Guest Blog: Cross-Country Bike-Packing at 63: South East Asia Tour

By Craig Davis, PhD

Day 33: Saturday

February 4, 2023: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam (24 miles, 747 miles total)

Le Ly Hayslip was born in South Vietnam in 1949. Her memoirs, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, describe her experiences growing up during the First Indochina War between the French and Viet Minh. This included the horrors from the beginning of the Second Indochina War between North and South Vietnam, and through the Vietnam War. She was tortured by the ARVN, raped by the Viet Cong, and suffered injustices of war her entire life until she was evacuated to the US. From the unique perspective of a Vietnamese peasant girl, she paints a portrait of her beloved Vietnam in turmoil, where good, innocent people are forced to betray their humanity and engage in cruel and barbarous acts to survive. Where the fabric of village life is ripped to shreds in a bloody struggle that no longer has a righteous cause, but only lost causes and survival of the most brutal. 

After Le Ly’s return to communist Vietnam in 1986, she published the book, and Oliver Stone adapted it to the 1993 film Heaven & Earth. I identify with her in many ways. I am able to see between the rhetoric of the Iraq War, the Salvadoran Civil War, and all the other armed conflicts that I have experienced to recognize absurdity, cruelty, incompetence, and hubris on exaggerated levels.

In the past week, I have seen more and more tourists. The younger adults who have not yet reached their 40s like to wear the baggy, pajama pants and skirts printed with colorful elephants and mosaics. My old bias against such touristy extravagances, along with fanny packs, nose rings, and tattoos, is melting away. I am literally a member of a dying breed. 

Growing up, only hoods and sailors wore tattoos, the same men who carried their cigarettes rolled up in their t-shirt sleeves. 

Today my bosses, my children, and my friends sport body art. My only piercing is shrapnel. My only skin coloring, a muffler burn down my leg. The only studs, titanium pins poking through my collarbone. 

Yet, I am a fanny pack convert. It has served me well on this trip. And just in the last year, I have thrown in the towel on bar soap and resigned to a modified dishwashing liquid called body wash, of all damn things. It is practical after all. 

On this morning, as I peddle my last 24 miles to Saigon, I am happy. But cautious. This is where mistakes are made. Down the stretch. I redouble my focus on safety and take my time. 

Thant Ut, a Vietnamese cycling veteran and tour guide, who has been running his own business since 2019, told me, “We never ride in the cities, Ho Chi Minh, Da Nang,” much less Hanoi. “We never ride on highway 1 (QL 1). Too dangerous.”  Then he quickly corrects himself. “We Vietnamese, sure, we can. But not the foreigners.”

On this last morning, I rode on QL 22, which was every bit as busy, dangerous, and monotonous as QL 1.  After a few miles, I got off and rode through a village and got lost, which was almost a welcome distraction to the traffic, noise, and the incessant stop and go that traffic lights require. A bridge that Kam led me to is now just some concrete posts sticking up in the canal. 

Once I found my way out, I chose the suburbs, which transform into rural farming and fishing land before my eyes. I ride along a stinky canal hardly believing this is officially HCMC, a metropolis of 9 million inhabitants. I could easily be convinced this is the Mekong Delta. 

When I reached the Ibis Saigon Airport hotel, I stank, in the sweaty, dirty clothes that haven’t properly been washed since Angkor Wat. My exposed skin was streaked with perspiration and sunscreen. I am surprised when the three clerks don’t try to forbid Linh and me from entering the lobby. Not because Linh’s frame is caked with dry mud and tire tread packed with water buffalo manure. But because hotel management doesn’t send me to the garage and let Linh check us in. 

We made it!

Day 32: Friday

February 3, 2023: Cu Chi, Vietnam (28 miles, 725 miles total)

In the 1940s, the Viet Minh forces began digging networks of tunnels to fight the French. By the 1960s, there were tens of thousands of miles of tunnels across the country. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers used these tunnels to attack the Americans and ARVN (South Vietnamese army) and disappear, set boobytraps, transport weapons and supplies, and relay communications. To combat these tactics, the US military trained special soldiers, known as Tunnel Rats, to enter the tunnels, navigate them, and fight the enemy. Northwest of Saigon lay an extensive network of tunnels around the town of Cu Chi that were linked to villages and sites 175 miles away, reaching all the way to the Cambodian border.

That was my destination today. Not only Cu Chi as my final destination, but the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. But to get to the border, I had to ride four hours by taxi. 

Make no mistake about it! Outside tinkering about in the 93 degree sun is a horrible idea. And peddling a damn bicycle in Vietnam while 63 years old in this suffocating temperature is downright asinine. 

I remember sitting in the shade of Saddam’s palace in Baghdad in 110 degree heat, talking to my wife and just barely being able to withstand it. Or moving around for a few minutes outside in Basrah, Iraq or Kuwait City in 115 degree temperature and feeling I might collapse. And I was 20 years younger. 

At the hotel restaurant, I caught two westerners staring at me, precisely like my mom had taught me not to. Both in their 50s. One with a bushy, salt and pepper mustache. The woman sat with one knee crossed over the other and her legs outside the table, as if she might up and leave at any moment. This was precisely one of the postures that I tell my grandkids to avoid. In fact, on this trip, I have seen a great deal of multinational, adult behavior that would earn a good scolding from me. A woman in Da Lat stood on the street with her feet crossed, pointing the the opposite direction talking to another woman. My granddaughter does this. So, I guess I need to be a little more tolerant. 

I heard the couple speaking French. The man turned around and asked me where I was going. I told him and added where I had been. His English was not so good, and my French non-existent.

There was a time that I could read French novels with a dictionary at hand. I read La Peste by Albert Camus and understood most of it. But that was a long time ago. And I never could string two words together. I was taught to read as a research language, nothing more. Speaking a language and reading it are two separate skills. As different as watching the NFL and knowing everything about your roster, record, and plays, and going down on the field Sunday, even as a bench player. 

The couple bid me farewell and wished me luck, as they strapped on their backpacks and went to check out. 

After an omelette, some fried noodles, and watermelon slices, I crossed the street and took photos of the Mekong River.

Yorng arrived 50 minutes early, but I was outside waiting for him. I had planned on being on Vietnamese soil by 1 pm and to arrive at the Paradise Hotel in Cu Chi by 5 pm. That would entail riding in the hottest parts of the day, but I had few options if I wanted to use Yorng. He was coming from Phnom Penh.

After an hour on a good road, Yorng detoured off and sped along a circuit of bumpy, dirt roads that left village cyclists and pedestrians in a cloud of dust with no sympathy for their lungs and eyes. Unless you have come off a fresh journey along dusty roads recently, like I had the past two days, you really can’t appreciate other people’s air quality.  

By 11:10 am, it was 90 degrees, and we still had 35 minutes to reach the border. 

