Lyon Family Cycles Vietnam

Hills

2007-10-06T19:32:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

We each had our own relationship with the hills. Shari attacked them, relying on her strong leg muscles, tri-athlete training and will power. She lived for the hills. Andrew, our resident mountain goat, seemed not to tire, and kept his own pace in whatever order he decided to ride, first or last, it didn’t matter to him, the hills were just flat rides with a little twist.

Mike took them in stride, worked and conquered everyone, as did Rebecca, who was remarkable and constant. Jonathan and I had the most trouble and each of us at one point or another walked and caught a few bus rides up.

The last day of the trip, cycling the beautiful island of Cat Ba, Tanh gave me a breathing lesson that revolutionized my ability to do hills. I realized I’d been breathing wrong, and with that, not getting enough oxygen to my heart, which caused it to pump faster, forcing me to stop. I thought it was congenital. I had developed what I thought was a technique to regulate my heart, by breathing consistently, the same in breathes as out, and I’d count them by four. I thought the way to calm my heart was to control my breathing. Evidently this is the opposite of what I should have been doing.

Here’s the trick, and for this I will never forget Tanh. First off, he said, we should breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. When one breathes in through the nose, the breathe goes deeper into the abdomen. And follow what the heart is asking for. The faster it is pumping, the faster one should be breathing in, this then feeds the heart the oxygen it is asking for. Breathe out naturally. Follow your heart.

I practiced what Tanh said along the road that wound from sea to hill to sea again around the island. I was amazed at the first hill. My heart did not race; it remained constant as it was fed the oxygen it was asking for. Why now? I thought. Why was I given this on the last day of the ride? If I believe there are no coincidences, a belief I come in and out of, this is exactly when I was to receive it. Evidently I needed to struggle on hills for two weeks to learn to follow my heart. Perhaps this is a lesson to take with me off the saddle.

The end arrived at a cul de sac just below the Sunrise Hotel on the far side of the town of Cat Ba. We did it. We rode through challenges and delights and got stronger as the days passed. We learned when to stop and when to push, although most of us pushed more than we stopped. I was proud of us and amazed that if we had more to go, we were ready. I was teary, relieved and filled with a sense of accomplishment. Physically, we had done what we set out to do.

It was bittersweet to take off our panniers and watch Tanh disassemble our seats and pedals. It would feel odd to wake the next morning and not prepare to ride. Although Shari would get up and take a ride through town.)

Even before we finished the cycling on Sunday August 5 at 2:00 pm we started scheming: Where next for more on the job training?

I Sweat Therefore I Am

2007-10-06T19:23:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

The training miles we racked up during the spring and early summer helped our bodies get used to having our butts on a little narrow padded seat for hours at a stretch, and got our muscles familiar with the rhythm of cycling. I passed through several stages during our training. First my neck needed to adjust to being crooked forward, which it did; then my legs came to understand the endurance part of cycling. We also learned techniques that helped us employ our core body strength instead of relying solely on our leg muscles. And all the training gave me confidence, that I really could go to Vietnam in the middle of the summer, ride 500 miles, and survive.

Then there is the on the job training - which is 75%. One of the reasons to go bicycle in Vietnam RIGHT NOW is that it is not yet a country in which every citizen has a car. What we had to learn was how to bicycle with the motorbikes, how to blend into the moving traffic, how to circumvent rotaries, how to cross streams of oncoming motorbikes and how to pass slower moving cyclists, pedestrians, and animals while being passed ourselves. When we started in Ho Chi Minh City we were relieved to be transferred by bus out of town before we started riding. After 10 days of this on the job training, while riding through a congested town, Jonathan yells, “Bring on Ho Chi Minh City, I’m ready!”

The heat. We had it and had to constantly manage it. This became apparent after the first full day of cycling left us sunburned having sweat off all the suntan lotion. We were our own personal saunas, cleansing our pores non stop day in and day out.
On day four I had a bit of sunstroke. By kilometer 50 of an inland loop off Route 1, the only major north/south highway, I felt like I was riding with an extra 50 pounds strapped on my back. With only five kilometers to go I climbed into the bus. Stick a fork in me, as Jarrett, Jonathan’s trainer would say, I was done.

I was more than done. I poured water on my head, down my back, cooled off my feet, and drank more water. We, the driver and assistant and me, followed the rest of the group for the final bit and picked everyone up and headed to the coastal town of Qui Nhon, to a beautiful resort on the bay. Jonathan too was feeling unwell and after dragging ourselves to lunch, in order to make sure to eat, we spent the afternoon napping in the cool and dark hotel room. At dinner we were slightly better, and by morning, pretty much recovered.

Rebecca, having light freckled skin, donned herself as the Vietnamese women do, with long gloves, dubbed wedding gloves, that go entirely up ones arm. The Vietnamese women, despite the heat or because of it, cover themselves from head to foot. At the top is their conical hat. They wear long sleeves and long pants and masks over their faces. We tried the masks, but they interfered too much with our breathing.

It was impossible to avoid the hottest hours of the day (11:00 am to 4:00 pm) and still get in all the miles that Mike had conjured up, Tanh so well orchestrated, and Shari demanded. So we learned. Our bodies learned in their inexplicable way. By the end of the trip, we seemed better adjusted to the heat, although the third to last day when we left the state forest and rode for hours over levees in the fullness of the sun, we became fatigued. Tanh suggested the reason it affected us so much that day was that in late morning, after a tough eleven kilometer uphill climb, we all pressed to get back down in time to visit the primate center before lunch. The downhill, did include three good inclines, and we pushed ourselves over them. This, he said, took a toll, and if we had not pressed, if we had rode at a comfortable pace, we could have ridden forever. He certainly could.

We were fortunate to have Tanh as our guide. Due, in no small part, or perhaps totally, to Mike’s insistence that we have a good one. Tang came in second in an all Vietnam race between tourist cyclists. Small and wiry, he never seemed to change his gate, and although he did at times admit he was tired, it was not often. And, as he told us, he sleeps well every night.

Cambodia, Floating Village

2007-10-06T18:40:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

South of Siem Reap there runs a long, straight dirt road on top of a levee that leads to the edge of Lake Tonle Sap and the floating village. In the dry season this road is 15 kilometers long and the lake at its southern end is two or three meters deep. At the height of the rainy season, in January, the lake is ten meters higher and the road three kilometers shorter.

On either side of this elevated road stand shacks built on stilts and beyond them stretch flat, wide open fields that in the dry season are planted with rice and in the rainy season covered with lake water. Some of these shacks are as small as the tree houses I built as a child. Their walls and roofs are made of reed or wood or corrugated metal or bamboo. They stand on stilts 10 to 15 feet high, depending on the distance between the road (on top of the levee) and the fields below. Under these shacks the people string hammocks where they can doze in the shade.

The road ends in a giant parking lot of slick mud, crowded with tour buses, shacks, food stands and tourist boats. We board one and take a thirty minute ride down the river to the lake. On both sides of this cruse is the Floating Village and it is just that—a complete town on houseboats. These houseboats are either wood rafts built over actual boats with a structure on top or simply a shack on a tied together bushel of bamboo. The boat and raft combination leaves the house high above the water. The structures that stand only on bamboo rafts sit low and look like they could sink at any time. Many of these floating homes have TV antennas and use car batteries to power their sets. There is no other electrical source out here, but there is a place where the villagers take their batteries when they need recharging.

In addition to the house boats, there is a full length basketball court on a steel pontoon raft, three or four schools operated out of houseboats, a Catholic church and a number of restaurants. All along the river’s path are fish farms, giant underwater cages, some as large as a 40-foot long cargo containers.

On maps the place’s official name is Vietnamese Floating Village, why Vietnamese, I don’t know. The floating village moves locations depending on the season.

At the mouth of the river, the lake spreads out wide. With a storm approaching, the water was choppy and we decided to pull over to a large floating restaurant and fish camp. I walked over planks that surrounded the open top of a fish cage and caught a glimpse of the shark like catfish they harvest. In another cage, this one all metal, the top three feet of which was above water, I saw 20 or more alligators, ready to be shipped to Thailand or Vietnam for their skins.

Everywhere kids were begging and tourists were taking pictures. The contrast was surreal. Like with many of the street musicians I saw in front of the wats, people with missing limbs are here as well. One young boy, missing his left arm, kept paddling back and forth in front of the floating restaurant in a small round boat that looked like a dog’s wash bucket. Other children swam in the muddy water. Each tourist boat that docked at this turnaround point was immediately surrounded by small wooden boats from which young mothers crouched on their hams in the bow of their boats, their babies swaddled against them, held up a bushel of bananas hoping for a sale. Everywhere I turned people were trying to sell something, anything that might bring in some money.

When we return to the mainland a woman presented me with a round table plate with my picture on it. I was surprised but did not purchase.

Cambodia, Pyramid Pimp

2007-10-06T18:33:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

On my second day, I climb a beautiful brick wat. The older wats were built out of brick, the later ones sandstone and laterite, a rock that has the look and consistency of lava. Virak stops by the gate in the wall at ground level and tells me to take my time.

On top, a small framed boy, maybe 16 or 17 years old with black, long, uncombed hair, a black T-shirt and long pants approaches me. Like dozens of other encounters, I’m expecting him to show me a guide book or postcards he wants me to buy or to simply tell me a few interesting facts about the wat and then ask for money. But his approach is all together different.

“Are you alone? Would you like a girlfriend for the day?”
“No thank you.”
“A nice, pretty, young girl?”
“No thank you.”
“Pretty girl, do what you like.”
“I already have a wife and find one woman is enough.”

He stops asking (they never push to the point of being rude or obnoxious) and starts telling me about what I can see from this high vantage point. We are above the trees. He is helpful and I see towers and wats, I would have missed otherwise. He disappears for a while. I finish my picture taking and start down and he shows up again, asking for money. They want American dollars, I give him a 10,000 note worth about $2.50 USD. He thanks me and asks for a second. “For school, to pay for school.” Virak has told me each student must bring his teacher a quarter a day, because the government does not pay the teachers enough. I give him a second note.

Eighty percent of Cambodians are farmers and 60 percent are poor, which means they have a house, a one room shack on stilts and food to eat but no possessions at all, including furniture. He figures ten percent of the country are well off, and perhaps 20 percent in the middle. That’s why each time I step out of the car to look over another wat there are 4 or 5, sometimes ten children who swarm me, wanting to sell me something--books, postcards, T-shirts. Once I say no to a purchase, they resort to begging. They gently try to trap me by asking, “You buy when you come back from seeing the wat.” They are in great need, but never malicious. Shyness and a smile come over their faces when I hold their eye contact for as long as they will allow.

The aggressive ones are the young men in their 20s, who all seem to be pimps. Their questions are the raunchy kind and there is plenty of evidence that their services are in demand. In every wat I visit I see German and French men, middle aged, with young (early 20s) pretty Cambodian women. Virak confirms what I think I see.

We pass one couple while walking around a wat on the first day. He is French, middle age, athletic looking with bulky muscles, she is his height, maybe 22, Cambodian, slim, well curved and dressed for the cocktail hour. We see them again two days later at another tourist site. When I take their picture, she notices me and unlike the couple we saw on Cat Ba Island (a short overweight Chinese business man and a young Vietnamese woman who would not look at us) this woman looks me right in the eye.

The darkest side of prostitution is rampant here. On the back of the tourist map that the money exchange service hands you with your cash at the airport, and on bill boards lining the only road leading from the airport into town, the message is clear in any language, because it’s told in pictures. Sex with children will get you put in jail.

