For some time we had been contemplating a new strategy for wheeling fully loaded. You see, dear reader, up until this point, I had been consolidating my belongings by strapping my technology bag onto the top of my pack and wheeling with the entire thing on my back, while Scott would put one pack on his back and one on his front.  An illustration from Surabaya, Indonesia may be found below.

This system worked fine for short missions, but it had a number of marked drawbacks. We were rather top-heavy and as we rode, blood flow to our heads was painfully restricted at times. In addition to that, the weight of our entire inventory was concentrated on the points where our rear ends made contact with the seats. And as you, dear reader, can no doubt imagine, this develops into a painful situation after extended amounts of wheeling.

Back in Vietnam, we had just awakened and ordered the cheapest coffee in Sa Pa, which was true to advertisement, served at our hotel, followed by another down the block.

In order to get up to Sa Pa, we had taken a winding but steadily uphill road. The road was about 35 kilometers long, and originated in Lao Cai, the Chinese border city.

It was our plan that day, to strap our technology bags onto the rear racks of the speed TRs and ride with only our packs on our backs. This, we hoped, would alleviate much of the strain and top-heaviness. So in the courtyard of our hotel in Sa Pa, we spent some time working on properly strapping technology bags onto the rear racks. We shook the bikes back and forth simulating the g-forces of a downhill ride. It was a pretty smooth road, but based on our preliminary wheel on our first day in Sa Pa, we knew there were a few sections of construction that would test the security of our arrangement.

As we were obsessing over our bikes, a crew of five or six Vietnamese men came by and insisted on taking photos with us and the Speed TRs, trying on the Maui Jims, and generally assessing AsiaWheeling. We did our best to satisfy their appetites for documenting their interaction with foreigners, and stood for photos with each of them individually.

After checking and double checking our setup, we climbed on the bikes and began to coast downhill.

It was glorious. With about half the weight of my gear off my back, I was set free to enjoy the thrill of whipping down the road, drinking in the lush green of the scenery. Traffic was very light, and with the aid of all the potential energy that we had racked up on our ascent, we were wheeling at nearly the speed of the few cars and trucks with which we shared the road.

As we grew nearer and nearer to the border town of Lao Cai, we started to notice fellow wheelers as well, like these two women transporting a startlingly large load. They both greeted us heartily, sharing the camaraderie that only those riding long distances downhill through the mountains of northern Vietnam can.

As we descended, the temperature rose, and the cool thin mountain air was replaced with a thick humidity. As we leveled out into the outskirts of Lao Cai, we began to sweat profusely, and with it came the hunger. We had forgotten to eat, again, and madness quickly ensued.

With little more than knowledge of the general direction of China, we set out searching for a Pho place. And for the first time, it was difficult to find. For one reason or another, we had inserted ourselves into the industrial goods and paint-trading section of town. So it was with sweat pouring, maddening hunger gripping us, and serious delirium setting in, that we wheeled the last four or so kilometers, which brought us to the river that separates the two countries. There we found a restaurant.

It was mostly empty, with only the odd table of Vietnamese men, feasting on very Chinese-looking chicken and greens dishes, and ripping huge lungs-full of thick tobacco smoke from a long bamboo water pipe.

Though we shared no language, the owner of the shop was supremely determined to communicate. He helped us park our bikes and took us into the back of the shop to select our food from the ingredients he had stored back there. The meal was amazing, consisting of roast chicken, cucumber salad, and rice.

As we picked our teeth, the owner, and the rest of the fellows in the restaurant came over to join us and discuss (mostly non-verbally) our mission, the nature of the Speed TRs, and our previous and upcoming waypoints. We ended the interaction by all taking a large rip from the huge water pipe. This induced a giant fit of coughing and a brief period of delirium. After the effects of the rip wore off, it was as though we all were made brothers. Warm regards were exchanged, and directions to the border of China were drawn for us on a napkin.

We wheeled on, with the help of the napkin map, easily finding the border crossing, which was marked by two giant arches on either side of a bridge. We exchanged the last of our Vietnamese Dong for Chinese Reminbi and headed to the border.

Outside passport control, we were accosted by a large group of currency changers who, though we had no interest in their services, insisted on continued interaction and soon encircled me. One of them reached out and removed my Maui Jims from my face, placing them on his own. I prepared for battle, and called over to Scott for reinforcement.

Just then, a customs official exited the building and yelled out to the men in Vietnamese. The group began to disperse, and I grabbed my glasses back off the man’s face. That was twice now, that I had taken those spectacles from a would-be thief.

The border of China and Vietnam is not the friendliest of borders, and I believe very few tourists cross at Lao Cai. Officials are strict and gruff, and your fellow travelers are mostly scrubby Chinese and Vietnamese traders, chain smoking cigarettes and shuttling large loads of consumer goods across the bridge on large hand-pulled wooden carriages.

We waited in line for some time, and then even longer, as the customs officials scrutinized every stamp and visa in my passport, before allowing me to exit Vietnam. For Scott, the process was even longer. I was lazily doing laps around a large flagpole in the middle of no-man’s land when Scott emerged from Vietnamese passport control. “What was that about?” he asked.

“No idea.” Speculation, however, is invited in the comments.

On to China! We climbed on the Speed TRs and, with a great deal of gusto and excitement, wheeled toward the rather Klingon-looking archway that symbolized the entrance to China. Our attempts to wheel across the bridge, however, were foiled by a Vietnamese official who forbade riding into China. So it was with slightly less billowing sails that we crossed under the great angular concrete archway into China.

One thing was obvious from the very beginning: the Chinese run a very tight ship. We were immediately, and respectfully greeted (in Chinese) by a starched and uniformed official who showed us where we could park our bikes in order to enter the customs building, which was a large and brutally unassuming structure. Inside the customs building, we were greeted by two more immaculately put together chaps, who greeted us in polite and formal, though heavily accented, snippets of English. After seeing the many Chinese visas and entry and exit stamps in Scott’s passport, he was waved on to passport control. Mine, on the other hand, was carefully inspected, detected, and scanned stamp by stamp, presumably to confirm the authenticity of my documentation. Though it took some time, it was done with the utmost professionalism and politeness. Finally, I was ushered over to passport control, past a large door labeled in large English type “Further Interrogation Room.” It seemed their discussions with Scott had alleviated all skepticism of AsiaWheeling, and I was flagged through with no further problem. Meanwhile, Scott’s bags were being carefully inspected, at the culmination of which, the customs official removed a certain bottle of Burmese smelling salts, which we had acquired in Sanklaburi, Thailand. They seemed to pass inspection as well.

We were in China, but the bikes were still in no man’s land. We were beginning to confer about how to best retrieve them when the Chinese officials once again proved their organization and foresight, by showing us back through the customs and allowing us to ride our cycles around and out into China through the same entrance that large cargo trucks use.

And we were in, bikes and all. The city was called Hekou, and so far it appeared to be the usual AsiaWheeling border town. It was a jungle of import-export businesses, and bustled with small-scale international trade. Women who appeared to be prostitutes roamed the streets in short skirts and high heels, strolling in packs. We poured out of the customs building into traffic, wheeling our way through an immense gridlock of Chinese men and women, transporting all nature of goods.

There were a few important missions we needed to complete: we needed Chinese SIM cards; we needed to find a hotel; and we needed to wheel the city of Hekou. We were still in the jungle of import-export businesses, so we headed on toward the interior of the city. On our way, we passed a bus station. We had spoken to the honorable Stewart Motta since our encounter with him in Lao, and at his recommendation, our next waypoint in China was to be a predominantly museum town by the name of Jianshui. Jianshui was also positioned conveniently between the border town of Hekou and Stew’s current residence in Kunming.

Inside the bus station, Scott demonstrated his Chinese skills, quickly manifesting for us a couple of tickets for early the next morning to Jianshui.

We declined a number of offers from fellows at the bus station to provide us with professional female companionship, and climbed back on the cycles. We soon found our way to the riverside, where we called a waypoint at a roadside juice stand, where the owner came to join us at our plastic table, explaining to Scott in Chinese where we might find a cheap hotel, what price we should pay, and how to find SIM cards. We thanked him, and after finishing our freshly blended mango juices, headed off toward the hotel and SIM card district.

All around us China was just churning with activity. Men strolled the streets yakking away on cell phones while wearing no shirts. Construction workers furiously bent and welded metal in the streets. Beautiful women zipped around on silent electric mopeds, and everywhere things were growing, being improved, remodeled, or torn down to make room for the future. Acquiring SIM cards was easy, and the staff at China mobile was exceedingly patient and helpful.

Armed with newly active phones, we headed down the street where we saw a giant gleaming Chinese business hotel.

Scott went inside, and firmly bargained them down to the price that had been communicated by our juice-making friend. It worked, and after declining more offers for paid companionship from a woman who had set up shop with a large placard of optional women at the base of the elevator, we headed up to our room.

The room was stupendous and cheap. For about US$20.00 dollars per night we were enjoying a spotlessly clean room, with new shiny fixtures, and the solid kind of furniture one expects at a place like the Westin. We had free in-room Internet (Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter were, of course, blocked by the Chinese government). We took only the time to pound a little water from the in-room water bubbler, and change into our Speed Matrix biking jerseys, before heading back out for a wheel.