I was not looking forward to the 1 pm heat. But with 28 miles to travel, I had two options. Pay a taxi to take me part of the way. Or hydrate, plaster exposed skin with sunscreen, pace myself, seek frequent refuge in the shade, and tough it out. 

Last July, I rode through Tennessee and Alabama for short periods of time (maximum one hour) when it reached 90, 91, and maybe even 92. But nothing like this for hours in the afternoon. I was almost always in the AC of a hotel room by noon.

Around noon, I was at the border, and Yorng was paid, and Linh was reassembled. I rode a few blocks into the immigration compound. This was even quicker than before. On the Cambodian side, I just walked up to a window and after showing the official my Vietnam visa, he stamped my passport, and I rode on. On the Vietnam side, I pushed my bike right into the immigration hall. I stood in line for 15 minutes and then he stamped my passport without a question. After easing Linh down some concrete steps to an awaiting official who double-checked my passport stamp, I rode on. It was 12:30 pm and about 91 degrees. 

I rode south through the greenest rice paddies I have seen to date. I saw large patches of healthy tobacco. A couple of kids on a motorbike passed me and then let me pass them so they could practice their English. They were so cool. A sign told me I was in frontier territory. In other words, I was very, very close to the Cambodian border. At times within five blocks. No doubt was I riding over networks of abandoned tunnels. 

Many years ago, I read a book about the Vietnam War that described combat where American tunnel rats would work their way into tunnels in the middle of a battle with a handgun and a knife to engage the enemy on their home ground. Even reading it scared me. 

Much of this trip was to attempt to identify in some bizarre way with the heroes of my childhood: My Uncle Tom, a pipefitter, a teacher, John McCain… And with those heroes of my adulthood: My Uncle Bob, a hermit neighbor, Jim who worked in Iraq with me, a work colleague at the Department of Labor (DOL) who broke both legs during a helicopter crash, those I read about, and many, many more. In fact, all of you who served. We owe you a debt of gratitude for your service. A debt we can never pay. A debt our country has never properly paid.  

If you see me somewhere some day, introduce yourself. And let me shake your hand and buy you a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. 

When I came back from Iraq the first time, having suffered trauma, for the life of me, I just couldn’t reintegrate. I battled nightmares in vivid color and stunning reality. The world around me was carrying on fighting petty mundanities, and had no appreciation of the horrors I had witnessed. That DOL colleague met with me on a park bench near the Francis Perkins Building in Washington DC for coffee one day. I asked him why no one around me at work or at home could appreciate what I had been through. He told me that they would never be able to appreciate it, and that I should stop trying. It was my job to reintegrate with them; not them with me. 

I had a hard time accepting that. Even as an introvert, I wanted to share my experiences. And I thought the best way was to have a few drinks, loosen up, and then describe the constant humiliation and terror and frustration and incompetency I had experienced at every turn. When that failed, I decided that I would have to return to Iraq to find some closure, or a sympathetic ear, or reconciliation of the absurdity of war. Maybe I could help myself by helping others. When that failed, I tried the US again for 18 months. Then, I went to Pakistan, a country in turmoil that was struggling with its own unconscionable violence, terror, and absurdity. The spillover of a US war in Afghanistan, and the repercussions of decades of injustices and intolerance had driven a very kind nation into unspeakable horrors. Next was Afghanistan itself. Yemen. Somalia. 

But my Vietnam veteran friend was right all along. I was the one who had to accept and to adapt, not them. A first step was to abandon the alcohol. The next was to channel all of that negative energy into positive actions: Exercise, diet, taking care of family, write and publish, coach and mentor younger staff, adopt grandchildren…

By the time I hit Trang Bang, Vietnam, it was 2 pm and 93 degrees. I took my first sitting rest break. I was halfway and soaked in sweat.  

Instead of following all of Kam’s routes through backroads, I stuck to QL 22, which was the main Asian road from Cambodia, and easily as busy and dangerous as QL 1. It was hotter, but my strategy was to get to the hotel sooner. 

I arrived at the Paradise Cu Chi Hotel about 3:30 pm. By now, the temperature had peaked at 93 degrees. I was fine. But glad to get out of the sun. 

After checking into the room, I got back on Linh and rode an additional three miles to WinMart and back to get some supplies. In the room, I booked my last room, where I had started it all at the Ibis Saigon Airport (hotel), ate room service food, drank a few diet soft drinks, and watched the Pacers lose yet again. Things were not going well for Indiana teams. 

Day 31: Wednesday 

February 2, 2023: Kampong Cham (21 miles, 697 miles total)

While I was waiting for my taxi outside the lobby, a Cambodian male guest about 50 exited the hotel and stopped to get a load of me. His English was good. He asked, and I informed him, where I was going. He returned from his large white SUV with a large bottle of water. 

“Is this not too big” to carry on the bike, he asked. I thanked him and poured it into my dry camelback. His wife was all smiles as well. They were happy to know an old American was as crazy enough to ride through their country. 

Today’s driver was Tamran. He was in his 30s, relatively tall, and blessed with large arms developed in a gym. We loaded up Linh and drove out toward Bos Khnor. When we veered off onto Highway 71, the road turned bad. It was narrow and patched, suffered from broken pavement on the edges, gravel shoulders, and particularly laden with heavy traffic. The quality of road might match that of a neglected county road in the US. Here it is a main thoroughfare. Off in both directions are district dirt roads. 

At one point, a motorbike was carrying 5-6 small pigs in a crate strapped to his seat. Later, a mother duck was walking her five duckings along the shoulder when one traipsed off onto the blacktop. My chest froze, and Tamran gently swerved to avoid it. The duckling scrambled back to its mother. 

Around 8:45, Tamran dropped me off in front of a Buddhist monastery. It was about 82 degrees already. While I was assembling Linh, I heard kids laughing. Then  a tuk-tuk puttered up beside me and half a dozen monks in two different colored robes between the ages of 10 and 14 rode by laughing and showering me with hellos. I showered them back with my own hellos. Then I rode deeper into the monastery, where I found a monk in his 30s, I suspect. He wore glasses and was sitting in a chair with his back to me surrounded by lounging dogs when I rolled up. 

I said, Hello, which surprised his dogs as much him. They ran up to my heels, and he yelled something in Cambodian, stood, and walked over to me. We shook hands, and after a few seconds of awkwardness and inability to communicate, I rode on. 

As the temperature climbed, Kam urged me to abandon the highway and take a dirt road. I figured that I would regret it, but followed her advice. By 86 degrees, I needed to rest. I stopped in a hamlet inhabited by wooden homes on stilts around Kampong Siem (knew it by the weather app). I sat on a stone bench and drank cold water as the young owner studied my curious bike. He was particularly interested in the camera. 

