March 9, 2016
Chapter 3
A good night sleep, an early morning walk in Van Long Nature Reserve, and around 11 a.m. we were on our bikes again. In North Vietnam, it is now the season of mưa xuân, the so called spring rain. Personally, I associate spring with sunny days, plenty of colours and light. I wonder if Vietnamese people have the same association since their spring is often grey weather, drizzle and mist. It has its charm, too. The landscape of karst mountains in Van Long covered in mysterious mist makes me think of Chinese traditional paintings. It is weather that inspires meditation and introspection.
On our day 3 we cycled mainly through some small roads. Finally I could take off my mask and breathe normally. Pleasant and calm ride along rice fields, small villages, forest patches, ascents and descends but nothing too challenging. Wherever we passed everyone was greeting us, waving and shouting ‘hello’! With all this attention and honours, I feel like a champion doing his victory lap. In the two and a half years I have lived in Vietnam, many times have I been perplexed by the Vietnamese hospitality and genuine positive interest towards foreigners. Considering the violent history of occupations and wars, which is still not so long ago, I find this remarkable and beneficial in many ways. I came to believe that one should not easily forget, but definitely forgive.
Problems on the road.
Lilyana’s bike had some issues with the gears. We started early our day and rode 30km to go to the city Thanh Hoa where we were told the address of a good bicycle shop. They fixed the gears and we were in a hurry to go further with our plan. Just as we went out of the city I had a flat tire. Ok, please don’t laugh, but yes, none of us actually knows well (I underline well!) how to take off the rare wheel. We asked google, read some advice and we managed to remove it. We changed the inner tube and as we started pumping it we realised that the pump we brought with us didn’t work. It’s an old pump from Holland, so I trusted it is in good state. But it was damaged and pumping was not possible at all. After a while of vain efforts a van with two guys stopped and offered us help. They took my wheel and tires, went to the village, put some air in and came back. And then for the big problem: we couldn’t fix the wheel back at the bicycle. We tried, the boys tried, more people stopped to help, they tried... and none of us succeeded. We watched youtube videos on the side of the road, followed step by step guides, and though we were doing exactly as shown, there was still a problem. At the end, I left Lilyana waiting there, on the road, while the guys took me back to the bicycle shop in town. There was something stuck and it took a while for the bike mechanics to take it out and put the wheel back.
All these problems took us more than 3 hours from our day. Desperately I was looking at the clock and thinking how little we had cycled. We had the rest of the afternoon and tried to catch up with the program.
It was a difficult noisy bad route, with heavy trucks riding both sides with great speed, houses all along the way. And like that we rode for 50km until the sun started setting down. At the end of the afternoon, we switched to a different road, less busy and noisy. And soon after we reached a beautiful big lake and area with just a few houses. We found a good place to sleep by the side of the lake and our day with problems finished well after all. As I got off the bike I felt like a cowboy getting off his horse after a long day riding in the Wild West. Thick cover of dust lied on my clothes, my face, inside my ears and eyes.
Day 5
We are in sunny Vietnam already! Dragonflies are dancing in the rice fields and drops of sweat are dripping off our faces.
We started the day early cycling on a main road. To avoid the traffic, after a while we moved to a secondary road by the side. It was going to be a little longer but possibly calmer. For a couple of kilometers it was a fabulous ride. Until... the tarmac road suddenly finished. I was hoping it was just for a small part but it turned out to be until the very end. For over 4 hours we cycled on a heavy off road with steep ups and down. It was physically very demanding and I was worried that our bikes are not suitable for off road and we may have another misadventure. Despite the difficulties, the place was a hidden gem of Vietnam. Deep in the countryside, only a few small villages and in between no traffic and people at all. For hours we cycled there and we were the only ones on the road. Something it doesn't happen often in Vietnam. In one of the village there was a school. Somehow the children saw us and ran out to greet us on the road. It was a special moment.
After long exhausting hours, around noon we reached the HCM road. Just when I thought we would have a rest cycling on a real road, I saw a long climb ahead. The day wasn’t over. And after this climb, there was another one and another one...
At about 5 o’clock we reached out hotel for the night and called it a day. It was supposedly a 3-star hotel. We thought we might have the luxury to ask our clothes to be washed. I asked the receptionist and she confirmed. We took our clothes and gave them to her. She asked us to follow her to the backyard where she showed us a basin, washing powder, water. We were confused. :) It turned out we had to wash our clothes by hand. Thinking that it was a slightly more expensive hotel, we thought it was a different kind of service.
Anyhow, we washed our clothes by hand just as any other day.
Day 5 was over. We cycled close to 500km in 5 days. I haven’t had any problems or pain so far. Legs were holding on. The bike saddle was ok. There was only one most unexpected trouble: all little muscles in my hands and fingers were soar and very stiff. I could hardly switch between gears and couldn’t possibly hold my chopsticks to eat. Funny feeling!
Day 6
We spent day 6 on HCM road. It is a beautiful and calm area with forest and cultivated land alternating. Clean air, birds singing around, little traffic. The difficulty for the day was riding in the mountains, in the sun, 35 degrees Celsius with very high humidity. There is something uplifting about puffing and panting, and climbing those hills one after another. After a few climbs, your legs are already very tired. And then you see another climb ahead and you think that this time you won’t make it. But you do. And you keep on doing it for the whole day. It reminds me of karate trainings and when you can hardly do 20 decent kicks, but the sensei asks for 100. And you just do, one more and one more... Your mind deserts your body and leaves it do its own work. The physical and mental efforts become all unconscious and mechanical. Your legs are a machine, they just keep turning.