The Ninh Binh Motorcross!

The past few days have been filled with beautiful sites to say the least. I arrived in Hanoi, had a great meal on the street somewhere. We returned to my favorite place, the Red Bar. It is run by a guy in his 20's that calls himself Mao (how appropriate). It is filled with anti-American propaganda from the war and is totaly chilled-out......until the brown out stuck and then it became quite warm as did the beverages so we made a hasty departure.

The next day (I of course don't even know the day of the week any more) we set out on a public bus to Ninh Binh. The bus ride was terrific. We all made a friends with the help of the phrasebook we had. I even got a gift from the farmer I spoke with. Some sort of paper money that I had never seen before. Probably a denomination so small that tourists never see them as we would never be charged such a small amount of money for anything.

Ninh Binh is quaint town of 50,000 surrounded by rice paties and steep thimble shaped mountains. We decided to rent motor bikes(4-speed manual mopeds) and have a look around the countryside. I am pretty sure that most of you have heard by description of the streets of Hanoi where there are so many motor bike that you just have to start walking across the street so they may swerve around you. Because of this, and the rest of the traffic around, we were a bit hesitant. Tristan got on his bike and as he started the engine, launched 50 yards up the road. Gabrielle turned to me and said, "nice, I was going to get on there. I'll just ride with you instead." Now, it was nothing against my sistter, but I refused to let her on my bike. Even after seeing Tristan's rocky beginning, I still felt she would be safer with him than with me.

We had to first go to the train station and buy a ticket for the following night. This 8 minute drive took us around an hour as every few blocks we had to stop and check the map again. The map by the way, was hand drawn and I'm pretty sure whoever drew it had no relation to any cartographer! Every stretch of road had a different scale. Some were 2 inches and read 12 km while other parallel to them were longer roads but said 2 km. Add to this all of the roads not on the map and it still wouldn't have been any help as so many "roads" look like sidewalks between buildings. When we did finally get to the trainstation things went pretty straight forward on the inside as the Vietnamese has clamped down on robbing tourist at the counter, at least that is what the government says. Our tickets clearly stated 'tourist' in a box for such an indication. The liquid nature of the ticket purchasing however was not my main concern as I waited outside with the motos while T & G went inside. Outside things were quite a bit different. We had pulled right up to the steps of the station and parked. Some random guy told us it was free there but if we parked in a shed, where there were many other motos, we would have to pay. We had opted for the free spot and the little old toothless man that ran the shed parking was none too pleased about it. Clearly, he was aggravated as he wouldn't have the opportunity to try and get my first born for the spot. He repeatedly kept pointing at the bike and then his shed. I repeatedly smiled and said no, I don't understand. More and more people kept coming over to plead his case for him, none of them in English, and I kept smiling and playing dumb. Eventually I went to buy a soda, the motos were in plain sight, and he proceeded to try and move them. This was actually a comical scene as the steering was locked on the one he was trying to move and it was much too heavy for him to lift. I went over and physically forced him away and yelled at him. He yellled back. I smiled and said no, once again. This whole thing continued for a good 30 minutes but there was no way I was going to give him anything. I wouldn't have minded if he wanted to earn my money somehow, like the lady selling sodas, but I lieing to me even in a language I could understand wasn't going to work this time.

Once the train business was over we headed out of town with our trusty map. I need not even tell you that we got completely lost looking for the Bich Cok Dong Temple. This is really the name and we were happy to refer to the illusive compound in this fashion as we road through the countryside looking for it. We never did find it. We did however manage to have one of my favorite experiences of this trip thus far. We rode through tiny villages, off road, on road, through would be rivers and the like. We didn't see another tourist all day, this was probably a good indication of just how lost we were. The landscape everywhere was surreal. Mountains jutting up surrounded by rice patties. It was amazing. We even, and don't ask me how, managed to avoid the afternoon rain storm. 2 1/2 hours later we headed back to town to get back before dark.

The following day, Friday, we hired a guide to ride along with us so we could actually see the sacred sights around Ninh Binh. His name was Ku or Ka or Kua or Kau, I guess I still don't know. His English was worse than my Vietnamese so it didn't much matter. We looked at each other and had a good hard laugh as we headed out of town with him and he took the same road we had traveled on the day before. Luckily he did turn off of it and ended up traveling down dirt paths that we would have never found with our map. We decided that the hotel purposely gives you such a useless bunch of scribblings so you hire a guide. The Bich Cok Dong Temple was 490 steep steps up a mountain. The breeze at the top was quite refreshing. Our next stop was in a village where we would get on a boat with a driver and an old woman and travel down a river to get a different view of river life. We ended up not doing this for 2 reasons. One, the afternoon rain came and threw us off schedule. Two, the old women are notoriuos for assalting you at the end trying to sell you cheeeeeezy souvanirs and then out right begging if you refuse. This of course is all done at the highest volume level possible from such frail lettle women and takes place in a public place to maximize the guilt factor. We ended our trip and I frankly was somewhat unimpressed with the remails of the 700 year old temples (the one on the mountain was cool though).

Off to catch the night train. 14 hours in a "soft chair" to the city of Hue. 'Ill let you know how this turns out. Train rides are often some of the most eventful and unpredictable means of travel.

Hope everyone is well back home.
E

PS: Mom, I heard about Manny...sorry.
PPS: Mom, did that pond-sucking, bottom-feeding landlord of mine ever send me my check?

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