The staff of the hotel, which was no doubt used to Chinese businessmen and international traders who were mostly interested in feasting and paid companionship, seemed baffled that we would head back out into the heat of the day, after just arriving sweaty and disheveled from the savage wheel. But thus is the habit of the AsiaWheeler. China was just too new and fascinating for us to separate ourselves from it by a pane of spotlessly clean hotel window glass.

We wheeled down the road, stopping briefly to purchase refreshingly affordable water at a brand new giant supermarket, and then headed down the road that skirted the riverside. On one side was China, on the other was Vietnam. The Chinese side was clean, orderly, and marked by gigantic blocky, brutalist structures. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese side was mostly undeveloped, covered with mineral extraction operations and tent cities. It’s true that Vietnam has one of the fastest growing GDPs in the world, but China was the clear winner in this race. We wheeled on past another large border crossing, this one for rail only. On the Chinese side, there was a huge brand new facility, imposingly constructed from concrete and glass, which dwarfed its modest Vietnamese counterpart.

On we wheeled, the opportunity to explore the wide smooth roads that connected the brand new housing and administrative developments of Hekou was too tempting not to. The sun sank low and hunger took hold. We had just made it back into the neighborhood of our hotel when we wheeled by a street filled with restaurants, and the glorious smells coaxed us in. We dismounted and walked the Speed TRs, scanning for a place to eat.

We finally selected a restaurant at the end of the row. It was one of the standard kind of Chinese joints, with no menu, instead just a giant bank of ingredients in an open cooler. We were invited inside to select from the ingredients, and once we had selected some, were expected to enter into an involved discussion of how we would like them to be prepared. This, we unfortunately lacked the vocabulary to execute, so we just asked the waitress to choose for us, and headed over to the table.

The meal that arrived was amazing, a truly emotional experience.

As I leaned back from my feasting, I was overcome with the delightfully new vibrations of China. The traffic, the food, the attitude of the people, it was somehow perfect for AsiaWheeling. This was a decidedly new chapter, and I could tell already it was going to be a glorious one.

We awoke hungry  in our comfortable and roomy hotel room in Sa Pa. I guess the dinner of Bia Hoi and unborn chicken had not been quite enough for us. We headed out in search of Pho, and found and ate a fatty bowl of it with very little expenditure of time or money.

Now, escaping the Pho joint without letting everyone in a giant group of local Vietnamese men ride the Speed TRs and try on the Panama hats and sunglasses was a completely different story. It seemed that we spent easily double the amount of time spent on the entire Pho mission just navigating this little gauntlet. Finally, we were free to head out in search of coffee and more wheeling advice.

Both were quite easy to find at a coffee shop just down the road. Here in Sa Pa we were back in high tea country, so unfortunately the locals did not drink coffee as they had in Saigon and Hanoi. This made the black gold a little harder to find and more expensive than than it had been up to this point in Vietnam. As the result, this coffee shop was more of a tourist joint, and in it we met a Vietnamese-American woman, who told us of a certain waterfall, up in the mountains beyond and above Sa Pa. It would be a nice, easy, inclined ride, she explained, over her mocha-caramel-whipped-o-chino. Scott and I looked at each other. “Sounds great,” we agreed.

And we were off again, this time up and out of Sa Pa. And once again, with our departure from the city, the view opened up into a jaw-dropping vista of indescribable grandeur. As we grew farther and farther from the city of Sa Pa, the buildings that clung to the mountainside began to change, and the people who lived in them and worked in the land around us became more unique, less touched by the outside world.  The road simply got more and more beautiful, and the whole time we rode, we passed perhaps only one other vehicle. It was as though we had the mountain to ourselves.

We stopped at a particularly savage vista to take a few glam shots of us and the Speed TRs, when we were approached by a few young lads from the neighboring hamlets. One of them, presumably the leader, carried a small plastic bottle attached to his belt, in which he kept small snakes that he had caught and killed. On his finger he carried two small birds that, despite the fact that he waved them around , appeared to be permanently attached (live) to him. His crew were all younger, and were interested in, but wary of your humble correspondents. They came over to take a look at the camera when it was sitting on the grass photographing us.

We decided that these young lads might be, in fact, budding photographers and encouraged them to try out Scott’s Olympus, but they seemed nervous about the thing, and just getting them to touch it was quite a task.

Soon the leader of the gang began to give us the signal to get out, so we did.

We wheeled off the small road that we had taken out of Sa Pa and onto a large mountain road. Still traffic was very very light, but from time to time on this one we would pass motorcycles, and even the odd small truck. We were getting plenty hungry; our breakfast of Pho long turned into energy for cycling the elevation change, and just when we were starting to think about drastic maneuvers, a roadside fruit stand appeared on the horizon. We wheeled up to it and feasted on a kilogram or so of high country plums. These turned out to be some of the best plums I’d ever had in all my meandering life.

The scenery around us just never ceased to amaze, with a new type of farming taking hold. This consisted of large networks of rope and branches, hammered into the 45º pitch of the mountainside. In the safety of these networks, we saw people growing everything from corn to berries. As we came around the corner, we ran into a woman and her guide (a small girl) walking down the mountain from the waterfall that we were on our way to see. The woman turned out to be from Portland, Oregon, one of the wheeling capitals of the U.S. We talked wheeling for a bit, standing in the middle of the road. No cars came by during our conversation. And soon we warmly parted ways.

When we finally reached the waterfall, we were once again starving. There was a cluster of stands and restaurants around the entrance to the falls, but a price gouge was inevitable. We ate two lackluster and overpriced bowls of noodles at a nearby restaurant, and then bought a couple pieces of grilled purple yam from a woman at a roadside stand. The yam was tasty, and the noodles at least gave us new energy.

We looked at the falls from a distance, and at the cost of entrance from up close, and decided, as we often do: more wheeling.

<<pic of us near the falls>>

We kept climbing, seeking solace in the knowledge that unlike yesterday’s wheel, this one would terminate with a luxurious downhill. Up and up we went, making our way around a vast section of road that curved in on itself as it clung to the edge of a steep ravine.  It reminded me so much of a wheel Scott and I had taken at Colorado National Monument during our pre-AsiaWheeling tour of the U.S., that I found myself, for perhaps the first time on the trip, getting a little sentimental about AmericaWheeling.

And with that we reached the crest of the mountain road, the highest point of our trip to date. It was a glorious view, and positioned in the midst of appropriately post-apocalyptic bits of crumbling settlement and roadside advertising.

And then we had the downhill. Ah, to fly downhill. All that potential energy… more than you could ever use. We whipped down the mountain at the speed the road was built to be driven at. And with the ease of movement, the scenery around us seemed to come alive all the more. As if the parts of my mind that had been preoccupied with humping our way up the mountain could now be free to focus on the pure enjoyment of our enchanting surroundings.

We rolled into Haba, once again with the same thing on our minds: where to find more Pho.  Settling down for a few snacks at the same roadside stand as the night before, we encountered a Frenchman executing a “Tour du Monde,” who took particular interest in the WikiReader.

We spent our last day in Hanoi, perusing the giant indoor markets in search of more Project K9 goodies to send off to one of our readers with culinary inclinations.

For ourselves, we picked up a few of the famous and charming Bia Hoi glasses that were made from poured glass and featured a big H emblazoned on their bottoms.

A street-side cafe was eager to help pack them after we effectively communicated that we wanted 10 glasses of beer
(hold the beer).

With a large bag of spices and local cooking tools, and a heavy bag of Vietnamese glass, we headed to the post office, and made short work of dispatching the whole kit and caboodle.

Back on the road, we decided to indulge in a little bit of mid-afternoon wheeling through the steadily intensifying rush hour madness of Hanoi. This was enjoyable, but very high voltage. In fact, we were soaking wet with sweat and rather frayed at the nerves by the time we made our way back to the restaurant we had visited the night before.

The same adorably surly waitress was there, as though waiting for us. She gave us a huge grin and then snarled through the ordering process, pushing us to select certain foods and not taking no for an answer on the Bia Hoi. No sooner had our beers arrived than we were joined by yet another North Vietnamese veteran who happened to speak Russian. We sipped bia hoi, and ate with him, discussing his service as a fighter pilot, flying MIGs for the people of Vietnam, and allowing the conversation to deviate toward more relaxed topics whenever we could. In the end, we were all very good friends, and bid each other warm regards upon departure.

Back on the cycles, we returned to our beloved Liberty Hotel, where the staff bid us another warm goodbye, while we packed up our things and climbed on the Speed TRs, headed for the train station.

Our tickets that evening were on the “tourist train” to Lao Cai. Lao Cai is the border town between Vietnam and Yunnan Province, China. Since the train is really only used by tourists (foreign and domestic), it is a rather over-the-top train. Though not outrageously expensive, the train is covered with faux wood paneling; each room sports a vase full of fresh flowers, and the entire experience is groomed to be somewhat Orient-Express-esque.

We wheeled up to the station and waited outside for our train. While we waited, we passed the time joking around with the Vietnamese rail employees who had just gotten off their shift and were sitting on the steps of the station smoking cigarettes. A few of them spoke a bit of Russian, but they were less interested in chatting than they were in the folding action of the Speed TRs, and Scott and my own general pre-rail antics. When our train finally arrived, we hustled to get into our compartment and snag some of that prized under-the-bottom-bunk luggage space. This we were able to do with zero difficulty, for the train was almost empty. We were, in fact, one of perhaps four or five passengers in our whole car, and, of course, had a four-bed compartment to ourselves.

