Hoi Ann

Okay,

We are in the town of Hoi Ann, Viet Nam, on the third day of a much needed break. For about a week there we were riding every day and riding hard.

We will be in Hanoi shortly and have some appointments to meet some organizations up there, but all the same, I feel like ablog is in order.

Now it is sure nice when we have funny stories to relate: for instance, two days ago, some knucklehead on a motorbike started hassling us while we were riding and ended up trying to grab Jacob's bike (he tried it with me but I kicked his motorbike). Well, Jacob tried to get the guy to leave him alone but eventually had to pull a knife on the guy and let him know that if he grabbed at Jacob again, there would be some danger involved. The guy took off.

Anyhow, I thought that even though the days are mundane in that they can be wrapped up by saying "we rode hard for 6 days", that really doesn't express what our days are like. And so I thought that some of you may be interested in finding out what a day of riding is for us. I will try to lay it out in painstaking detail, and then also share the things that help distinguish one moment from the next. Because even though there is similarity in the days, it is the little things that we have come to notice that make the day memorable.

So here goes, a day in the life of a cyclist duo in Vietnam:

Morning:
Generally we wake up at 6 am, sometimes earlier. This is decided the night before based on the distance that we have to cover and the heat that we expect. The first 30 minutes of our morning are almost scripted, or I should say automatic. We rarely talk. Sleepily, we pack our bags and change. Someone goes to the bathroom first, and while they're in there both of us change into our cycling shorts (because this involves nudity). We get all of our bags in order. Jacob is invariably done first (he is less sloppy the night before) and carries his bag down to the hotel counter.
No matter how early you rise, there is always someone at the counter, because in every hotel we've stayed in on our trip, the hotel managers sleep on cots in the lobby. He gets our passports, and we load our bicycles. This is all done in near silence. The only conversation, I suppose, often has to do with the quality of our morning excreta, which is really sort of a health topic, and is not really inappropriate.
Distinguishing moments:
Just two days ago the manager of a hotel tried to charge us 10,000 Dong (the money here) for having gotten towels in our room. I was about to get pissed off, but Jacob sort of pre-empted me by making a sound that was the non-lingual form of "bullshit" that the guy laughed and acted as if it had been a joke.

Morning riding:
The ideal is to put about 30 km of riding on the odometer before we stop for breakfast. This is ideal because it is still cool out and our bodies have processed our dinners and are ready to provide energy. Eating immediately after waking draws blood to the stomach and makes the body slow down. So we ride, and we usually ride pretty fast. The angle of the sun's rays are also so oblique that they are often blocked out by trees and we can get some shade. This is about the only time we ever ride in shade, given that usually we ride on a road through rice paddies.
At about 30 km we begin to look for a place to get coffee. This is pretty easy here in Vietnam because coffeeshops are the loudest places in any town. For whatever reason, all coffee shops blare Vietnamese pop music at incredibly high volumes.
We stop for coffee. Coffee is absolutely delicious here. Basically, some hot water is put over some grounds in a filter that sits on top of the cup. Slowly, extremely thick coffee drips out. One ends up with coffee that has a consistency almost of syrup and is incredibly strong, but is also a fairly small amount, maybe a 1/4 cup. Coffee is served with evaporated sweetened milk.
For breakfast we eat either some noodle soup, or more commonly, a baguette.

Distinctions:

Hmm. I guess one big distinction is that the food changes wherever one is in Vietnam. In Nha Trang, baguettes were very thick, and were filled with Laughing Cow cheese and vegetables. Elsewhere it could be pork, or salted fish. Also the coffee shops are different. What we prefer are small ones where we are not stared at, and where the music isn't so loud.

The riding:
It is hard to describe just the riding. I suppose that I could say that it is boring, b/c there is so very little to do except to move forward. All the same, there are many things to notice and observe: will it be a hot day? Is there any wind? What direction is it? How is the cloud/tree cover? What are the people along the road doing? What are they carrying? What does the road/surroundings look like? Is the rice ready to be harvested? How do my legs feel today?
Ultimately, there are a million things that one can look around and notice or another million things that one can think about totally unrelated to what is going on. The mind just sort of wanders on its way, touching a topic, flies off to a new one, returns, and flies off again. The scenery in Vietnam is pretty monotonous, but the mind is active. It flits froms idea to idea, each one forgotten as quickly as it is visited and what is, or could be, a period of intense boredom is simply a period of time that the mind wanders.

By 50 km it is getting hot out. We have to stop often. There are countless roadside places to stop. Plastic tables and chairs the size of pre-school chairs and drinks. Drinks are never refrigerated. They are served with a chunk of ice that is hacked off of large blocks (every morning we see the ice-deliveryman as he rides a truck, motorbike, or bicycle around town and country with 10' blocks of ice and saws them into segments at each stand). We are usually so thirsty that it is an excercise in patience to be able to wait for the drink to cool down. What we have perfected is the art of slowly drinking in such a way that the liquid has to flow around the chunk of ice and is cooled right before entering the mouth.
What distinguishes these countless places are, I suppose, the types of drinks they have (they often have presses and can make fresh sugar can juice, is there a breeze, are we going to get surrounded by villagers and made to feel like animals in a zoo, is there shade? If we are outside of town limits the drinks are half as expensive.

Eating:
We have to eat fairly constantly to keep up our energy. There are many ways to do this, b/c Viet Nam is, for one thing, a culinary paradise. Well, that may be overstating it, but I should note, I guess, that we never pass any supermarkets or anything like a grocery store. There are markets for fresh ingredients, but most people here buy there food nearly as cheaply in stalls along roads. So you have a whole country that eats out, and that leads to food nearly everywhere, at great prices, and with an incredible variety of local dishes (there are over 2,000 dishes that are considered unique to Viet Nam)
Basically, along any road will be stalls. They can be divided into 3 types: those that sell noodle soup (pho), those that serve meat (or vegetables) with rice, and actual restaurants where they serve both. There really is very little choice about how the food is prepared as it is already cooked. You just pick the meat and what you want it with. Jacob prefers 'com heo' or pork with rice. I prefer muc (squid) or pho ga (chicken noodle soup). Sometimes the food is delicious. Sometimes it is just decent. Usually it doesn't matter. After all, this isn't Cambodia.