The uncontrollable joy and shouted hellos with which the Vietnamese showered upon us are missing from these people. There is a flat, blank look in their eyes. Incentive and curiosity is absent from their expressions as is the quick, easy joy of seeing someone new. Virek says his country’s people don’t have much religious faith because long ago they stopped trusting their leaders. Cambodia is run by a Vietnamese dictator and before him the Vietnamese themselves ruled for ten years and before that was the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. The companies that are building all the new hotels in Siem Reap are either owned by the dictator or his friends or are foreign owned so the wealth is not going into the local population.

For my three days here, I feel not only like a tourist, but an employer, having hired a guide and car and driver, having decided to say at the nicest hotel in town. I am uncomfortably comfortable.

Cambodia, Pich Sovirak, My Guide

2007-10-06T18:27:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

He is available just 45 minutes after I request a guide and driver and instantly I like him. He is tall with a slender build but stands comfortably in his body. He looks like a runner and by the end of the day; I’ve learned he ran the 100 meters and the 4 x 100 relay in high school. Now, at age 31, he was born during the second year of Pol Pot’s reign, he plays volley ball three or four times a week. To accompany his easy, confident gate and lean, straight body is direct eye contact and a quick smile.

He is one of 400 specially trained tour guides for the temples of Angkor, which are called wats. They have guides trained in every language except Korean, but are now training some who know that language as well.

Virak, the name he goes by, speaks English and Cambodian. Most of his guests are English and Australian, few are American. He’s been at it twelve years.

His father was a college professor, teaching geography and French, but when the Khmer Rouge took over, he was sent away to work in the fields as a farmer. Virak, along with his mother and siblings were moved as well, but separated from their father. A two-year-old sister died of starvation. Another sister was murdered at age four. It was the time of the killing fields. “Every family lost members during those years,” he said. Today, his three remaining siblings are all teachers in secondary schools. His father, still alive, has had a stroke and is paralyzed on one side. Virak’s wife gave birth to their second son four months ago. Their seven-year-old son will start second grade in October. And his wife will bring the baby to school when she returns to teaching second grade in the fall.

He takes me to Angkor Wat first, the largest and most well known of the temples. In clear careful diction, Virak tells the story of the wat, the king who built it, and how it is being preserved. Like me, he likes wide open space and points it out every time we come upon some, the first being Angkor Wat’s moat, 190 meters wide and 1.5 kilometers long (more than a mile) by 1.3 kilometers --a giant rectangle. It is the first open space in this country of jungle that we enjoy together. Three or four times during our next three days, we pass this moat on the way to a different wat and each time he gives the dimensions and restates the fact that it has never been empty of water. He likes that truth.

Inside the first wall of Angkor Wat is a massive field large enough for landing a fair size passenger jet. It’s the second stretch of open space he acknowledges. Nine hundred years ago, this area was the site of hundreds of wooden houses where the citizens of the city lived. Each place Virak stops, I take a picture, then he points to a different subject and I take another picture. We move to the wat’s center section, a series of walled off square, each higher than the last as we move closer to the center. Along a tall wall, Virak points out a mural and recites the mythical stories of good, depicted by monkeys, fighting evil, represented by man-beasts.

At the base of the steep steps that lead to the highest level, (each wat was built with a central tower or mountain where the gods lived) he explains that the climb is steep and dangerous, the steps tall and narrow, because it takes work to reach heaven.

Virak tells me to climb, look around, and to find a nice quiet place to set and let the calmness of the place come over me. For 45 minutes, I enjoy yet another open space above the jungle canopy. Unlike much of America where a high vantage point reveals a distant skyscraper, radio tower, water tower or power line, the horizon here is a clean straight line of green tree tops.

Our time together runs about six hours the first day. For Thursday he insists we drive 18 kilometers away and visit a small wat, built by a priest, with what is considered to be the most beautiful detailed carvings. The place is called Banteay Srei and he is right. Examining the carvings fill me with a deep joy and a sense of privilege to be in the middle of a jungle, in the middle of Cambodia, on the other side of the world from my world.

We discuss everything from how Bush has seriously damaged the international reputation of America (a subject he brings up) to local drug and alcohol abuse to the wide spread poverty and prostitution in Siem Reap, the tourist town just a few miles south of the wats. He is open with the facts, careful with his opinion and always friendly. Over our second lunch, I find out his birthday is January 5th, my is the 4th, and I describe the steady emotional state of Capricorns and he agrees he is that way and we share another laugh.

Bao Cap, When The People Starved

2007-10-06T18:13:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

We had only one day to explore Hanoi. At dinner the night before I asked Tanh what we should see. The Museum of Ethnology, he said, “Make sure to see the Bao Cap exhibit that documents when the whole country starved.” What I didn’t know until our museum visit was that Tanh was handing me the answer to one of my questions. What had happened in Vietnam since 1975?

For me, after the last helicopter left the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, the country dropped into the back of my thinking, my knowledge of it never deepening beyond the occasional release of another war movie. One of the things I was looking for and what Tanh in answering my question was giving me was a chance to understand the history of the country over the last 32 years or at least draw an outline of it. His emphasis on the Bao Cap exhibit showed again the candor we had experienced from him all along.

After the country was unified in 1975, the communist leaders moved quickly to socialize the southern economy turning food production into a forced collectivization. This time of “subsidy economy” was called “Bao Cap”.

The underlying goal was the maintenance of a tight control over the people and for the leaders the preservation of their power. The result was chaos. All rice distribution was controlled by the government, which set up a system of rice stores. Citizens were only allowed to buy rice at the store where they were registered. It was as if you were assigned to buy all your food at one particular grocery store. Each family was given rice coupons on which appeared their names, their jobs and the amount of rice they were allotted. The lines at these rice stores grew long and the stores were often closed before everyone received their ration. Not surprisingly, corruption was widespread with the most powerful and wealthiest people able to obtain more and better food then the vast majority. Often because the best rice never made it into the stores, the people were forced to trade their coupons for “moldy, smelly, worm-eaten rice.”

With no incentives in place for farmers to obtain more food by working harder or growing more crops, rice production dropped.

Stacked on top of this weak economic structure were a number of events in the late 1970s and early 80s that shattered the economy.

Because their incentive based work life in the south was taken away, hundreds of thousands of people, mainly ethnic Chinese, fled the country on foot or by boat causing a drain in vital human capital. It also didn’t help that thousands of the south’s intellectual and government leaders along with many skilled and educated people, who did not leave the country after the war, were interned in re-education camps.

During the late 1970s the country suffered major floods and drought that severely reduced food production.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978 after the Phnom Penh government had claimed part of Vietnam’s southern region as its own and had instigated a series of border clashes. Vietnam quickly took control of Cambodia. To fight back, the Khmer Rouge retreated into isolated areas and began a guerrilla war which forced Vietnam to station 200,000 troops in Cambodia. United States and most of the other western countries instigated an embargo on Vietnam to protest this war, which isolated the country. To punish Vietnam for invading Cambodia, China launched a brief invasion. This month-long war destroyed many northern towns, but it also stung the Chinese. It is reported that China may have lost 50,000 troops during this revenge act. For Vietnam the cost of supporting troops in Cambodia and defending its border with China grew high.

Meat and rice became scarce. The lines at the rice stores grew longer.

The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union cost Vietnam its only supportive nation, but in watching how glasnost and perestroika worked in Russia, Vietnam was given an idea for how to get out of its troubles.

Under a new leader, Nguyen Van Linh, the party’s motto became “to change or to die.” A contract-system was set up with the farmers to encourage cultivation. They were allowed, for the first time since the war, to sell their excess crop. In 1989, when Tanh was 13, rice production for the first time in years, increased significantly.

The new leadership understood it had to end its forced isolation with the world. Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia and signed a peace agreement with the country in 1991. Hanoi began assisting the US in determining the fate of Americans missing-in-action, which in turn led to the US lifting its embargo in 1994 and establishing diplomatic relations with Hanoi in 1995. That same year the country became a member of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and foreign companies began to invest again.

Today Nike is the largest employee in Vietnam. The farmers are expanding their crops and everywhere one senses the Vietnamese see a more abundant future. Tanh, with his girlfriend, own a motorbike. Their country has a long way to go, still. But for some, like Tanh, it is happening now. For his two weeks of care and guidance, a group of six American cycling tourists gave him a $600 US dollar tip – a little less than Vietnam’s average annual per capita income.

A Village of Boat Builders

2007-10-06T18:05:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

On Saturday, July 28 we cycled 52 miles along the coast north of Nha Trang. Part of the ride took us onto the Hon Gom Peninula. The isthmus that connects the mainland to the high mountains that dominate the southern end of this land was nothing more then a thin, five mile stretch of sand dunes covered by beach grass, small shrubs and short trees. The asphalt road we followed was long and straight and empty of vehicles. There was a wonderful quietness about the place. On our right was Ben Goi Bay and the low tide had drawn down the water enough to strand in mud the anchored fishing boats. On our left was a most curious and beautiful discovery -- especially for the boy in me who loves working with wood – a village of boat builders.

Vietnams fishing boats, the sea worthy kind, have a number of similar characteristics; gracefully accentuated bows that lift high above the deck, hulls that are painted a bright, beautiful blue, and gunwales accentuated in a different color, often red. The boat’s center cabin will be covered in bright colors as well and geometric designed will accessorize the cabin’s walls, doors, and window shingles.

The most interesting personality trait of these boats can be found close to the bow, just below the gunwale. Each boat, and this is without exception, is adorned with whale eyes. The eyes are drawn in the shape elongated teardrops and painted white, their pupils a long, narrow dash of black. Fishman revere the whale as their protector from the dangers of the sea.

To our great fortune the village had boats in all stages of production. We saw the beginning framework of one boat that looked like the skeleton of a giant armadillo on its back. Wooden ribs had been pegged into the keel using long, wooden spikes. To keep these spikes from loosening a small piece of white wood, no bigger than your thumb, was wedged into its crown much like how the ends of pegs are treated in a post-and-beam house. Everywhere giant C-clamps were holding boards together.

To curve the end of a long board for use in building a bow, these craftsmen would wedge one end of the board against the bottom of a palm tree and then about five feet away rest the board over a stack of cinderblocks, about the height of your knees. Using this stack as their fulcrum, these self-sufficient people would hang weights; heavy stones cradled in nets or cinderblocks on the far end and let the weight over time bend the board into a curve.

These boat builders are proud of their craft and rightfully so. The whole time I was examining their work, I was fantasizing about how I could buy one of these boats and get it back to Lake Waccamaw, for no other reason than to have the most beautiful and unique boat on the lake.

We stopped in front of one boat, almost finished. Sealing varnish was being brushed onto the completed hull, blue paint was being applied, and an elongated section of unpainted wood just under the gunwale was being reserved for the whale’s eyes. When I asked, by gesturing with camera in hand, if I could take the builder’s picture, he proudly stepped in front of his boat and faced me. But before he stilled himself, he pointed to his right shoulder where a peculiar bulge protruded—bone covered by skin. Was it an old war injury? He took his cigarette out of his mouth, his eyes locked onto mine, and he posed in front of his beautiful new fishing boat with its whale eyes.

