Hanoi Vietnam to Chang Mai Thailand Bike Adventure – November 2018
Vietnam
The ten-year old kid on a bike two sizes too big that I had asked about finding a hotel on the way up into Bac Yen kept waving me on. It was obvious he was used to riding these hills and in my exhausted state I had a hard time keeping up with him. Stephen was somewhere behind me, lost in the flock of scooters coming into town. We had just ridden up two monstrous mountains that would be HC in a Tour De France stage. Miles and miles straight up thru a sea of green. I didn't know there were Alps in Vietnam!
Riding in Vietnam is like riding in a green house. Even though November is the dry and cooler season, its still in the 80s every day and 110 percent humidity. Water, water, everywhere water. At the top of the second mountain, I had created my own water source, it came running out of my helmet and splashed onto my handle bars. What is different here is that it isn't any cooler at the top of the mountains...like most places, and even as we fly down the other side soaked in sweat its not chilly enough to need a jacket.
Finally, at the far end of this long thin town perched along a ridge looking over a huge valley the kid stopped and pointed up at a nondescript building that was this town’s only hotel (NHA NGHI). Stephen and I had been planning on staying in hotels, but have sleeping bags and pads just in case we can't find one. Hotels here are really nice and clean...and super cheap! Only $10 to $20 per night! After a long day of sweaty hills the shower alone is worth that. At the Hotels they make is park our bikes in the scooter parking lot inside some enclosure next to the entrance.
By now, our bikes are caked in mud from the first day when it rained some as well as construction in the roads in places that left long stretches of mud. So I'm really glad I put on fenders before leaving home. It rained all afternoon our first day out of Hanoi so to save my shoes from getting soaked I rode in flip flops for the last 40 miles of our 75 miles of wandering thru the Vietnamese countryside. The puddles were warm that splashed up on my bare feet.
I had conjured up this bike ride after riding in China in September. I originally was going to start in Kunming China and ride down into Laos and in to Chiang Mai, Thailand where our Liberty Lake neighbor Alex Kern is living. After Stephen told me he wanted to come along we changed it to leave out China and add Vietnam. That was a brilliant move! I really knew nothing about Vietnam except I remember watching Walter Cronchite on the evening news talk about the war back in the 1960s. Boy did the USA screw up that deal. If you want to learn about that watch the 10 part Ken Burns Netflix series about it...very excellent.
Its hard to put into words what makes this the most awesome cycling adventure ever, but I'll try to convey some of it here.....
1) Of course its the people....as the old adage goes....the people make the place. In China, people's shyness gets in the way of their friendliness. Not here though...as we ride by we hear hello shouted out windows, from rooftops and from everybody walking down the street. We say hello hundreds of times a day and the people are genuinely excited when we respond to their friendly words. At the markets and in the restaurants the women are friendly and helpful. With really no Vietnamese language under our belt, we rely on lots of charades. (don't try this when you are asking where is the bathroom). Vietnamese seen extra excited when we tell them we are from America. I think this is because so many of them have relatives in the USA, not because we were such gracious visitors in the 1960s.
2) Its so different than home. By far Vietnam has the most visual stimulation per mile of any bike tour I've done. Its still like its been for decades....maybe centuries. Even In Hanoi there are no Starbucks, KFC, McDonalds, or any other Western chain stores. It’s hard to find a place in the world that hasn't been homogenized in that way.
3) Who knew?!......That Vietnam has almost 100 million people in this string bean shaped country the size of New Mexico. It makes for great riding because most of the people are strung out along the roads...and since half the people jobs here are feeding the other half....there is food around every corner! And wow is it cheap. Lunch or Dinner with a beer each is usually $3 to $4 for both of us! Every patch of ground is planted with a garden that yields fresh veggies to add to the Pho that is sold everywhere. In the street markets, less than half of the fruits and vegetables are known to us. The Vietnamese people seem very industrious.
Mostly its women tending to the gardens and selling what they grow in the markets. We've been through many villages with differing hill tribes. One village will have women in green skirts, the next will be orange or dressed In all white with various head dressings stacked high above the big bun of hair spun on the very top of their heads. Google Vietnamese hill tribe women to see.
We will be leaving Son La today headed towards the Laotian border near Dien Bien Phu. (its the place where the French got thoroughly routed and sent home in 1954)
I'm sure we'll have more adventures there!
