Advertisement
Published: April 21st 2008
This morning Ryan and I bummed around the city some more, and then I dragged him off to 'the best Pho house in Saigon' - one of the 1,000 places to see before you die. Notice a theme?
Well, we didn't realize the pho house was so far away, and the taxi ride ended up costing a whopping $4 to get there. The Pho was good...I guess. I don't think I'm a huge fan of pho. I like bold flavors, and the flavors of pho are very light and subtle. They served us large bowls of broth and noodles with a pile of raw beef in the center. We stirred the beef into the stew so it would cook, and added leaves and limes that were set on the table. The bowl of pho was also accompanied by fried pastries for dipping in the soup, a gelatin 'wedding cake' as a dessert-like snack, and fermented pork paste wrapped in banana leaf. It didn't have much flavor - Ryan wouldn't touch it. Anyways, the cool part about the place was that it was full of locals - every table was full - so at least I knew I was eating legit
pho.
For some reason the taxi ride back was half the price of the taxi getting there. No clue why. Oh, I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog that Ryan and I are so used to bargaining that all day yesterday we bargained with the taxi drivers before we went anywhere. Today we realized they actually have meters (wow this is a developed city!), and that we had been paying about double the going rate as a result of our 'bargaining'. Sweeet.
Well, when we got back to the city center, we investigated motorbike rentals. We found a place renting fairly new 110CC Hondas for $8 a day. We were told we weren't allowed to take them out of the city because the police would fine us $200. Yeah right. (Or maybe she is right, but I'll take my chances). Also, motorbike theft is HUGE in Southeast Asia, and the rental lady told us that if our bikes were stolen, we were liable for $1800 per bike. They didn't offer insurance. We decided to take the risk, and rented the bikes for four days.
So here we are, sitting on our bikes parked on a sidewalk in Saigon, our backpacks by our side, and we're figuring out how to get to Dalat, 250 km to the North. We didn't really have a reason to go to Dalat other than the fact that it's located in the central highlands of Vietnam, and is supposed to be very pretty. We're approached by another goddamn hammock salesman, but this time a hammock seems like a smart investment. What if we're stuck in the boonies? I buy a hammock and some webbing for a total of $1. Ryan gets a bigger hammock for $2. Not a bad deal.
Then we're approached by a lady selling counterfeit Lonely Planets and maps (hopefully accurate?). A map seems like a good idea, so I buy one of the roads in Vietnam, called a 'Tourist Map'. When we open it though, it's no more detailed than the map of Vietnam on the inside cover of my Lonely Planet.
We hit up an ATM to get cash for the trip, and we're off! ...well, so we think. We make it 100 yards, and realize we have NO CLUE how to get out of the city. We know we want to go from higway 1A to highway 20, which takes us to Dalat....but that's all we know. Ryan has the bright idea to try a bookstore for a map of the city, and he's successful...only there's no highway 1A. We assume that the 'Hanoi Highway' on the map is the highway we're looking for, so we find it, and soon we're out of the city, cruising on our scooters with backpacks on our backs (oh and helmets on our heads of course). We actually did have, and did wear our helmets, they were just a quarter the thickness, and afforded probably one tenth the protection of a helmet in the U.S.
Well, until now we had been taking taxis throughout the city because we thought that driving on the back of a 'moto' seemed incredibly dangerous in the city of Saigon (mind you, the moto driver never gives you a helmet, but he wears one himself). Driving yourself in Saigon is quite fun actually, but takes a lot of getting used to. Driving on the highway, however, is a different story.
Diesel trucks don't drive through downtown Saigon, but they do drive on the highway. Breathing in the funes while driving on a motorbike behind diesel trucks in the U.S. would be bad enough, but in Vietnam it appears they have no emissions controls. If the truck accelerates, it will often pump out a cloud of wet (yes wet) soot right into your face. Within minutes your skin is caked in soot, and parts of your face, particularly under your eyes and on your forehead, get so covered they turn black.
The highway is absolute chaos. No lanes apply, and passing on the right is much more common than passing on the left - that's because the right lane is where all of the motorbikes are, and they'll get out of the way of a truck...or so the truck driver assumes.
However, there's order in all of this chaos, and at no point did I feel particularly unsafe. The truck drivers here are much more used to motorbikes than truckers in the U.S. (that's an assumption but it seems reasonable enough), and unless you do something really stupid and get run over by a bus or 22 wheeler (yes I counted 22 wheels on a truck, and it wasn't even that big), the worst is you blow your back tire, fall off at 60 kph, and get hit by 50 other motorbikes. (Dad, I know you're wincing and understand all too well, I shouldn't even be writing about this in the blog, for my sake and yours. Mom, I know you're saying to yourself, 'thank god I bought the travel insurance'.)
Anyways, we made it 30 km outside of the city to the town of Bien Hoa. Well, we thought we did, but at several intersections there were multiple signs pointing to Bien Hoa, each pointing in a different direction! We asked people on the side of the road which direction we needed to travel to Bien Hoa (on our map of the entirety of Vietnam, it appeared that we needed to travel through Bien Hoa). We asked people on the side of the road for "By-en Ho-a" and got strange looks. Finally I showed someone the name in my book, and they exclaimed, ahhhh "Ben Whaa". I guess from now on I skip butchering names and go straight to the book.
