South Vietnam (Not actually a country anymore)

Hue (pronounced 'Hwey') is a pleasant river town full of history, tourists, and motorbike/cyclo taxis. It's also a dieter's hell, as some years back it was home to a guy who demanded every night that 50 dishes be prepared by 50 cooks, and as a result, the streets are teeming with tasty snacks that cost around a nickel a piece. On my first day there, I wandered around a dozen different pagodas, went to the war museum (which was ever-so-slightly biased against us), and went to the imperial palace, which may have merited its 55,000 dong admission price at one time in its history, but (thanks to those pesky Americans) was now mostly just one big pile of rubble. For dinner I went to a restaurant run by a deaf guy, which was flanked by two other restaurants run by deaf guys (it leads you to wonder just how many deaf restauranteers one neighborhood can have); using only sign language (actually, nothing's really new there) I ordered "roll-your-own" spring rolls which were essentially the oriental equivalent of fajitas; my spring rolls never looked even remotely like what you'd order at a restaurant and usually had to be eaten with a spoon, but they were tasty nonetheless.

Vietnamese is a simple yet tricky language; there are about six different words in total, which, depending on tone and combination with the other words, can convey any idea conceivable. The alphabet is basically a subset of the English one except that virtually every consonant makes a 'z' sound (though all are completely differentiable for native speakers). And the instant you think you've finally got the hang of the survival phrases, you cross the demarcation line and everything changes.

The people in Hue didn't want me taking their motorbikes as far as Hoi An so I grabbed a day rental for 50,000 dong. I ran up through some rice fields to a highly acclaimed Thanh Toan Bridge which was essentially just an old covered footbridge with a bunch of drink stands around it. From there I crossed to an unnamed island and the town of Thuan An.

Coming from Thailand, I had been disappointed up til now with the apparent lack of elaborate temples, but on this island there was an elaborate pagoda quite literally every five to ten feet; the more affluent residents seemed to have built their own personal pagoda where you would expect a garage to be (perhaps it was just a really ornate garage). Further down the beach road was the "city of tombs" where families had struggled to beat their neighbors in the game of building excessively colorful graves for their dead relatives; though in the very same field, there were plenty of plots that were simply piles of sand.

When I read in my guidebook that a ferry back to the mainland could take pedestrians and motorbikes, I imagined a modern, sizeable vessel doing the route; however, the thing that pulled up was a pile of timber only 2 metres across at its widest point that was stained coal black from the oil and smoke belching from its aging engine - the motorbikes hung halfway off one side. From the dock on the opposite shore, I made my way to Bach Ma National Park; here I was informed that there was absolutely nothing of interest to see during this season and they flat-out refused to take my money.

Heading back to the city, I breezed by a few ancient tombs and pagodas that were overrun by cattle and local children - the latter taught me how to karate chop thousand-year-old bricks. I stopped by Thien Mu pagoda which is one of the most famous structures in Vietnam, but it should come as no surprise that I've never heard of it. Returning to town, I grabbed a bus 2 hours south to Danang.

A moto driver followed me for about 2 miles from the bus station before I finally admitted that I had no idea where I was going and hopped on - he took it upon himself to take me to every hotel in town and have me ask at each for a $5 room - on about the 15th try I had to give in and pay $5.50.

In the morning I stopped by the huge pink Danang cathedral which was filled far past capacity (with a few dozen people on stools outside) for the 5am Mass (the standard time for Vietnamese churches - would Catholicism exist in America if this were the only service offered?). I grabbed breakfast at a stand serving up purple porridge - I later discovered that this was one of many such stalls in the city which serves baby food to mothers with infants - nevertheless, it was tasty and had all the nutrients a growing boy needs.

Danang

It was clear that the Lonely Planet guys hadn't stopped by Danang in a while since all the hotels and restaurants they recommended in the 2005 edition had disappeared without a trace and all the historic pagodas had been replaced with BP stations. So there wasn't a whole lot on offer in the city itself - I did manage find the sculpture museum which showcased a bunch of interesting rocks from assorted eras.

