Welcome to the trip tales of our 17 day bike trip in Vietnam

This is a backwards blog, so the first page is the first trip tale. Half way through the trip, you'll need to click on "older posts" for the last 7 tales. We're planning to take more trips to far away places, on bikes, so if you have any suggestions for our next adventure, please let me know.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Yesterday – Sunday - we spent the day trying to see all the sites that Lonely Planet suggested we cram into 1 day. And of course, we walked everywhere, our favorite way to go in a new city. The Reunification Palace is untouched since the 60’s, and much of the furniture looks like what’s being sold in Soho these days.


The market is the center of life and every shape and manner of thing is sold here. The meat market was quite a spectacle, displaying organs and other body parts that we’d never seen “in the flesh”. We observed one meat cleaver who worked so intimately with her wares that we feared she would mix in her own body parts (adding her own “toe-fu”, as Steven suggested.)


From there, I wanted to go to Chinatown, where there are some wonderful pagodas. Notwithstanding the heat and Lonely Planet’s advice to take a taxi, we set out walking in that direction. Every street crossing has been a life altering experience.


Steven got muffler burn from a motorbike that kissed by him, and a slight bruise from another that stopped barely in time. At one point, we were so afraid to cross that an 11 year old rescued us and led us to safety. I think we provided a fair amount of street entertainment for the locals, who chuckled with glee while we plotzed and darted about in sheer terror.






As we cruised one fairly busy street, a motorbike cowboy grabbed my fanny pack from the front of my waist, expecting it to snap right off. WRONG, Roy Rogers.  It finally gave way but so did I. Thankfully, he couldn’t hold on to the pack, and it flew to the sidewalk. (Steven’s glasses were in it.) I didn’t travel nearly so far, but hit the ground and got some fairly nasty scrapes.  A toothless senior with a dangling cigarette retrieved the pack and then insisted on being my own personal Florence Nightingale. He scrubbed my elbow and palm with disinfectant from the nearby pharmacy. He hovered over me, close enough for his ashes to mix with the disinfectant, until we found a cab and headed back to the hotel.  So, I’m bruised but OK, and I’ll be fine to bike. I’ve been in NYC for 30 years and never been mugged. Had to travel all the way to Saigon for the special event. Oy vey. Maybe getting mugged is on the universal bucket list.


Glad to say that we finally found a pagoda, and it was a wild sight. Lots of little rooms with altars to various gods. The worshippers have big stacks of burning incense sticks that they place at the altars of the gods of their choice. It was so smoky we could barely keep our eyes open; the incense brought me back to Hare Krishna recruiting ceremonies in Harvard Square in the 70’s. I couldn’t find the God of Graceful Aging, or you can bet I would have spent my allowance on incense for her. On the other hand, maybe it’s too late.

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