The beds were firm and comfortable, but for one reason or another, I did not sleep well. Perhaps it was the change in pressure as the train worked its way up into the mountains, or a strange but drastic oscillation in the ambient humidity in our car as we traveled. Whatever, it was, I awoke quite definitively, shortly before sunrise, and spent the next couple hours peering out the train window at the mountainous farm terrain that was being slowly but surely bathed in steadily increasing shades of gray sunlight. Despite the gray light, the land was startlingly green, reminding me once again what a splendid bit of land Vietnam had for itself. We snaked our way into the mountains, and the smell of pine and rice mingled in a refreshing bouquet.

We were pulling into a city that was large enough to be our destination just as the sunlight began to gain some hints of yellow. The train hissed to a halt, and Scott and I climbed out.

We showed our tickets to the ticket takers (here they use the Chinese system of showing one’s ticket only at the end of the ride) and exited the station into an early morning crowd of touts. It was a misty, drenching, muggy day here in Lao Chai. Just in the time it took to exit the train and make our way outside, Scott and I became completely soaked with sweat. We were getting hungry too, but the pushy nature of the many street vendors outside the station forced us to choose to simply unfold the cycles and head out in search of less pushy breakfast.

Pho was of course the goal, and since we were still in Vietnam, satisfying the urge proved quite simple. We were able to find a delicious spot, which was quickly filling up with locals catching an early morning breakfast before heading out to do whatever they did here on the border of China. It was also perhaps the cheapest bowl of Pho that we had during our entire time in Vietnam. The greens were fresh and delicious, and we were just finishing our bowl when a bus pulled up next to us.

A woman stuck her head out of the bus and called to us Sa Pa? Well… we were indeed trying to head to Sa Pa, and though on AsiaWheeling we usually decline solicitations for forms of transport, this one seemed legit. We made our way over and began the process of bargaining for a ride to the mountain outpost. Eventually we reached a deal, and Scott paid the Pho vendor, while I paid the bus driver and loaded the cycles in the belly of the beast.

The bus then left and we drove for approximately four minutes, before stopping again at the bus station, where our vessel duly waited for the next hour and a half, filling the rest of the way up with people. We were fine with this, for it gave us a chance to drink a can of coffee, use the truly hauntingly filthy bathrooms, and peer across the river into China, where we could see the border town of Hekou. From here it looked not dissimilar to Lao Chai where we were, except that the signs were in Chinese. Soon we would be wheeling in that glorious country once more, through that very border in fact. But first there was a little more to do in Vietnam…

Our bus wound its way up the mountain slowly but surely. The road steadily sloped upward and wound back and forth, climbing out of the sticky humidity into the clouds, which soon enveloped the bus, condensing on the windows, and running in thin streams down the panes. When we pulled out of the clouds, the mountain range was laid out before us, clear and bright, atop a bed of silky gray vapor.

The road wound a few more times around, taking us through an active construction site, and finally up into the village of Sa Pa. Most of the passengers on the bus were headed farther away to the city of Lai Chao. In fact, we were the only people to get off in Sa Pa. However, if you think, dear reader, that taking the local bus might have saved us from being swarmed by armies of touts once we climbed off, you would be sorely mistaken. One of them was so forthright as to even climb on the Speed TR and take it for a spin without asking! All said, though, it seemed to be a day for strange behavior on the part of the AsiaWheeling team, for not only were we swarmed by touts, but we actually selected one of them and followed her back to her guest house.

We pulled up, us on our Speed TRs and she on her moped, to a beautiful place, with an unencumbered view of the vast misty mountain range that surrounded us, and were shown to a room with three full beds, wireless Internet, and hot water all for $8.00 a night! On top of all that, they even advertised the cheapest coffee and cold drinks in town. Splendid.

Our tout brought us a thermos of hot water with which to make tea, and took our passports to go register us with the local tourist police. In the meantime, we slathered on a bit of sunscreen, cleaned off our Maui Jims and started preparing to wheel.

We awoke at the Liberty Hotel and made our way downstairs for breakfast. Getting coffee proved very difficult, and the resulting brew was manufactured before our eyes from some off-brand instant powder that looked like it had been manufactured around the time of reunification. Next, we headed out to a noodle restaurant for the morning’s sustenance.

The broth had been prepared with a tool for boiling beef bones and scooping noodles, almost identical to a Project K9 request we were about to ship off for our dear reader Laura.

Next we wheeled onward passing various vendors and fruit stalls.

Feeling much refreshed, we climbed on the cycles in search of more adventure. This day we decided to head north, in an attempt to get a perspective on the city not dissimilar from that we had gotten when we simply wheeled west in Saigon.

We took off heading north this time, working our way through the center of town up through an area that was filled with communist statues, large blocky headquarters, and Ho Chi Minh’s tomb (which by the way is rather similar to Lenin’s).  Onward, the architectural styles varied between communist-industrial, to modern, to French colonial in an enjoyable medley of colors under the overcast sky.

We kept working our way north, past a large cemetery, and into the suburban housing projects.

Suburbs don’t work in Hanoi exactly the same way they do in the west. What I’m talking about here is a sort of wasteland of giant concrete apartment complexes connected by giant highways. Like western suburbs, there is little in the way of pedestrian activity or small-scale corner stores. But unlike western suburbs, those around Hanoi are a little closer to the city center. No one has a yard, and the only real roads are giant highways. It was along the side of one of these giant highways that we were riding at the moment we saw a new construction project, which seemed to warrant further inspection. As far as we could tell it was another (slightly more posh) cluster of sky-scraping apartment buildings. This one was still heavily under construction, but it seems before they started any other part of the project, they had to first finish and polish off a giant central gate, which loomed in full monumental glory – something in between a communist monument and the Arc de Triomphe. Of course we were barred from entering, but it was certainly a worthy waypoint.

From there we did our best to keep heading north, though the roads seemed determined to keep siphoning us eastward. Finally, we found ourselves at another great bridge, across the same river that we had traversed the day before. At first we entertained the notion of skipping the bridge, and trying to head down the riverside back toward Hanoi’s city center. But this began to seem impossible as the road turned north once it reached the river rather than south. So we were met with a conundrum: should we…

1. cross the river and head south on the other side in hopes of faplungeoning our way back to Hanoi, or
2. head back south the way we’d come and experience that same ride in reverse

Option 1 seemed the obvious choice, but in order to execute that maneuver, we needed a little more coffee. This we were able to acquire in the form of a couple cans of Thai coffee from a large bulk dry goods shop along the road we were currently riding upon. Refueled by the coffee, we headed up and onto the bridge. This bridge had many large lanes for cars and trucks, and a separate smaller lane for bikes and motorcycles. This is the lane we took.

It was a hard, fast ride in the midst of swarming motorbikes. From time to time we would run up on another bicyclist, but he or she would be riding so slowly, on a cycle so laden down with vegetables or cement, that there was little opportunity for comradeship, and usually the situation necessitated a hair-raising pass during which Scott and I had to put our faith in our fellow drivers and our ability to accelerate into the region of the bridge one might call the fast lane.

On the other side, we pulled over to take a breather. We were badly in need of water, and a little shaken by the high voltage bridge crossing. Once we had caught our breath, we looked around. We were certainly in a new and interesting part of Vietnam. All the buildings here were very narrow and three or four stories tall. All took interesting architectural cues from both the French colonial influence and the blocky metal and concrete communist architecture of China and Russia.

We worked our way around the block, searching for a spot to buy water, and we found one right next to this strange metal device.

Speculation as to its purpose is heartily invited in the comments.

From there we began to wheel hard, right through this little city at the end of the bridge from the Hanoi suburbs and up onto another dike. It seemed so much like the dike that we had ridden on the day before that we thought it might in fact connect. So on we rode, into the wind, through a landscape that was ever-changing and so very different than I had imagined Vietnam to be. Take a look at these pictures and do your best to reconcile them with your views of Vietnam.

We wheeled on and on. The sun was beginning to hang low in the sky, and we were still yet to find that this dike was indeed the one we had wheeled on the day before. To complicate matters, it seemed that we had acquired a new river to our right, which had not been there before. We were now almost certainly separated from the city of Hanoi by two large rivers. We continued to head south hoping against hope that we might find ourselves near something that we recognized, but still all was unfamiliar.

Then we saw it… across the river, a large communist party building we knew we had passed the day before. So the good news was we were close to the road that we had ridden before. The bad news was that we were still separated from that road by a pretty large river, with no bridge in sight, and the spot we could see was still quite a way from Hanoi and our beloved Liberty Hotel.

The sun was sinking low… perhaps two hours left before it was too dark to ride. We pulled over to have a conference. We finished the last of a red bean and fig cake we had purchased at the water stand near the strange metal object.

We decided our only rational choice was to keep wheeling south in hopes of a bridge, and if it got dark before we found one, we’d need to come up with a new plan, most likely involving folding the bikes up and getting in a cab.

So we wheeled on hard, keeping our eyes peeled for a bridge. Not that much farther down the road, we passed a sign indicating that if we kept going forward we would reach Hanoi in 23 kilometers. This was a good sign, and it gave us renewed energy to pour into the Speed TRs. We started really pushing the pavement underneath us, as the road grew larger and more filled with traffic. Finally, this road T-ed into a larger road that almost certainly led to a bridge over the river. We pulled into the traffic and triumphantly rode over the bridge.