I rented a motorbike from a local motel; shortly after paying for three days, I discovered that the fuel gauge, speedometer and odometer were all faulty - this is a rather tricky combination when it comes to guessing how much fuel you need; additionally, the seat was not secured to the rest of the bike and fourth gear seemed to be missing entirely. As usual, the word "refund" didn't seem to translate that well, so I set off for the beach.

East of town is some sort of military establishment known as "Monkey Mountain"; it is supposedly off limits to civilians, but with a name like that, I couldn't resist checking it out. Passing by a series of Vietnamese signs from which I only managed to translate "forbidden", I ran along the headlands and found amazing views of the ocean and city; along the route, the strong scent of fermented fish sauce was ever-present - this lends credence to the theory that they manufacture this stuff for use as a chemical weapon.

There was apparently a severe tropical storm headed for Vietnam and I was only staying upright by leaning all my weight into the wind - at one point a particularly strong gust actually picked up my bike and deposited me half a meter to one side. I decided that this was probably a bad day for the coast and headed for the hills. About 20km inland was Ba Na Hill Station - a national park which reportedly held an exceptionally scenic mountain summit. What they didn't bother to tell me at the ticket office was that the whole thing was under thick cloud cover, and after driving 16km of constant switchbacks, I found I was limited in the scenery I could see to that which I could physically touch; not inclined to roll down the side of the mountain, I drove back down and headed back east.

After trying to piece together the details I could draw from my 3 worthless maps, I eventually managed to get to Hoi An. This is an incredibly touristy town and actually requires that foreigners buy a ticket before they can enter. Fortunately I arrived after the ticket guy had gone home, so I just waltzed in, got a grilled eggplant for dinner (apparently they're green here) and grabbed a $6 room in a central hotel; while glancing into an Indian/Vietnamese restaurant (samosas with fish sauce!), I met one of the Americans I had last seen in Sapa, who in turn, had just run across several people she had met in Laos - this goes to show just how ridiculous the "beaten track" is in this part of the world.

Despite the driving rain, I set off for the ruins of My Son - the Vietnamese equivalent to Cambodia's Siem Reap and Thailand's Ayutthaya. Like the other two, there's a huge industry built around shipping tourists out to this spot and a hefty entrance ticket (60,000 dong), but it differs from its neighbors in that it's really nothing more than a few uninspiring piles of rubble and it takes all of half an hour to see by foot. As with nearly all their other historical structures, they blame this inadequacy on the Americans - they assured me that if I had only come 40 years earlier, it would definitely have been worth the price of admission.

Back in town, I began exploring the old city. Hoi An is chock full of traditional architecture and is one of the few towns I've found in Asia which is actually worth walking through. Naturally they capitalized on this by introducing a confusing ticket scheme where you pay 65,000 and get to see, from a possible 10, one attraction from each of 5 categories; this means that if you want to see more than one of the temples, museums, old houses, or if you for some reason need to cross the Japanese Covered Bridge a second time, you have to either buy an extra ticket or be extra stealthy. I managed to sneak into all three museums without any problems, but the pagodas were each guarded by a small army of ticket checkers.

The night scene is somewhat livelier here than most small towns; the myriad art galleries all stay open late and I would have perused them if I weren't constantly dripping wet. There was a cooking class on offer for $6 but it seemed largely useless as one dish could only be made with water from a local well and another was a native fish wrapped in banana leaves; additionally, there were no attractive women signed up (and what other motivation could one possibly have to take a cooking class??) I ended up eating at a restaurant that advertised "free internet" since I'm easily drawn in by silly gimmicks; it seemed like a good deal since they cooked the food themselves and charged a fifth the price of the other place.

What are the two cheapest things you can pick up in Vietnam? Draught beer and ice cream - the former is around 6 cents a glass and the latter starts out at 2 cents for a cone - and the two are always sold at the same stores which usually average at least 10 to a city block; so if ever you're looking for a wild night on the town, you can always walk to your corner beer and ice cream joint and eat and drink enough to make you sick for less than two quarters; passing out in the streets of a Vietnamese city though, may end up costing you a bit more.