Authentic live Cambodian music began playing through loud speakers down the street, so I climbed back on Linh to investigate. A block away, I found a tent where a wedding was taking place. Several women looked at me suspiciously, and one even shook her hand to tell me to leave. 

I was dirt packed from my toes to my face, dripping with sweat, stinking like a swine, and riding a filthy bike. I couldn’t imagine why they didn’t want me to intrude. 

After that, the day got harder. The roads were worse at times; I hit a series of small, rolling hills; and the temperature climbed to about 89 before I hit the next blacktop road about eight miles after I had started on this maze of dirt roads. 

The blacktop was better for making time, but I was peddling gradually uphill, and the sun was taking its toll. I stopped several times for shade, once I bought cold water and sat in front of a motorbike mechanic’s shop while a woman food store proprietor, her mother, and a young woman customer stared at me the entire time. It stopped bothering me a long time ago. I was an oddball and I knew it. 

By the time I got to the LBN Asian Hotel, it was 11:30 am and 91 degrees. This hotel staff was not so good. Three of the four desk clerks were trainees who needed direction by their woman manager. She refused Linh inside the room, and we had ta go through a series of interactive debates, where she pretended to call her manager, before she allowed me to take Linh with me. For the first time in Asia, she made me pay an early check-in fee of 50% to enter the room before 2 pm. She just wanted to get  back at me about Linh, I am sure. It was only $20, so I paid it just to get on with it already. 

I negotiated on a local driver to take me 92 miles to the Bavet border in Vietnam, but ended up settling on Yorng, my original driver the first day I arrived. He has two small kids, and business is suffering, and he had contacted me earlier in the day. 

I ordered room service and got Tom Yum Seafood soup. In Thailand, I used to have this about five times a week. I had forgotten about all the non-edible sticks you have to pick out of it to get through a bowl, but otherwise, it was a welcome experience. If you have never had any of the Tom Yums—Chicken, Pork, or Seafood, I highly recommend it. Just don’t eat the sticks. 

Because the hotel couldn’t return my laundry by morning (another first), I resorted to hand washing the cycling clothes I was wearing. I had nothing clean, and they were bringing a new meaning to Tet Offensive. They never get as clean when I do this, but they reach a reduced level of stench, which is less disgusting even to me. 

After hanging them all over the room, showering myself, and settling all my plans for tomorrow, I spent the next six hours downloading videos and photos. This is how long it takes. And even with all my care, I still made mistakes. 

Day 30: Wednesday 

February 1, 2023: Stueng Saen (23 miles, 676 miles total)

The engineer of the four-year Cambodian genocide from 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot, was born in Prek Sbov, a small village just a couple miles outside of Stueng Saen. Stueng Saen is the capital the capital of the Kampong Tho m Province and my destination for today. Stueng Saen sits about 100 miles north of Phnom Penh. I decided to have a car take me all but 20 plus miles, and I would ride the less. I think  just a couple more nights in Cambodia, and I will push on to Vietnam a few days early. Sit in Ho Chi Minh City a few extra days to rest up. Maybe explore and see some sights and sell Linh. 

I am tired. Don’t get me wrong! This has been a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket-list, butt-kicking trip, but I am approaching the my limit of vacations, time off, and peddling. As I have mentioned before, I think, introverts love their alone time, but even we need human interaction, particularly with loved ones. The profound loneliness in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen left scars. I missed my family deeply. I am almost ready, but not quite, to end this journey and move to the next leg of my life. I want to return to Honduras, reunite with my family, enjoy Friday family movie and pizza night, resume work, and fulfill my commitment to work through October 2023. I love my work and my professional colleagues. 

Beyond October, who knows! I am supposed to get another medical test next month (March) in the US, but I am trying to push it off until the fall. 

I have really enjoyed this trip, even more than the first three journeys in the US. Part of the reason is that SE Asia is so fascinating, new, and different. 

After my first trip of 650 miles in Florida, a friend asked me if I were planning to do it again. While I wasn’t sure, I realized that averaging 40-45 miles per day was too much and it took a lot of the fun out of it for me. Too much of my day was invested in peddling and downloading photos and videos, and too little in reading, enjoying the scenery, and relaxing. I told him that 30 miles per day was perfect, say 3-4 hours on the road. 

Regardless of that realization, on the next two trips, I pushed myself to meet ambitious distances and deadlines, drove myself to my physical limits, and spent too many hours of the day on the road. 

Long days over four hours are much less fun. 

To complicate matters, Kam led me on paths through villages—which could be beautiful and fascinating, but were always slower than highways. Paths sometimes turned overly muddy, sandy, bumpy, and more challenging than anything I ever experienced the first three years on good US highways and roads. However, I have not had the difficult mountains on this trip that I had in Tennessee and Alabama combined with the heat of last July. That was a harder trip. But I made a conscious decision on Day Two in Vietnam to take steps to make this one more enjoyable. 

Another factor that stretched my days working on the video production was the fact that my new Insta360 camera requires a significant investment of time to edit, maybe 3–4 times as much time as standard “flat” videos. Since the videos are 360 degrees, I have to identify what and where I want the viewer to see: My face, the road, motorbikes approaching from behind me on the left, shops on the right, and so on. It is fun, but requires time. 

All of this to say that one reason that I have enjoyed this trip more is because I was able to keep my legs of the journey shorter. Hiring taxis to take me part of the way has also enabled me to see more. Without this adaptation, I would never have seen Da Lat in the mountains, the Mekong Delta, Angkor Wat, or even Cambodia at all. 

And I am quite satisfied with the physical exertion and exercise of three or four hours peddling per day. 

My driver and I loaded up Linh and bid farewell to the hotel staff around 7:15 am. I told him I had to go to an ATM, and he clearly understood, but he never stopped. Like just about every other driver, he called his wife and had her speak with me on the phone. She spoke very good English.

At our only stop, I bought us both coffee and a Chinese sponge cake that looks like a sponge. In fact, I wasn’t sure it was food until I tried it. 

Around 9:30 am or so, I had him drop me off at the side of the road beside a small family store, and I re-assembled Linh quickly. This brought out the “hellos” and jokes in Cambodian from four or five adult family members. The sun was out and the temperature was on the rise. Already it was about 84 degrees, and by noon it would be about 90. 

I bought water from the family and filmed while I filled up my Camelback, which always amazes locals. I guess I was pretty amazed myself when I first saw one in Iraq. A pair of soldiers were filling theirs. I also filmed their watermelons as they were the size of a grapefruit. 

I hadn’t peddled very long when I stopped to see this huge wooden hammer apparatus connected to an engine. I had seen three others as I rode by, so I figured this deserved further inspection. One lady demonstrated it for me. It pounded rice into the flakes, much like a huge mortar and pestle. I supposed much like mills grind corn and rice in Central America, these huge pounders make rice flower. 

