Right after I had a long, wet climb up Hai Van Pass, I descended into Da Nang and had to navigate through this traffic.
Cycling in Vietnam is a lot like a video game. There’s a lot of opposing objects moving at different speeds as you go through an intersection. If there’s someone moving really fast and confidantly, you have to give way. But if someone shows hesitation, you pounce and move forward.
Unfortunately, this video doesn’t capture everything that’s going on in the periphery.
It was a boring morning as I rolled along Highway 1 in Vietnam. I’m getting fewer Hellos in South Vietnam than I did in the North. I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast on my iPhone when a hand reached over and yanked the earphone jack out of my phone. “Whooooaaaa!” I yelled, and I found two young Vietnamese guys on a scooter next to me. The guy in the back was still hanging onto the end of my earphones. I pulled them back, giving a scolding look. They said some stuff to me in Vietnamese and I showed them I didn’t understand, but then I reverted into being polite and friendly — I’d rather not have trouble, or show fear. They stayed close to me, and showed a lot of interest in my iPhone which was mounted on my handlebars. Then he grabbed at my iPhone, and I threw his hand off of it. I still tried to remain friendly, but it was weird. I waved goodbye as a hint for them to get lost, but they hovered right next to me. I would speed up, and then they would speed up. I tried slowing down, but they had that covered too. I felt like a victimized woman probably feels. I had a feeling they were planning some attack, and I was out in the countryside, a white man with a big helmet but no language skills. Then I saw we were approaching a town. I saw a fruit stand and I pulled over to safety. They left, luckily, and I needed oranges.
I got three oranges from a sweet-looking, smiling, elderly lady. She told me I owed 40,000 Dong ($2). This is double what I’ve paid many oranges before, so I gave her a suspicious look and talked her down 50 cents. [I know, it's only $1 extra, but it's the principle and the feeling. Can you imagine overcharging someone because they're foreign?]
From the fruit stand, I moved on to a food stall to get some Pho. Pretty standard, and I was left alone. But then this little one came out and said Hello. He was curious about me — the tall, strange being. I was friendly to him, and the family who ran the food stall all loved it. I took this photo below, and then showed it to him. Then I was invited to join them at their table, and eat some of their food.
They gave me a bowl of rice, and kept giving me eggs and salad, and pointing to other things I should try and have more of. They found out I’m not married, and so they started pointing to Vietnamese girls that I should marry.
The little boy was looking bored, so I went into my panniers and pulled out a spinning top. I had bought this in the $1 section of Target for exactly this purpose — winning children over. And it worked perfectly. He loved it, and the family loved me even more.
It’s a simple trick: win people over by loving their children. All you need is a top, and you win the entire family.
Terrible self-timed shot. Why am I so big?
I asked how much I owed, and the grandma said 20,000 Dong ($1) for the Pho. I figure this is the local price, and I’ve been paying 30,000 at every other place. I gave her 50,000 and refused the change, gesturing shoveling food in my mouth to show them that they fed me well.
I headed on towards My Lai. I decided to take a back road to cut off some distance. It was a great decision — beautiful landscape, quiet road, and quaint villages.
But then the road turned to mud. I slopped through it; rode where I could, and pushed where I couldn’t. It was really tough going, and I almost fell sideways a couple of times from exhaustion. And my shoes fell into big mud pits a couple of times giving me soppy mud-water socks.
But hey, if you don’t love it, why do it?
I’ve noticed that when I stop and get off my bike, I have some fun experiences. No conversations happen, but there’s curiosity on both sides. They want to see White Man on Tour, and they feel lucky because most people only get to see a glimpse of White Man as he rides through town.
These two waved at me when I rode by, and when I stopped up ahead, they turned around to walk back to see what I was all about.
Since Grandma and Girl were brave enough to check me out, these boys had the courage to do the same. The boy in the back climbed up from working with the water buffalo in the slop — look at his muddy feet.
I found out that biking in Bogota is really dangerous. It’s mostly because of the buses. These bus collectivos seem to be privately owned — like some guy can buy an old bus, stick a sign on the front window with the destination, and start driving it. They don’t have official bus stops. Instead, if someone on the side of the road puts up his hand, the bus will swing over and stop to let him on — like how you’d hail a taxi. So, these buses were swinging all over the place as I was trying to bike. I had to heighten my awareness to stay operational. The roads were full of taxis too, and they’d be weaving to get around the buses that’d be swinging across the lanes to get to the sidewalk to pick up passengers.
Early on, I made some bold moves squeezing through narrow gaps between temporarily-stopped buses on my wide, fully-loaded bike. I would be holding my breath, a sign of me knowing I was being a dumbass. Then, at one point, I was out in one of the middle lanes making a move past a bus that was on my right, when the bus started pulling out to shift into my lane. I was pinned between a taxi that was tight on my left and the bus that was moving forward into the taxi’s lane. I made an emergency stop as the shock ran through my body. And the bus saw me and stopped moving. I waddled through the gap the bus left me, embarrassed about causing this scene in a place where I don’t understand the traffic culture. “Stupid … Not worth it, not worth it,” I kept repeating in my head. From then on, I dropped my bravado and got patient, staying all the way to the right, and waiting behind the buses that cut me off.
There are a lot of bike lanes on the sidewalks in Bogota, but pedestrians were always drifting in there making it a really slow, annoying stop-and-start for me, so I used the streets for cycling. Also, on Sundays, the city would close off a lot of the main roads for the Cyclovia, a weekly event where people would come out to cycle, rollerblade, run, or walk. It’s a great idea, but that’s only on Sunday — the rest of the week, you have to deal with the horrible traffic.