Cheers
RG & Stephen
LAOS
It was only 25 miles from Dien Bien Phu to the Lao border. DBP was in a valley at the bottom of a really long hill. We checked into a nice hotel for only 300,000 DONG, ($12), had dinner and sought out a good foot rub for only 100,000 DONG ($4).
You could tell DBP was a regional commerce center by the economic activity and general hustle as bustle as we rode out of town the next morning. The Vietnamese have a certain vitality and industriousness to them where everybody is doing something to contribute, and every house has an awesome garden, even of its just in the ditch in front of their house.
We crossed the green valley thru more already harvested rice paddies full of grazing grey water buffalo to a ravine that slowly crept up into the high green mountains. Scooters were everywhere and ladies are selling at markets all along the road. Then, for the first time in our ride across Vietnam, it all stopped. The last 12 miles to Laos was all uphill to the border and there weren't any houses or gardens, any scooters zipping by or any body selling anything. Just the green jungle full of birds chirping and squawking. It was pretty obvious by the lack of traffic, even though this was the only border crossing for a couple hundred miles, there wasn't much economic trade between these countries. We rode along in sweaty silence and climbed that hill on our 65-pound bikes for two and a half hours.
When we arrived at the Vietnam side of the border at 11:30 am we found it deserted. One guy rode up on a scooter in half of a guards green uniform, shorts and flip flops and told us that they were closed until 1:00!! Who ever heard of a border crossing closing for lunch! Just as we were heading to a small shack to buy a cold drink another guy rode up in a scooter and indicated he would stamp our passports to allow us to leave Vietnam. Relieved to know we wouldn't have to wait an hour and a half we headed across the 5k of no-mans-land between Vietnam and Laos. Alas, only to find that the Lao side of the border also closed for lunch so we still had to wait until 1:00.
The mountains we were crossing all across Vietnam were about 4000 -5000 feet high, coming up from valleys about at 1500 feet. Climbing 2000 to 3000 feet usually took about two hours for each long hill. By the time we reached the tops we were seriously soggy. This was really no different than riding the Continental Divide Trail through Colorado where you are constantly climbing from 8000 feet to 11,000 feet. But here, the road is paved and steep because they never have to worry about snow and ice..... And its 85-90 degrees here. Unlike most places with mountains, its really no cooler at the top than the bottom. Even drenched in sweat there was no chill as we sailed down the mountains after the climbs.
We were really curious to see what the relationship was between The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and The Lao People's Democratic Republic. Both are viewed by the world as "communist". But it seems to me that capitalism is as strong here as anywhere, but they just don't get to pick their leaders. It isn’t like the old Soviet style communism where all means of production was owned by the government.
Laos........Laos.........Laos
Stop reading right now and think about what you know about this country............Ok, that didn't take long did it!
Well, in the 1960s the USA gave this little country that is two thirds the size of Vietnam, or about the size of Utah a dubious distinction.....The Most Bombed Country In The History Of Man!!!!
At the time, in the 1060s, Laos was a small country of only 2 million people (6.8 million now) 90 percent of which were subsistence Farmers scratching out enough food from the jungle to just get by. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his henchmen like Robert McNamara, his Secretary of Offense (Defense?) decided to start a "secret war" in Laos in 1962. It wasn't much of a secret here!!! JFK is on tape saying he needed to show the electorate he was "trying to slow the spread of communism" to get re-elected in 1964. So much for heeding Eisenhower, his predecessor's warning about the military industrial complex.
So........JFK decided to have the U.S. Air Force drop bombs on these Lao people like some sort of horrific metallic rain!!#! Get this!!!!! JFK, with no vote of the people or support in congress told the CIA to get to work. So... the CIA DROPPED THE EQUIVALENT OF A PLANE LOAD of BOMBS ON LAOS EVERY 8 MINUTES FOR NINE CONTINUOUS YEARS!!!!! Absolutely horror for this little country that is only as big as the state of Utah!!!! I am actually surprised LAOS would let us in when we showed them our passports!
I think we should still go find the salesman who sold the bombs to the CIA and bury them up to their necks in an anthill! This is why I think traveling is so important...it gives you a perspective you can't have sitting on the couch at home. So, get off your couch and go someplace and see how U.S. policy affects the little guys of the world. You don’t have to use a bicycle.....just go!
Well, enough ranting. The Lao side of the border was also closed for lunch....so that's what we did too. We needed to get Lao visas but they were available for $40 as long as you had a passport photo with you and your U.S. dollars were brand spanking new. No old money or any kind of winkle or tear allowed. A sign said that they didn’t take any “broken” money. We knew beforehand this so we were prepared.