Before long, the heat rose to 86. I stopped at a gas station and got a bottle of some type of sports drink and sat in the semi-shade for a few minutes. Then I peddled on. 

For days now, I had been meaning to oil my bike chain. When Tommy sold me the bike, he gave me a small plastic bottle of oil. I stuffed it away with the new chain, cables, air pump in a plastic bag down in the bottom of one of my saddle bags and forgot about it. Then whenever I got the flat tire and had to dig out my pump, I found the oil had spilled out all over the plastic bag. Nothing was salvageable for the chain. 

So as I passed shops on the right, I decided to stop into one and ask them to oil Linh’s chain for me. At the first motorbike shop, the door was wide open, but there was no one attending the shop. But next door was a shop that sold oil and other items. A man came over to dig out a cold drink from a cooler and I typed out on Google Translate, “Can you oil my chain?”

He stared at it for a long time and then told me to go on further to another shop. I realized that he couldn’t read, and to prevent himself any further embarrassment, he just wanted to get rid of me. 

About half a mile ahead, I found another motorbike repair shop. I stopped and showed the same message to a young man with greasy hands. He looked at it for longer than necessary, and again I realized this man couldn’t read either. He called a woman over. 

I showed her the pre-typed message—Can you oil my chain?—hoping that it didn’t hold any perverse sexual connotation in Khmer. 

She read it quickly, and explained it to the young man. He returned and oiled it quickly. I gave him a dollar, and he thanked me. 

Across the highway three high school boys pushed a barrier on wheels in front of our lane, and three others did the same 100 yards ahead, but blocking the oncoming traffic. No sooner had they blocked the road, than gaggles of school kids dressed in white and black uniforms shot out of the school yard and into the street on bikes and foot. This went on for a few minutes until the flood of Cambodian youth just stopped as if someone had shut off a spigot. Then, just as quickly, the barriers disappeared, and the highway traffic resumed, although the cars and motorbikes gave plenty of space to the school kids.

Naturally, I was dispensing and receiving greetings from nearly every kid on a bike and on foot. If I could somehow monetize greetings from this trip, I would be a wealthy man. 

Finally, a couple miles further on, I had passed most of the kids, and was some distance from the last one, when Kam blurted out that I had to turn right. I had ignored her all day because every path she wanted me to take was dirt and sand. But this one, I had to take. Otherwise, I would have to travel three extra miles on this highway. So, in the couple seconds from the time she told me to turn, and the actual turn, I studied the dirt path. It followed a levee for as far as the eye could see. So, I turned right.

 

And suddenly, I inadvertently ran some poor kid off the road. He narrowly missed me by jerking his bike into the a tiny dirt field and circling around. 

“Sorry, I am sorry,” I said and stopped. Almost everyone knows that word.

He smiled and started peddling toward the highway again.

“Sorry,” he said with a smile.

I tapped my chest and said, “Sorry. It was my fault.”

He laughed and rode on. 

These kids are really cool. May God bless them all!

This next leg was the hardest of the day. The temperature climbed to 88 degrees by 11:30 am. This damn dirt path had pockets of dust all around every few yards. To make matters worse, farmers were cleaning out the irrigation ditches on both sides and tossing the earth up onto the levee to patch what had washed out last monsoon season. It was everywhere. Looks like they had been working for weeks. 

So, as I slid and slipped around on the slushy sand and loose earth, the sun baked me. I was also traveling slower than I had all day. There was no way I could go quicker. The terrain just wouldn’t allow it. 

To complicate the four-mile road, there was not a tree or bush on the entire stretch. But about two miles on, I came to a spot of trees off to the left. Two women were sitting there resting in the shade. While a few men were working. I had seen women shoveling earth half a mile or so back, so I know these women weren’t just cheerleading. They were workers. I just happened to catch them at a break. 

One of the women waved me to come and join in the shade. The told me it was hot. We carried on an awkward linguist conversation, but socially very friendly, for about five minutes. Then, as bad as I hated to, I rode on. It was due to the clime to 91 degrees by 1 pm, and 92 degrees by 2 pm. 

At the end of the four miles, I came to a tiny hamlet with a restaurant on the right. Several men and women yelled at me to come back and sit with them. I waved and peddled on. But I needed water. Half a block ahead, there was another tiny store. I stopped and got some ice cold water and rested while I guzzled it. 

That was the end of the hamlet, so I was on a levee with no shade for a mile or so. Then I reached a little village and turned left. That road led me into Stueng Saen. It was about 90 by now (around noon). 

I stopped in to visit a monastery and film a little. I saw several monks, including many ten-or 12-year-olds. Maybe even younger.

At the hotel, I was exhausted. Not really wiped out. I could have gone another ten miles, but I am glad that I didn’t have to. I showered and went to the ATM, which was inside a bank. The security guard made me take off my hat inside. 

When I got back to the hotel, I sat down in the lobby and booked a room for tomorrow at Kampong Cham, about 70 miles away. Same as today, I only wanted to ride about 20-25 miles, so I picked out a spot on the map with Kam, and told the desk clerk that I needed a taxi. And that I wanted to leave at 7 am. I would still be facing the same heat as today, but I didn’t want to leave at 6 am. 

I went into the restaurant right before they closed at 2 pm, and ordered room service (given the language barriers, this is often the most reliable method), and then came back outside. The clerk was waiting for me. He said that he had inquired and found that I couldn’t leave until 10:30 am, and that would be by a public bus. I told him, No. I wanted to go by car. And I needed to leave at 7 am. 

He said, “Private car?”

“Sure. No problem,” I responded.

In the elevator, I noticed something odd for the first time. There was no fourth floor. It skipped from third to fifth. I was on the seventh floor. In China, the number four is bad luck, so tall buildings often don’t have a fourth floor, like the missing 13th floor in the US. But I didn’t realize that it was also unlucky in Cambodia. Now, I am wondering about all the hotels I stayed at in Vietnam. Certainly, there are many Chinese tourists in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Just as my food arrived, he called. He said he found a taxi for $60. I asked him to try $50. He called me back, and we settled on $55.

I think one more night in Cambodia, and then back on Vietnamese soil. If I get my visa, which was still being processed this morning when I checked.  

Unfortunately, the internet stopped working around 3 pm. When I called and asked them about it, they told me it was a problem with the internet company. And that it may be back on by tomorrow. They could have been telling me the truth, but I suspect they hadn’t paid the bill. The hotel was run down. The restaurants didn’t have many things that were on the menu, like Coke Zero, Tom Yum soup, homemade ice cream, just to name a few.

Day 29: Tuesday

January 31, 2023: Angkor Wat, Cambodia (20 miles, 652 miles total)

Today was fun!

