made the train trip to Sapa, though; yesterday, the train were were on two days earlier became marooned halfway to Sapa because of the floods. (In Hanoi, we learned that the rains this late in the season were the worst in 35 years. People downtown were netting fish in the flooded streets. Two Hanoi men died in their car last week after they fell asleep drunk and the vehicle flooded drowning them.)
Roadmonkey expedition members riding along a mountain ridge, through fog, near Sapa.
From Sapa, the weather relented, and though we’ve been shrouded in clouds in the higher elevations, as we descend the mountain roads, blazing along rivers and through villages, we’ve gotten sunshine and chunky, fluffy cloud cover. The ride on bikes from Sapa to Lai Chau was magnificent for the first 30km, downhill along a rushing river with mountains rising on either side…and then began the uphill climb, hard uphill climb, long uphill climb.
The eco-lodge near Sapa, during a rare break in the mountain clouds.
The group peddled incredibly well. There is so much more details to give, but we’re on a schedule to leave Lai Chau now so that we can reach Muong Lai (see map on website page called Vietnam Expedition) before dark. We will report more details of the journey so far from there, and will post photos.
Two people have come down with yucky stomach syndrome, and that is going to be fairly unavoidable among the group over two weeks. But it is fair to say we have a good group that enjoys its own company and is very hardy and adventurous. And yes, Alison, we’re taking good care of David. He’s climbing those hills like Mr. Armstrong, so no worries!
Remind me to tell you about The Socialist Boulevard we explored here in Lai Chau, where the group was simply blown away by the new, enormous (but unoccupied, yet) committee buildings carved out of whole square miles of empty field — all part of Lai Chau’s new status as the provincial capital.
Paul
Nov
Xin chào các bạn và quí vị,
Everyone has now arrived at the Hoa Binh Palace Hotel. Last night we went for highlander food at Highway 4, a restaurant with a bamboo-style upper room. Sitting cross-legged, the meal began with cups of corn water, followed by flavored rice wine (apricot, strawberry, cherry). Appetizers of mango salad, followed by a couple plates of honey-roasted crickets (they were quite delish; and yes, everyone ate some), some fish and rice, medallions de Vietnamese ostrich and some free-range chicken.
Roadmonkey expedition co-leader Brent Wexler samples our opening night feast
Washed it all down with bottles & bottles of beer: Larue, a Belgian ale brewed in VN; and Saigon export – the Vietnamese equivalent of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
And now, the closest thing this blog will get to a political comment:
After a year and a half of exposure to presidential campaign articles, ads, attacks, controversies, bloviations, exaggerations, contradictions, meltdowns, parodies, histrionics, hyperbole, lies, spin, spam and the what can only be described as the American cable news idiotocracy…
…it sure is nice to be half a world away, walking past Hanoi’s flooded central lake, into the old quarter, through 1,000-year-old fish, meat, fruit and vegetable markets, and over to a little stall where a rosy-faced woman ladles her rice-based batter on a steaming drum to make perhaps the world’s best bánh cuốn.
can't beat a good bánh cuốn breakfast
More of today’s pix to follow, shortly.
- Paul