Just a small typhoon

My tentative plan had been to get up early, bike up by China Beach and the Marble Mountains to Danang and then catch a bus from there to Nha Trang. When I woke up, however, heavy winds were battering the walls outside and my room was leaking from every corner. Walking outside, I found the river had overflowed and the town was flooded; people were struggling to carry on their normal routines despite being knocked every which way by the wind and doused in a constant driving rain. The market was up and running though the tarps would collect gallons of water and either dump their contents or collapse on the people and goods; I managed to find a porridge vendor that had picked one of the few spots spared from nature's wrath. This didn't seem to be the best day for a bike ride 30km towards the eye so I called up the renter and explained the situation; much to my dismay, I found that this person was, in actuality, Satan; she refused to let me leave the bike for a later pickup and insisted that I return it on time. Given that I hadn't left my passport or any form of identity with this person, I certainly should've dumped her bike over a cliff and headed south, but inexplicably, I decided to brave the weather and fulfill the agreement.

There wasn't much north-bound traffic on my road, which was useful as it made it much easier to navigate around the recently formed lakes, treefall and downed power lines. My speed topped out at about 5 km/hr since the wind was changing in intensity and direction every few seconds. Power was out in most areas, but occasionally a loudspeaker would blast instructions for the dazed people to follow as they wandered the flooded streets. The state of Danang was rapidly deteriorating and strong winds were toppling the foolhardy bikers who still tried to make it to some critical destination. I arrived at the store and found (to no great surprise) that I would not be refunded for the unused day of my rental.

I moved across town to the bus station, jogging to escape the desperate motos who were fighting the elements to capture the few pedestrians who still remained. When I arrived at the lot, I found they had moved all the buses 3km further north and had no choice but to hop on the back of a shaky moto. The first bus going my way was not until 2 in the afternoon so I planted myself in one of the few internet cafes that still had lights and hoped that the way south would still be clear in 4 hours.

There is a very different attitude in this part of the world towards hurricanes; there are no evacuations, no closures, no sandbags - everything is business as usual. The people seem to realize that the world is going to Hell, but no one buys 5 gallons of water and runs home to hide in their bathtub with a radio and a flashlight - they just sidestep the falling debris and continue doing whatever it is they would normally do.

Danang's last sector with electricity, where I'd set up camp in an internet cafe, abruptly lost it. So I had an interesting chat with the guy working there, who was a chemical engineer that had learned English from heavy metal music, and then returned to the bus station. My van had decided to leave an hour early despite its load of only 3 passengers; it quickly filled by picking up random people wading through the streets who seemed to be going in the same general direction.

We cruised down Highway 1 where we were at all times preceded by emergency crews working to clear trees, accidents and crumbled billboards from the road. There were still hundreds of buses going north all filled to the brim with apparently clueless passengers and thus the many newly formed one-way portions of the route caused lengthy queues. The fields to the sides had all been transformed into great inland seas and farmers now navigated their crops by paddle boats - I don't think I could have imagined an eerier sight than rice paddies with white caps.

Many portions of the road were under a half to one meter of water and a strong current with waterfalls at both sides flowed across - our van drafted a large truck so as to avoid being swept into a paddy; the driver lit a few sticks of incense as we all prayed to make it through without a stall. We came upon several towns that were completely underwater and usually caused serious bottlenecks as various vehicles became stuck in the middle of the street; residents saw a great opportunity to dispose of unwanted garbage and were sending it floating out into traffic.

Dalat

As darkness fell, we cleared the last of the arms of the storm and sped on into the night. For some reason we chose to stop to eat at a place with no power and I somehow managed to order cold bean sprouts and rice. We arrived at our destination at 4:30AM; fortunately the market was already in full swing and I was able to procure a host of cheap local specialties. I had earlier read about a 7km walk around the town lake, which had earlier seemed like a silly waste of time, but at 5 in the morning, I honestly couldn't think of a single better thing to do. Dalat seems to be a remarkably beautiful town with cool temperatures, lush evergreens and vibrant flowers.