On the other end of the bridge, we found ourselves back in the place where we had turned around on the previous day’s wheel. The same woman was there packing up her stand after having sold all her crabs and ducks. We paused for a moment to catch our breath. We were on a giant busy street and staring down the option of taking this huge street directly into Hanoi, which would be faster and might even get us in before darkness had fallen completely, and taking the route we had taken the day before, which would have us on quieter roads, but would certainly have us riding at least half the ride in the dark.

Since our ill-fated misadventures with bearings in Cambodia, Scott was left without the use of his dynamo hub. This meant that he had no headlamp. And we had neglected to bring our Knog Gekko lights with us….

We decided to take the busier, but more direct street, and to do it at highway speeds. We exchanged one last glance and then raged downhill into traffic. Keeping to the right side at first, we pedaled hard along with the stream of motorcycles, joining the throngs and breathing the fumes of burning oil. We tore through the small city that we had encountered the day before, and followed the road onto a larger bridge than the one we had taken yesterday.

Now I was really thriving on the energy of the ride, feeling great, and flying along. I was passing the slower motor bikes, and ringing my bell like a maniac. Old men on motorcycles would turn to me and smile in approval.  If I came up on a cycle burning a lot of oil, I would just lay extra hard into the old Speed TR and pass it. It was amazing – like some kind of drug. I felt great flying along there, safer and more in control than normally. As I crossed the bridge, a motorcycle with two beautiful Vietnamese women on it pulled up alongside me. The one riding on the back turned to me and smiled, giving me a peace symbol, and yelling something in Vietnamese through the wind and engine noise. I felt like a character in Easy Rider, raging through the noise of motors, smiling and interacting with my fellow traffic. I was in a world without cars, where two-wheeled vehicles ruled the road. Ah, Hanoi, one of my favorite cities yet.

On the other side I pulled over to wait for Scott. He pulled up seconds later, looking similarly ecstatic. We were back in Hanoi. There was still light left; we’d made it and we knew where we were.

We wheeled back to our hotel taking only one wrong turn that put us onto this giant street full of even more motorcycles than before. Perhaps the immensity of it is best communicated using video and photography.

Once we finally made our way back to the Hotel Liberty, we decided to stop at a nearby place for a glass of Bia Hoi. It was the perfect beverage for the end of a wheel. Mellow and malty, cool, not too sweet, and not too alcoholic. As soon as we saw it, we knew the place. It was a grubby open-air curbside beer joint. There were about 20 men there already, all Vietnamese and between the ages of 35 and 65.

As soon as we sat down, we made friends with one of them, who insisted not only on buying our beers, but also in introducing us to his extended family, talking to us in English, Chinese, and Russian, and also leading me by the hand to the bathroom.

After finishing our beers and bidding our friend goodbye, we climbed back on the Speed TRs to look for a restaurant. Without needing to wheel too long we came upon a jam-packed restaurant that emitted the most delightful smells.

We sat down to a feast and took special pleasure in engaging in a fair bit of shtick with our surly but adorable waitress.

The elderly Vietnamese family that had shared our compartment on the Reunification Express had already climbed down from its lofty perch by the time that Scott and I awoke. We were in the Hanoi Station, and we were just able to get ourselves vertical in time to help our — well I would not quite call them new friends, but at least new acquaintances, who appeared to tolerate our monopolization of the luggage space — to unload their bags. This appeared to heal at least some wounds, and they bid us a reasonably hearty farewell once we were out on the platform.

Hanoi was cool. Almost chilly by AsiaWheeling’s standards hitherto. In general, we are in places where existence outside air-conditioned environments is by definition sweaty. Here it was cool and breezy and gray. We unfolded the Speed TRs on the platform while a crew of railway workers arrived to wash down the startlingly dirty exterior of our train.

We climbed onto the cycles, and wheeled out of the train station, right by the horde of cab drivers and guesthouse touts who lay in wait. We took a right and headed down the street in search of a little pho and coffee. Instead what we found was stand after stand selling Chaco sandals. Chaco is my (and many other members of the AsiaWheeling team’s) preferred brand.

These were either knock offs or taken straight from the factory, for they were being sold at bargain basement prices. We stopped to further investigate, considering a replacement of Scott’s Sri Lankan faux leather sandals. Unfortunately, the gigantic nature of his feet precluded us from purchasing any sandal in their entire stock.

As we wheeled on, we commented to each other on how gorgeous this city was. Hanoi has a decidedly European feel to it, with large tree-lined promenades, and small side streets with plenty of outdoor cafes. Much of the architecture takes cues from the French, and many of the buildings are built from brick or stone.

It was just starting to sprinkle when we came by a shop that would at least be able to supply us with coffee.

As we parked the Speed TRs and made our way inside, the sky opened and began to soak the city of Hanoi.  While the rain fell in buckets, we ordered cup after cup of absolutely delicious iced coffee.

We had shied away from the Vietnamese coffee these past few days, after our initially terrible sample, but now we were kicking ourselves, so delicious was this shop’s offering.

Let me divert the narrative for a moment to explain this glorious brew. You are given two cups, one filled with ice, and one that has a thin pool of condensed milk in it. Onto the milk cup is placed a kind of aluminum brewing device. The device is filled with coffee and then hot water. The resulting slurry is tamped down with a  kind of of metal cap, and the whole apparatus is covered with a larger cap that is later used as a drip tray. The consumer of the coffee is then encouraged to wait while a thin stream of very strong and fragrant coffee drips through the device and into the cup. This is an opportunity for conversation, answering email, smoking cigarettes, and generally enjoying one’s self. The waiting period is an important part of the coffee consumption event and as such should not be taken lightly.

We were indulging in the email-answering functionality of the waiting period, and as our tab grew from four to eight coffees at this place, we feasted on one of the many free wireless networks that pervade the big cities in Vietnam. After about three hours, the rains finally stopped and we climbed back on the Speed TRs to begin wheeling around in search of a decent hotel.

We soon found ourselves in a delightful little neighborhood, filled with little food markets and spice shops. It seemed reasonably central and would make a great home-base for Hanoi. Unfortunately hotels were few and far between. It took us quite a bit of wheeling before we finally found one that fit our needs and our budget. It sported free fast wireless, and a nice comfortable room for less than we’d paid in a while.

The catch was we had to walk up seven floors to reach the room. But we figured this would be good training for our upcoming stint in Mr. Stew Motta’s apartment in Kunming, so we booked our room at the Liberty Inn. We dropped our stuff and began consulting the front desk as to noodle shop recommendations.

We were, of course, looking for Pho, but the man at the front desk convinced us that we might consider branching out into a new style of noodles. We agreed and followed his directions to a joint down the road that served nearly brothless noodles.

It was an amazing bowl of noodles. First each bowl was filled with a handful of fresh greens, onto which were piled steaming rice noodles, from there a spoonful each of spicy savory beef, deep fried crispy onion, and crushed peanuts were added. The entire bowl was blended with spicy and sweet condiments at the table and stirred relentlessly before eating.

Ah, we felt great after that bowl, ready for anything, and just revving to wheel Saigon. We took off toward the main river in the city, and when we saw a huge group of both motor- and bi-cyclists heading onto an old metal bridge, we took the opportunity to follow.

It was a long, old rusty bridge, which led across the river to the opposing hamlet of Cu Khoi. We wheeled over a number of river beds, some of which showed signs of being low for so long that people had begun to plant them with crops. On the other side of the bridge, we found ourselves in a smaller, slower city, which appeared to be where most of the Bia Hoi was produced.

Let me depart from the narrative once again to discuss Bia Hoi. Bia Hoi is a very weak home-brewed beer that is very popular here in northern Vietnam. It is made in small batches and transported in small plastic kegs all around the city on a daily basis for consumption at small street-side cafes. As we wheeled through this part of town past many small scale breweries, we could detect the warm sour stench of fermenting grains passing over us in waves. We decided we’d need to try some later that day.

The landscape was so different than I had imagined Vietnam to be. It looked more like Scotland, with overcast skies and deep green grassy hills. As we rode along, we had a choice of taking either the high road or the low road. The high road seemed to skirt around and out of the city along a great dike, while the low road snaked its way through the many small structures that made up the city itself.

We took the high road, and began pedaling hard, making our way around and out of the city in record time. The traffic was an interesting combination of cattle, fellows transporting large or oblong pieces of industrial equipment or building materials via motorbike, and dump trucks.

Soon we were riding along a river, and the city had dissolved into farmlands, industrial parks, and Communist Party offices. Finally, the road we were on T’ed into large iron bridge. I looked around the green land, dotted with bits of rust and concrete, which, for a moment, conjured up Pennsylvania coal country.

We stopped for a moment to investigate the wares of a very popular roadside seller, who was hawking crabs, large insects, and live birds. I found myself unable for a time to stop staring at a fellow who had bought two live ducks and strapped them quite violently, by the legs, upside down, to the front of his motorbike. The ducks looked none too excited about their immediate future, as they swung inches above the pavement.

Let me get this straight, though. I eat plenty of meat here on Asiawheeling, and when I am back in The Empire. I am in favor of killing and eating animals, but something about the predicament of these ducks unsettled me. It seemed like they were being tortured, strung up by the legs, being blown by the wind, flailing with their faces just inches above concrete which was whipping by at 40 or 50 kilometers per hour. I am sure that most of the experiences that animals undergo leading up to their consumption by humans could be construed in one way or another as torture. And I would not be surprised if inside the U.S., it is actually a more torturous approach to dinner than here in Asia. So, in the meantime, I am going to chalk this up as one of those cognitive dissonances one must acknowledge and schedule for later consideration. For certainly, I am not about to stop eating meat. Perhaps I’ll come up later with a justification for a more callous view on animal rights. In the meantime I’ll continue to pity my food as it suffers and turn right around and happily ask for seconds while I wipe the grease from my chin.

