The past couple weeks have been a myriad of contradictions.
Ultimate highs and bottomless lows, healthy brown glow to peeling skin off in pieces, the freedom of the open road and the never ending slew of mechanic stop offs, having 'millions' in local currency to losing it all to pickpocketing...
In traveling, as well as life, it would be naive to assume that every day is going to be a peach. As soon as you get off the well beaten track and try and do things on your own, that's exactly what you are, on your own. My sanity would have literally been left in among the banana trees up north if not for my traveling mates, as we've all had each others back since we left Hanoi. The last post commented on day one and tribulations experienced in that short time span. Take that theme and multiply it by by the past two weeks and you basically have our motorcycling adventure. It's not to say that it's been all bad, but if you had one of those funny little law scales and balanced the pros and cons the con side would be severely faltered. I could bitch about it for a few paragraphs but in short it went like this.
Day 1-2 -> Break down, spend two days at mechanic
Day 3-4 -> Make it to a hole in the wall town called Yen Cat, where two out of four bikes break down again. Also my bag fell off the back of the bike and smashed my camera
Day 5 -> Eventually make it to a 'big' town (60,000 ppl) where we say 'F THIS' and put the bikes and ourselves on a train for 35$. Train takes 12 hours. Very good seafood pizza.
Day 6-11 -> Arrive in Hue. Absolutely relish the fact we are back in a big city, where the option to eat something other than rice or noodles is open to us. Party our butts of, talk to pretty girls, watch HBO and do a few rides around the city (which is absolutely beautiful! Like, omg, there are giant lotus flowers like floating in the surrounding inlets, and those inlets lead to like the ocean where you can like, totes watch the sun dip down behind this gorge illuminated bridge, while like the impending storm comes in from the west with freakin craze lightning and thunder OMG!!)...also got robbed for about 15$ during this time. Was thumbing for some money from my wallet, and some little wanker comes up grabs a handful and makes off. If you're reading this little vietnamese fellow, really lame move brother.
Day 12 -> After a 800,000 dong (40$US) motorbike overhaul we are back in working condition,
and with heads high, helmets on, freshly showered we set of. We get about 4km out of town when one of the previous shit bikes, waitttttttt for it......BREAKS DOWN AGAIN!
So another night spent in Hue where I meet a fantastic bunch of vietamese dudes and we drink beers, talk about there families and Canada and all sorts of rubbish and what a great time....until I realize my wallet is no longer in my pocket. (Insert sad face) Luckily the wallet was found a few feet away under a little bike taxi thing...with about 70$ missing. At first I looked at it like 'goddamn vietnam', but that's the wrong attitude. There are thousands of people here looking to squeeze an extra buck out of you, legally or illegally, but on the other side of the coin there are multitudes of people who will, and have, help you without a blink of an eye. People are just people, no matter where you are on the globe.
One motorbike got sent back to Hanoi for scraps, so I was driving double yesterday with one of the boys on the back...a solid 200 pounds, but the scenery here made up for way more than the fact I was shifting gears like my life depended on it....which it did. Now that my bike is back in complete working order (thank you Hue mechanic) I'm optomistic about the rest of the drive down, but word to the wise...don't buy an old shitty bike just because it looks cool or that's what people do, because thus far we've basically been doing a tour of the mechanics in Vietnam, instead of actual vietnam. Pick yourself up a cute little honda wave, put on your pink helmet and hit the road, because I'm sure you'll make it more than 100kms without a break down, once a day, every day. The bike total is now up to about 420$ with purcahse, gas and repairs but you can't put a price on adventure. Well, you can, but I literally can't think about it, because it makes me want to vomit.
So at the moment, we are getting a squad of scooters to tour around Hoi An, perhaps get a nice shirt made and go have a margarita, if we can find the beach....(that gigantic body of water with sand on it). I do love vietnam very much, and when my trip is over I'm going to put some serious consideration into teaching english in Hanoi. Peaccccce Out!
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