I gave the nice Lao lady clerk a brand new but slightly damp Benjamin and Stephen and I were in....well almost. The last thing we had to do was to pay 5000 Lao Kip (about 60 cents) to have our temperature taken to see if we were sick! That's a first! I was actually thankful that we had over an hour off our bikes just before this or I think we might have been too overheated from riding up the mountain to get into the country!
We cruised down the Lao side of the mountain from 4200 feet past brown Lao cows walking on the highest to our first village... much more primitive than Vietnam. But then, Laos had been bombed back to the stone-age 50 years ago and hasn't quite recovered.
Another valley and another two hour climb at dusk and descent at sunset and we arrived in Muang Khua in the dark. We lucked out and found a brand new Guest House (common in Laos, like a small privately owned hotel) run by a young guy named Jam. Stephen enjoyed talking to Jam all evening thru the use of Google translate app on his phone.
Laos was much less developed than Vietnam, fewer towns, people, scooters, gardens...everything! And, the kids that run out to greet us as we ride thru their village now are yelling Sa-we-deeee...... rather than hello. The kids are so cute and so friendly. And prolific....its like half the population is under five years old....and might be. It’s like riding thru a National Geographic Magazine.
I had read that Laos is one of the 20 "poorest" countries of the world. That means there are 30 countries in Africa that are better off?!?!?!?.....that I have a hard time believing. What we see as we ride along is happy people with plenty to eat and drink, a school and medical clinic in every village and kids whose parents obviously care about them. They just happen to live in stick houses with mud trails between them. What we don’t see is stress on their faces from trying to pay the mortgage and car payment.
The next morning we cruised out of town to follow a river up stream 67 miles to the regional capital Oudomxai. That was the first day of riding when we didn't have at least two hard long mountain climbs, only one long slow climb all day. Traffic is light in Laos, even in the cities with airports like Oudomxai. We had our first awesome Thai style food of the trip for dinner....making us even more eager to get to Thailand! We met Juergen, a German 49 year old and he joined us as we rode along.
Our plan of riding about 70 miles a day has worked out, but has been much more challenging due to the elevation and heat. Stephen has been great to travel with..... Considering he's mostly been riding a desk his natural cycling abilities shine through in these tough conditions. He must have some awesome parents!
Cheers
RG and Stephen
Thailand
We arrived in Oudomxay Laos with the idea that we'd decide there whether to continue on our expected route north thru Luang Namtha or to ride south towards Luang Prabang. Stephen had heard from a friend that Luang Prabang was beautiful and not to be missed. We discovered however, that there was a third option that sounded really interesting. One long days bike ride, mostly following the Nam Beng river out of Oudomxay would take us to the small town of Pak Beng which was located on the Mekong river. From there we could take a nine-hour Boat ride thru a very undeveloped 200 miles of the Mekong River. We chose Plan C. After seven hard days biking in a row our bodies could use a day off on a boat ride.
All along the Nam Beng river and along our little highway were villages full of smiling children less than five years old. They would come running out from whereever they were playing to give us a high five and a loud Sa-wa-deee! The plain weathered-board homes that crowded right up to the road were all elevated off the ground about five feet on posts. When we rode by we could see that the women were cooking over fires stoked by dried corncobs. There was plenty of wood around, and we frequently passed small one-man sawmills, but I was glad they didn't have to burn the tropical hard woods just to make soup. We stopped for lunch at a Chinese run restaurant and had really good lemon grass chicken. Because we were just south of the Chinese border and on the main road into China, many Chinese immigrants and businessmen were in the area, and many of the cars we saw had Chinese license plates.
Pak Beng ended up being an overnight stop full of restaurants and guesthouses for people taking Mekong river trips. We picked a big green guest house right in the middle of town and quickly jumped into the much-needed shower. Between being extremely sweaty all day, riding thru villages and muddy sections of road and eating dust as trucks went by us... we were a really filthy site by the end of each day's ride.
In Vietnam and Laos it seems that all of the animals are free range, and prefer the road to spend their day. In spite of many cows, water Buffalo, pigs, chickens and dogs laying on and wandering down the road, the only road kill we've seen are snakes..... and lots of them. I don't know what kind they all are but mostly between 12 and 18 inches long.
Next morning we boarded the long skinny boat headed up stream. The all day boat ride cost about $11 and another $3 for our bikes to be tossed up onto the tin roof. It seems like all the boats on the Mekong are built to the same ratio, about ten feet long and one foot wide. Our boat, which held a maximum of about 100 people but was only half full, was about ten feet wide and 100 feet long. It was really obvious that all of the seats were car, van and bus seats from many different vehicles being repurposed.