Home Again

2007-09-27T16:14:00.001-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

I am still suffering from jet lag when I visit the Saigon Market in Wilmington, just days after our return. I am Vietnam-sick and need to smell rice and dried fish and see indecipherable Vietnamese letters. I breathe in deeply the salty starchy aromas as I meander the aisles, lingering in front of a display of clay pots that remind me of the cooking school in Hoi An, where we learned to cook eggplant. I walk past large bags of rice and wonder on what street in what village these kernels dried out and how many dogs, motor bikes and cyclists ran over them. I fill my basket with guava juice, lemon grass, Vietnamese chili sauce, greens and dried rice paper, resolving to work on a recipe that makes fresh rice wraps.

The owner, Lan, came to America soon after the war and settled in Wilmington with her American husband whom she met during the war. They have two children, a daughter who is soon to marry and a son who works in the store and remembers me, the crazy woman who planned to cycle Vietnam in the heat of the summer.

Lan smiles when I tell her I’ve just returned. She pulls photo album after photo album out from under the cash register and shows me pictures of her visits to Vietnam.
I admire the photos. They are taken by photographers that follow tourists around, snap dozens of shots, develop and deliver the finished photos to their hotels at night. Lan uses this method of picture taking on all her visits. It is cheap she says. I think she is also glad to employ them and share her American wealth.

There are pictures from Hue, the ancient capital, where a brother lives, along with nieces and nephews, their spouses and children, dozens of them dressed in their best clothes at weddings and restaurants. There are pictures taken in the old Forbidden City on the same steps where we took pictures just weeks ago. She shows me one picture of her mother dressed in a royal costume made of a rich red robe and stiff ornate hat, taken in a tourist restaurant; perhaps the same one in which we ate.

She always starts her Vietnam visits in her hometown; south of Saigon, where her mother lives in a house Lan built with money she earned in her store here in Wilmington. We saw numerous homes all across Vietnam financed by money sent home by Vietnamese living elsewhere. There is a special word for Vietnamese ex pats, who left under duress and like many refugees, on the one hand long to return to their homeland and on the other are happy living the American dream, possible in America. In a culture that honors ancestors and whose social structure is built on a backbone of family millions of dollars annually are sent back to Vietnam.

Her relatives tease her about her soft American ways. Lan installed air conditioning in one room in her Vietnamese home, finding the heat intolerable. Yet all her relatives fully appreciate the indoor plumbing she installed one year. On each trip home, Lan invites family members to vacation with her in Dalat, in the highlands north-west of Saigon, so they too can enjoy the cool mountain air and great green pine forests. She shows me pictures of her daughter dressed in multicolored indigenous tribal garments, her arms draped around her Vietnamese cousins. Both her children have visited Vietnam.

Lan’s trips are expensive since she is expected to host her extended family and spends upwards of $20,000 between meals, gifts, trips and home improvements. Her mother died last year and she has not felt well since her most recent visit. She doesn’t know when she’ll return next. I wonder if she has Malaria or some other foreign bug our American bodies are not accustomed to. I urge her to see an infectious disease doctor. She says others also have suggested that and maybe she will. Meanwhile, she is always cold and is on this hot day wrapped in a wool sweater.

I leave the shop promising to visit again soon. I’ll bring my photographs, digital images on a laptop, so she can see the similarities. I’ll also show her my pictures of Hanoi, a city she has never visited, but says she will on her next visit. I will too.

Bad Dog! Bad Dog!

2007-09-27T16:09:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

Preparing for this trip took time and thought, not to mention shots and shopping. The shots numbered over ten, depending on what one might have previously had and the shopping was to outfit us in bright bike clothes, special wash and wear underwear and a big first aid kit.

We put in as many miles on the bike as our schedules allowed. Carving peddling hours out of already crammed days was not easy. Jonathan and I had a goal to ride 100 miles a week, 50 during the week and at least one long ride on the weekends. We were more or less successful, although we found no hills in eastern North Carolina, so our training was bereft of an important ingredient. This proved to be a challenge when we got to Vietnam.

We had many lovely and some tired early morning rides around Greenfield Lake and longer rides at Lake Waccamaw, rides out to Wrightsville Beach and one delightful ride on July fourth along the country roads of Columbus Country just west of Lake Waccamaw during which Jonathan and I were able to put into practice some valuable advice learned from our neighbor and avid cyclist, Norm.

Norm, a retired heart surgeon and teacher is the mildest mannered of men. His natural tendency is to smile and assuage any feelings of discomfort. A formidable Scrabble player, I had never heard him raise his voice, even in delight, as he lays down a seven letter word on the triple word tile and accumulates 135 points.

So it came as a complete shock when on one ride around Lake Waccamaw as a dog lunges towards us, barking, teeth bared, Norm belts out in a loud and mean voice Bad Dog! Bad Dog! Startled, the dog stops for a moment and we speed off. Norm explains: This is exactly what owners do when their dog misbehave so in that confused moment when the dog is registering this command, you are given a fraction of time to take off and save your ankle.

That is what Jonathan and I practice riding the back roads of Columbus County. Evidently in this part of the country, every home comes equipped not only with a gun and a pickup truck but with multiple dogs. On otherwise quiet and bucolic curvy roads through cornfields and past barns, we peddle towards and away from barking dogs, strengthening our calves and thighs and vocal chords. Bad Dog! Bad Dog!

This may be good training for America, but I knew it would be impossible to learn Bad Dog! Bad Dog! in Vietnamese with the right intonation. I was going to have to wing it and rely on the three preventative rabies shots we received in case of a bite from dog or monkey.

In Vietnam, we saw monkeys, but none on the loose and passed hundreds of dogs. Sweet, docile dogs, large and small, they meandered along the roads we cycled, slept and lounged around. At first I thought I was seeing dead dogs, expired from the heat or lack of food. But these were Zen dogs. They hardly looked at us. They just didn’t care about the passing traffic, not the Vietnamese on motorbikes, water buffalo, or Westerners on bicycles wearing bright clothes and helmets, looking like they came from outer space. Who can blame them for their lethargy for every day in Vietnam was dog day hot.

Only once did I encounter a barking dog. I was cycling behind Mike and this medium size scraggly looking dog really did act like his American cousins. He seemed so happy chasing Mike. Wagging his tail, it was as if this dog finally realized that this is what dogs did, chase cyclists! I did wonder if the dog planned to take a nip at Mike’s foot but there was something in the initial moments of the fray, when it looked like the dog was just having fun, trying something new. Mike, understandably, took off, yelling in English, Bad Dog! Bad Dog! I coasted past the now panting and exhausted dog who turned back into a Vietnamese dog and lay down and played dead.

What we had most to fear was not a dog bite, but rather running over the toe of a Vietnamese child who, all over the country, seemed to play the same game. How many Hellos and High Fives can you get from a Westerner riding through the Village? At first it was charming and endearing, but as the trip went on, I began to fear the shrieks and cries wondering if it was going to be in this village that I was going to run over a little foot.

Some rides, like the day we rode miles of levees, past rice fields and fish farms just south of Hanoi, they could see us coming from a long way off. Along with the heat waves rising off flat parched land, rose their many voices followed by small bands of charging children. They’d stop abruptly, line up, arms raised; hands open and wait for us to pass. . Depending on how tired I was, I’d either come in close and hi five them, or swerve away, needing all of my energy to keep upright after a long hot hard day of cycling.

Jonathan loved the game right back and came up with one of his own-- stop and take their picture and show it to them. They loved this almost as much as hand slapping. Entire villages loved this. The teenagers, in teenager fashion, would hold back, but they too, came forward and laughed to see their image and ask for more. The girls would giggle, the boys swagger and the younger ones jump up and down. To Jonathan’s dismay, one father put his baby on the back of his bike.

Overnight Train Trip

2007-09-12T18:16:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

Between Hue, the French colonial capital and even older Nguyen Dynasty capital and Ninh Binh, 56 miles southeast of Hanoi, we took an overnight train. The 600-kilometer ride through this north central part of Vietnam lasted twelve hours from 4 pm to 4 am, during which we crossed the DMZ.

We settled into our cabins and dined on Vietnamese style guacamole that Amy and Tanh had cobbled together with ingredients bought at an outdoor market. Tanh was correct in his assumption that we would not like the boxed food included in the cost of the ticket. After dinner while the last of the sunlight waned, I stepped into the aisle and began taking pictures of the passing countryside. On the train’s west side were tall distant mountains, jagged silhouettes in the dimming light. On the train’s east side stretched flat, rice-paddy-covered green fields as far as you could see.

Since taking pictures had become a bit of an obsession with me by this point in the trip, I clicked away, hoping to capture something interesting, but explicitly wanting an image of the train’s long line of cars. After tightening the camera’s nylon handle securely around my wrist, I would stick my left arm as far as I could out the open window and click away. Then with my hand still stiff-armed, I turned the camera and pointed it on a few of us looking out the window. When we flipped the camera over and examined the digital image of smiling faces and wind blown hair we went wild with laughter. The fun was contagious and everyone wanted in. Again and again two or three or five of us would crowd around the window and stick our faces into the wind while I clicked away. Then we’d jumped into position, heads close together to view the results and invariably break out in laughter.

It was one of the most joyous moments of our trip, filling us all with youthful energy. Here we were, all children again in a cabin hurling northward through the night, half way through our trip, acting just like the children who surrounded us in village after village, who wanted us to take their pictures and then once seeing the images, would exploded into laughter.

Later that night, after the women had headed to their cabin for sleep, Mike asked Tanh if he wanted to watch any of the war documentaries he had brought along. Tanh was very interested and for the next hour Mike played different parts of two or three CDs on his laptop. Here we were, four men watching a war documentary, sharing a train compartment, sipping a little Scotch. If Tanh and I or Mike or Andrew were 18 or 20 or 25 in 1968 and in this country we could have been fighting each other. Andrew had a draft number, but was never called up. Tanh was born just north of Hanoi in 1976. His uncle was killed fighting for North Vietnam. On a metaphorical plain, we killed his uncle and Tanh beat our entire army into retreat, giving America the first lost war in its history.

I couldn’t imagine fighting this kind man after having cycled together for a week, eaten dozens of meals together, having received his help with everything from staying hydrated through the hottest part of the day to making sure I didn’t take the wrong turn, to showing me, the only one who wanted to go, the old Cham towers at the end of one of our longest cycling days. This was his country yet he was speaking my language.

In this moment and there were many like it, I was grateful to be here, grateful to experience it with Amy and the others so we could be witnesses to each others lives, grateful that I had not had to come here as a soldier.

My Lai -- 504

2007-09-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

It is hard to understand this massacre. I try to make sense of it by reading the old newspaper clippings at My Lai. There are many in the museum display case including one from the Springfield Union from Amy's hometown.

William Calley was the only member of his platoon convicted. Five others were tried but acquitted, but they had all lifted their guns toward a face, a torso, a bent form, a child, an old woman and they had not stopped. During four hours in the early morning of March 16, 1968, Calley and his men, helicoptered into this small hamlet since no roads lead to it, burned down 19 thatched homes, raped, and killed hundreds villagers. A black granite wall inside the large windowless mausoleum like museum records this mass murder in sharp details: 504 killed, including 182 women, 17 pregnant at the time, 173 children, and 60 men over the age of sixty. Their names, ages and genders are listed. William Calley served less than five months of a life sentence before being paroled and allowed to return to his home in Columbus, Georgia to run a family jewelry store.

The frustration among the GIs was high. The Tet offensives had just happened six weeks earlier. The My Lai area was believed to be a stronghold of the Viet Cong. There was intelligence that the VC was in the hamlet. The U.S. solders were on a search-and-destroy mission in a free-fire zone which meant all the rules were left back at camp.