Back in Vietnam, we wheeled along the same high road, now taking the opportunity to divert our travels to the low road for the way back.

Here the smell of brewing beer was stronger than ever. The Speed TRs were put to a little test, scrambling over piles of garbage, fording deep mud puddles, and navigating a generally unwelcoming road.  They passed with flying colors, bringing us finally back to the bridge, which we crossed, finding ourselves now on the other side, in the midst of a giant kitchen wares market.

We spent some time perusing the market, and purchasing some K9-related kitchen goods.

Back on the cycles, we made our way back toward our hotel, noticing quite suddenly that we were starving. But we were deep in the touristy section of town, which seemed to be filled only with expensive western-style restaurants. We scoffed at these and kept riding, calling random turns until we had made our way out of that district. Finally we found a little roadside outdoor restaurant, where we ordered some dishes with rice, and a couple of Bia Hois.

Another great thing about Bia Hoi… it’s alarmingly cheap. A glass costs about 25 cents, and is served in a very attractive thick green glass, full of tiny bubbles. The glasses generally have a big “H” stamped on the bottom.

We were squatting on tiny wooden chairs enjoying our Bia Hois and snacking on the free peanuts that accompanied them, when a man called over from the table behind us. He spoke very little English but called out to us in what he had, asking where we were from. I said “America” and though he instantly became a little more wary of us, we began to chat. He commented on our Bia Hoi and asked whether we were enjoying it. We were, quite thoroughly, and informed him. He smiled and asked whether they had such a type of beer in the U.S. We explained to him that we did not really have such a system of down-home brewers who sold beer in small batches for widespread consumption. Sure we had micro-breweries, but microbrews are trying to be distinctive, luxury goods, and most were pasteurized and regulated. Here in Vietnam, everyone was just trying to crank out this cheap, unregulated, weak, unpasteurized lager, which was the drink of choice all over the city.

I turned to our new friend, “You know the only other place I’ve heard of this type of beer being produced?” He looked blankly at me — “Russia.”

Suddenly, the man leaned in close to me. “So you’ve been to Russia?” he said. “да,” I answered. And then we were off speaking in Russian. It was so unexpected, it took me quite a while to remember how to say certain things. I explained to him that I had studied in St. Petersburg a few years back, and that we would be visiting Russia later on AsiaWheeling. He explained that he had been sent to Russia as part of his training to fight the Americans in the NVA. Now that we were speaking Russian, his whole demeanor had changed. He congratulated me, and complimented my filthy broken Russian.

“So few Americans can speak Russian,” he said, “Did you study Russian to spy on them? Are you a soldier?”

I did my best to explain that I was just a curious fellow, hated war, and had no interest soldiering. I did my best to communicate that just like Vietnam, Russia was an enemy of the U.S. at one time, but now I am hoping that friendship can replace animosity.

He really seemed to like this, and began to go on at length about Vietnam today, comparing it with Vietnam during the war. My ability to understand him was severely hampered by my poor grasp of the Russian language, but I was able to ascertain that much of what he was saying was about how much better off they are now, mostly due to the fact that Ho Chi Minh was able to re-unify the country. He also spoke at length about the Cuban Embassy, as well, which he showed me was just visible down the street. He knew that the U.S. did not have one, and commented on the proliferation of affordable Cuban cigarettes and cigars in Vietnam as highlighting one of the great drawbacks to our embargo. I agreed with him heartily.

It was then that he started talking about vodka. I think there is something about speaking Russian with another non-native speaker that gets one or both of the parties thinking about that old Russian vice. He spoke at great length about the way that Vietnam has learned from the Russians to make very good vodka. It was still somewhat early in the day, and we had quite a few kilometers yet to wheel before we arrived back in the neighborhood of our hotel, so I declined his repeated offers to drink.

The Bia Hoi is a very weak sauce. A cup varies between 2% and 3% alcohol, but I knew that if we started drinking vodka with this fellow, we would soon be in a rather compromised state. In fact, if my estimates were right, after such a hard wheel, and under the kind of peer pressure which Russian-style vodka drinking generally encourages, we would soon be more beasts than men. So I had to stick to my guns.

Despite my refusal to drink, he ordered a bottle of the Vietnamese vodka to the table, simply to prove to me that here, like in Russia, the vodka is kept in the freezer and served cold. “This is the only proper way,” he explained.

He then shook my hand repeatedly and returned to his little table. Throughout the rest of the meal, he came by from time to time to say something congratulatory and shake our hands.

Once we had paid the bill, I bid him farewell, and we climbed back on the cycles.

We had just enough time to get hopelessly lost on our way back to the hotel before night fell on this most fascinating city.

We crawled our way through Vietnam on the Reunification Express. At times I found myself unable to do anything but stare transfixed out the window.

Vietnam has a great piece of land. Really it does. It snakes along the entire eastern coast of southeast Asia like some great dragon, with mountains, productive plains, and biologically rich coastline.

The train line gives a most flattering view of this country, which already needs no flattering to be impressive.

Our compartment had emptied out early that morning, so for most of the day Scott and I had the place to ourselves. Eventually, a woman appeared, nervously offering us fruit. We refused a few times, and then accepted, to her great delight. The fruit was great. I believe it was durian, or another variety from that glorious family of gym-bag/fruit hybrids.  Then she revealed some sliced dragon fruit, which proved particularly tasty.

This woman kept returning to our bunk from time to time. Soon we began to suspect that she was, in fact,  a new bunk mate. We quickly rearranged our belongings to make room for her. She seemed to confirm our assumptions by sitting down, and we began attempts to communicate our welcome to her, offering food from our bag (all of which she refused), and posing together with her for a team picture.

The picture may have been a step too far, though it came from a kind place, for she began to blush uncontrollably and scampered off. She did reappear again and again, however, throughout our journey, mostly to offer us more fresh produce (sweet corn, dragon fruit, bananas, cucumbers). We felt bad about scaring her earlier, and did not want to eat her out of house and home, but at the same time she was pushing the food quite vehemently on us. We did our best to walk that line, leaving some food behind for her. But we never saw her eat.

Then all of a sudden, night was falling and she was still nowhere to be seen. The woman had been absent for some time. We never saw her again, though her plastic bag of fruit stayed with us for the next day or so.  To supplement the fruit, we ordered some of the tasty train food offered by the kitchen.

At about 11:00 pm, just as we were crawling into bed, a group of elderly Vietnamese people with tons of luggage made their way into our compartment. It turns out they were to be our bunk mates for the night, and were none too keen on our monopolization of the under-the-bunk storage. It was no easy task, but with some reorganization we were able to get everyone’s luggage into the compartment, and soon all concerned were once again asleep while the old magic carpet made of steel drew ever closer to Hanoi.

We awoke on our last morning at the Blue River Inn in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Scott was not feeling well. Wheeling, it seemed, would be out of the question. He was unable to eat much, and felt too delirious to mount a cycle. We lounged around our room giving Scott as much time to rest as we could; then it was checkout time.

We moved our stuff downstairs and stashed it behind the front desk. From there, we set out on foot, in hopes that a bit of gentle strolling would help Scott’s condition. We wandered around slowly, getting fairly lost, wandering into shops, eating more Pho, and eventually finding ourselves once again in a giant grocery store. There is something about being a foreigner in a grocery store that I find monumentally engrossing. Time just slips by you. Given this strange phenomenon, you would be not surprised to find that we exited the grocery store quite some time after entering.

We were laden with a great bag of snacks to eat on that night’s Reunification Express. We would be in the train for the next few days, so plenty of food seemed appropriate.

We were just sitting down to a cup of overly sweetened coffee at a little shop outside the grocery store when I decided to take a trip to the bathroom. As I walked toward the john, I found myself suddenly walking within a group of Vietnamese police officers. I looked around, but they all had very stern expressions on, and refused to make eye contact. I briefly considered aborting the mission to the bathroom, but such a mid-swing reversal seemed, perhaps, a suspicious move. After all, I had nothing to hide.

So I made my way inside and settled my business. I was about halfway back to Scott at the coffee shop when I heard a bunch of screaming. I snapped my head around to see a bunch of cops screaming and running. One of them knocked over a display advertising crock pots, and as it clattered onto the ground I felt the electric shock of adrenaline pour into my system. Was there a bomb? A man with a weapon? I dashed around a corner and sought cover behind a large display about exercise machines. I whirled my head around.

The people inside the shop were confused and looking around. The cops were running out the door. It seemed calm was returning. I called over to Scott, “What just happened?”

“A guy just ran out of the shop with something he’d stolen. The cops are after him.” A crowd had formed outside the shopping complex. People were now smiling, joking around, enjoying the return of a feeling of safety. I certainly didn’t need another cup of coffee, so we headed back toward the hotel.

We got there, and had about three hours to kill. Scott was drifting in and out of consciousness in a chair in the lobby, when the woman at the front desk offered him a free room to sleep in for a bit. If the Blue River had not already been in seal-of-approval territory, it certainly was now. Going for a bit of a stroll, we came across a Banh Mi sandwich stand and indulged in some quick dinner.

