The bike Ride

Well hello to anyone still reading this. :) I suspect this shall be my last post since tonight is my last night in Viet Nam; I leave tomorrow evening for the 24 hour trek home. I just wanted to catch you all up on some of the most recent misadventures I've had in the Mekong Delta region.



So yesterday we had a bicycle trip arranged around the small island we were staying on called An Binh Island. We, a group of 15 American students who've all been riding bikes since forever, were thinking "Oh, a bike ride, this shall be pleasant and scenic, how easygoing, and la la la." Not so much. We had never ridden bikes in Viet Nam before. First of all, my bike had no gears, shotty breaks, bent wheel covers, and several other things that made it just busted enough to throw me off, but not broken enough to warrant legitimate repairs. So we all jump on like a bunch of confident fools, standing up, going fast as we can, swerving around each other, thinking this will be a lovely ride. Well, as soon as we went up the first bridge and around the first corner, we knew better.



After he nearly caused a 5 person pile-up over the bridge, I decided that my friend Saad was not the person to follow while mounted on a bicycle. I tried to speed up to the front, but my friends are all haphazardly passing me, not minding the fact that motorbikes are zooming at us in the opposite direction, honking like mad, so then my friends almost run me off the road each time this happened. Yikes, I thought, I've gotta get to the front so all these fools in my group don't kill me. So I make a break for the front, and there are only 2 people ahead of me, my tall, lanky friend David and the tour guide au jour, Han. Now Han, bless his little heart, does not understand how to lead a pack of bicyclists. He proceeded to slow down before every incline such that David and I would nearly collide into this back and hear many angry shouts from the fiesty crowd behind us who would also nearly crash via domino effect. David's just shouting in English, "Christ man, GO!" and our guide is not going any faster, and mind you this "path" we were on was anything but a bicycle trail. More like the Oregon Trail. We almost had to ford a couple rivers, and definitely encountered some perilous terrain along our journey.



The trail consisted mostly of bricks and stones jutting out of the uneven ground, muddy pot holes from the motorbike traffic, and rickety bridges that were under contstruction, as well as sharp turns, overgrowth slapping you in the face and tree branches you had to duck under, with the occasional cactus or two to avoid. To make a long story short, I managed to get to the halfway point practically unscathed. I grasped at the nearest water bottle and guzzled the thing, only realizing when I had dismounted how sweaty and dirty I was. At this point I also became aware the pain in my ass, and no I'm not referring to my annoying group members, I mean literally, my bum hurt so bad from that dag nab seat I had to walk funny. Great, this was only the halfway point. Oh biking in Viet Nam.



I must say though, for that first part of the trek, at least the wind was blowing on your face as you rode along, so it was like being cooled off as you were exercising so hard. And that's why you don't realize how tired you are until you stop. We all sat down for a drink, not thinking we were going to be able to get back up; it had already been an hour's ride. After a short rest, we remounted our bikes, the seats of which had been baking in the hot sun during our pause. Grrrrr. I make way for the front again, knowing to avoid some of my less than coordinated counterparts, and this time my friend Jenna comes with me. As she, David and I are humming along, trying not to hit a rock and fly off into the sludge or into a crowd of people laughing at us, our guide says we're too far ahead of the rest of the group and we should wait. VETO! we're all thinking, they'll be fine! let's go fast! I wanna go FAST!! So we push on, forcing poor Han to leave his sheep else we mutinus 3 usurp him. As we're riding we start to sing, anything from The Beatles, Wheezer, The Sound of Music, whatever, and we're also jutting side to side, narrowly missing dogs and small children, screaming out "MOTO!" to warn each other of oncoming motorized doom, and still having the same problem of nearly ramming into Han's a$$ everytime he slows down to go over a bridge. David is doing this antsy bicycle dance around Han, crying out that he has to go to the bathroom and we really need to go faster, nearly falling and shouting, causing Jenna and I to do the same, and we're laughing so hard our sides hurt because we're all surely about to crash and fall into a river or something, when finally David breaks free and peddles ahead. Jenna and I follow, and things are going great! FREEDOM and SPEED. Mmmmmm. The wind is rushing through our hair, life is good, this is great!...until we miss a turn, have to turn around, and subsequently end up in the back of the line for the remainder of the ride. Booooo.



I can't explain some peoples' need for speed sometimes, but it was painful to inch along behind those slowpokes in the back, watching them actually tip over and fall off whereas we only had close-calls along the way. So when we make it back to the starting point, and look around at each others' sweaty, hot messes, I realize I've made it out okay. The cactus that attacked me magically didn't leave a mark, and the one time I did start to fall, I was able to jump of the bike just in time and run along beside it, allowing my fear to manifest itself in verbal obscenities rather than bodily injury. At least I didn't come back bloody, or broken, or not come back at all. One of my group members' bikes had legitmately fallen apart on the trail, luckily only a few yards away, but we didn't know that at first, so we sent out a search party. The search party was Han on his motorbike, and when I saw him getting on, I didn't realize he was looking for the lost kid, I just thought he was going for a joy ride. So what do I do? I ask to come along. And precious Han says okay, and goes to get me a helmet, unneccessarily holding up the search for the kid that's lost for pete's sake, he could have said no! But I happily accepted the helmet and enjoyed the heck out of that motorbike ride, zooming faster than any bike could peddle, feeling like a speeding bullet racing down the streets, and not feeling any need to hold on to Han, but letting myself enjoy the exhileration and carefree-ness of the ride.

My comrades were not so lucky. Han got a call saying our lost friend arrived, so we turned around and realized I had just accidentally delayed the search...so I felt slightly bad, but not really because I had reeeeeeally wanted to ride a motorbike in Viet Nam and I finally got to. So Kelly's knee is bleeding, Lucy threw up in the orchird and launched herself into a cactus somehow which left awful scrapes on her arm, Jenna's fingers are full of cactus prickers and most peoples' hands are shaking from the iron-clad grip they had on the handlebars, Dan's bike fell apart and Saad led 4 other people to God knows where and got them lost before our guide Truc had gone and redirected them, all while I was happily riding on the moto. Sheesh. Needless to say, the hammoks at the restaurant we went to next were all occupied by the wounded, and we rested up to go along with the remainder of the days' activities, with a few new battle scars to show off. And That was the bike ride. :)

Tonight I'll enjoy a final dinner with the group, then the rest of the night will probably be spent in a blissful haze of wine, Vietnamese, and wonderful views of Saigon from atop a hotel patio. This trip has been a blast, and I hope you've enjoyed reading about it. Ciao all :)