The Odyssey of Gertrude and Bertha: Part Nine – Conversations with Traffic
Distance so far: I sort of lost count, oops. I’m guestimating around 5600km. I’m tired just thinking of all that.
Repairs: The easier question is what is still functioning. Does anyone really need both brakes? We also changed a flat on Bertha, which inevitably led to an audience and advice doled out in Vietnamese. Super helpful. And the second flat came a few days later, but happily right outside a motorbike shop. Timing is everything.
Vietnam, Bertha, and I had what some might call a tumultuous relationship. It has taken several months, a new continent, and a lot of meditative breathing to get the perspective I needed to commit to print any memories of my time bicycling through Vietnam. Don’t be mistaken; it was definitely not all bad. In fact, some of it was excellent. The problem is that, as is oft the case in life, the bad sticks in my mind longer and with much more vibrancy than the good. And that with those vivid bad memories comes the strong language that I am not prone to, but comes in times of pure, unadulterated anger. And so with that caveat, let me list the good parts before I dive into the recollection of things that turn your everyday touring cyclist into a raging hulk.
Let me just begin with the food. Jeepers was that ever good food. With an incredibly difficult tonal language, we never seemed to get the food we thought we were ordering, but 99% of the time it didn’t matter. Whatever we got was delicious! Even the soups were super tasty, though we avoided those if we could. When you expend as much energy as we did, eating soup is like giving your body the finger. You get progressively hungrier as you eat the soups. I can tell you that rice is a cyclist’s best friend, and when that rice comes accompanied with a variety of meats and eggs of every style as the topping, I was one happy cyclist. What I did discover was that Kem Bo was my favourite food, though we only found it in Danang, and because the cuisine in Vietnam changes drastically from region to region, that delicious avocado and coconut ice cream was relegated to a distant but fond memory. We did, however, get lucky in discovering Bun Thit Nuong, which is a delicious noodle and meat dish with a variety of other mystery things in it. We learnt pretty quickly on this trip that it’s best to not inquire further into the ingredients in whatever is delicious. Frankly, Vietnam probably had the best food in all the countries we visited, and that’s saying something because I love me some Thai food. Suffice it to say that we ate. A lot. In fact, we may have terrified some other travelers with our love of food and the amount of it we consumed at any given point. Bertha demands I eat, and I always obey my trusty steed.
Vietnam is also incredibly beautiful as a country (if you ignore the sight of traffic). The rice paddies, the ocean (which Sophie was extremely excited for), the small villages where ladies hang fish to dry, the fact that if you don’t like the scenery, it’ll probably change in 100km or so. There is no denying that Vietnam has a natural beauty that holds its own in a world of glorious sights.
Vietnam’s third happy point was a hostel called Life’s a Beach that is situated in the little fishing village of Bai Xep, and was a haven for us when we most needed a break from the insane traffic that Vietnam is famous for having. Life’s a Beach is run by Steve and Gavin, two lovely guys who really care about making the village better, providing excellent quality of service, food, and accommodation for the guests, and somehow managed to get a luxurious yet affordable beachside hostel to feel like a family as soon as you enter the grounds. Between the two dogs running around, the home cooked meals, the local kids coming in and out, practicing their English with the hilarious British accents they’re picking up from the very English Steve and Gavin, the karaoke or movie nights, the family style dining, the beautiful sun loungers, and the serenity of the location, this was as close to paradise as we could find. Tearing ourselves away from this little bit of heaven was next to impossible, but a little traveled road across Vietnam into Cambodia beckoned.
And that brings me to the reasons behind our need for a mental retreat by the beach, and a decision to cut cross-country and head to Cambodia early. There are a few different reasons, but you’ll probably be able to tell pretty quickly that the one I feel most strongly about it the traffic. To put it in perspective, I cycle in Toronto, weaving in and out of pretty solid traffic, but after Vietnam, that has become a cakewalk. But I’ll save my traffic rant for the end.
For some reason, it turns out I was the flavour of the month in Vietnam. I mean, Soph and I got pretty used to people asking us if we had husbands and kids, being shocked when we said we didn’t, and then immediately trying to marry us off to the nearest male, regardless of our indifference or his marital status. But this was a whole new level. Somehow it was always me, and not Soph, who had people hold my hand, touch my bike, squeeze my tires while I was trying to pump air into them with our tiny and ineffective hand pump, stir my food for me, lead me around a guesthouse by my waist, or even (and this was the ultimate disregard for personal space) manhandle my food by rolling my Banh Xeo for me. (A delicious food rendered slightly less appetizing when some dude’s dirty hands and long nails have come into contact with all of it.) I’m pretty tolerant of other cultures and the differences in physicality, but I’m also a person with quite a few personal space issues. This girl likes her bubble to be unoccupied by strangers.