After breakfast, I asked a clerk to help me find a taxi to take me to Stueng Sean, a city about 70 miles from here in the morning. I mounted Linh with only one saddlebag, holding with my tools and inner tubes in case Linh needs first aid, and we rode freely and lightly. With her back tire now firm, she purred. 

Before I left Saem Reap (the modern city just a few miles south of the ancient ruins), I saw a pagoda on the left, right beside the hospital. Two healthcare workers pushed a mother and small daughter across the road on a stretcher. I swung around and went back to the pagoda. I pushed Linh inside and began filming. After a few minutes, a caretaker started yelling at me to leave. He didn’t like the idea of Linh there, I guess, although they had assembled at least half a dozen motorbikes in front of the office. 

When I left, I moved into the street between the pagoda and the hospital and waited on a caravan of Tuk-Tuks to pass. I suspect they were transporting a tour group. 

As I eased back onto the street, a man on an electric motorbike rode up beside me and started a short conversation. He then bid farewell and veered off onto a side street.

By now, it was about 9 am, and the temperature cooperated at a cool 68 degrees. As I rode through the shade covered road toward Angkor, the breeze felt great. I was rested and energetic. Optimistic. 

I stopped at the Ticket Control Center that I had missed yesterday. Indeed the sign was tiny, and I let the crew of five or six park staff know it.

“That sign is small,” I said. But the woman ticket controller and the man who chased me down and chastised me yesterday insisted the sign was huge. 

“You remember me?” the man asked. I reached out and shook his hand to demonstrate there was no animosity for having stopped me as I was cruising so comfortably along yesterday. I told him I did. “What are you doing today?”

“Just exploring,” I said.

“Don’t want to come to my house?” he asked.

How kind! I laughed and thanked him, but insisted I needed to ride.

“Tomorrow a holiday,” the woman ticket controller said. 

“You are closed?” I asked. Not that I was planning on returning.

“No. For you. Tomorrow you take a holiday,” she suggested. She is right. Taking a day off yesterday left me more energetic today. More relaxed. You need not use the three-day pass for three consecutive days. You have a week, I think. That also allows tourists to see other sites, stay more time in Saem Reap, and spend more money. 

I am really fortunate that the throngs of foreign tourists have not returned Angkor yet. The atmosphere is so calm and relaxed. 

At the park, I really enjoyed myself. Stopping when I wanted. Taking photos when I wanted. I made a circuit around the primary complex, although some temples and monuments are as far as 15 miles away. I didn’t even see half of the sites, but what I saw was really cool. 

Ta Promh Temple entrance was under repair, so tourists had to cross an aluminum scaffolding stairway. Ta Keo Temple was a steep complex built on three different levels. I climbed to the second and sat down. I tried to call my wife (who I thought might be awake) and daughter (who was working) from there but my signal was bad. 

Riding through Victory Gate with its huge faces carved over the entrances was breathtaking. On the other side, I passed between Prasat Suor Prat, 12 towers. I swung north and rode along the Terrace of Elephants, which is a long royal viewing platform. As I curved around the corner of Bayon Temple, I ordered my camera to start recording. I stopped to ensure it captured plenty of four monkeys calmly sitting beside the road. One was eating a banana someone had given him. Another was just sitting and watching the human traffic. Another had a baby on her back. I rode on to Bayon and called the camera to stop. That is when I realized my mistake. 

For 29 days now, I have been ordering Insta360 to turn on and turn off, and she does the opposite. For her, “start record” and “stop record” sound identical. You can use them interchangeably. This is one reason that I started wearing my glasses so that I can read if it is on or off. There is a flashing light when it is on, but either my color blindness or the glare of the sun, make it almost impossible to read. As a result, I have missed some of the best filming opportunities of the trip, and consequently filmed long stretches of nothing particularly important. 

I carefully ordered Insta360 to start and walked Linh all the way back to the monkeys. This time more monkeys had assembled because a man was feeding them. Two mothers were carrying small babies. After a few minutes of this, I went back to the temple, made sure I let the camera roll, got lots of film, and rode on.

(It wasn’t until I got back to the room that I realized again, I had botched it. Story of my life.)

Fortunately, I found two monkeys shortly thereafter grooming themselves, and I got some film and photos of them. I passed through the Southern Gate, which was even more elaborate than the first one. 

By now, hours had passed. It was warmer, maybe 85 degrees. I stopped for some cold water and a pre-packaged ice cream cone. Then, I peddled back to the hotel.

The clerk told me she had found a taxi for me for $70, and I booked it. At the room, I signed up for FoodPanda.com, which is an international delivery service in Asia. I ordered KFC and then a Blizzard from Dairy Queen. Downloaded my videos to free up space for tomorrow and was dozing off by 8:15 pm. 

Day 28: Monday

Jan 30, 2023: Angkor Wat, Cambodia (Rest Day, 632 miles total)

Today I rested.

Day 27: Sunday

January 29, 2023: Angkor Wat (12 miles, 632 total)

Before Phnom Penh became Cambodia’s capital in 1434, the western city of Angkor was established as the Khmer capital around 800 AD. Hindu King Suryavarman II commissioned the construction of Angkor Wat—the king’s state temple and capital city—in 1122 as a dedication to the Hindu god Vishnu. In 1177, the Chams army sacked Angkor Wat. The next king, Jayavarman VII established a new capital at Angkor Thom (within walking distance of Angkor Wat) and dedicated the new state temple to Buddhism because the Hindu gods had abandoned him. As a result, many of the original Hindu motifs have been changed and converted to Buddhist figures. 

Today Angkor compound stretches across 154 square miles and is home to scores of temples, monuments, walls, canals and reservoirs. Angkor Wat is the best preserved. 

When I moved to Thailand for a short period, a colleague of mine told me that I needed to go see Angkor Wat. I never got around to it, and I have been kicking myself ever since. I put it on my bucket list a few years ago, and when planning this cycling trip, I kept it as a top priority. Even when my plans changed on January 4th, the trip to Angkor Wat was non-negotiable. 

 When I woke up this morning, I found a this spot of blood on my sheets and several smears on the sheets and my pillow. I looked all over my body, but couldn’t find any blood on my body or clothes. 

While packing and preparing for the journey, I found a cut on the back of my arm just above the elbow. I suppose somehow moving Linh in and out of two taxis, I must have scraped my arm  without knowing it. 

Yorng was downstairs waiting to meet me well before 6 am. By 6:05, Linh was loaded and we were on our way. Traffic was light. He was right. This was the time to leave the city to avoid rush hour traffic. After yesterday’s headache, I didn’t ever want to deal with that level of traffic ever again. 

It is funny how people position themselves to adapt or reject certain environments. Many people I know love big cities. At the University of Chicago many summers ago, I remember a girl from New York City who said that she hated Chicago because it was too rural. 