I worked on correspondence for you, dear reader, while fireworks went off all around us. It was Independence Day here in Vietnam, and the people of the city had poured into the streets to sing patriotic songs and celebrate the reunification of Vietnam. I took a break to watch the fireworks on the lobby television. Just as they were getting into the grand finale, a thunderstorm broke out in the city.

The rain kept falling, and was still doing so when it was time for us to head to the train station. Because of the rain, we decided to take a cab. It was our first time experiencing the streets of Saigon in a car. It certainly hammered home my previous observation that the automobile is merely tolerated, and not quite welcome here in Saigon. Motorcycles poured around us, cutting us off, and generally making our traversal difficult. Multiple times, our cab driver stopped to yell insults at the motorcyclists. They generally paid him no heed.

At the train station, we were forced to wait for some time as the train was late. This, we were told by the locals who were waiting with us on the platform is actually quite abnormal. By the time the train arrived, I had been standing for quite some time with my pack on and must have been quite the sweaty mess.

We finally got onto the sleeper, and I threw my bags down on the bed. We had gotten two opposing bottom bunks. The train was set up with three levels of bunks, separated by thin walls into six-person compartments. The cycles just barely fit under the beds, which were presumably communal luggage space. We were quite glad to find that our bunk mates arrived with minimal luggage and did not need the space. They were quite friendly, and spoke a tiny bit of English. The six of us chatted for a bit before turning off the light and letting the rhythm of the rails lull us to sleep.

Ah, trains. It had been so long since we had ridden one.

What a fine way to travel.

We woke up to the gentle chimes of Sim City 2000 in the roomy coolness of our digs at the Blue River Inn. We made our way downstairs to the free breakfast to find that today’s offering was a kind of smallish блин . It was tasty, but none too filling. After some deliberation, we decided that this might be just enough calories to fuel us through the short ride to the Reunification Palace.

We collected our things and climbed on the cycles. It seemed the Speed TRs were getting along especially well with Vietnam. Mine felt smooth, tight, and responsive as we wove our way through the surging waves of motor bikes.

The Vietnamese coffee, in all its cloying sweetness, was beginning to kick in and we made short work of the ride, purchasing the 85 cent tickets and entering the palace grounds.

To call this place a palace is both right and wrong. It certainly is a palace in the grand-structure-with-which-one-impresses-others sense, but it is so very communist, that one might better call it an official headquarters, or even a diplomatic reception building.

You see, dear reader, at one point, on the same ground on which one now finds the Reunification Palace, there was a very real palace, made of ornately carved wood. This was destroyed, and a new palace was built by the French, when they took over the running of Saigon after a slow but brutal campaign in 1868. The French ruled from this, though they kept the king of Vietnam around as well, doing some minor ruling from the old royal capital in the central Vietnamese city of Hue. During the second World War, the place was briefly occupied by the Japanese, until the defeat of the Axis in the Pacific and the forcible reinstatement of French rule in Vietnam.

The French had a strange habit of calling Vietnam Cochinchina, which to AsiaWheeling makes about as much sense as deciding to call Malaysia Varanasiindonesia, and this might have had something to do with the subsequent troubles that a France still recovering from crushing defeat and occupation in during WWII had in establishing control over their previous colony.

In this time of strife, Ho Chi Minh, and his communist organization, the Viet Minh took power in Vietnam and eventually, after a string of military victories, forced France to sign the Geneva Accords, which returned Vietnam to local control, with the north ruled by the communist Viet Minh, and the south ruled by the marginally democratic Republic of Vietnam, split along the fabled 17th parallel. The north was led by Ho Chi Minh (the guy on all the money here in present day Vietnam), and the south was led by a fellow named Diem (a rotten, paranoid, murdering dictator — heavily supported by the U.S.) Diem ruled from the old French palace, now dubbing it the “Independence Palace.”

During the early 60s, North Vietnamese bombers destroyed the palace that had been built by the French, so it was rebuilt in wonderful 1960s mod South East Asian Art Deco glory. To this day, it still retains the original facade and interior decoration. It also sports some interesting exhibits and re-education videos, so we figured it was worth a visit.

Inside we found it to be decorated not unlike a cooler version of the rooms in one of our grandmother’s houses. I’ll let the photos talk:

We also were sure to watch the re-education videos in the basement, which tell the story of the Vietnam War from the North Vietnamese perspective (to them it is the American War). It was very interesting and embarrassing to see how sinister and destructive my country could seem through the eyes of our one-time enemy. While I am sure that in reality the truth, as always, lies somewhere between the version of the Vietnamese War that we are taught in American schools and the one taught in Vietnamese schools, one thing is for sure, it was an ugly, wasteful, crying shame of a war.

Before we left, we made sure to tour the basement of the building, which was set up somewhat like a level from that old Nintendo 64 game, GoldenEye.

This video should corroborate:

We left the Reunification Palace hungry, and climbed on the cycles to weave our way back into the wild traffic of Ho Chi Minh City, looking for a place to eat. When we spotted a Vietnamese crushed rice restaurant, we called a waypoint, but were for one reason or another tempted even more by a restaurant across the street advertising Hue (pronounced “Hway”) food. Hue food is from the central part of Vietnam, and since we had bought tickets that skipped right over that part of the country, we figured we had better try the food.

I ordered a bowl of thick square yellow noodles with a spicy sesame broth, Scott got a clear soup with round white rice noodles. We shared a plate of tiny fried clams that we spread on pieces of toasted rice paper, sprinkled with fresh garlic and hot peppers, and scarfed down.

As we ate, a man came into the restaurant, and noticing that there were no more tables left, planted himself next to us. We exchanged greetings, but he did not appear to speak much English. It was not until we had finished eating and begun to take turns reading aloud the Vietnam War section from the Wikireader that our table partner spoke up.

It turned out that, in fact, he did speak quite good English, and presented himself to us as a Vietnamese journalist. He was interested in what two young chaps, interested in Vietnamese history were doing riding folding bicycles in this city. For one reason or another, we intrigued him enough that he agreed to meet with us later that day, at his hotel, and allow us to interview him about his life and perspectives on Vietnamese history. As you can imagine, dear reader, Scott and I were tickled pink at the opportunity, and spent the next few hours wheeling around Saigon, brainstorming questions to ask the man, and hunting down a fresh supply of pens and paper.

When we met up with the man, he had changed his clothes and was welcoming us into his luxurious room at the New World Hotel.

He called for a maid to assist him in making coffee for us. With steaming mugs in hand, we sat down in his heavily air conditioned room, and he and began to tell us his tale, and perhaps more exactly, the story of Vietnam in the 20th Century.

And this was it:

His father was born shortly after the turn of the century (the 20th). He was of wealthy intellectual background, so he studied at a good French school, eventually becoming a lawyer and securing a position within the administration of the last Vietnamese king, who still held a fair amount of power and popularity with the people at that time. Our friend was born during this time, as his father was rising to his final position as the Chief of the Office of the King. As you can imagine, this is a rather high position, and our friend’s father had become a trusted adviser to the king.

With the end of WWII, and the aforementioned unstable power switch between the Japanese occupiers and the old French colonialists, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh had come to power. It was actually our friend’s father who, in light of the growing communist power in Vietnam, suggested that the king resign once and for all, appealing to Ho Chi Minh. The king did this, and in response, Ho Chi Minh offered him a position in his new communist government, as supreme counselor. So with this, our friend’s father found his way into the Communist Party, and our friend moved from Hue to the northern communist capital of Hanoi.

Meanwhile, while the English and French are invading the south of Vietnam, attempting to re-establish colonial rule. Our friend is 16 at this point, and along with his father, joins the resistance. They worked in the military administration, with our friend eventually reaching the rank of Chief of Company. In 1954, the French and English are defeated, and the country is split according to the Geneva Accords along the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh’s administration is new, and the country is war-torn. He realizes that in order to catalyze development, he must educate his people in the ways of science and industry. And with that, our friend was assigned to be sent to Beijing (they called in Peking then)  to learn metallurgy. After spending a year in Hanoi learning 中文, he made his way to Beijing where at the Vietnamese Embassy, he overheard a conversation that would change the rest of his life.

A telegram had just come in from Hanoi requesting that five students be selected and reassigned to learn journalism rather than their respective scientific or industrial vocation. He promptly presented himself as a volunteer and the officials agreed. It was in this way that our friend became a Chinese-trained journalist.

He returned to Vietnam four years later, in 1955, to find the U.S.-supported Diem regime in the south to be unstable and losing popular support, while meanwhile the communist Vietcong insurgency was slowly, under the direction of Ho Chi Minh, eroding the power of the Southern State. Meanwhile open war had broken out between the Soviet- and Chinese-supported North and the U.S.-supported South. By now U.S. forces were playing an active role, not just training and advising South Vietnamese military, but engaging directly in ground combat and devastating bombing of the north. Even the U.S. became fed up with Diem’s inability to lead, and he was assassinated in a U.S. supported bit of regime change. Unfortunately, subsequent leaders were no better, and were instantly seen as puppets of the Americans, which of course they were.

In the meantime, our friend is working for the North Vietnamese newspaper. Interestingly, we later noted that this fellow had a parallel occupation to the protagonist of Full Metal Jacket, “Joker”, who wrote for the American wartime newspaper Stars and Stripes, telling stories of American valor and the failings of the North Vietnamese Army.  When we asked him if he felt the press was free in North Vietnam, he explained to us, “I was free to write anything which would raise the morale of our people. I was not told what to write, and I did not write lies.  I just only wrote stories that were uplifting for our struggling citizens. You may call it what you would like, but I will call it free.”

