Originally I was going to name this entry “Pedal Power” since it is about my fourteen day cycling tour of Vietnam. But when I joined the group and saw that all ten of my co-riders were women, I thought it was appropriate to change the name.

We were told that it is the first time in Intrepid Travel’s history that a bike tour group is all women—and it had to be my group! At first, I was a bit disappointed because I’ve never been one for girly gossip or constantly talking about how to find a ‘husband.’ Too much estrogen can get a bit much and it’s nice to have a mix with some ‘maleness’ thrown in. But it turned out to be a really interesting and fun group of gals plus some of these chicks are tough cyclists who would still beat the bicycle shorts off most men. Not only is it all women, eight of the girls are from Australia, two from England, and then there’s me, the unsurprisingly only American. It’s a tad bland of a group as far as ‘internationalism’ goes. We are nearly all thirty-something English speakers who look as white as Wonder bread. We do have some diverse occupations, though, from a fashion designer to a radiologist, to an architect to some gals who work in mining. Mostly it’s good fun and I even scored my own room without having to pay a single supplement.

To give you just a brief understanding of the tour mechanics…here is the nitty gritty:

The tour itself started in Hanoi, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, in the north and will end in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south. It’s a long but narrow country of 83 million people and we are seeing a lot of it firsthand from right over the handle bars.

We are assisted by two vehicles. A bus rides in front of us and carries all our bags and suitcases plus an ongoing supply of bottled water, fresh fruit, and, of course, snacks like the international Oreo cookie (we are all women, afterall!). A truck follows us behind and carries the bikes when we are not riding. Also, if you are riding along and just get tuckered out you can sit by the side of the road and wait for the truck to come along and throw your bike in the back and hop on for a lift and a much needed rest. We always had a local tour guide riding in the front and the tour leader would follow behind. Phuc Le (pronounced f-o-o-k, very close to another word), is our tour leader and has been with Intrepid just six months. He organizes everything for us and makes our daily lives pretty easy and stress-free. We don’t need to do much thinking each day—just riding. It’s quite nice, especially for me after traveling now for nearly six months; it’s nice to give my ‘planning’ brain a rest. He takes care of where we ride, what we eat, and where we sleep. He is from Hanoi, but went to University in Sydney where he studied English and management, so he is a bit more “westernized” than some other Vietnamese and really easy to understand and very cool and laid back. On our first day, we found out it was his first time doing this cycling tour for the Intrepid Company. My initial reaction was regret because I thought it would be better to have a seasoned veteran. But Phuc turned out to be the best we could have hoped for. He was a bit quiet and seemed shy at first, but he has a nice easy going leadership way about him. He’s in charge and ‘takes care of business’, but in a very low key way and tries to make the experience, albeit physical, as relaxing as possible and always with a smile on his face. I really appreciated this along the way. He doesn’t rush anyone, but we still adhere to a daily schedule. It’s a tough balance on tours to keep to the schedule but also not have your tourists feeling pressured and rushed. He dances along this line beautifully. Plus if any of us ever needed anything at all he was on the case immediately. I got to know him a bit since he would ride in the back and I often found myself back there with him.

Each day starts around 7am with a breakfast and then we either hop on our bikes or get on the bus for awhile until we find the spot where we start riding. We average about 50 Kilometers (30 miles) a day, but some days have done as much as 80 (50 miles) or as few as 30 (18.6 miles). Every 15K or so, we stop for a fifteen minute break for some fresh fruit and cold water. Loi, the bus driver, is another good one. As soon as we ride up, he’s greeting us with a “well done!” Then he’s putting a much needed fresh bottle of cold water in our hands plus has already sliced up some of the tastiest fresh fruit I’ve ever had. I couldn’t get enough of the sweet local pineapple. All he really had to do was drive the bus, but did so much more and became part of our family. He was also a bit of a photographer, snapping shots of us on his old film SLR as we rode past. It was really nice to see these guys become great assets to the Vietnam tourism landscape, especially after some other hawkers just see you for instant cash and don’t yet understand the idea of ‘long term’ gains from developing relationships with tourists to earn respect and in turn repeat business and recommendations for future growth of the industry.