The mighty Mekong flows all the way down from Tibet, thru China's Yunnan province, thru Myanmar, and then is the border between Thailand and Laos and then into the area of Laos where we were. It was immediately apparent that this riverboat ride was going to be interesting, as the Mekong's chocolate pudding colored water was extremely turbulent. Because it is the dry season in SE Asia, the flow was down and the water swirled and bounced off of rock's sticking up all over in the river.
I watched the boat driver closely all day and could see he was taking his job seriously. He had no electrical instruments to help him guess where the rocks were hiding just below the chocolate swirls, just an experienced eye. About five times during the day we dropped off passengers along the muddy banks and picked up a few at clusters of huts along the green hills. When landing, the First Mate would climb onto the roof with a long green bamboo pole to feel for the depth and to fend of any rocks along the shore. Many times the boat rocked around violently as the river tossed it around, and we could hear our bikes sliding around on the tin roof.
There were no real towns but an occasional farmer's hut. At one point we passed an area where they were doing logging and were using elephants to drag the logs down the mountain to another boat waiting in the river. The bad part of the boat ride was seeing that it was very apparent that every body upstream (and most likely downstream) was using the Mekong as a mighty garbage disposal. Plastic sacks clung to every stick and twig sticking out of water and up to thirty feet up the river banks, looking like millions of little colorful flags outlining where the high water mark is. The locals on our boat too threw everything out the widow from plastic sacks, to food containers and all of the disposable diapers.
The river eventually became the border between Laos and Thailand where the mountains became smaller. We disembarked on the Laos riverbank and immediately Stephen yelled out that he'd left his cycling, and only, shoes at the guesthouse way back in Pak Beng. It looks like he'll be wearing his flip flops to bike all thru Thailand!
Because we had a bunch of Lao money to use up we stayed on the Lao side of the river for the night. All of the eating, foot rubs and bakeries couldn't use up all our Lao Kip so we headed to the border downstream a little ways to cross the "friendship bridge" and exchanged our Kips for Thai Baht. It was the only bridge we'd seen across the Mekong on our entire 200-mile boat ride. Unfortunately, after stamping out of Laos the border guards wouldn't let us ride or bikes across the bridge and made us get in the bus with all of the other pedestrians which also were not allowed to even walk across.
On the boat ride the day before I had time to think about that road crossing. What made it interesting was the fact that we were going from a right side of the road driving country to a left side. My civil engineering brain wanted to know how they handled the switch without having head on crashes. I'd been to lots of left hand driving countries (Japan, England, Ireland and Australia) but they are all islands and didn't have to ever meet up with the opposing country's drivers. I had conjured up ideas of fancy cloverleaf designs that would spit your lane out on the opposite side, or maybe an over-under scenario. But alas, the road just ended up crossing like the middle of a figure eight demolition derby. Because we were all in no mans land between countries, and on a bus, it was all rather anticlimactic.
Thailand
Siam is the only South East Asian country never to have been colonized. I don't know the reason why, if their forefathers were fierce fighters or what. I believe it was probably because the Imperialists found Siam and its people too friendly and beautiful to mess up! For us, Thailand has been our Biker's Shangri La. We arrived last night at dusk in a small village about 30km north of Chiang Mai, our final destination. We really lucked out by arriving at the beginning of the biggest festival of the year in Thailand, Loy Katrong...celebrating the full moon and harvest.
It would be really difficult to describe what we saw but it involved everything from dancing horses, little boys dressed up as Thai princesses, fiery lanterns floating into the sky by the thousands....and much much more. Tonight we will be in Chiang Mai for the second night of the festival and it should be really something.
Thailand has been an awesome bike tour unto itself. We've been down every kind of road and trail, pushed our bikes through fast flowing rivers and up ridiculously steep mountain roads....all while being surrounded by beautiful scenery. But again, the people make the place, and Thai people are the friendliest on earth. Coupled with the best food on earth and you've got the best biking on earth!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm very thankful I've had the chance over the past two weeks to be able to explore these three really awesome SE Asian countries by bike with my son Stephen. It really couldn't have gone better. We are injury free, and actually more fit than when we started. Full of great memories for sure!
Sa-Wa-Deeeeeeee!!!
"Do it while you can" - Jan Wesche (RIP)
Cheers,
Randy & Stephen Grinalds