America, of course, lost. And when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, the official moment is often considered to be when an NVA tank bulldozed its way through the gates of the Independence Palace, taking over. They renamed the place, Reunification Palace. As soon as word of the fall (or liberation) of Saigon made it to Hanoi in the north, our friend made his way down to witness the event. He told us the story of walking into the old U.S. Embassy, which was now in ruins, riddled with bullet holes and stained black with the soot from burning vehicles. He walked through the interior, which was in shambles, having been ransacked by the Vietcong. Amidst the sea of documents that covered the floor, he saw a bolt from an American rifle on the floor. He picked it up and has kept it since as a paper-weight.

Since the war, our friend went on to work in Vietnamese television news, traveling the world, and even visiting America five times, to such exotic locales as Nebraska, Kansas, San Fransisco, and Washington. On his trip to Washington, he was accompanying the Vietnamese prime minister, taking an historic image of the American and Vietnamese flags side by side on the president’s limousine.

Our friend now works in a senior capacity at Viet-My, a Vietnamese-U.S. relationship magazine published by the Vietnam-USA society. His magazine now works to build good faith and friendship between the people of the two countries. AsiaWheeling would flatter itself to think it is working to do the same.

Many people have told us not to disclose that we are American while traveling. It’s safer they say. But also, as our dear friend Mr. Stew Motta so eloquently put it, “You’ve got to represent, man.” And we agree. In traveling, AsiaWheeling has enjoyed so many more positive experiences connecting with people from other countries than we have negative ones. And in many of these, we are playing the role of representatives of our country and our race. With so many jokers out there, and so many idiotic things that have been done by Americans in the past, it would be a crime for all of us decent folk to hide behind Canada or England, rather than starting to rack up a few more positive interactions on behalf of America.

With that I’ll sign off. From the AsiaWheeling mobile offices in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, good night and good luck.

Our second day in Saigon, which is of course more officially known as Ho Chi Minh city, began with complimentary breakfast. It consisted of sunny side up fried eggs and a baguette. Unfortunately, with it we saw the return of the Bandung-style petroleum-derivative margarine, which refused to melt even in one’s mouth, and left the poor consumer stricken with a greasy interior coating.

I was still struggling to shake the coating from my own mouth when we hopped on the cycles. Our plan that day was to simply wheel west, away from the river, and see where we ended up.

As we rode through Saigon, we began to discover that the city was sectioned off in a very interesting way. More perhaps than any other place we’ve been, certain neighborhoods of Saigon were dedicated to a specific type of shop or service.

Stopping for an obligatory coffee, we spent a moment at a roadside cafe that had set out vinyl deck chairs  providing a good view of the city’s bustle.

Using the restroom meant going into the back of the cafe and meeting the proprietor’s extended family, which of course we were happy to do multiple times.

We went by the area where all the power tools were sold, which transitioned organically into a neighborhood full of working clothes and protective equipment.

With the added protection of our new helmets, we were really beginning to get the hang of wheeling in Saigon. It was not for the weak of heart, that’s to be sure, but it was doable – enjoyable even. The other people in the traffic were mostly quite alert and communicative.

They might not signal their intent in the explicit way that AsiaWheeling does, but our fellow riders’ head motions and shifting in weight spoke volumes about their next driving moves. We were wheeling fast and hard through thick traffic, but I did not feel out of control or unsafe.

One particularly interesting feature of Saigon can be found in the sidewalks.  The majority of them are actually sloped to allow motorcycle traffic to climb on and off as needed.  This makes it much easier to transition into a “Mario Kart” while riding with the rest of traffic, and seems to be a nod by the Ho Chi Minh City urban planners to the necessity for sidewalks in wheeling.

Soon we found ourselves on a street of musical instrument manufacturers. When I saw a fellow hacking away at acoustic guitars and upright basses along the side, I called a waypoint.

Once again, I found that guitar shop owners stand out from all other shop owners in their willingness to simply hang out, chat, and let me play music in their shops with no pretense of sale. We sat around with this particular chap for some time as he brought out guitar after guitar. It seemed a shame, for the man could build quite decent guitars when he put his mind to it, but it seemed that the demand in Saigon was primarily for 30-dollar-piece-of-garbage guitars, which refused to stay tuned even for the duration of a test play, and were made mostly of unfinished splintering pieces of wood. Regardless it was an enjoyable experience, and I exchanged hearty good wishes with the fellow before departing.

It then occurred to us that it was certainly time for more eating. We wheeled along the musical instrument street and watched as it changed into a stamp street. We could not resist stopping at a local stamp producer to investigate the opportunity for production of an AsiaWheeling ink stamp or two. The shopkeeper was, unfortunately, not available to communicate.

Shortly after the stamp street we found our way into a bakery district. This seemed the perfect excuse to engage in a little scarfing of Ban Mi. Ban Mi are the Vietnamese version of the French baguette sandwiches that had been such a welcome addition to the AsiaWheeling lifestyle since our arrival in old French colonies.

Next was a quick cup of coffee at an anime-themed restaurant that seemed to be populated by the lazy well-to-do youth of Saigon, who flopped lackadaisically on pillows and eyed us suspiciously.  From the fourth story of the building, we had a good vantage point to view the city.

Electrical wires were strung en masse, providing power to all those who consumed it so vigorously.

Once we had finished our coffees, we headed back onto the streets, heading once again westward. We made our way along a main westward street that suddenly turned to gravel. The flow of traffic continued unabated though, plunging onward into a giant cloud of dust being thrown up by the many motorbikes and cargo trucks that traveled with us.

We then reached a strange dust-free area in the center of the large stretch of gravel. It soon became clear why this section was dust-free. A large team was conducting some kind of sewer-related operation in the center of the road. Part of the operation required a great pipe to be dumping sewage into the center of the street, which wetted down the gravel and killed the dust cloud. I wheeled by trying to minimize my exposure to the splattering sewage.

From there we made our way onto a smaller street, still plunging westward. The city began to change the farther we went. The buildings were getting smaller and closing in on us.

We stopped along our way to investigate a shop selling a great many folding bicycles. We investigated them and asked the owner how much for each one. He quoted a price of just a little over $30.00. And that was to foreigners, before bargaining. These were some seriously inexpensive bicycles.

From there we kept heading west until the roads became so small and clogged that the smoke and the noise became too much for us and we pulled a rauschenberg onto a parallel street.

This street was much more comfortable in terms of noise and traffic, though it did run alongside a giant river of sewage. Despite the smell, we stopped a few times to investigate interesting operations taking place in this part of town, like this scrap metal business.

From there we headed back into town, and called a waypoint at a large grocery complex. We paid a few cents to park our bikes outside and went inside in search of some Project K9 goods. We were able to find some interesting kitchen supplies and spices therein, and left feeling quite good about the day’s work.

We made our way back toward the neighborhood of our guesthouse just as the sun was beginning to sink low in the sky. In the process of doing this, and not for the first or last time in Saigon, we found ourselves quite lost. As the sun began to sink into the smoggy haze, we continued to make our way around the city. We were  finally able to recognize a bit of our surroundings and suddenly found ourselves outside a large and delicious looking Pho place.

It was time to try again. And this time we were far from disappointed. The Pho was cheap, generously portioned, and accompanied by a giant plate of greens, hot peppers, sliced lime, and the like. We dug in greedily. There is a certain healing quality to this soup. Every time I eat Pho, I walk away quite full, but it is a stomach filled mostly with broth, fresh greens, and rice. And it seems no matter how much I eat, it quickly settles to a comfortable size in my stomach, leaving me refreshed, energetic, and optimistic about life.

Pho, official Vietnamese soup of AsiaWheeling.

Once again, Sim City 2000 called us forth into the world. It was 5:00 am in the Amari Watergate, and I was brewing the last cup of complimentary coffee that we would have for a while. The city was just beginning to wake up and pull itself together as we rode through the gray morning streets. We rode through the area where all the sugarcane to be juiced that day in Phnom Penh was being prepared for transport to the far ends of the city.

As agreed, a van arrived at a certain street corner to pick us up. The driver instantly locked in on the Speed TRs as an opportunity to extract some bicycle-related fees. He proceeded to go on at some length about it, inspiring mounting fear in the AsiaWheeling team that we might miss our bus to Vietnam, until Scott and I agreed to a bicycle fee of $2.00 per cycle and we were promptly on our way.

The van picked up two more passengers on the way to the bus depot. One was a German, the other an American. As we rolled up to their hotel, they were sitting at a table outside with a scantily clad Cambodian woman. When they saw the van, they quickly finished their coffee and both kissed and hugged the Cambodian woman goodbye, then climbed into the van, reeking of booze.

At the bus station, we paid our $2.00 to the luggage-loading fellow, which secured prime spots for the Speed TRs in the belly of the bus. The luggage handler grinned and ran over to the far end of the parking lot. I watched as the driver of our van and the luggage loader then split the money between the two of them. I walked over to where they we doing so, and placed a hand on the luggage loader’s back, laughing in a congratulatory way. He first looked scared than began to laugh too. Just doing my part to spread love here on AsiaWheeling, one transaction at a time.

From there, we had about 10 minutes to wander around the station looking for breakfast foods and coffee. This search was hampered, however, mainly because the buses surrounding us numbered so many and burned so much oil even while idling that the air was an acrid brown mist, which removed even the most hearty appetite immediately, and tempted all to seek shelter with haste.