The killing was initially covered up by high-ranking army officers, but in November of that year, the story hit the newspapers. In 1970 Life magazine printed 51 colored photos taken by an army photographer who was on the ground with the troops. These photos are on displayed on the walls of the museum and show the gruesome facts: a huddled group of 15 women and children just before being executed, two boys cowering in the road moments before being shot, soldiers gunning down farmers forced into an irrigation ditch. 170 died in the ditch. Its walls are now cased in concrete to preserve it. Was this whole thing a revenge killing for Tet? Who came up with this evil plan and how high a rank was he? Why’d they bring along a photographer?

The hamlet of My Lai now looks like a well manicured garden, with neatly pruned bushes, orderly plantings, walkways, leafy trees and just beyond the grounds, acres of bright green rice paddies. Although a tall palm in the middle of the village still shows the scars of bullet holes. The air is clean and still and quiet, the smell of gun powder and cries of the dying have long been brushed away by the wind. Carried, I fear, to Iraq.

One US helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, tried to save some of the Vietnamese once he realized this infraction had turned into a slaughter of the innocent. He set his chopper down in a field and beckoned villagers to run to him. When member of Calley’s platoon saw his actions, they took aim at these running civilians, but the helicopter pilot aimed his craft’s machine right back at them and warned them not to shoot. The pilot managed to fly about a dozen villagers safely out of the area.

The museum guide, a young woman, dropped into an emotional trance when she began her talk while we stood outside next to where one of the village huts once stood. Her voice turned distant and weepy, even though I could tell she had recited these words verbatim many times. The last thing she told us, as we stood in front of the wall of names, was that her grandfather, two uncles and one aunt were killed that day.

Cu Chi Tunnels

2007-09-12T18:04:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

They raked the dirt into rice paddies, poured it into streams, and dumped it into bomb craters so the Americans couldn’t tell they were digging under them. They started these tunnels in the late 1940’s when they were fighting the French. By the mid 60’s their underground world included kitchens, theaters, dormitories, printing ships, weapon cashes as well as 125 miles of tunnels.

When they were not excavating, they were extracting gunpowder from unexploded bombs or artillery shells fired by the US or they were setting booby traps made of bamboo spikes or waiting out the constant shelling the Americans threw at this province just north of Saigon.
Using only short handled hoes and small reed baskets for carrying out this hard clay, the VC created a three-tiered network of tunnels that dropped to depths from 10 to 30 feet.

As I crawled through them, they zigzagged every few yards. They were designed never to run straight for long, it helped limit damage if there was a fire fight. The tunnels were almost pitch dark because the few navigational lights that the museum strung along the walls were far apart and gave off little light. I crouched on my toes, curled up into a tight ball and used my hands as a second set of feet, swinging forward like a monkey. This way I was able to move quickly and not have to crawl on my knees.

At one point the tunnel dropped down a small square hatch and I found myself on a deeper level. The place felt like the inside of a maze and I could have easily taken a turn or two and not known from which direction I had come or which way was out.

I passed a small opening on my left side, an off shoot; probably a body’s length long and I imagined it was where someone would have slept. I imagined them feeling the ground shake as the bombs fell around them, fearing their exit would be caved in by the next explosion. The US bombed the area so extensively it damaged 70% of the tunnels. I imagined the man or woman, they worked and fought side by side, whose niche this was waiting and listening to hear whether the US would, after the bombs stopped falling, next try to fill the tunnel with water or flames or chemicals or send in a tunnel rat, a volunteer with a rope tied to him, who would start shooting at the dark. I imagined lots of things and was grateful when the exit appeared and I climbed the ladder to sunshine.

Second World

2007-09-12T17:55:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

In the afternoon of our eighth day, we cycled for hours through a long series of country villages that were surrounded by cemeteries, an area just north of Cau Hai Lagoon. There was no apparent order or pattern to the area, no separation between homes, hay stacks and graves. We’d pass a house or small shop that stood by the road and next to it laid a grave or behind it stretched acres of graves, large and small, facing one direction or the other, some in the starkness of the sun, others dappled in the shadows of long leaf pines.

The people here live in humble dwellings, wooden shacks or brick, one-room structures, yet they spend significant amounts of money to build a grave to honor their ancestors. The graves are made of brick, finished over with plaster, covered with ceramic tile or painted with bright reds, blues and yellows. From a distance these elaborate structures looked like enlarged pieces of ceramic art that you’d find in an antique store. Some of the graves were in the shape of lotus flowers, some stood two stories high, some used beautiful, dark red marble or stone for their sarcophaguses, some employed arches, high walls, and had great detail in their roofs.

Tanh, our guide, explained that at first when someone dies they are buried in a coffin and put in the ground with a simple marker or nothing at all. I saw many mounds of sand that looked like unmarked graves. After three years the casket is dug up, the bones removed, placed in a jar and put in a permanent grave, the location carefully selected, often with the help of a geomancer. Tanh explains that this is all a part of the Taoist beliefs. He says there is a second world where the dead live and from where they watch the living. The more the living honor them, in part by giving them a handsome grave that some actually planned for themselves, the more the dead will help in this life.

The guide books say Taoism is the least visible and most mystical element of Vietnam’s mix of beliefs. It’s a philosophy that dwells on nothingness, on the yin and yang symbol that emphasizes the harmony between contradictions. It’s a belief system that focuses on the absence of personal ambition, desire and sensual pleasure. It values simplicity.

Tanh told me that after his father retires in a year or two, he will start looking for his brother (Tanh’s uncle) who was killed during the American War and whose body was never found. He will use a gifted psychic to help him locate the body. The Vietnamese army employs five such psychics who have help relatives of the dead find the remains of 10,000 soldiers.

Tanh’s story left me wondering what kind of grave has his father, in his daydreams, envisioned for his brother.

Chicken Village -- a love story

2007-09-12T17:27:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

Outside of Dalat, in the south central highlands, after we cycled our first downhill, an 11 kilometer ride down a steep mountain road with cars and buses whizzing by at close quarters, we turned off the highway onto a dirt road heavily rutted by rain and entered a small village. The residences were members of the L’Ha one of the many hill tribes that the government is moving off the mountains in an attempt to stop their slash and burn approach to farming and integrate them into modern ways.

This was Chicken Village, and in this tribe, it is a custom for the women to pick their husbands. Among the cluster of wooden buildings there stood a 20-foot high concrete statue of a chicken. The concrete bird is a replacement of the previous wooden one, which after long standing eventually deteriorated.

The story behind the chicken goes like this: A beautiful but poor farm girl fell in love with the son of a very rich family and asked him to marry. The family did not want the marriage, but custom dictated that they could not outright deny it. Instead they set up an impossible requirement. She would first have to bring them a chicken with long, perfectly formed claws, an impossible request. She accepted this request, set out to find this perfect bird and was never seen again.

The story ends there, at least the facts and I’m left with only my imagination to pluck this bird, cook it and discover what it tastes like.

Symbolically, the young girl in love has nothing. She is poor, but her heart is strong. Inside she is filled with the great treasure--the ability to love. Sadly her wealth is invisible to most others. She wants the young, rich boy. She wants the golden ring, perfection, the external picture of having-it-all. Our story teller did not say how the boy felt about the girl. It’s not really his story. He’s just a symbol of the temporal mountain top. We don’t know anything about his capacity to love. Was he a spoiled brat? A momma’s boy? Full of bravado? Or was he a strong, handsome, cowboy? Was he kind or selfish, smart or slow? All we know was that his family was rich. He symbolizes perfection, a member of the highest caste.

She has a very courageous character, revealed by two acts. One: she asks the boy to marry her. She goes against the norm, what’s the expected, reaches above her status. She wants more. She wants it all and she asks for it.

The family’s request is also symbolic. It’s a demand for perfection, for the impossible. You want the moon; you must first bring us the moon we want. She asked for perfection, the boy’s family asked for perfection back. They, the family, by throwing out their impossible requirement, are keeping themselves safely locked away from the poor, the imperfect, from other humans, from the power of the heart.

Her second great act of courage or stupidity or surrender, depending on how romantic you are, is that she actually goes in search of the perfect chicken and of course is never heard from again.
And here’s where you can choose how to garnish your now cooked chicken.
What happened to her?

(1) She walked over the hill and threw herself off the nearest cliff understanding she would never be able to do the impossible. Sounds like a Shakespearean ending. (2) She walked over the hill and searched and searched and eventually found the perfect chicken but by then she had come to realize she didn’t need a man who couldn’t go against his family and love her back. She’d outgrown the need for a whip. (3) She walked over the hill, found the chicken, realized its worth, took it to Saigon, sold it, which made her rich and she found that she had to beat away the men. (4) She walked over the hill, never found the chicken, fell in love with wandering the road and became a guide for Spice Roads. (5) She walked over the hill, traveled to America, realized she didn’t need a man and ran for president.

The Monkeys and the Communist

2007-08-07T06:08:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

Amy, Amy.
Jonathan calls to me from under his mosquito netting.
Amy, there is something in our room.
The sounds of the jungle pale against the rustling cellophane.
Are you eating something? I ask, still groggy.
No, there is something in our room. I think it is an animal, it might be a monkey.

We’re staying in the simple but clean rooms in the Cuc Phuong National Park after a tired but good day of cycling through flat farmland dotted by rugged carst hills. We’ve seen the ancient capital and worship rooms of the first king to unify Vietnam around 900 CE. We have grilled goat for lunch in a tourist restaurant. There are either tourist restaurants or sidewalk cafes eaten on ones haunches, and not much in between, especially in the countryside. restaurants. Rebecca and I especially enjoyed the grilled goat with sesame marinade.

We arrive at the National Park late in the day and are all exhausted. This is our first day after the train ride during which none of us could sufficiently rest, although the hard beds preferred by the Vietnamese should have prepared us for the metal bunks of the train. Fortunately Spice Roads has organizedfor us government hotel rooms so when we arrive at 4:30 am in Ninh Binh, we shower, rest and are ready for breakfast before we start our ride for the day.

At breakfast I go into the kitchen to borrow a knife to peel the mangoes lefover from our train picnic. Very clean and large, a woman enters with fresh chicken and cilantro as the chef is busy boiling broth, a pile of noodles ready on the table. That and some good and strong Vietnamese coffee helps take the edge off.

A monkey? I think. We did catch a frog earlier in the corner of our room and safely released it out of our front door. I could understand how the frog squeezed in between the bamboo windows, but a monkey?

A monkey? I ask my imaginative husband.

Maybe not, he says, I think it is a rat.

I don’t like this. A monkey is one thing, a rat is another, not so romantic.
A rat? I say and wrap myself in my blue silk sleeping bag and carefully tuck the mosquito netting around me. The light switch is far away all the way across the room by the door and there is no light on the nightstand. I wait for my husband to act like a husband. He does and bravely goes forth across the ceramic floor towards the constant rustling. The room lights up and he pulls the TV table away from the wall.

It’s a mouse.

A mouse?

Yes a mouse. He’s eating something. I’m going to leave him alone.

You’re not going to do anything?

No, I’m going back to bed.

So he’s just going to stay in here all night?

Yes, he’s under the refrigerator, he won’t bother us.

What about the pineapple? And here, I say extending my hand from under the mosquito netting, put these cough drops in the refrigerator.

He does and as he is I scamper from under my netting to under his and curl up like any mouse fearring woman. Later on I wake to sound of rustling and have to the go to the bathroom. I wake my husband so he can get out of bed and turn on the light for me. He does.

