Ridin' Easy with the Easy Riders

WARNING: Heavy on the graphics, not good for slow connections

Hello!!! I'm back from spending 4 days in the Vietnamese countryside on the back of a motorbike with Duong Nguyen (nickname Uncle Nine), one of the Easy Riders motorbike gang (sounds badass, right?). These guys are famous all through Vietnam for taking people on motorbike tours, mostly through the central highlands but they will go anywhere in the country that you want. I found Duong - well actually, he found me - at the Da Nang train station. He gave me a lift to Hoi An, 35km away, and when we got there we chatted about trip options, he showed me his logbook of testimonials and photos from other tourists, and I decided to go for it! It was an amazing 4 days and I loved every second of it.

There are a lot of copycat "Easy Riders" out there, but I was lucky enough to hook up with one of the genuine ones. On the road we met other Easy Riders and stopped for chats here & there,and stayed at hotels they always use. The standard of accommodation was good - always clean, comfortable even if it was a bit rustic at times. Duong was an awesome guide - a wicked sense of humour and he was cracking jokes the whole time. On the first night, he joked we'd be staying in a 1000-star hotel, meaning sleeping under the stars :P He knew a lot of the locals, was super friendly and had a good rapport with everyone we met. He speaks one of the local minority languages too, so we were able to visit a village and talk to some of the people who don't speak Vietnamese.

Everywhere, people are asking me if I'm Vietnamese. They can see I'm not a local but I look Asian enough and they figure I must be Viet Kieu - foreign-born Vietnamese. Sometimes I say I am, and they totally believe me. The next question that follows in inevitably "are you married?" after which they ask "why not?" Endearing at first, now it's just annoying. But shows you how important family is to the culture.

On the first day we headed out of Hoi An to Marble Mountain, one of 5 mountains in the area that have special significance (named fire mountain, water mountain etc.). Lots of Chinese pagodas dotted all over it. I'm constantly surprised by how Chinese Vietnam looks - not an orange-robed monk in sight, only Quan An (Kwan Yin) shrines.



After Marble mountain we headed inland. The drive went through rice paddies, villages and lots of beautiful local scenery. Duong pulled over so we could try sugar cane juice and rice crackers, and we saw lots of high school kids coming home for lunch on their bicycles. The girls wear the ubiquitous white ao dao - a well-known scene that is seen in a lot of paintings and postcards. There are a lot of 'war memorials' dotted all over the place, it's true there are a lot of war scars to be seen everywhere (bomb craters, land mines) and it seems every place that has a leftover bombshell is turned into a memorial. Tough for me, not knowing much background on the Vietnam war except it was north vs. south, the Americans helped the South but the north won and now they're all communists. Here's one such memorial.

We headed into the hills and the scenery started to change. The weather became noticeably cooler & dryer (ahhhhhhhhh!) and we passed more minority villages, waterfalls & mountain passes.




Duong took us to little local eateries for lunch & dinner every day, where we ate local specialties and real Vietnamese food like this:

Looks a bit like Cao Lau they have in Hoi An, but a slightly different taste. Still delicious!
on the second day we climbed higher into the mountains and got a fair bit of rain. And who would have guessed, but the humble ponga tree grows in abundance up there!! Look at this photo, if you didn't know I was in Vietnam you'd think I was back in NZ :)




Ho Chi Minh road - the Vietnam end of the Ho Chi Minh trail that extends into Laos. It was used as a guerrilla supply route during the Vietnam war (or the 'American war', to the Vietnamese) and in Laos is still a very rough trail that's popular with hard-out hikers. On this side, it has been paved and developed and is used as a major highway that runs parallel to HW1 on the coast. The scenery is just breathtaking.


Watch out for animals - they own the road and will not move for you. I know who'd win a buffalo vs. motorbike prang.

Damn, those things are heavy!
Straight on to Vietnam, left for Laos
Rice, rice and more rice
Local people collecting cassava roots & loading them on the truck

Why did the chicken cross the road?
Because otherwise he'd get run over by the Easy Riders :P


Lots of war memorial stuff in the DMZ.
Finally caught some lightning on film!
A reminder to be a good Communist.
Rubber trees
Coffee plantation

We came close to the Laos border quite a few times. The ethnic minorities living in the hills here are spread across the border and have their own language, they speak neither Lao or Vietnamese. They're mostly farmers, cassava and rice. Their dress looks a lot more Lao, the embroidered/woven wraparound skirt is everywhere and not an ao dai to be seen. Not even a Chinese pagoda.

But first, we stopped off at the Dong Ha market before breakfast to pick up some groceries...



if you don't have a basket, just put your chickens in a plastic bag!

Getting closer to Hue you see the Chinese influence coming back though. Hue was the Imperial Capital during the Nguyen Dynasty (mid to late 1800's thru to the war in the 1940's), relatively recent. There are lots of mausoleums for important guys, pagodas on hilltops and Buddhist monasteries (Chinese Zen Buddhist, not Theravada orange robed guys). IN the middle of the city there is a huge stone wall that goes around the original Imperial City, which contains the actual royal citadel. The entrance looks remarkably similar to Forbidden City in Beijing, with the giant portrait and Chinese architecture...

BEIJING: (pic from Google)

HUE: (my photo)

Mausoleum

Some more pics of Chinese-influenced architecture in the Imperial City

and to finish off a tiring and adventurous 4-day motorbike trip, what better than an ice-cold local beer? ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh :)
Until next time!
Love,
ML