Despite these obstacles, we were able to find some canned coffee and a few Cambodian baked goods, all variations on the combination of baguette, a white cream similar to the filling in Oreo brand cookies, and pork floss.

Aboard the bus we found that, for the first time since Thailand, it actually possessed a bathroom, as advertised. The apparatus itself, however, was a strange retrofitted bathroom system, sporting a full-sized, western-style porcelain toilet, which used a startling amount of water for each flush. Where they were hiding a reservoir to support this kind of system, I may never know.

The bus had two crew members: a driver and a kind of steward. As we made our way out of Phnom Penh and into the country, the steward came on the loudspeaker. He began, not for the last time, to apologize for mistakes that had either been made or not yet been made. He then put down his microphone and made his way through the bus, collecting the passports of all passengers and making sure that each had a Vietnamese visa. He kept the passports and ordered us to fill out immigration cards. These too he took, explaining, in barely intelligible jumbled bits of English, that he would need to do special paperwork to smooth our way into Vietnam.

Outside the border, we stopped at an overpriced restaurant full of grumpy staff and mediocre Cambodian fare. The poor value for money was, however, mitigated somewhat by the fact that a long line of urinals in the back of the restaurant were all filled with big chunks of ice, a trick they no doubt stole from the Ritz Carlton.

When we reached the Cambodian border, we found that just like in Poipet, it was a wasteland of casinos and giant signs explaining in English how frowned upon child prostitution is in Cambodia. Exiting the country was quite simple. In fact we were merely given our passports by the bus steward, already stamped. We then had only to hold them out in front of us and walk by a small booth, where they presumably were checking to see if our face matched that on the passport.

As we queued to get back on the bus, I could see the entrance to Vietnam looming in the distance. It was a large Soviet-style archway, with a great many red and gold communist sculptures attached to it. We had been told many Vietnam-related horror stories by other travelers, our dear bureau chiefs, and even by the all-knowing Steve (may his beard grow ever longer). So it was not without some anticipation and trepidation that we crossed the stretch of no man’s land and entered Vietnam.

Inside the passport control building, we were herded with all our luggage into a large  room full of sweaty people. We had given our passports back to the bus steward, so we were without documentation. We were instructed to wait for the steward to call out our names and then rush with all our luggage to the front. My name was called rather early. When I heard it, I hustled to get myself, and my folding bicycle into position. I presented myself for inspection while the bus steward handed my passport over to the Vietnamese officials. They looked at it and then back at me and then flagged me through. On the other side, I was asked to put my bike through a large metal detector, but something about the Speed TR inspired trust in this fellow, and at the last moment, he decided that I need not remove my pack, and waved me on into the hot morning sun.

I loaded my cycle back into the belly of the bus and waited for Scott who emerged similarly unscathed. We looked around. Here it was… Vietnam. So far so good.

The bus landed in Saigon a couple of hours later, and we climbed off to find ourselves in the most developed city we’d been to since Bangkok, which had by this time descended into violent street warfare.

We had been getting emails from friends in Bangkok, and reading articles about the violence. It seemed so hard to understand. We had been in Bangkok with the red shirts and had felt so safe. They were just smiling people driving around in pickup trucks, dancing to pop tunes. How had that turned into urban war?

Meanwhile in Saigon, we unloaded our belongings from the bus and spent the next few minutes vehemently declining offers from old women selling all kinds of goods from large wooden trays, which they carried by means of a long pole yoked over their shoulders.

We took a moment to collect ourselves before wheeling off in search of a hotel. We had selected one from the Lonely Planet pdfs while on the bus, and after a bit of meandering, we were able to find it.

Even in that short bit of wheeling one thing became crystal clear: We needed to get helmets.

After Scott’s accident in Bangkok, we swore that helmets would need to be added to the AsiaWheeling kit. Yet since then, we had been traveling through such rural and lightly trafficked places that the need for helmets had faded from its central role in our consciousness. Now in Saigon, the need took on a new importance. The streets were filled with motorbikes, swerving and plowing forward in a great swarm. The motorbikes obviously ruled the road. Cars were the vast minority and crept along nervously, allowing the motorbikes to flow by them like water around a stone. The speed of the traffic was just slow enough that we would be able to keep up, given the somewhat constant state of highway speeds. But increased speeds demanded an increase in the technical quality of our navigation.

We checked into our room at the Blue River Inn, which was quite comfortable, and was positioned with access to a few unsecured wireless networks. This we were soon to discover was the norm in Vietnam. Wireless networks abound;  securing them is not something people do. Vietnam did, we found, block a few sites that we use quite regularly, including facebook.com. However, all which was required to overcome the censorship was a simple change of DNS. That little bit of haxoring out of the way, we headed out for a wheel.

The first order of business was acquiring a couple of tickets on the Reunification Express. This is the train that connects Saigon in the south of Vietnam and Hanoi in the north. The fall of South Vietnam at the end of the U.S.-Vietnam war is generally referred to as the reunification of Vietnam, and so the word is often tacked on to large public projects. We had consulted our hotel about tickets and they assured us that we could visit a certain ticketing agent around the corner and purchase tickets for the same price as at the station. And since we were none too keen to battle the seething motorbike traffic over to the train station, we decided to take her word for it.

Buying the tickets was no problem, though we soon discovered that we could have purchased them for much less had we gone to the train station.

But here at AsiaWheeling, we are not ones to stew over a few lost dong. So we proceeded on to a nearby Pho place. Pho, as you no doubt already know, dear reader, is what one might call the national soup of Vietnam. It is pronounced more like Fa, rhyming with the 1990s parlance “duh.” We made the mistake of visiting a pho spot that had come highly recommended by the Lonely Planet. It was resoundingly mediocre. AsiaWheeling was continuing to lose faith in the Lonely Planet. It was, perhaps, high time that we learned it could only be counted on for supplying consistent mediocrity.

As I slurped the last of my soup down, I could easily think back upon four or five restaurants in the U.S. that served a much more delicious version of pho. This place, by the name of Pho 23, had a tasteless faux chic vibe to it, and skimped so shamelessly on the usual large pile of greens that accompany Pho, that we were simply fed up. The only thing that could have lowered our regard for this joint further was their dastardly misrepresentation of Vietnamese style coffee.

Sure enough we ordered a couple, and so heinous was the resulting brew that they produced for us, that we briefly considered the possibility that food and coffee might, in fact, be not so tasty in this country. Of course, this would prove to be resoundingly false.

Refueled, albeit with disappointing grub, we headed toward the Saigon river, which we followed north for some time, until the city began to change around us. Soon we were siphoned onto a network of much larger roads that threatened at times to turn into a full on elevated highway. As we wheeled along through traffic, I did my best to keep up with the speed of my fellow (motor) cyclists. This meant we were going fast, all the while looking out for a helmet retailer.

Saigon is full of motorcycles carrying all manner of wild cargo: pigs, loads of bricks, huge stacks of vegetables, multiple kegs of beer… it’s amazing what the people of this city can load onto a moto. But just when I was beginning to become familiar with the mad diversity of cargo that surrounded me, a motorcycle joined the pack and outdid them all. It appeared to be carrying a load of some 30-50 Styrofoam cooler chests. The giant stack was banded together and perched on the back of the cycle, which teetered its way down the road at a surprising clip. The wind resistance of such a giant brick of Styrofoam was nothing to scoff at, and this chap was flying, burning a fair bit of oil.

So fascinated was I with this heavily laden vehicle, that I leaned into the Speed TR, pedaling as fast as I could to catch up with the fellow. I was unable to catch up completely, but I did get close enough to capture a little video, which will soon be featured on the blog.

Scott pulled up behind me just as the sun was beginning to sink into the giant apartment buildings all around us. We pedaled our way around a roundabout and started to work our way back toward the hotel.

On the way, we happened to stumble upon a vendor specializing in motorcycle helmets. We began to peruse and try on her wares. Eventually we settled on two helmets that sported rather German colors, with backwards American flags and large cartoony bald eagles on them. We bargained for a while with the owner of the shop, and finally settled on a price that we later found was likely a huge price gouge at $8.00 a pop. Well that was two for today.

The sun was beginning to sink low as we made our way back toward the Blue River.

We got there just in time to get a text message from a certain Ms. Trinh who had been recommended very highly to us by our dear Malaysian Bureau Chief, Smita Sharma.

We had just enough time to relax a moment in the room before we took back to the streets, in search of a certain restaurant specializing in gentrified street-style food. We could not help but think that birds of a feather dine similarly, for Smita herself had taken us to a very similar gentrified street food court when we arrived in Kuala Lumpur.

The meal was delightful and the company entrancing.

Ms. Trinh, we humbly thank you for your hospitality. We climbed back on the cycles to head back to the Blue River feeling like kings. It seemed high time to indulge in a little night wheeling. Our night wheel was made all the more intense by the fact that we got hopelessly lost trying to find our way back to the hotel. It was something about Saigon… normally we are able to quickly get our bearings in a city, but the ability to navigate this one continued to elude us.

It was fine, though. We eventually made our way back. And being lost caused us no great discomfort. Our faith in Vietnamese food had risen to new heights. We were beginning to build a little mental map of the city. And Vietnam was proving not to be the terrifying nightmare that had been portrayed to us. Instead it was proving a manageable, organized society, very affordable, and full of people who, while they are willing to rip you off at every turn, at least did so with a gentle smile and a good sense of humor.