After our government breakfast we cycle up an eleven kilometer path in the National Forest, past huge banana plants, with fronds larger than me. Halfway up the hill, we stop to explore an ancient cave. We try to negotiate with a group of Vietnamese tourists to give us their rental flashlights and we’d give them the deposit money but we fell into a language gap and entered the huge cave without a light. Without a flashlight Jonathan uses the flash from his camera to show us the extensive caves that recede into the mountain. It is remarkable and we have to hold Jonathan back from crawling out of sight. He takes lots of pictures. The stairs up and down to the cave are more treacherous than much of our ride.

It is a hard ride up, a constant 10% grade and it takes us close to two hours. The tropical forest is thick, shades the rode and beautiful. Butterflies flock in the patches of sun and we greatly appreciate the cover of the forest, a welcome and seldom break from the heat. The reward is the downhil. We are all pleased to coast down, save a few inclinces, and marvel at our endurance. As Harve said to Andrew and Shari, this will be on the job training, this ride, and it is true for us all.

The National Forest is home to a Primate Rescue Center. It is illegal to hunt monkeys, bu the indigenous tribes have done so for years, for food and now they can also sell a monkey for a lot of money on the black market. The confiscated monkeys are brought here until they can be safely released We ride directly to the center to tour it before our lunch.

It is lunch time and the monkeys are happily chewing on fresh greens, the baby onces frolic and the large monkeys swing across the tops of heir cages. And they sing, they sing and sing, louder and louder, until all else is muted by their chatter.

At lunch Mike and I are especially happy when they bring out two big plates of French fries, just like the ones we had the night before for dinner. We take the bottle of hot sauce that Rebecca had gifted to Mike and mix it with the lime/salt pepper dipping sauce to feast.

The afternoon is a 20 kilometer amazing ride through the levied farmlands, past villages, houses made of mud, crab boats, water buffalo, rice paddies, boaters who use their feat to oar; there are tiny dugouts with hand paddles and larger boats with canopies. We veer around cyclists carrying chickens, fish in water in plastic bags in baskets, pigs, greens, longans (another fruit) all going to market.

It gets hotter. The last hour of our ride Mike reports, the temperature increases another 5 degrees to 99 Fahrenheit. We are all happy to reach our van for the transfer to Hai Phong.

From the rustic outreaches of the National forest and train saga to elegant Harbour View hotel. Some of had our laundry done at the National Park and the rest of us who did not have our clothes washed in the rivers of the forest send out our sweaty dirty clothes, including headbands for an overnight launder and head out for dinner.

We have spent a lot of processing time on how and where we eat. Most of our meals are included in our trip and the Vietnam tourist organization brings us to the tourist restaurants which are often isolated and the food quality inconsistent. We finally negotiate with Tang for the reservations we can not cancel that we order upon arrival instead of the fixed meal, since we’ve discovered that those fixed meals are often prepared hours ahead of time. There was one very hard fish in tomato sauce at a lovely beach side restaurant that was inedible although the mussels in wine, ginger and lemon grass was delicious.

It is late and we are all tired. The bus brings us past bustling outdoor local restaurants to an elegant staircase and three or four attendants usher us up to a private room. This looks like a recipe for disaster. Andrew and Sha (that is what the Vietnamese call her) are drooling to be amongst the people; Jonathan and I lament our decision not to stay in the elegant hotel and order room service; Rebecca in her constancy, is making the most of each experience, and does not seem to have too many regrets, although as the token non family member, perhaps she is on better behavior than the rest of us. We reject the English fixed menu and ask for a la carte. Sha has one menu, Mike the other.

Monkey. Mike says.

Monkey? We ask.

Yes, you can get Monkey here, fried monkey, bear, fried civet, drink juice of monkey brain, cut the throat of the porcupine, bile of bear, tableside slaughter of snake, frog any way you like it. Snack of rat. Seriously. This restaurants caters to all foreigner, especially Chinese business men.

This is going downhill. Mike does not want to give this establishment any money, Rebecca wants Tang to work as interpreter with the manager so she can explain how serving these foods is immoral and they should stop. Tang looks down.

We explain to Rebecca we think this is not a good idea. Sha jumps in and starts to read the other menu. We figure it all out, fresh and fried springrolls, shrimp fried rice, mustard greens in garlic, steamed grouper and a seafood Hot Pot. The meal is very good, Sha and Andrew embrace the VIP room, Rebecca orders red wine from Dalat, we drink local beer and lime sodas.

Did I tell you about the Hot Pot? A boiling broth on a sterno and a plate of fresh fish, that most probably the chef had someone run to a market when we ordered it, and a heaping pile of greens, and a plate of noodles. This is a meal in itself and we all do our best to do it justice. It puts us over budget, and we spend some time making sure we have enough common money to cover it.

We finally settle down and enjoy our meal. Having barraged Tang with all kinds of questions, he as interested as we in the discussions. But this has been a hard day, and the morass of food issues have snared Tang more than once.

Tang, Sha says, Let’s talk about Communism.

On the Train

2007-08-06T12:16:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

We’re on the sleeper train heading from Hue to Nim Dimh. Out in the dark we cross the 17th parallel. Evidently there is not much to show tourists here and there is still a possibility of a hidden landmine so we are covering 600 kilometers of central Vietnam to get just a few hours south of Hanoi for to start the northern segment of our trip.

What a scene it was to get the six of us and all of our luggage onto the train. Tang is the Yin to all of our Yang. We need to tell Spice Roads that Tang is well suited for a bunch of Middle Aged Jewish (mostly) Americans who all like to be in charge and all have the best ideas and have very specific preferences around food.

Speaking of food, today Tang most happily acquiesces our daily allowance for both lunch and dinner and we fend for ourselves at lunch and buy picnic food for the train.

For lunch Andrew and Shari, our most intrepid travelers, although Rebecca follows a close third, head off to the market while Mike, Jonathan and I decide to dine at colonial Hotel Saigon on a Croque Monsieur and pommes frites. Unfortunately for the culinary experience the French have been gone too long. .

I am put in charge of buying food for a picnic on the train and really and truly Tang is completely relieved when he hands to me a total of 360,000 dong, 60,000 dong ($4.00) each to pick out train food. Although a box lunch comes with the train bunk, we ware not convinced that we’ll be able to stomach or digest it. I start shopping by almost blowing the entire budget at the hotel. And although the hotel had lost the recipe for a Croque Monsieur, they did remember how to make a very good chocolate tart. Each cost $1.50.

Next stop, the market. There are no supermarkets in Vietnam, at least that we have seen. Most people do not have freezers and not all have refrigerators, so they buy their fresh foods daily. Which means beautiful displays of all kinds of fruits, vegetables, rices, meats and fishes. We see them daily in small villages and cities. I am accompanied by Tang and I feel like Julia Child. We stop at the first stand and plucked a healthy looking bunch of Ramatans. Mike taught me on day one that although more expensive, the ones with the leaves attached are best. These are small red hairy fruit that one breaks in half revealing a large white grape like fruit with a large seed in the middle. You put the whole thing in your mouth at once and suck the fruit off the seed and then gracefully spit the seed back into the shell, or wherever.

We sample a Mangosteen. Mangosteens have dark purple skin with with a green stem area that looks like a flower. One cuts or tears them open horizontally to expose the inner ball of white plump segments. They are sweet and juicy. Tang negotiates with the vendor for the total of 30,000 dong, or about $1.80, which offests the splurge on pastries. We move on to find long avocadoes, mangoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and red chili’s. We'll have guacamole with crackers for dinner on the train.

The time has come to say good bye to the big white bus that had been trailing us up and down hills, through narrow village roads, to the embarrassment of some of us and relief to others. The driver Tuie and his assistant Fong, drop us and all of our luggage off at the local train station and head off on their a 24 hour trip back to Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the chicks that some of us think Tuie ran over, he did a fantastic job avoiding the pedestrians, children, water buffalo, cows, motor bikes, bicycles carrying bales of wood, ducks, scrap, baskets, tools, buckets, vegetables, fruits and people. And all of this without any of us wearing a seatbelt. They also cleaned our bikes every night, pump air into our tires, fill our water bottles numerous times, Tuie fixed my sunglasses, and most of all, appeared when needed them most.

For me that was a few times up serious climbs when the climb I most needed was to climb inside the bus; or when one or another of us had our bought with stomach maladies and needed to sleep it off, despite our competitive impulse that most of us have, say except Jonathan, to keep up with the group and make sure we get all of our miles in.

To date we have ridden over 300 miles which includes a 100 kilometer ride the day before this train ride that starts at 7:00 am in Hoi Ann and finishes close to 6:00 pm in Hue. We start on a newly paved rode that has replaced the fronts of many homes. The construction literally chopped off the fronts of homes, revealing living rooms and bedrooms, altars and beautiful ceramic walls. The homeowners had been compensated and had new homes just down the road, but some evidently did not want to leave their old homes, so were living in the rooms that still existed, and had turned the expose rooms into a kind of front porch. This beach will be full of high rises the next time we are here.

All over Vietnam there is building. This place is paving roads, building homes, resorts, bridges, you name it. And, we have been fortunate, thanks to Tang and Mike, to ride along many newly paved roads, some so new they are not open for traffice. This was the case of the amazing pass between the hill town of Dalat to the sea side town of Nha Trang, that afforded us a 17 mile downhill. This morning the new road brings us along the sea toward De Nang, a scene of such violence and now a newly built well thought out town with a wide boardwalk along the river.

We ride through town around the bay to the beginning of an 11 kilometer climb up the hills that surround the water to the peak and then a wonderful descent that wound us back around to the sea and to lunch and a swim.

Hot means hot here. But it doesn’t stop us from indulging in a dark Vietnamese coffee, bolstered by sweet condensed milk. That and a few Alieve, and we’re good to go for the afternoon ride through villages that hug the water and take their living from the sea and fields.

It is hot here. Did I say that? We lather on lotion and at night finish up with balms to heal. Rebecca, medicine women aka UCC minister has a remedy for everything. When I tumble over to the top of my bike because my pointed straw hat falls in my face and I squeeze my front brake, Rebecca pulls out arnica and put its under my tongue. I am sure it helped, though I do have a nice bruise just above my elbow.

It was a magical moment , like hundreds of magical moments on this trip, but this one is a personal one. When I realize I am flying over the top of my handle bars, blind, I relax, and fall into a roll. A calm feeling overcomes me and I know I am going to be all right. And the moment I land I dart up, since we are on a narrow bridge just leaving the village of My Son (Mai Lai), and I know there are motorbikes galore. It is scarier for Rebecca, Andrew and Shari who are behind me watching it all, and Rebecca, in order not to hit me, has to abruptly stop and she falls into the guard rail. Rebecca has a matching bruise on her hip. All is well that ends well and the fall doesn't stop me for more than a minute, although when Jonathan sees what is happening, he drops his bike, quickly runs over and somehow cuts his leg, which I felt needs to be tended to with an alcohol swab and Bandaid. Tang and Michael are far enough ahead not to be directly involved in the fray, but when they hear what is happening, they swing back, so what happens to one of us happens to all.

Magical. More than one of us has used that word. So much magic. The people are genuinely curious in us as we pass through their worlds, the water and land and sky in all its variations stun us continually. The blue boats in the lagoons painted with large eyes like whales, round baskets that are boats. The night fishing for squid, making the coast look like a constellation, each fisherman a star luring the white luminescent creatures from below. The surprise of sweet fruits inside dusty dark shells, the shrieks and laughs of the children who swarm us for high fives as we pas through their villages. And I was most worried about dogs nipping my feet, never thinking the worst hazard would be barefoot children rushing us for high fives as we whizz through their worlds. Evidently after the war the birth rate produced 51% males, which is an unusual statistic and today more than 70% of the population is under thirty. That is a significant percentage of potential high fives.