For most lunches Phuc would just find a small, very inexpensive roadside Vietnamese joint and we will have noodles, fried rice or a local specialty. For dinner, he takes us to a local spot in each town. All the food has been tasty and super cheap. Most dinners with a beer, cost less than $5. And lunches are about $2. There’s lots of meat, pork, fish, noodles, rice, squid, etc. There are some other ‘odd’ meats here and there and the other night I tried something Phuc called “a cow tendon.” Of course, after much prodding, he told me what it really was–part of a cow penis. Mmmm. Kinda grisly. The girls seemed to like it more than the guys—now I guess that makes sense.

To take a break from the constant drone of the bustling & smoggy city of Hanoi, I got away on a three day, two night tour of the mysterious and beautiful, and much quieter, Ha Long Bay. This wonderful landscape of limestone cliffs enshrouded in mist cascading into the gentle waters became a UNESCO World Heritage site back in 1994. By the way, since I never knew, UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

It’s not the cliffs themselves that make Ha Long Bay unique, but rather their sheer number. This huge bay is dotted with nearly 2,000 mostly uninhabited jagged limestone islands. Created over millions of years, tectonic forces slowly thrust the limestone above the water-line. During this process waves lapping against the stone carved out a number of huge, striking caves.

Over the ages, Vietnamese fishermen with too much time on their hands began to see shapes in the stone shapes of the islands, and named them accordingly — Turtle Island, Human Head Island, Chicken Island and so on. But one of the most fascinating cultural features of the are the floating fishing villages, where houses are set atop barges year round, the inhabitants catching and cultivating fish throughout.

My tour, as well as hundreds of others, consisted of a ride on a ‘traditional’ (but rebuilt copy of course—like everything you buy in Vietnam) junk boat. A junk is a traditional Chinese sailing vessel.

After we walked down the dock and then precariously climbed over several other boats, we hoisted ourselves aboard our shiny wooden decked and trimmed junk. It was nicer than I expected. There was a large lounge/dining room and an upper deck with lounge chairs and potted plants. I shared a double room with a French gal and it was larger than many hotel rooms I’ve stayed in. For $75 I was getting two nights lodging (one on the boat and one at a 3-star hotel on an island), three lunches, two dinners, and two breakfasts, plus the tour guide, all transportation costs, and activities—quite an amazing value.

The bay is really a magical place. It was so peaceful compared to the city we’d left behind just hours ago. It was nice and quiet out here—well, except for the one hundred or so other tourist ‘junks’ that sailed around us following just about the same route. Oh, and one other thing that just seems impossible to escape in Vietnam? The Hawkers. Even out here in the calm, quiet waters tiny women in tiny boats approached.

“Excuse me. Please buy something from me. Oreos? Ritz Cracker? I have snack for you.”

These women were tireless and the most persistent salespeople I’ve ever encountered. Perhaps they should come to the states and try their hand at pharmaceutical sales…they could make a fortune. Well, considering the fact that most middle class here earn about fifty to one hundred dollars a month, working anywhere else could make them a small fortune. If you bought something, they would toss it up to you in the boat and you would try to get your money down to them without it drifting into the water.

On the first day we docked at one of the many islands and took a tour inside what I think is the most amazing cave I’ve ever seen. They call it the “Surprising Cave” and once inside you can see why. There are three main caverns in it and each one gets larger than the next. The walls were illuminated with colorful lights to show off the limestone formations really adding to the overall ‘coolness’. Stalactites grew down to meet their friendly stalagmites all around us.

Our boat held twelve tourists—a really nice small group for a tour like this. As I’ve learned, most times, it’s really the group that makes the tour and not really the tour itself (barring any huge tour issues). We had a great international contingency: An Australian couple from Melbourne who I became quite fond of (too bad I met them after I stayed there!), a cool Canadian guy that was just taking some time off as he returned to Toronto after living and teaching in Taiwan for two years, A girl from France who was in Hanoi volunteering, a Japanese student, a quiet Korean guy who was also here to volunteer, and a friendly, a fun couple from Germany, and a British family traveling throughout Asia for seven months.

Today, this area is a booming tourism zone. Tourism in general really just got started in Vietnam about ten years ago. So, you can imagine some kinks are still not completely ironed out…and even when they are, the folks here just don’t have the years of experience to make it a completely smooth sail, pun intended.

As I’ve said, the tour and accommodations were beyond my expectations and that was a really nice surprise. But they are still learning the tourism ‘ropes’ here and still have a pretty harsh mentality of sometimes only giving the customer the least of what’s expected and certainly don’t know the phrase “the customer is always right” yet. There were two amusing examples of this.