“It has trees,” she said with repugnance. 

I, on the other hand, don’t like cities at all. Raised in rural Jackson County, I have made every effort to rain in smaller towns all my life. I want to be within distance of a movie theater and some restaurants, some decent malls or shopping areas, where I can buy clothes or hardware if needed, but otherwise, I am happy in the country. In fact, my wife and I bought a small horse farm during the pandemic. We replaced the horses with grandkids and plan to retire there. 

When I worked in Washington, DC, we lived in rural Maryland, and I commuted 1 hour 45 minutes every day each way. When the train was on time. 

The main roads in Cambodia are not really any prettier than those in Vietnam. Rows of one story buildings on either side that remind me of Pakistan or Kurdistan or Somalia. Something about them brings back unpleasant memories. 

However, the people are lovely. And with fewer cars and motorbikes on the road, travel is a little faster. The gas stations are usually equipped with nice restrooms, small stores, and fast food restaurants. At one gas station, where we stopped, just outside the restrooms, there were three pool tables. The commercial advantages to investing in gas stations has never really caught on in Vietnam. You are lucky to find a bottle of water. Sometimes, a woman will sell some snacks. 

There are more Tuk-Tuks (or motorized rickshaws, as the are called in Pakistan and India). Every town and village has a pagoda. I saw many spirit houses—these tiny pagoda-like devotional houses on a pedestal, where people pray and leave offerings—Cambodia seems to abound in them. 

I took a nap on the trip to make up for the sleep I had lost last night. Just staying up late and getting up at 4 am to meet Yorng’s 6 am departure deadline. And just past 11 am, we arrived at the Saem Siemreap Hotel. The location was poor. It is off a back road and hard to find, but the hotel is really pretty, and the staff were really hospitable. 

After storing my valuables in the room safe, I rode Linh two miles to the Angkor Wat Ticket Center, which is about three miles from the entrance. Don’t ask me why!

More than 6.6 million tourists visited Angkor Wat in 2019 and less than 200,000 in 2021. The pandemic has been devastating for the tourism industry. And the hotel and restaurant staff are perhaps much more flexible than in the past. 

At the ticket center, there were about six or eight people in line to buy one-day passes and no one in front of me to buy three-day passes. In fact , the ticket agent was asleep with her head in her arms when I arrived.

I bought two ice cream bars and gave one of them to the policeman who watched my bike while I was away. He was really happy. Another policeman turned up and tried to get me to pay him $15 for his Police cap. 

I peddled on to Angkor Wat. It was pretty busy. Perhaps 200-300 people, including Chinese, Europeans, and Cambodians were milling about, posing for photos, taking selfies, and listening to tour guides. Some young women had donned shiny saris and professional photographers ushered them from spot to spot for photographs. Families and tour groups moved in packs. Couples walked and talked and took each other’s photos. 

And in strolled a 63-year-old American on a bike in shorts, riding vest, and biking helmet all sweaty and stinky and smeared with white streaks of sunblock. 

For the next hour, I strolled through the compound taking photos of myself and of the temple and royal city and the pounds. As glorious the compound was today, I wondered what it looked like 900 years ago. It must have been spectacular. I amused myself until nearly 3pm. I was hotter and sweatier and hungrier than I had been when I arrived to town. So, I got back on Linh and rode back to the hotel. I ordered room service and sat on the balcony overlooking the pool and ate a cheeseburger and fries. It was good. Then I ate a fruit plate. 

It was a good day.

Day 26: Saturday

January 28, 2023: Phnom Penh (19 miles, 620 total)

In the 1920s, the capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, earned the title the “Pearl of Asia” because of its beauty. During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong used Cambodia as a base. Thousands of Vietnamese refugees found sanctuary in Cambodia. 

In 1967, the Communist Party of Kampuchia formed the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer in French), a military wing in an effort to seize power. In 1974, the Khmer Rouge led by the infamous Pol Pot cut off supplies to the Phnom Penh. In April 1975, they seized the capital and carried out a campaign of torture, mutilation, and murder. They forcibly evacuated Phnom Penh in what has become known as a death march. They dumped patients from the hospitals into the streets. 

Pol Pot became the new government’s prime minister and conducted a campaign of torture and murder against anyone perceived as educated, engaged in espionage, or political enemies in order to establish an agrarian society. The Khmer Rouge marched civilians nine miles from the capital into the countryside and murdered and buried them in open pits that became known as the Killing Fields. 

I remember many years ago in Thailand, a British man who’d married a Thai lady told me that Buddhists were pacifists, and that all wars had been conducted by Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Because I was his guest, I didn’t remind him that Pol Pot was a Buddhist responsible for the extermination of 1.5-2 million of his fellow Cambodians, wiping out an entire educated and technical class of Cambodian society.

Today Phnom Penh’s population is about 2.5 million people. The city is modern. The economy is still struggling to recover from COVID measures. 

After paying my bill at the resort, the driver and I departed at 7:15 am. I calculated five hours to the border (say, 12:15 pm), one hour on the Vietnamese side (if they don’t hassle me about the port of departure), an hour on the Cambodian side, which would deliver me on Cambodian soil about 2:15 pm in time to search for a Cambodian SIM card, money changer, and taxi driver to take Linh and me to within 20 miles of my destination. 

For once, however, the trip went much, much better than planned. 

My Vietnamese driver stopped a couple miles from the hotel to buy us both ice coffee. This time it wasn’t as sweet and didn’t have milk. So I nursed it, like the locals, for hours. 

We rode on a highway designated for cars only, and we made good time. I asked him to put on music, and he said, No, with an embarrassed smile. Maybe the radio didn’t work. 

At one point near the border, we saw a pack of about 40 cyclists in black riding suits all going south. They looked fit, no saddle bags, and I suspect not a kickstand among them.

By 10:15 am, I was assembling Linh at Moc Bai, the Vietnamese side of the border. I pushed her half a block along with other Vietnamese who were pushing their motorbikes and dozens of Western tourists. 

The immigration official made me leave my bike outside, which was one of the hardest things I had ever done. There was no place to lock it, and of course the saddle bags were easy pickin’s for anyone who so desired. It was parking security on the honor system. There were money changers and other civilians milling around. I asked one man who was trying to facilitate my visa for a few dollars to watch the bike, held my breath, and went inside. 

The line was pretty big, but it moved quickly. The immigration official stamped my passport without a word, and I looped around and picked up Linh. I paid the man who was watching the bike $2, which he wasn’t expecting. He was happy. And I was happier. 

After a similar exercise on the Cambodian side, I changed money and got a SIM card from the same man. He gave me a fair price for both. Then I rode Linh about a block to a row of taxis. That’s where I met Yorng. We agreed on $50 to take me to my destination which was about 75 miles or so. 