We are a feisty bunch, jabbering non stop about politics and government and the relations between the two; about where to stop, how far to cycle, about who got to the top of the hill first, about Americans abroad, at home, about where it is and isn’t safe to eat. Tang is barraged by us with questions about the Vietnamese, their social, political, familial, religious habits, how they feel about gays and women, abortion, drugs, the deformed. You name it and the social worker, therapist, minister, writer, history buff and dreamer all prod and poke. And he answers us all.

We are right about the food, although Andrew bravely goes forth and opens the little containers and eats what is inside. Rebecca searches for rice and the rest of us breathe through our mouths since the odor is far from appetizing. We sit around and talk and watch Vietnam pass outside the window. We make the guacamole and consume it, chase it down with beer, whiskey and the expensive French pastries. We are all now tucked into our cabins, Shari, Rebecca and I wrapped in our silk sleeping bags, Rebecca purchased in Hoi An and gifted Shari and I with one, saving us from laying any part of our body on the sheets and blanket that also come with the metal bunk. We have only a few hours to sleep before our expected 4:00 am arrival when we'll shower change and, yes, get ready for a full day's ride.

Cham Civilization

2007-08-06T12:09:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

Her wave caught my attention. Standing 50 feet up the side of a steep slope, the little girl could not have been more than six. Behind her moving hand and her shouted “hello” was the dark open mouth of a cave at the base of a giant boulder the size of a 5,000 square foot house. From the switch-backed steps carved into the clay earth that angled up and away from the highway, I believe she was standing in front of her home.

Even though we whizzed by her in seconds, while in the middle of an 18-mile descent on our bicycles thanks to a new road that was cut through the mountains from Da Lat to Nha Trang, I believe she was a member of the Cham civilization. All day during our 57-miles ride we passed through their villages. The evidence of their old ways was everywhere. They are farmers and weavers using a slash and burn approach to prepare steep mountain slopes for their crops. We passed irregular shaped corn fields, stretching up mountainsides that any westerner would need a harness, rope and repel seat to safely descend. Other bits of land, again almost vertical, were black from recent burning. Occasionally we could see a straw hut. Other small structures were roofed with the blue plastic awnings we are use to seeing on homes damaged by hurricanes. None of these structures were close to each other and none easy to spot. I believe these people try to live an invisible life. The government does not like them burning the mountainsides. They have laws against it. And they have, in many places, moved the Cham and other indigenous tribes into villages off the mountains.

In these villages, we receive the now familiar “hello” repeated by children who stop whatever they are doing and run to the side of the road to watch us pass. There is an explosive joy in their greetings. Often the sight of us sets off so much energy in them that they can’t control their jumping and arm waving. Many reach out a hand to be touched. On one day, I must have tapped 50 different hands. These people are not used to seeing such funny looking foreigners.

All over the country, the Vietnamese use the road in front of their farm or home for drying rice, potatos, fish, or the sliced up round disks of cassava which are laid out in long, narrow stretches on woven beds or plastic tarps. We tried hard to avoid running over these crops.

The guild books say that the Cham lived as a strong organized civilization in the south-central coastal region of Vietnam from about 600 AD to 1471. They worshipped Hindu gods and their temples and art are of India influence. The Cham tower that I walked around in Nha Trang was built to pay homage to the 10 gods who taught this civilization its two great skills, farming and weaving.

The tower is one of three that sit on a bluff overlooking the sea in the northern part of Nha Trang. The tallest tower is seven stories high. The method of its construction is still a mystery. It is built of red bricks, about the same size as we use, but there is no mortar between them, yet these towers have lasted more than 1,000 years. The guide who walked me around said the most popular theory is that the Cham constructed the towers while the bricks were still wet, filled the inside with wood and stacked logs over the outside and then set the thing to fire. The heat fused the bricks together.

The interiors felt like the inside of a chimney, since they were covered with soot from the burning of incense. In the main tower is a headless statue of one of their gods, which the French, who ran Vietnam as a colony for more than 100 years until 1954, chopped off its head, and brough it to Paris, and replaced it with the head of a Vietnamese looking surrogate. The Cham are used to this type of punishment. They lost their power in 1471 when the then Vietnamese emperor decapitated 40,000 of them. Decapitation has also been a modern horror in this country. In the war atrocities museum in Ho Chi Minh City, we saw a real guillotine which the French apparently trucked all over the country, last using it for an execution in 1960.

A Day In Dalat

2007-08-06T12:00:00.001-04:00

Written by Rebecca Brown

Dalat—Day two
We awake in a quiet hotel on top of a mountain topped with pine trees, which feels strangely like home for those of us from New England, in the lovely windy town of Dalat. We wake up early, partly because we all still have jet lag, and partly because Mike has the great idea that we should wake up before dawn every day and bike before it gets too hot. We track down our helmets, drag our bodies into our yellow and green shirts and skin tight pants, and find each other and breakfast. A couple of tourists look at us in shock, and then a wise elderly guest explains to them that we are bikers. The surprise food in Dalat is duck eggs for breakfast, which have clearly been prepared way ahead of the meal, and are slowly drying in the early morning warmth, in order to be aged to perfection. Some people in our group – namely Amy, Jonathan, Shari, and Andrew, have taken to ordering double espresso’s, which they will consume several of before we depart on our bicycles. We are trying to tank up on the liquids, though it will take us several more days to completely master this technique.

We check our brakes, spokes, frames, and bolts, and jump on our bicycles and pound off down the road, destined for a village of Indiginous people. Mike goes first. The rest of us are close behind, though we have diverse experiences of the steep downhill plummet. Shari is in her element. As she explains, you upshift into the highest gear, and pedal with energy, because this is where your power is. No matter if you are going thirty miles an hour down a ten percent incline, push it up, and you’ll be in better control. Mike is loving it.

Forty five minutes later, after being honked at by three hundred motorcycles, two hundred lorry trucks, and two dozen passenger busses, and after dodging hundreds of bicycles, we arrive at Chicken Village. It is a calm place, off the main road and down into a quiet neighborhood, and we are greeted by a small congregation of L’Ha people. One young woman and her two year old son seem to be the ambassadors of the L’Ha, and she explains the circumstances by which her community is living in this small earthen place. Previously the L’Ha lived in the mountains, where several of the elders continue to live because they refuse to be moved by the government. In the forest, they cut significant portions of wood for fuel. It is for this reason, according to the ambassador, that they have been requested to be moved. They are weavers. The original village, where some of the elders have stayed, is five hours away by foot. They are not going anywhere.

We are fascinated to learn about the matriarchal tradition of the L’Ha. In the L’Ha, it is the women who invite the men to marry. They offer them some gifts, sometimes asking permission of their mothers, and the men then come to live with the women’s families.

The L’Ha village is also called “chicken village”, which comes from a large carving of a chicken, originally of wood, and now recrafted by the government in cement. The chicken represents a story. There was a young woman in the L’Ha community who loved a young man. She was a poor woman, hardworking and earnest. The young man was wealthy. When the woman went to the man’s parents to ask for his hand in marriage, the parents were displeased with her because of her economic situation. They asked her, as a wedding gift, to bring to them a chicken with a perfect claw. Such chickens do not grow in Vietnam. But the young woman went off into the forest to look for the chicken, and she looked and looked. She never returned to the village. And so the villagers erected a giant chicken to honor the depth of her love.

Jonathan once said, when he was thinking about that story, that the moral might be, “Don’t ask for perfection and don’t look for perfection.”

There is a small monkey (Gibbeous) in the village. He has a metal chain around his neck, and he is tied to a tree. He is not pleased with this, and at one point in our visit, he loops his chain around a high branch and swings from his neck. We are concerned for his safety. Andrew mentions perhaps that he was in a difficult situation psychically. The family tells us his story: he had been captured from the forest when he was a baby, and he lives in the village now on his chain. Clearly too he is unhappy because he had bitten one of the children the day before.

Rebecca sits down with the child to take a look at his bite, and works with his mother to clean it with alcohol, and wrap it in bandaids plastered with Neosporin. The group happily dubbs her “Medicine woman”, and she happily accepts the nick name. Bandaids are not enough to return to Vietnam with in 2007, but it is a small thing that represents a greater care.

After the village, it is time to consider the ascent of the steep crowded street. Mike says he is ready to go. Andrew and Tang are ready to pound up the hill as well. But the rest of us, whether for concern for the traffic, or concern for the grade, or concern for the sun, or preference to visit the monastery, decide to ride to a Buddhist community instead.

The bikers report an easy climb, not as hard as it had looked, and are cool and refreshed before the monastery visitors rejoin them. The monastery visitors are startled and delighted by the serenity of the lakeside retreat, the Buddhists in their saffron robes, the local participants who have come in their street clothes to say their prayers, the Buddhist barber keeping the monks’ hair tidy and short in short efficient haircut sessions out on the veranda, the opportunities to climb up and down the slopes of the lake and enjoy the view. Several small coffee shops beckon us in as we approach the lake, and we learn one new thing about Vietnamese coffee. It comes in very small aluminum filters, perched over small glasses. If you order it with milk, they pour in canned sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of the cup, and the coffee layers above it in an exotic stripe of fragrant black above a rich stripe of white. But there is a thing here about waiting. In Vietnam you take your time. When you are waiting for your coffee to be ready, you are meant not to try to push it along. Jonathan, after about fifteen minutes of watching his coffee make its way through his filter, tantalizing drop by tantalizing drop, finally takes up his little spoon and gives the grounds a stir. He is immediately accosted by the host of the coffee shop, who strides up to him, takes his spoon away, and resets his coffee filter. Reluctantly, with a scandalized face, she brings him a clean spoon. It is clear that we are meant to wait.

The heat is rising and the group is reunited for a quick lunch and preparations for a countryside cycling trip from Dalat, along a bustling river, and through seven or eight towns which are busy growing spinach, morning glories (a popular vegetable, lightly stir fried with garlic), broccoli, and cabbage. Piles of cruciferous greens meet us at several significant street corners, and many children run out of their houses to greet us.

It is a beautiful afternoon of biking though it felt like four in the morning to our bodies, greeting many new friends along the way, and then, finally, rest.

Amy sets up camp in the hotel lobby, with her reading glasses, her computer (to work on the blog) and a tall fresh bottle of water. Rebecca joins her with her journal. Two women writing, six Americans far from home, a pilgrimage of athleticism and endurance and compassion and good will.

Land of 10,000 Hellos

2007-07-29T20:17:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

Ho Chi Min City is a city crammed into itself, busting with energy. We stay in the old section and Michael, Jonathan and I have an afternoon to explore the city.

Our initiation in crossing streets is immediate. Look one way and then the other and what you see are streams of motorbikes carrying multiple people, even entire families and cars and trucks leaning on their horns plowing through the sea of motorbikes that part as if water. The lights are few and far between. Drivers think nothing of riding up on the sidewalk if space permits, weaving in and out of pedestrians, or passing by a group sitting on small plastic chairs or squatting around a makeshift soup stand. The motorbikes spread out and fill the roads, so if there is room for four across, great; ten across even better.

This makes crossing the road a learned art, kind of like being part of a symphony playing cacophonous music that miraculously in the end all comes together. Novitiates are best off shadowing a seasoned pedestrians, who proceed with caution and determination, looking for gaps and a moving path onto which to travel across. The slightest hesitation can throw off an entire city not to mention the potential of self harm.