Soon we were in Bien Hoa, and found a grocery store to stock up on survival food - cashews and pumpkin seeds to be exact. This was no ordinary grocery store. It was 4 floors - the first a grocery store, the second a clothing department store, the third a cafeteria, and the top floor a movie theater. Kindof like a Wal-Mart. Do they have movie theaters yet?
The town of Bien Hoa seems to be clinging to communist Vietnam...but it's in the South so that statement doesn't make any sense. Anyways, the town of Bien Hoa is lined with red flags bearing a yellow hammer and sickle, and this symbol and color scheme was present on every billboard I saw as well. Very strange. I wish I knew the explanation.
Well, we traveled probably 20 kilometers past of Bien Hoa, double-checking along the way that we were indeed headed toward Dalat. We did this by stopping on the side of the street and asking a person "Dalat?" and hope they point a direction. Well, after about 20 kilomteters, we asked another person, and they pointed us back the way we came. We checked with a couple of people, and learned that we had missed a left turn. I thought that was odd, because we had taken a left turn off of the highway.
Well, we found the left turn, and then found some chicken. A lady on the side of the street was roasting chicken on a charcoal grill, and it smelled wonderful, so we stopped to get dinner. We were greeted by a few local guys, whom immediately poured us shots of rice wine. Ryan and I were served chicken legs (we specifically pointed at the drumsticks and not the feet), and were shown how to 'properly' eat the chicken with fresh cucumber and leaves that looked like mint but tasted different.
This was probably the most fun dinner I've had on this trip so far. The locals didn't speak any english, but we communicated through sign language. We chilled, ate chicken, and drank some rice wine while one of the locals jammed on the keyboard and kids dropped by to see the Westerners. And they kept pouring the rice wine.... You're not allowed to refuse! We kept making charades of us driving the motorbikes and they just laughed, nodded their heads in approval, and served more shots of homemade rice wine! Thank god the shot glasses were small, the wine pretty weak, and my tolerance decent, or else I would have been screwed. Needless to say, after 10 mini-shots of rice wine, I was a little buzzed. We hopped on our bikes, and right before we headed off, one of our friends ran up to us and served us each a last shot of rice wine. Are they trying to kill us? 11 mini-shots.
Well, we followed the directions one man had drawn for us, which required us making yet another left, and, low and behold, we found ourselves back at the highway, 10 km back from where we had turned off five hours before.
It occurred to me that we could turn back to Saigon and head off early in the morning, but that didn't seem to occur to Ryan. He immediately started heading back up the highway, so I followed. We figured our map of Veitnam was so small that it appeared we go through Bien Hoa, but we really just go along the highway past it, and we assumed correctly. (Mind you, the 250 km distance between Saigon and Dalat appeared as 3/4 of an inch on our map of Vietnam - not very detailed).
Well, we drove up the highway until it started to get dark, and Ryan says to me "well, I guess it's time to look for a hotel". I go, "Hah! Are you kidding me? This isn't the U.S. I haven't seen a single hotel, and I'm sure we're not going to be finding any. We're in the middle of nowhere, and who in Vietnam can afford a hotel?" Well, Ryan was right, and by pure luck we found a hotel 3 km up the road.
We inquire about rooms, and are surprised to learn that they're $8 a night. That's expensive anywhere in Vietnam, especially in the middle of nowhere. Who stays here anyways?
Well, that was answered when we saw the rooms. They were absolutely spotless, with freshly painted purple walls, new beds with a mirror running along the side....wait...a mirror along the side of the bed? That's why there's a motel in the middle of nowhere! It's a sex motel!
Hey, I didn't care, Ryan didn't care, and it was clean, so it didn't matter. What did matter, though, was the old man. I guess he's the owner of the place, and when he showed Ryan his room, he asked him for $2. Ryan asked him why he needed $2, and the old replied "because I want $2". Ryan gave him $1, and pretty soon the old man was knocking on my door. I didn't know the story, so when the old man asked me for $1, I figured I hadn't paid him enough for the room, and handed him $1 without even thinking about it.
I started to get ready for bed, but soon Ryan knocked on my door. He told me that he had left his helmet on his scooter when we wheeled them into the garage at the motel, and thought that if the old man was asking for handouts, he might take the helmets from the bikes. Low and behold, when he went looking for his helmet, it was missing. When he approached the old man about it, he said he didn't know anything. Ryan found his helmet in a cupboard in the front desk. Hmmmmm.
Needless to say I bolted my door shut, and slept with my passport and money. Ryan was paranoid that the old man would steal our bikes with a tow truck (very possible), and so he planned to wake up at 2 am to check. I set my alarm for a 4am motorbike check.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0497s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Diana M - Toronto
non-member comment
April 16th - number next one - hurry
Okay Merritt - ending on that note is like discovering that the last couple of pages of a riveting book borrowed from the library have been ripped out, or an exciting dream from which you awake suddenly, never knowing the conclusion... I'll try to wait patiently for the next installment. My god you and Ryan are living on the edge. Kudos. Please stay safe.