As Dalat is far too big to attack on foot, I settled on renting a bike; this was a tough adjustment after many weeks of riding motorbikes - I would turn in to traffic and crank down on the right grip only to continue at a slow drift, and I frequently used my turn signals (the little buttons on the left) to no avail; I am proud to say, though, that I made it through a full day without once pulling into a petrol station.

From the lake I powered up the hills to the north to arrive at "Love Valley"; actually I first stopped at "Dreaming Valley" which is a recently installed theme park designed to fool people searching for the other, more popular valley into buying an extra ticket. At this imposter valley I came across the worst con-job I am seen yet in my travels; I was rather disappointed as the Vietnamese are usually brilliant at this sort of thing and make you nearly certain that they believe what they're telling you to be true; it went something like this: ticket guy hands me the ticket for my bike and says "That will be 2000 dong," and I reply "But it says 1000 dong right here on the ticket!" and the ticket guy, thinking quickly, comes back with "Yes, but you see, I can only sell you two tickets - if you had two bikes it would... wait let me start over... you see, we don't have a ticket for bicycles, so I have to sell you 2 motorcycle...", by this time his friends were all laughing hysterically and I walked off to the park ticket office so he could have a few minutes to get his thoughts in order

I discovered the true nature of the feux valley just in time and went another 100m up the road to the real thing. I'm not really sure what the source of this particular attraction was, but there were a slew of carnival rides, cartoon statues, and dried fruit vendors, and in the back somewhere, a valley of sorts.

The town's flower garden looked as if it had endured some kind of nuclear winter and every blossom lay wilting; this was particularly strange since every other flower in town was in full bloom. I snuck through a hole in the fence to get into the university; it was well-landscaped and packed with students but it seemed to lack the character you'd see in most American schools - I found no central quad with crazy old guys spouting Biblical rhetoric, and, as shocking as this may be, there appeared to be no free food of any kind.

The next stop was the Dalat railway station; this hadn't been used for any practical purpose in a really long time, but did offer a ride on a decrepit train that went 5km down the tracks and then came back; the price tag was about the same as a 600km trip on the normal line. The town's Catholic cathedral was nearby; along the same vein as most churches in the country, this one was extremely pink. Further along this route was the "Bai Do Palace;" this was essentially a western home with couches, TVs, toilets and the works that someone important had lived in (I didn't get the full story on this guy but I think his name was Bai Do). Just a little further from there was a crazy house where the buildings were tangled, concrete trees, the rooms each had an animal theme, and strange, cartoonish statues were strewn across the grounds. The final stop was Cam Ly Waterfall which was less a waterfall then an excuse for tourists to stop somewhere, buy souvenirs, ride a pony, and feast on dried fruits.

The street where my hotel was situated had the funny habit of sporadically disappearing off the face of the earth, and it never took me less than an hour to find it, but I did eventually get back and subsequently headed to the market for a collection of fake pork, beef, chicken and anchovies at one of the many vegetarian stalls. Dalat is one of those rare cities that is a few hundred kilometers from anywhere and happens to be next to a big hydroelectric plant; for this reason, the night sky is illuminated with dozens of neon signs and the skyline is dominated by a huge, glowing eiffel tower. From what I've seen of the nightlife so far, it seems to fall short of overwhelming; there is a lively shopping center where vendors scream out insanely low prices on piles of junk and great crowds of people rapidly shift from one to the next as they compete; since it is a college town, I'm sure the students are all going nuts somewhere, but, as usual, I didn't get invited to any crazy keggers.