We visit the War Museum and Palace and are confronted with the horror of war and stupidity of politics and the fallout of both.

Rebecca, Sherri and Andrew arrive very late Tuesday night and we all meet Wednesday morning on the roof top restaurant of our hotel for breakfast and dine on rice porridge, dragon fruit and chocolate croissants (thanks to the 100 years of French colonization) before our first bike ride to Cu Chi Tunnels. Mercifully we transfer by bus out of the city. Smart move by Spice Roads - they probably figured throwing a bunch of jetlagged Westerners into rush hour Ho Chi Min traffic the very first morning is not such a good idea.

We reached a quieter rode and our white super sized air conditioned bus pulls up across the rode from a modest house. The family sitting on their front porch watches the spectacle that we are. Tang, our guide, asks the family if we can use their facilities. The woman leads us around back, past the main house and the kitchen house, next to the cows in the pen and points to a low brick enclosure. Sherri goes in first and figures out for the rest of us that one should aim towards the corner of the cement floor where there is a small hole in the wall and when finished one should use the hose to clean up.

We are almost ready for the first ride. But first our bikes are fitted and tires filled, water bottles, helmets and sweat bands put in their place. All this draws a crowd as young and old come close to investigate what we could possibly be doing. This will become a common occurrence on our trip, in cities and villages, the site of a great big white bus unloading a bunch of oddly dressed foreigners with lots of stuff. For no other apparent reason than to ride.

We join the flow of traffic for the first time. Single file our yellow and green shirts spread out. It seems to work best when adopting a Zen like posture of going with the flow. It helps that the motorbikes are not so elevated from cyclists, and need to be somewhat alert and cautious for their own safety, unlike riding in America with nothing but huge cars and trucks whizzing past.

I have to admit that even 5 days into the riding, when I get on my bike, on flat terrain or at the top of a hill to give us the advantage of a downhill start (along with all the other vehciles) I reach around looking for my seatbelt. Not finding one, it comforts me to think of the helmet on my head.

Now that we are out of the city, everyone wants to say hello. The children wave and run after us, motorbikes slow down alongside to practice their English. Sherri's blonde hair and Rebeccas red hair draw attention. We drive by a rubber plantation (brought by the French) and past an open air schoolroom. All the children stand up and yell hello and wave.

We spend several hours touring the Cu Chi Tunnels. The museum is striving to keep about 25 miles of the 250 miles of tunnels built over a 20 year period in tact. It is hard to parse out the feelings but I’d say the dominant ones are anger against war and aggression and stupidity; sadness for the loss of so much life and suffering on both sides and admiration for the industriousness of the people who built, lived and fought from these tunnels.

Tang, our guide, is thirty and grew up north of Hanoi. His father is a Communist government official and mother a teacher. He lost an uncle in the war. He talks of the Dark Years, from 1975 to 1990 when there was not enough food. They survived on rice and cassava. He tells us this while seated in a simulated underground kitchen drinking green tea in tiny teacups and sharing a plate of boiled cassava (tastes like a cross between a white and sweet potato, very starchy) dipped in salt and pepper.

Vietnam of my Past

2007-07-23T21:07:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

Like so many of my generation I remember our family gathered around the television. We children would sit on the orange shag rug and watch the dire faces of newscasters, choppy black and white footage of grey clouds of explosives and palm trees violently swaying under helicopters hurriedly rising out and away from whatever horrors lurked on the ground below. And, of course, the body bags, the vigil of numbers stringing from night to night. The dominant tandem memory is of protesters, long hair and angry gestures, crowds of yelling youth rushing towards the camera or being chased away by police carrying through tear gas and waving clubs, and the somber talk of AWOL and the Canadian border.

During that time my father picked up a long haired hitchhiker in the center of our town. It was a beautiful autumn day, the world all golden and orange. Miraculously, my father knew this odd looking young man and we drove him a few miles to his parent’s home. My father joked with him. He sat in the back seat next to me and to a ten year old it seemed like the soldiers had two sad choices: die in Vietnam or run away and live.

I said to a friend that I was not going to spend too much time reading on the war that I wanted to read about today’s Vietnam, how the country was emerging from isolation and eager to share in the profits of free market, and to read about its history and culture.

Even as I spoke, specters of vets loomed in my mind and my words felt a travesty. I remembered the sergeant, whose name escapes me, but I wore on a POW bracelet for years as an adolescent. There was Sonny who owned a hotdog shop on Main Street in Hyannis the summer of 1978. He was in his thirties but spent his time hanging around with a gang ten years his junior. And my friend Chuck who to this day valiantly wrestles with his daemons and those of the other vets who feel most at home at a VA hospital, many too far gone to ever have a normal life.

I did spend time over the winter watching the taped 2006 Vietnam Presidential Debates at the Kennedy Center, watching the politicians, historians and journalists from that era, all in varying degrees of comfort, debate and regurgitate the politics and choices of the American presidents, the ones they worked for and counseled. I was struck by Kissinger’s defensiveness, Jack Valenti’s smoothness, and Haig’s pride. Watching these advisers, all who own a degree of culpability, reminded me that this war still wages and shall until all who were touched by it have passed on, including my generation, and ‘Nam becomes part of the annals of history.

Two-thirds of today’s Vietnamese were born after 1975. I’m told that they don’t hold a grudge against the Americans or French and that I’ll be amazed by their friendliness and vitality. The American War (as they call it) is already part of their past. For them, we were the last of a long succession of foreign intruders (to date) over many millenniums, and they are much more interested in building their country, and more concerned about their northern neighbor, the Chinese. And for better or worse, like most citizens around the world, they separate the acts of the politicians from the general population, and they like Americans.

It was as naïve of me to think that I could embark for Vietnam only concerned about the present as much as it was to fear that my entire experience would be colored by the war. Hopefully I go a bit more balanced and my experience will not be filtered through any one lens and instead I will be ready for and embrace with respect the complexity of an ancient culture, its history and its present day reality.

Thoughts of Vietnam from 36,000 feet above Alaska

2007-07-23T21:05:00.000-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

We are in the fifth hour of our 14 hour flight from Atlanta to Seoul. When we reach South Korea, we’ll spend about three hours in the airport than fly to Bangkok, a 3 ½ hour flight. Our flight so far has taken us out of the U.S. by way of the airspace over Montana. We are now somewhere over the empty northwest territory of British Columbia, Canada.
The map clams we’re passing over Alaska Highway 97 just south of the border between BC and the Yukon Territory. Find that on the map. For the speed freaks among us, we’re traveling at 579 mph and for those old friends in the northeast who love to talk about the weather; the outside temperature is -59 degrees F.

Alaska is about an hour ahead of us. A state of oil and ice, few people and to me memories of my parent’s vacation there a few years ago. Their descriptions of traveling north of the artic circle and of a long bus ride over gravel roads through a massive state park where bear walk close to the bus are still strong memories to me. As geography goes it’s an odd addition to this country’s makeup, but so is Vietnam to our history.

In the process of telling friends about our plans, I’ve collected a variety of responses. One of my buyers reacted to our plans by asking, “What are you going over there for, to eat dog?” Another said, if you got to go that far away, why don’t you just stay away.” The kind neighbor around the corner from us, who spent many weeks in Vietnam a few years ago said that within days of arriving in Hanoi she was looking for a job in hopes of staying for a year. Another friend, now a retired cop living in Wilmington, told me yesterday he had been based in Cam Ranh Bay and was in charge of an ambush squad. A neighbor, who lives in our townhouse complex and who recently retired after being a military lawyer in Germany for 30 years, told me he was there for a year in 1969-70 as a “grunt” then insisted we try a special, strong, seasoning sauce that the Vietnamese mix with their rice. “What makes it so good?” I asked. “It’s made of fish heads.” I can’t wait.

It’s now -70 degrees F. outside.

I jest read Amy’s childhood memories of Vietnam. Mine come mostly from TV and newspaper pictures. A few of the dominate ones: Friday night news with Walter Contrite when at the end of every week he would announced the number killed on both sides, as if it were a score board. I recently read there had been a truth telling a few years ago when the Hanoi government made public the real numbers, so large you wonder what’s real but they claimed 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers were killed during the American War. In rough visual terms, that’s about the equivalent of erecting a facsimile of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington every 50 miles along Highway 1 as it stretches from Saigon to Hanoi.

Other memories: The helicopters, the thump of their rotor blades. The peace demonstrations. The college girl, her arms raised, as she knelt beside the fallen student at Kent State. The monk burning outside the Pentagon. The naked little girl running down the street after being napalmed.

And then there’s the memory closer to home, a conversation with my mother after our government had signed the peace accords and the local churches planned to ring all the church bells for 12 minutes to symbolize the 12 years we had been at war. Someone had asked her, “Don’t you think that’s too long?” And in her stern and dignified way she told me that she answered, “I’ve waited 12 years for this war to end. I’m happy to listen to church bells for 12 minutes.”

We recently watched The Dear Hunter; they don’t make moves like that anymore. It came out when I was 18 and I watched it many times back then. To me it captures some of the craziness of what we did over there and the craziness it left inside our collective consciousness. It also reminded me that the floating, unorganized memories and knowledge I have of Vietnam, leave something unsettled in me. That’s a good thing, I think. Faulkner said something once about if you can observe without judging, you come to understand that everything reveals character. I look forward to observing character over the next three weeks. By the way, all the Koreans on this plane have pulled down their window shades and are sleeping. I don’t get it, in my world it’s just 6:30 pm. In Soul it’s 7:30 am. They’ve been awake all night.

We just passed Anchorage. Lime Village is about 200 miles ahead—that’s your next geographical challenge. The temp is -61 degrees F. It’s time to walk around the plane, before the lower back tightens up too much.

48 Hours in Bangkok with Jeab

2007-07-23T20:48:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

Sa wad dee ! (Hello) This is a picture of Jeab giving us a Thai lesson.

What a wonderful visit we had in Bangkok, truly because of Jeab. Jeab was kind enough to take two days off work and tour Bangkok with us. (Thank you Jeab!) We went everywhere by river - Jonathan hailed us a river taxi, we rented a long tail boat and cruised around the canals, the Marriott transported us back and forth across the Chao Phraya river to our destinations. Once we strayed away from the river to go to the market to shop. . . . .

The Grand Palace - so much story and beauty and the Emerald Buddha and the giants and angels and the monkeys and gold and shimmering color. We took hundreds of pictures.

Tommy and Michael came to the Marriott for breakfast the first morning. We ate Mangosteen and Dragon Fruit and these small little fruits that look like grapes with skin and a big seed in the middle.

The Reclining Buddha - so immense they built a Wat (temple) around it. Everywhere the Thais are fixing their Wats with Thai Tile. We saw saffron robed monks and sat in on a service. Jeab explained what the message was: "Stay in the middle of life, Do not act when excited and stay away from evil."

We climbed to the Top of Wat Arun, the temple of Dawn, and went to the Wat Ra Kang, the temple of the Bells.

The Packing is Over

2007-07-19T16:55:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

4:00 PM Thursday July 19

We're sitting at ILM waiting for our plane to Atlanta. (For those of you who don't know what that stands for, it is Wilmington without the W, since Wilmington, Delaware got there first. It's one of the many things I like about my new home and one of my favorite places in Wilmington. One of ILM's amenities is free Internet service.) We may be here a while - weather it sounds like. We may as well get used to weather - Vietnam is forecast to be hot, I mean hot, drippingly humid and wet and there is a tropical storm hovering around Hawaii. But, as Jonathan says, this is all an adventure, however it unfolds.