It was 10:55 am. 

Yorng, my Cambodian driver, told me in his broken English that there are very few tourists compared to before. He was very reliable and honest. We stopped at a convenience store, where I went in to try to find a diet soda. No luck. I bought the closest thing to orange juice I could find for me and a Coke for Yorng. 

While we were drinking and driving, I saw a full mobile retail store of shirts and jeans being pulled behind a motorbike. I noticed the school girls wore uniforms of white shirts and long black skirts. Women wore long floppy hats, like the flapper hats of the Roaring 20s in the US. I didn’t see the conical hats so common in Vietnam. 

Traffic had a very different consistency. There were fewer motorbikes. The motorbike to car ratio here is like 5 to 1; whereas in Vietnam, it is 20 to 1. Motorists are not obsessed with blaring their horns, although it does seem that cars take more risks passing. Women don’t cover their entire faces here with scarves or masks to prevent exposure to the sun, like in Vietnam.

Yorng dropped me about 20 miles from Phnom Penh, and I immediately hit a 15 mph headwind on Highway 1 (not the same QL 1 of Vietnam). So, I got off the main road and went through a village. The road turned ugly quickly. I found myself on gravel and dirt. So, after a few miles, I got back on Highway 1. As I got closer to Phnom Penh, I was pleased to find a motorbike lane and a shoulder. Unfortunately, motorbikes with side-carriages converted into fruit or juice carts, and others the pulled long, wide trailers, like the retail clothing stores on wheels, while bicycles traveled precariously. The conversions take up the entire lane. And the shoulder is routinely gobbled up with sand, dirt, and gravel, or motorbikes traveling the wrong way, which means I had to keep my head on a swivel and move around a lot. The soil and gravel spillage onto the highway can lead to Linh’s wheels sliding and losing grip on the pavement. 

So, I got off again into a village on a nice street only to be led onto a wide mud road with large pools of water covering both lanes. I got back onto the highway and stuck with it, hazards and headwinds be damned. 

Once I reached, Phnom Penh, I faced the most challenging traffic jams, blockages, and sidewalk riding I have experienced. It was rush hour. All I could do was keep my wits about me and focus on the road. Enjoy the experience but remain safe. It seems like I crawled about the sidewalk to sliver of shoulder for an hour or more before I reached moving traffic. When I finally arrived at the Aquarius Hotel & Urban Resort, I was happy. 

Next door was a Circle K, but no diet soft drinks. Fortunately, the hotel had them. After my shower, I ordered room service, which was the delicious Cambodian curry.

 

Instead of riding to Angkor Wat at a pace of 30-40 miles per day, I contacted Yorng and arranged for him to pick me up at 6 am and go directly to Angkor Wat. I could spend three days there, and they head back at whatever pace I wanted. I could synch my photos, catch up on the blogs, rest. And enjoy myself.  

Day 25: Friday

January 27, 2023: Ben Tre, Vietnam (23 miles, 601 total)

I slept in till 6:30 am. Started transferring photos to my phone because iPad is clogged. I planned a 25 mile Kam tour in a loop that would take me around this island. Organized my laundry and dropped it at the desk. I ordered the hotel taxi for tomorrow: $109 for 80 miles north to Moc Bai, the border of Cambodia. 

I have been worrying about my Vietnam exit port for a month. On the application for eVisa, you mist put your exit port. I put the border of Laos. Two cycling tour companies told me I have to leave through there. But since my plans changed, I have spoken to both of them, contacted immigration, read my visa closely three times, and have failed to come away with a clear answer. I have to be out of the country by Sunday as my visa runs out. And I am traveling tomorrow and have a hotel booked in Cambodia tomorrow night, so I hope they let me go. 

I ate a thin scrambled egg and some bacon at breakfast and went back to the room and pumped up a completely flat tire. Now I am worried about that. I need either this tire fixed or a new one. I found a moped shop 1.4 miles from the hotel, and peddled off in that direction. 

At the shop, an old man, a younger man whom I assumed was his son, and a customer all stopped what they were doing to help me. I had no internet again, so I couldn’t use Google Translate. But the young customers helped explain that I thought my valve stem was bad. They greased the stem and pumped it up. The old man refused money, but I forced him to take a few dollars. 

My next stop was a Viettel vendor: A mother and her two teenage daughters. I bought another month’s worth of service for $4. And instantly, I had internet. I don’t know why I didn’t do this yesterday. 

Then I pedaled off deeper south into the island. I planned to reach the ferry crossing and then double back a little ways and cross to the other side of the island. However, before I arrived, I had to stop. It was getting hot: 94 or 95 degrees. My pronunciation of “cold” and “orange juice” that so eloquently worked twice yesterday failed today. I just wasn’t getting it right. Instead I got cold water and was glad to have it. 

Except for a few things in my bags, I was light. No backpack. As I peddled on to the ferry docking site, I made up my mind to switch up my plans and cross with the ferry onto the little island across the river. 

When I arrived at the dock, really just a ramp, the ferry was coming our way. Then Yens arrived. The 18-year-old Belgian had saddle bags much bigger than mine, and a tire and other items strapped onto his bike. But no kickstand. I am not sure what it is about seasoned cyclists, but they don’t like kickstands. A few days earlier Mark, the British cyclist, had commented on my kickstand when I used it to prop up my bike. 

“You don’t have one?” I asked. 

“No, I just lean it against me,” he said, leaning it against himself. Perhaps not using a kickstand seems too pedestrian or amateur for the most experienced riders, or maybe they are opposed to the additional weight. 

For me, I am about the practical. I want my bike to stand up everywhere I go. Even along the side of the road where there is no tree or guardrail to lean it against. 

Yens and I got on the ferry together. He was in his 18th month of cycling. Starting at Belgium, he had crossed every country along the way. He was going to Cambodia next, and in about six months would end up in New Zealand before going home. He was on a 10 Euro budget per day. Most times, he said, “I don’t spend that.”

On the ferry, I realized my tire was going flat. On the other side, we disembarked and pumped up my tire. First me with my pump, which is awkward with this type of stem. And then his, which works better. He said these stems are common in Europe. 

Damn Europeans!

I bought him a cold drink and then peddled on a concrete path the width of a sidewalk. In places it was broken into pieces. Once, going around a corner, I almost slid off the road into a pond or canal. People here were not particularly friendly. The island seemed a little more sparsely populated. But it was pretty. The path wove through networks of canals, creeks, and tiny tributaries to the river on both sides of us. 

In addition to a tire that kept losing air, one of my saddle bags got into the spokes. So, I removed it and strapped it onto the the back, or so I thought. As I was riding over a bridge, it came loose and fell off. I turned around to see what the sound was, and when I turned back, I had ventured onto someone’s rice stalks lain out to dry. Linh slid out from under me, but landed on my feet and caught her before she hit the ground. I went back and got the bag.