1. I paid about $15 extra for what this tour company called the “VIP” tour. It meant I was supposed to be on a slightly nicer boat and the second night’s hotel would be three stars instead of two. Well, it turned out that about half the folks on my boat were not VIP—so I guess there was no real boat difference. BUT, these non-VIPers would be charged to use the air conditioning units in the rooms because it was not included in their tour. My A/C use was included in my VIP treatment. Well, the tour guide, Linh, a very effeminate Vietnamese guy who majored in English but we could still barely understand him, made sure to pull me aside to tell me that we could use the A/C when I was in the room, but my French roommate, who was so not VIP, could not use it alone. And he was not joking. All the VIPers were handed their A/C remotes and would have to return them the next day. It was quite hilarious.
2. On the final day, the couple from Deutschland, Anya and Bernard, accidentally broke their key off in their room lock. The guide said they would have to pay for a whole new door knob/lock. It was a very awkward situation. We all knew back in our respective countries, the hospitality etiquette would be for the manager to apologize to them and just get them a new key. But here in ‘Nam—the customer broke it and would have to pay. The cost was going to be US$10 because the staff claimed they would have to replace the whole thing. I spoke out and asked if we could just get some pliers and remove the key bit from the door. Luckily one passenger had a multi-tool and just a few minutes later Bernard reappeared with the end of the key. So now all they would need is a new key. They continued to contend it was very expensive and wanted about 50,000 Dong. Now this is only a little more than three dollars, but it was the principal. We all knew that here in the world of cheap copies, there was no way a duplicate key to a cheap lock would cost that much. Everything here is about a quarter less than it would be at home.

Anyway, back to our fun getaway. After a scrumptious meal of many courses and much seafood, we hung out chatting as our boat dropped anchor for the night amidst the sea and stars. Silhouetted against the night sky were the forms of dozens of looming limestone cliffs—it was surreal.

The next day we had an active day—cycling in the morning on one of the islands and kayaking in the afternoon around the islands and in and around some caves. Not only was the bicycle ride my only warm up to my upcoming two week ride through the country of Vietnam, it was also quite an eye-opening experience to ‘real life’ for many here. We cycled through farm fields and into a small and very remote village on the island. These people are truly self reliant—growing, killing, and cooking their own meals is a daily way of life. And yes, I must tell you, that I saw firsthand one of the staples of their diet—dog. It became quite evident rather quickly as we rode past the small mud and thatched homes that every single one had dogs and puppies laying around their cement slab of a ‘front yard.’ As I cycled by, I thought to myself, there is just no way all these people could have or afford to have these as pets. I rode up to Linh and asked him if they were in fact raised for eating. Not only did he say yes, he had tried it and said it was “quite tasty.” Now before you get too upset, all I can say is this:

I am a very big animal lover. I would and could never hurt an animal or kill one myself to eat. Not to say, I do not realize where the meat and chicken comes from that I eat. Believe me, I continue to think about becoming a vegetarian and struggle with the hypocrisy all the time. I try to do what I can to eat organic and free range animals, but again, do not do this all the time. I understand we eat meat. I am fine with this; it’s just animal abuse that I am not fine with. If animals have a peaceful and happy life and are killed in a known humane way, then I think this is okay. I still could not do it myself, but I think it is okay. No suffering of any kind is the key. SO, back to Vietnam: These dogs were all hanging out roaming around freely and seemed happy. If this is part of their diet like cows are part of ours than I guess that’s just the way it is. These dogs were not domesticated and were not wagging their tails at any of us. So all I can say is it seemed okay. But of course, I also tried not to think about it too hard. I guess last year was a pretty crappy year for dogs in the ‘Year of the Dog,’ and for this year’s pigs, I don’t think it’s any better.

So speaking of eating, in the middle of our day, our boat pulled right up to a deserted sandy island beach, unloaded a table, chairs, white tablecloth and china and we had a lovely lunch on the beach. It was all quite nice—prawns, chicken, fried rice, tofu, calamari, and fruit. As I write this, I’m also seeing the complete ironic contrasts of our fabulously luxurious easy life compared to the poor villages we had just waved to only moments earlier. I guess we have to at least just remember to be so thankful for all that we really have or give back when we can.