Like this morning. We are members of the Wrightsville Beach Turtle Volunteer Organization and every Thursday morning at sunrise walk a two mile stretch along the very south end of Wrightsville Beach, from the Local Beach Club past the Oceanic Pier to the tip and back. We are looking for signs that a Loggerhead female had come ashore during the night and laid her eggs. We've had wonderful early morning outings, the very first with Alice who was visiting from NYC. A good sport, she eagerly arose at 5:30 and although we had no turtle sitings, we did see a beautiful sunrise and had a southern breakfast at Causeway Cafe.

Alice, you should have been with us this morning. Admittedly, we were late. It hasn't been all that relaxing getting ready for this trip. We got to the beach at 6:30, and were greeted by a mound of sand with tell tale wooden sticks with neon orange ribbons - - marking a turtle nesting. Soon we were surrounded by three women, turtle volunteers for 5 years now and had never until today found a nest, exclaiming and measuring and pondering. The tracks, as promised ran up from the ocean, like fat tire tracks, to the mound of sand and back down.

Nancy, who runs the Turtle program arrived and decided, because of the proximity of the nest to the ocean, we'd need to relocate so as not to be washed away by a storm. This is only done under extreme circumstances, since it is best not to disturb the nest. She donned her plastic gloves and we all started to dig. Dig carefully. We unearthed a full nest with 129 eggs and Nancy gingerly transferred them to a plastic pail and subsequently created a new nest further up the beach tucked into a dune. We'll start babysitting the nest September 19.

We take this as a good omen for our trip.

Packing Day

2007-07-18T13:50:00.001-04:00

Written by Jonathan Smylie

Our clothes are drying in the sun after being thoroughly soaked in a pesticide and water mix. This, all the guide books say, will kill any mosquitos that lands on the fabric. We have yet to take off the parts of the bikes we'll take with us, the seats and pedals, but that chore is rising quickly on the do-to list. We picked up the 31 malaria pills we will start taking tomorrow morning and will carry them on the plane with us. We finished our last workout at the gym two hours ago, in shape or not, the plane flies tomorrow and we'll be on it. We fly Thursday night to Atlanta where we spend the night and Friday at 11:00 am we begin our flight to Seoul and then south to Bangkok, about 24 hours in total travel time. Tonight we'll lay out all of the clothes and double check them against our list. Over the last few days, I've had to pull myself out of the most recent book on Vietnam I've been reading and focus on the last details of packing and work. I look forward to the plane flight, when all the scurrying around is finished and the anticipation can be simply and deliciously enjoyed--uninterrupted. Now, where did I put that list?

Vietnam Itinerary

2007-07-08T21:10:00.001-04:00

Wednesday July 25
Saigon, 25 Miles
Bike fitting and ride to Cuu Chi Tunnels. Transfer back to Saigon. After Chu Chi Transfer to Dalat

Thursday July 26
Dalat, 31 miles, Hotel Novotel
Dalat was once a favoured retreat for the French, especially during the hot summers. It was once known as Le Petit Paris and is now a popular honeymoon destination for the Vietnamese. We arrive in time for lunch while our staff set the bikes up. In the afternoon we ride quiet back roads along the Langbian Plateau, passing along side the Xuan Huong Lake in the shadow of Langbian Mountain. The ride takes us past flower farms and vegetable gardens, through smaller villages and past picturesque churches and ornate cemeteries, up cobbled streets and past old colonial buildings. We stay in a beautifully converted French colonial Villa.

Friday July 27
Nha Trang, Ride to Phan Rang Transfer to Nha Trang, 67 miles,Nha Trang Lodge
Setting off on our bikes from the hotel we ride along quiet roads out of Dalat. There are some stiff but short climbs followed by some outstanding descents to take us back down to sea level. There are some fantastic views and beautiful mountain scenery before we reach the Cham towers of Po Klong Garai. Those arriving early may have time to explore take some time to explore the crumbling Hindu temples. We then drive to Nha Trang, the resort town where we can enjoy a more lively evening.

Saturday July 28, Tuy Hoa
Ride/transfer to Tuy Hoa, 52 Miles,Hotel Cong Doan
An early start takes us on a wonderfully scenic ride to the beautiful fishing village of Dai Lanh. We are riding on Highway One today and there will be some traffic on one side contrasting with the best of rural Vietnam on the other. There is just one short climb in an otherwise smooth days cycling and you will be surprised how easily you cover the 80 kilometres. We will have lunch on the beach. Most people will spend the rest of the day swimming and relaxing but serious cyclists might want to ride the last 45 km into Tuy Hoa town.

Sunday July 29, Qui Nhon
43 miles,Life Resort
We transfer out of town past the busy and dusty section of Highway 1. We turn off the main road and cycle a loop to Ba To Town. The road is extremely quiet and people unaccustomed to the sight and sounds of cyclists. It is truly a pioneer ride. Looping back to H1 we transfer the rest of the way in the afternoon to Qui Nhon

Monday July 30
Hoi An, Ride My Lai loop and transfer to Hoi An, 55 Miles
We transfer from Qui Nhon to Quang and start the ride to My Lai, the site of one of the worst massacres of the American/Vietnam War. After a guided tour of the site and museum, we continue cycling out into the Vietnamese countryside. We stop to visit an interesting pagoda. The rest of the ride is through quiet, rural villages before eventually looping back to the main highway. We transfer the rest of the way to Hoi An, arriving in time for lunch. The afternoon is free to explore Hoi An. The town was known as Faifo to early western traders and was one of Southeast Asia’s major trading ports during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was an important point of call for Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese traders and the architecture reflects its cosmopolitan past. More than anywhere in Vietnam, Hoi An retains the feel of the past. There are over 844 structures of historical significance and most people spend the day wandering around and enjoying the sights and atmosphere.

Tuesday July 31,Hoi An, Free day or ride My Son loop, 33 miles
Staying another night in Hoi An, we ride out of town to visit My Son, the ancient centre of Cham civilization. We ride through small back roads out of town. We transfer out of town to avoid the highway before cycling along scenic country back roads past paddy fields and through eucalyptus forest passing many scenic villages. The road climbs away from the coast offering stunning views. We ride and as the road cuts a gorge through the lush jungle alongside the Song Tranh River. Eventually we arrive at My Son, which was once Champa's greatest city. Although many of the temples were destroyed by American bombs, there is still enough of the archaeological site to impress most visitors. We take lunch before spending the afternoon visiting the site. In the afternoon we ride back to Hoi An.

Wednesday August 1 ,Hue
Ride coastal road to Hue, 62 miles,Saigon Morin
This is probably the toughest ride of the tour but is also one of the best. We transfer beyond Danang to take on the High Van Pass. Climbing 500 metres above sea level, we enjoy stunning views of the South China Sea. The afternoon downhill is just reward. After lunch we turn off the main highway and take a coastal side road for 44 km almost all the way to our destination. Energetic riders will make it all the way into Hue, the old capital of the Ngu Yen Dynasty.La'Residence.

Thursday August 2, Nam Dinh,Boat trip. Night train, 19 miles
We take a day off to explore the historical city of Hue. The main sight is the citadel, where huge walls contain the Forbidden Purple City, where only emperors, eunuchs and concubines were allowed to enter. In the early evening we regroup to transfer to the train station where we board the reunification Express for the overnight train to Nam Dinh. The train is a fun and comfortable way for us to travel 600 kilometres into the heart of North Vietnam.Ride 30 Km Sleeper Train. B D.

Friday August 3, Cac Phuong,Transfer ride Ninh Binh to Cuc Phuong, 37 miles
National Park
We arrive in Nam Dinh late in the morning. We then transfer to Ninh Binh. The area around Ninh Binh is famed for its spectacular karst scenery. Soaring limestone mountains jut straight out of the paddy fields. We ride amongst this extraordinary scenery to the ancient city of Hua Lu. After a quick visit we continue on country roads to the National Park at Cuc Phuong where we visit the primate rescue centre before checking into our accommodation at the Park.

Saturday August 4 ,Haiphong,Ride and transfer to Haiphong, 37 miles
Harbourview Hotel
From Ninh Binh we head east, riding some interesting backroads through North Vietnam. You will notice the difference between North and South Vietnam immediately. The villages are poorer and people dress quite differently; suddenly everyone seems to be sporting a pith helmet. The ride is a very pleasant meander through the back roads of North Vietnam. We pass through many rice fields and follow country back roads past poor but friendly villages. Later in the afternoon we jump into the bus to transfer 3 hours to Haiphong, one of Vietnam's major ports.

Sunday August 5, Cat Ba, Ride across Cat Ba Island, 22 miles
Sunrise
First thing in the morning we cycle and traverse numerous rivers by local ferry to the harbour to reach our private boat to Fulong, on Cat Ba Island. The island is at the southern end of Halong bay and contains one of Vietnam’s most beautiful national parks. We disembark at Fulong and cycle 22 kilometres taking one of the island's only roads. We pass through some lush jungle scenery and get stunning vistas across Halong bay. The road is small and we hardly encounter any traffic at all. Lunch on board.Ride up to 35 km. Sunrise Hotel. B L D.

Monday August 6,Hanoi,Guoman Hotel
We spend a truly memorable day on a boat cruising through Halong Bay. The awesome limestone karst mountains rise dramatically out of the emerald sea. Halong bay is one of the most incredible natural wonders of the world. Legend has it that it was formed by a great dragon that descended from the mountain into the sea. The boat trip is a fitting reward for all our exertions we then transfer from Halong to Hanoi by road

Tuesday August 7, Hanoi

Coffee Shop Training Technique

2007-07-08T21:05:00.000-04:00

Welcome to our Vietnam Blog

2007-05-20T21:31:00.000-04:00

Written by Amy Lyon

The intention of Lyon Family Cycles Vietnam is to have a place to collectively archive our trip before, during and after and to share it with whoever is interested in monitoring our progress and adding thoughts of their own.

The idea to create a blog was born on a 50 mile training ride Saturday, May 19, my first long ride and Jonathan's second. We leave for Bangkok two months from today.

We rode the near circumference of Lake Waccamaw twice, a 24 mile pendulum swing. The additional three miles of Jonathan's beloved lake are impassible by bike although one could wade through it carrying their bike above their head. Luckily for me Jonathan never seriously suggested it although he did ask me if I thought I'd like to hike it at the end of the day. It was sufficient for me to find an extra two miles to make an even 50 which we did by biking up to the convenience store for a bottle of Propel. Perhaps the wading would have been a more useful training tactic.

We were hoping for hot and humid weather, to begin to get us in shape, but instead were given a perfect combination of 70 degrees, clear, a slight wind and no humidity. We spent much of our time counting alligator sitings (7 or 8) checking out the homes for sale and watching the turtles sun themselves on the banks and on partially submerged tree limbs in the canal that rings the lake, dug out at the end of World War 2. By the way, there are as many turtles as Lyon relatives - which means they are hard to count and even harder to corral.

We're apt to clock most of our miles at Lake Waccamaw. Soon it'll become steamy summer in the south to better condition us for the Vietnamese rainy season. And then there is Dales, the best fried shrimp, hushpuppies and sweet tea around. But most of all, there is John MacNeil, and his famous log cabin lakeside home with a 100 foot dock draped with cypress trees and hundreds of flowers and John himself, who bought the land in 1947 and has lived there ever since.