If you've lived in the tropics all your life, it's possible you've never seen a day like what you come across in a Dalat winter - the sky is a perfect blue, the air is cool, and warm breezes blow throughout the afternoon. In Gainesville, we have one or two such days each year (the ever-elusive Florida Spring); at these times, it would be sacrilege to go to class, so really the only acceptable course of action is to pick out a sunny patch of grass, lie down, and watch the world go by. As usual, I had a few hundred square kilometers to cover and no time for such aimless idleness.

In the "Around Dalat" section of my book, the attractions ranged from 20 to 150km out of town - I decided that this was probably a bit too great a task for a mountain bike for one day. A big attraction in this city is a group called the "Easy Riders" who are essentially moto-drivers that aren't universally despised; they ride vintage German bikes, are reportedly good-natured, and carry around a laminated program of activities along with a book full of recommendations; all this glamour comes at a price however - they ask twenty bucks for the standard around-town package - and of course, the other moto-drivers have all caught on to this scheme and make sure to throw in the easy riders buzzword whenever they stop to harass you; in the end, I decided to pay 4 bucks and ride around with my good-natured self, probably getting horrendously lost and not finding much of anything.

I started out heading east in search of Tiger Falls (thus named because someone stuck a big concrete tiger there) but somehow missed that and instead came to a really impressive pagoda that didn't seem to be mentioned anywhere. Next, I arrived in D'ran which had some hilltop temples of one sort or another; while I was photographing one of these, a local English teacher, who may or may not have been completely nuts, came and emphatically greeted me and invited me into his home; he informed me that there was absolutely nothing of interest in this neck of the woods and I was obviously very lost.

So I headed back west along a different road til I reached Gougah falls and followed the road up to Prenn Falls and Datanla Falls; it seems every waterfall in this region has been transformed into a grotesque tourist attraction packed with Vietnamese cowboys and Native American statuary. I somehow missed "Chicken Village" (a village where someone constructed a giant concrete chicken) but managed to eventually get to Langbian Mountain north of town for some incredible views.

Vietnam is the first place I've visited where rental agencies don't adopt the "return with matching gas" policy; they see this as missing out on easy money. Prior to giving you a bike, the renter will inevitably empty all the gas out of the tank, leaving you only the few drops necessary to reach the nearest petrol station - I have thus made it my duty to always return it with the same amount or less, regardless of the risk or effort involved. On this particular occasion, I hit empty right around the 2200m summit of Langbian; this was fairly convenient as all I needed to do was put it in neutral and coast all the way down, building up enough momentum along the way to cruise through town (ignoring annoying little details like right-of-way and stoplights).

At the moment I spotted the drop-off point, all power city-wide suddenly switched off; I kicked myself for not doing more damage to this bike, as a careful inspection had just become impossible. I made my way to the market to try to get some food before it all went cold, but found it very difficult to tell a sandwhich apart from a pile of raw meat; I eventually settled on a vegetarian restaurant - you can't go too wrong with beans, even if you can't appreciate what creative fish and meat shapes they've been molded into.


Notre Dame Cathedral (yup it's in Vietnam)


"Japanese Covered Bridge" or "I drove 6km to see this?"


Incredibly elaborate graves





South China Sea


They don't exactly have the "pristine tropical beach" thing going here


How many of your neighbors have a huge, ornate pagoda in their backyards?








The most famous building in Vietnam - I forget what it's called


Car some guy drove right before he lit himself on fire and burned to death in front of thousands of people


Cham sculpture









Lions in the mist





Giant Buddha (trust me, it's there somewhere)



My Son Historical Park







Hoi An Beach


Pagoda dragons




All hail the lord of the goats






I really don't get what tourists see in these bridges



An old house


Typical Hoi An storefront







Trees in typhoon








Morning mists over Dalat





































Doesn't get any tackier than this







Dalat Cathedral



Crazy House "Pheasant Room"




"Bear Room"


"Under Construction Room"













Bao Dai Palace - wow, couches!



Someone's a little too obsessive about their carpets










Don't tell him I took this - they apparently like to get money for these pictures






















Male and female doors


















A stain-glass <one of those things that looks like a bacwards swastika>














What is it with this town and bare-breasted Indians??