That night we slept on Cat Ba Island in what was probably the most luxurious hotel I’ve stayed in since my beach time in Australia. Of course here, it was only $25 a night, but it had regular western rooms with TV, fridge, A/C and a big, but incredibly hard bed. We dined in the hotel restaurant and relaxed for the evening. The following day after a series of boat changes mid bay, we returned back to the harbor where we had started from and boarded our mini bus back to the hustle of Hanoi. This time I was prepared for the full-on assault of the city and it seemed just a little tamer then when we left…well , not tamer, but I knew what to expect.

Really, I mean good morning…like wake up and smell the exhaust fumes. And if that doesn’t wake you up (or knock you out) the noise will because there are fifty thousand motorcycle and car horns blowing constantly!!

So, here I am in CRAZY Hanoi. Okay, forget what I said about Hong Kong. That city now looks like “Kansas” compared to Hanoi. If that was sensory overload, then this is sensory implosion. At least in Hong Kong there was some order and people still stopped at lights and crossed at crosswalks. Here, horns are a constant—they love ‘em and use them like we all tend to foolishly push the elevator button repeatedly as if that will make it come any faster. They beep here almost just for the sake of beeping. It’s so common and ingrained in the noisy fabric of society that I don’t t think anyone here even hears it anymore and they certainly don’t get annoyed when someone beeps at them. In a way, it’s used much more, but much less aggressively than our honking back in the US. There, if you beeped as much as they do hear, you’d rack up a good amount of dirty looks and one-digit hands by the end of the day. Here, it’s really just to say “I’m behind you, move over a bit.” But the decibel level always remains at a constant high.

I’ve never seen more scooters in my life—not Rome, not anywhere! It’s nuts. And coming from the airport, I think we hit one intersection with a traffic light—all the rest were just a free-for-all—proceed at your own risk. Someone recently told me something that has resonated very true with what I’ve seen on my tour so far: The world is divided in two—the countries where cars stop for pedestrians and the countries where pedestrians have to stop for cars. So true—and a good barometer for how most other things will be as well.

Vietnam’s Communist government opened the country up to foreign trade with the US just six years ago. And just this January they became members of the WTO (World Trade Organization). Now this tiny country, which is only slightly larger than the US state of New Mexico, is Asia’s fastest growing economy after the powerhouse of “Big Red,” China. The new competition has driven prices down…so in turn the poor working class can now afford all these motorcycles. And it won’t be much longer when they will start trading up for more automobiles—an urban planner’s nightmare on the already clogged, tiny and exhaust hazed streets of Hanoi.

My most frequent mode of transport during my travels so far has been walking. Even that is a bit difficult and unnerving in this town. The sidewalks are barely there or non-existent. Most shops spill out into the street overtaking the sidewalk or they are completely covered by the aforementioned motorcycles. The sidewalks are more like unofficial scooter parking lots and pedestrians spill onto the street with the rest of the constant and frenetic motion.

But it’s not all bad here, its saving grace is that it was a French Colony for about sixty years—so amidst the hustle and bustle are some grand French boulevards and tree lined walkways. French rule ended with the Franco-Viet Minh war in the 1950s when French forces surrendered in the northwest town of Dien Bien Phu. The only reason I’ve heard of this city is thanks to Billy Joel’s we didn’t start the fire! (“Dien Bien Phu falls, rock around the clock, Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team…”)

I may get used to it, but I don’t love it so far. I already was a victim of an attempted scam. Many travelers I met and things I read warned of that here—everyone just sees Westerners and sees dollar signs in their eyes like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. So everyone is trying to sell you ‘something’ you ‘need’ and make the most off you that they can. That’s a pain to be on your guard all the time. In my few short hours here I’ve already been propositioned by about ten ‘moped’ taxis, a girl selling travel books (they are copies of the originals) out of a box, a fruit lady, and other random hawkers. Now , of course, in Hong Kong there were the tailor guys trying to sell you suits, but they took ‘no’ for an answer. Here they follow you down the street after you’ve already said ‘no thanks’ several times and then unfortunately you have to get “not nice” with them which doesn’t make anyone feel good.

Plus the money? It’s 16,000 Dong to $1! That’s also too much math work for my tired brain and too many bills in my pocket! But it does make me have to say one thing: “What’s happenin’ hot stuff?” For those of you growing up in the 80s, I have no doubt you know what movie Long Duck Dong was from.