Personal space aside, there was also the issue of sleeping and the infamous jazz hands. Let me explain myself. In Vietnam we discovered foreigners need to be registered with the police each and every night. Which means when you stay at a guesthouse (even the sketchy ones that are more likely than not brothels), they need to register your information with the police, and that often includes a bribe of some sort. So immediately staying anywhere includes the foreigner tax. Which is frustrating but in a small country that contains almost 90 million people, there isn’t really anywhere to camp that isn’t inhabited, so guesthouses are pretty much inevitable. We came to terms with that, and with the hit it would mean for our budgets. What we couldn’t come to terms with were the jazz hands. By this I mean the hand signal that people would give us when they saw us approaching, indicating that they had no rooms available in their empty guesthouse which also happens to be the only guesthouse in town. You would think then that the rooms were in fact all full. You would be wrong. The rooms were in fact empty, but the extra effort of having a foreigner staying in the establishment would have meant more hassle than we were worth, so there were no rooms available to us. And at the end of a long, sweaty day, when there’s no guarantee the next town will have a guesthouse or even be remotely reachable before dark, there is nothing more disheartening than seeing someone raise both hands in what will momentarily become jazz hands. So thanks Vietnam for ruining Fosse’s choreography for me forever.
And speaking of infuriating, let’s talk about traffic, and the dos and don’ts of the road. In Vietnam there are really only two rules of the road. 1. If you need to indicate anything, are feeling any emotion at all, need to brake, or are bored, the only way to express this is to honk your horn. As loudly and as many successive times as you can. 2. The bigger vehicle wins. No matter what. Overtaking the wrong way on a single lane surrounded by traffic and roadworks? Definitely do it if you’re bigger. Want to pass someone despite the definite lack of any available space on the road? Go for it as long as you’re bigger. Don’t feel like stopping? If you can crush the other vehicles on the road, stopping isn’t for you. Getting run off the road at least 4 times a day, having to bail off your bike into a concrete wall as you suck in to not get hit by a bus going full speed in the wrong direction, keeping up a steady stream of swear words, riding through construction, Fred Flinstone style braking to avoid being hit, and being so confused at intersections that it takes 10 minutes to cross a road in a city was not what I call relaxing. If you ever bike through Vietnam, Highway 1 is never ever worth it. Someone else once called it the Highway of Hell. We gave it a new name. The Highway of Fury Inducing, Blind Rage Causing, Satan Himself Would Beg To Leave, Hell. It felt fitting.
And finally, let’s talk about the horns. We get it. You have something to say. This is never a reason to blast your very loud truck horn next to a cyclist’s ear repeatedly. As much as I love our horn conversations, I love my hearing more, drivers of Vietnam. When the makeshift earplugs Sophie was forced to don to protect her eardrums fail, you know the decibel level of the horns is too high. During my time cycling the roads of Vietnam, I learnt to decipher what the horns meant, and we began to have infuriating conversations. Here are some examples.
Truck: Welcome to Vietnam.
Me: Thank you, but the previous eight trucks also welcomed me with their horns. I know you’re friendly, but this is excessive.
Truck: I’m behind you. I’m next to you. I’m in front of you.
Me: Thank you for the continuous update as to your whereabouts. I was actually able to decipher them from both the loud sound coming from your large vehicle, as well as my eyeballs being functional.
Truck: I’m on the other side of the road from you. I feel that is too much distance. So I will say hello for the next five minutes with my horn. I want you to feel at home in Vietnam.
Me: Thank you, but really, each and every vehicle before you has already welcomed me in a similar fashion, and the vehicles after you will undoubtedly welcome me as such as well.
Truck: I’m hungry.
Me: I too am hungry, but instead of laying on my horn, I actually do something about it by having a little snack. May I suggest some peanuts?
Truck: I will be turning left.
Me: Thank you for the vague indication that you will be doing something. I did not actually know specifically what until you cut across construction onto the wrong side of the road, ran me into the dirt, and then actually turned left. It was when you actually turned left that I realized your horn was in lieu of your indicators, and that as a lowly bicycle, my safety and ability to go on being alive is of very little concern to you. How silly of me not to have known that earlier.
These are only a few of the thrilling conversations that Bertha and I had with our fellow vehicles, but I think you get the idea. And so with eardrums barely intact, we unsurprisingly changed plans and left Vietnam early in favour of quiet and dusty Cambodia. With no real idea what Cambodia held in store, we made our way there like settlers of old, in hope of a better world. But please don’t let me destroy your desire to see Vietnam. Just maybe strap your bicycle to the back of a motorbike and take the Ho Chi Minh Highway instead. I’ve heard it’s quiet and beautiful.
