here, there, everywhere

I have no idea why there were so many trucks clogging up the road, but it took us over an hour to squeeze our way past them in both directions. Trucks are always a source of great stress whenever I drive in Vietnam - as anyone who's ever had to dodge a truck swinging into the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic to overtake a bus overtaking a cow will probably attest to - so you can imagine how much fun fifty trucks shoving past each other with total disregard for anything else in their way on a tiny muddy road might be. Fortunately, Iain is a much better driver than me, and so we were able to inch our way past ...





Even without the trucks, there were plenty of mud and rocks and muddy rocks to keep Iain on his toes and make me secretly relieved that my wrist injury made it impossible for me to drive myself. Again, all of which would have been made much worse by a bunch of ducks in baskets:


So that was our last day in Cao Bang! The next day we got me and my bike on a bus (this time they took it apart and shoved it in the back) and started making out way back home to Hanoi.

We stayed in Cao Bang for a few nights making day trips out of the city; our first excursion was to Pac Bo cave, right on the China border, famous for housing Ho Chi Minh for several weeks in 1941.


The cave itself was small and filled with drunk Vietnamese tourists who found us hilarious - lots of laughing, pointing and Tay! Tay!ing ensued; I don't usually mind being called Tay ("West") since, obviously, I am a complete foreigner in Vietnam, but it was getting a bit annoying there, possibly because we were all crammed in a tiny cave together.


But, the area around the cave is gorgeous, and it was easy enough to get away from all the pointing and laughing. Here I am, modeling my fetching wrist bandage:


Pac Bo cave probably isn't the most exciting place I've visited in Vietnam, but it's pretty interesting even if you have only a cursory knowledge of Ho Chi Minh's career (which, I am embarrassed to say, I do), and I'm still happy we got to see it. 

I was feeling quite proud of myself for not crashing during the two days we drove over horrible roads to get to Ba Be, so of course I crashed the day we left Ba Be on a far more reasonable road. It wasn't very interesting (though I think I horrified a bunch of little kids on the side of the road who saw me crash ... sorry, guys), nor was it particularly serious, though I did land pretty hard on my wrist (I got an x ray later, and it was OK). After driving a few more kilometers, it became more painful to make that revving motion you have to make with your right hand, and it became pretty obvious that there was no way I'd be able to get to Cao Bang before dark. Fortunately, because he is a hero, Iain managed to hire two random dudes on the side of the road to drive my bike for me to the next town, and then get me and and my bike both onto the next bus to Cao Bang. Literally - I was a bit alarmed by how readily the bus company agreed to take the bike, but, as you can see from the video, they definitely look like they've done it before.

So, long story short, I ended up finishing the second half of the trip ingloriously on the bus, meeting up with Iain in each town at their bus stop, and learned that rooftop is but one of many ways in which a Vietnamese bus is willing to accommodate a Honda Wave (other ways include dismantling it and shoving it underneath, or else carrying it inside and wedging it into the aisle, much to acute annoyance of everyone else).  Riding the bus itself was actually quite nice - I got to make small talk with people in my crap Vietnamese, and take in the scenery a lot more, as well as enjoy the godlike thrill of power that comes when your bus sounds a colossally loud horn and overtakes just about everyone on the road so it can whip that much faster around a turn. Good times! Fortunately for my ego, my last bus to Hanoi actually dropped me off in a suburb, which meant I did get to drive back into Hanoi proper triumphantly on my motorbike. 

It was totally worth driving over rocks and mud for two days to get to Ba Be lake, because Ba Be lake is gorgeous and now vies with Mai Chau for my favorite place in all of Vietnam. We stayed there for three nights, never doing much, though we got to go swimming in the lake...







I think the most fun I had during our return to Vietnam was at Ba Be - it totally made up for two days of miserable driving, and was a much nicer way to spend our 3 year anniversary (which had fallen on the first day of the bad roads).

After Na Hang, our quiet, tranquil road trip became less of a pleasant ride down nice roads and more of a slog over piles of rocks and mud, or any combination of rocks and mud. When I get back to the States, I can happily launch into a dramatic retailing of the woe we encountered, but for now - as I'm getting rather backlogged on blogs - here are some highlights from our two days of terrible driving:

• Iain's bike's clutch snapping off, which meant the hilarious sight of Iain coasting through the Vietnamese country side on a crap bike, unable to stop, calling Bike repair? Bike repair? to anyone who happened to be listening in what must be the most hilarious example of the doppler effect I can envision. (Imagine you're a local Vietnamese guy in the middle of nowhere, minding your own business, when suddenly a foreigner on an unstoppable bike comes rolling down the road crying out for a mechanic in bad Vietnamese. Hilarity!) 
• Asking countless locals about the state of the roads, and being told they were fine; and then, when we either pointed to the current terrible road or showed them a picture of a terrible road, they'd nod sagely and say "Yes, just like that." 
• Relatedly, learning that my definition of "really big rocks" and other people's definition of "really big rocks" do not coincide. Not even a little. 

• Me taking advantage of what I thought was my solitude on a particularly harrowing road to cuss it out, loudly (after three hours of driving a Wave over rocks up and down hills, it seemed like a reasonable move) ... only to be busted by some Vietnamese dudes on their bike not 2 yards behind. Oops.

• The humbling realization - or reminder, really - that everyone who lives in that area drives over those roads all the time and probably does not feel the need to blog triumphantly about it. Not that we didn't already know this, but Vietnamese people are way tougher than us. 

... from Tuyen Quang to the small town of Na Hang...

... from Na Hang to a road that turned into a giant rock quarry with no end in sight, so we decided to double back, lose a day, and then set out via alternate route (and what turned out to be worse roads)...

... to get to Ba Be lake, where we spent 3 days lazing around...

... then headed further north to Cao Bang, where we spent a few more days visiting caves and waterfalls...

... then drove back down Route 3, spending the night in Bac Kan before driving back to Hanoi yesterday afternoon. Or, more accurately, Iain drove all the way back to Hanoi. I ingloriously crashed my bike and hurt my wrist* on the way out of Ba Be, and so actually the latter half of this trip was a bus trip for me, rather than a bike trip. Not the most heroic story, but well worth learning a) that while a Wave can drive over a veritable quarry of rocks, it is best to steer clear of a single rock lying innocently in the road all on its own, and b) that there are myriad logic-defying ways to wedge a Honda Wave into and onto a Vietnamese bus. 

Misadventures and all, it was an awesome trip! I can't think of a better way to have celebrated our three year anniversary together.