With the Luck of the Golden Tortoise

We tried, we really did.... we tried to motivate and keep riding through the rain, leaving our palatial estate in Hoa Binh and climbing, climbing, climbing into the mountains of Vietnam... Perhaps the rain would clear, the sun would come out, we would get out of this infernal mud, and the road would finally dry off. Perhaps...

Or maybe not. About 100km outside of Hanoi we turned around and headed back for the city, the first time we had backtracked on our whole entire trip. It was a tough and trying decision, but we were tired of being wet, and a bit tired in general after a flurry of traveling and few too many nights without a good sleep. This time we caught a bus from Hoa Binh, opting not to ride the crazy stretch of road again, and navigated our way through the Hanoi motorbike frenzy once more, to a nice, quiet, and peaceful guesthouse in the old quarter.

It was here that we recharged our batteries for a few nights, getting good sleep, finding some good food, and enjoying the quite charming Northern Vietnamese city. One night we spent a few hours walking around the central lake, which felt eerily similar to Lake Merrit but was the location of one of Hanoi's most famous folktales. Legend has it that magical golden tortoises live deep within the lake, ancestors of the O.G. tortoise that took the sacred sword from the king long ago and returned it to its rightful owner. We had vague ideas of what this legend was about, and were completing our second lap of Qi Dong walking and arm exercises when we saw mass hysteria at the far end of the lake. Motos were driving off the road and into the park area, which is strictly verboten in normal times, cars were parking up on the sidewalk, and people were running en masse to the edge of the lake. At first we thought they were enjoying the sunset, but unless they knew something we didn't, there was much too much excitement for an everyday occurrence. Police began impounding motos left and right and no one cared - they couldn't tear themselves away from the water. Realizing that we were of course in Asia, we did what any good soul would find themselves doing upon seeing such a huge crowd - we ran over and joined in. Peering in the water the excitement was contagious, even though we had no idea what we were looking for. And then, we saw it - the golden tortoise surfacing for air, and then promptly plunging under, startled by the deafening cacophony of gasps and moans from the anxious onlookers. People were almost falling in the water at this point, as they tried desperately to snap a photo with whatever electronic device they had. We asked one of the hundreds of onlookers whether it was good luck, as the mob ran clockwise around the lake, following a feint trail of bubbles beneath the surface. "I hope so!" she said, as she took off to follow the crowd, and perhaps grab more of that lucky turtle power.

We felt incredibly fortunate being able to see this amazing occurrence and not have any of our personal possessions impounded by the police. We only hoped that all the citizens who had a long walk home (and a lot of explaining to do to someone) would remember what a lucky event they witnessed. Feeling rejuvenated, we went to the 6:30 performance of the water Puppet Theater, which while incredibly touristy and packed with Westerners, dong-for-dong one of the best entertainment values in the whole world. It was a puppet and live music event, and the puppeteers did it all in a murky pond of water up to their waists. Jim Henson would have been proud.

With images of the Golden Tortoise in our minds we set out again, still determined to take the back road into Laos and start working our way back to Bangkok. We rode out of central Hanoi for the third time, finally starting to feel a bit comfortable in the traffic, and jumped into the madness of the bus station. Mo dusted off her incredible bargaining skills and got ourselves and our bikes on a bus headed West for a very reasonable price, only a bit more than the actual charges. This was quite a scene as the driver started almost triple what it should have cost, and the falang with bicycles bargaining immediately drew a crowd of Vietnamese, all looking for some good entertainment. After a full day on the bus, complete with locals absolutely fascinated by Mat's arm and leg hair (to the point of stroking it, pulling up his pants leg, and inviting people from all over the bus to check it out) we made it to the picturesque town of Son La, a few hundred kilometers out of Hanoi and well on the way to our final Vietnam destination of Dien Bien Phu.

Stuck in Hanoi with the Luang Prabeng Blues Again

After a few days of rest in Hue and some antibiotics (thanks Jennifer and Scott!!!) Mo was back in full force and we jumped on an overnight "sleeper" bus North to Hanoi. The seats were not normal seats, but rather some space-age pods that fully reclined while allowing your legs to extend to some degree. We managed to get a bit of sleep, more so than a regular bus but definitely less than your average room in a guest house. At 5:30 AM we awoke to being dropped off in the rain, in the middle of nowhere, outside the city center of Hanoi. Conveniently, there was a queue of taxis awaiting the bus, friends with the bus driver, who were waiting to take the passengers to a wonderful guest house nearby, for a hefty fee. Argh. Of course we couldn't load our bikes in the small cabs, and we weren't planning on staying in Hanoi anyway. We pulled a janky photocopied partial map of Hanoi and set to it, navigating the streets of the huge metropolitan city, on our bikes, in the rain.

At this point we realized why The Amazing Race didn't select us for their show - we would have demolished all other teams involved. Somehow we found our way to a hotel for breakfast, found the central part of town, and then got directions to the bus station that would take us to the start of our next cycling leg: a journey west from Hanoi, over the mountains, and back into Laos.

Riding around in the rainy madness we realized what the one piece of gear we wished we had most was: fenders! Somehow we neglected to bring these from the states, and had to improvise some for our bikes out of duct tape and plastic water bottles. They worked decently well, however the Vietnamese have a remarkable ability to stay completely free of dirt and mud while riding their bikes and motos through the street. It seems that in the culture it is very important to keep your clothes clean, even with our plastic fenders after a few minutes of riding we looked like we had just finished Paris-Roubaix. We literally became the laughing stock of every corner we stopped at, with people pointing at us and making disgusted faces at how dirty we had allowed ourselves to become.

We headed out of Hanoi towards our bus station and began to get a hang of riding in all the traffic. Hanoi has a unique per-capita income that allows nearly ever inhabitant to be able to afford a motorcycle, but not a car. So the streets are literally filled with thousands of motorcycles, zipping back and forth like some futuristic arcade game. Our pace was somewhere in between the slow motos and the fast local cyclists, which resulted in quite a lot of passing and getting passed. We finally figured out one of the main traffic rules which helped things go a bit more smoothly - as a driver, you are responsible for all traffic in front of you, but none behind you. So motos, bikes, and vehicles routinely merge from the right hand lane without giving as much as a glance over their shoulder - as long as they are a fraction of an inch in front of you, they have right of way. Riding actually became easier once we discovered this rule, as we knew when to hit the breaks and let people in.

Mat had the great idea of riding right bast the bus stop 12km out of town and riding to our starting point, 70 km away. He was not operating super clearly due to lack of sleep and mud in his brain, but this is what we did. Accordingly, he had a breakdown about 30km into it when the hundredth person pointed and laughed at our mud covered bikes and butts. We got some Pho and managed to salvage enough motivation to but on, and about 40 km out of Hanoi the traffic lightened up a bit and the scenery became gorgeous. If only the rain would stop.

Unfortunately, it didn't. We spent a night at a terrible value guest house in Hoa Binh after after an interesting meal full of all sorts of things we couldn't identify. We even gleefully accepted a bottle of what we thought to be water but turned out to be incredibly strong moonshine to drink. The bottle itself would have killed a man, but we had a few shots at the risk of offending the local spirits and called it a night. At least we were out of Hanoi and on the road back to Laos.