Kam led me to a second ferry, and I crossed back to the Ben Tre island, and had to stop to pump up my tire again. Some 15 minutes later, it was going flat and the heat had climbed to 89 degrees. The sun was overpowering. I stopped to get an ice cream bar, but the first store didn’t have any. The second store didn’t either, but the manager—a teen or man in his early 20s—gave me a free bottle of water and asked if he could get a photo with me. 

I had to pump the tire up again a little further. This was stressing me out. Tomorrow, I would be going to Cambodia. I couldn’t deal with a bad tire. One way or another, I had to fix this tire or get a new one today. 

I came upon mounds and mounds of coconut shells, which locals process for charcoal. It is inexpensive fuel for cooking and has a nice smell. I stopped again one more time and pumped up the tire before crossing the bridge back over into Ben Tre proper. I went back to the same moped shop. It was empty, but the old man and his wife were at a concrete table and bench in the median under a bridge just across the street. The old man came over, but his wife stayed and napped. 

I told the man that I needed help. He nodded. I told him I needed to either replace the tire or have it repaired. He told me that he didn’t do that. (Repairing mopeds and bicycles were two different crafts.) I told him I would pay him well, so he went across the street and brought back a bicycle repairman. They removed the tire, and the old man put the tire and inner tube over his head and shoulder, ready to leave and try to find a new tire. I gave him $9, which he gladly took and rode off on this bike. 

About half an hour later, he came back and shook his hand back and forth, signaling, “No Luck.”

He tried to give me the money back, but I refused. He looked at me and then went back to the other man across the street. The old man returned by himself and without the tire and tube. He let me know that the bicycle repair man would fix both the tire and tube. He crossed the road, told his wife that he was leaving, and he rode off. She sat up and watched the shop from the median. 

Some twenty minutes later, the repairman came back with the repaired tire and tube, and showed me where the holes were. Then installed them. I gave him the old tube that had gone flat days ago, and he repaired it too. In the end, he asked for $4 and I gave him $9. He was a happy repairer. 

Back at the hotel, I took Linh upstairs to the room, ordered food, and picked out a spot outside of Phnom Penh, where I hoped a Cambodian driver would drop me tomorrow. 

I was still worried about exiting Vietnam from this land port tomorrow as it is my nature to worry.

Day 24: Thursday

January 26, 2023: Ben Tre (54 miles, 578 total)

The Mekong Delta is the wet coastal land southwest of Saigon. The might Mekong River courses from Cambodia into Vietnam and disperses into a number of major distributaries, called Nine Dragon River Delta in Vietnamese. The delta is rich in rice production and fishing. 

The Mekong Delta became a brutal battle zone during the Vietnam War, as the US Mobile Riverine Force patrolled the region, and the Viet Cong launched attacks against the South Vietnamese army, US Navy swift boats and hovercraft and US 9th Infantry Division. 

My day into the Mekong Delta began in Saigon. I peddled from the hotel in the bright sunshine. The first day that I didn’t have a confirmed hotel room. Last night when I was online booking the room in My Tho, I couldn’t find a good room in Orbitz or other downloaded platform, but I found one in on Trip.com. I was tired and made a mistake, booking it for the current evening and not the next night. As soon as I booked it, I realized my mistake. In all these years of booking one, two, and three nights ahead, it is a wonder that I haven’t committed this blunder this more often. 

Within 60 seconds, I contacted a Trip.com agent online and explained my mistake. She told me it was too late. My booking was non-refundable. I argued that I just made a mistake. She said the would let me know by 10 pm if she could change the reservation. But at 10 pm, she sent an email explaining that she had failed to reach anyone but hoped to have an answer by 10 am. 

So, here I was riding 42 miles in 89-90 degree heat without a hotel reservation. Many of the nice and affordable hotels were already booked up. To make matters worse, my tire was losing air. I had stopped once already to pump it up. I didn’t like it, but I peddled on. Fortunately, there were no hills or headwind on the route, except the bridges, which were formidable but manageable. 

Traffic was pretty intense and the heat began taking its toll. I stopped once to rest on a concrete bench outside a closed store. The newest email told me Trip.com wouldn’t have an answer until 6pm. I responded that I would arrive well before that. 

The first major bridge stretched over QL 1 and circled back under itself to merge into the highway. I managed that like a Vietnam traveler with no problem. About half a mile ahead, however, I missed my turn and had to stop. While I was waiting for the traffic to diminish so I could swing around, a man on a motorbike sitting behind a huge dog passed me. It was hard to tell which one was driving. 

I rode along a small road that ran along a highway that didn’t permit motorbikes or bicycles. There was no protection from the sun. And it drained me strength, although I knew I could make it to My Tho with no problem. Finally, the route took me off that path and through some villages directly south. I stopped in a village park and found shade in a concrete structure. A woman vendor was using the shade to rest and organize her wares. I pumped up my tire, rested, and went on. 

At the next village, I found a motorcycle shop. I stopped to see the if the owner would pump up my tire but he wasn’t there. It was around lunchtime and people often go here for naps. Two women on a motorbike saw me and stopped. One grabbed the electric air pump hose and started to help me, but when they saw my funky stem, they realized they couldn’t. I pulled out my hand pump and one woman held the hose valve on the stem while I pumped with both hands until I was winded. Then we switched. It was pretty well full when I told her to stop. She didn’t want money but I insisted. When they left, she patted me on the back with an act of sisterly intimacy. I remember once when I was on an operating table in Costa Rica and the doctor was resetting my broke hand while I was awake, the nurse stroked my hair. The tender, platonic act was very calming. This touch by the Vietnamese woman was the same. 

I stopped for water at a small shop and checked my email again. Trip.com reported that the hotel was closed, but they had a sister hotel that was open. Did I want to book there? I looked online and it was $10 cheaper a night. I said okay if they would honor my payment I already made. 

About 30 miles into the journey, I was sweating heavily and whipped, so I stopped at family-owned, open-air (no walls) restaurant. The family adults were talking and eating. The men were drinking beer. One of the men asked if I wanted a beer. I declined. I was already feeling a little nauseous. Like always, they sent their children to wait on me because they were the ones in the family who spoke English. I ordered a freshly-squeezed orange juice and it was excellent. I bought a cold bottle of water and checked my email. Now, the hotel wanted more money for this hotel, even though it cost less per night. Trip.com gave me the option of cancelling, so I cancelled. Then while still sitting there in the cool shade finishing my orange juice, I booked a hotel using Trip.com in Ben Tre, some ten miles deeper into the Mekong Delta. That would extend my trip in this 89 degree heat to a total of 52, but I could do it. I felt tired but strong. 

I paid $1 for the juice and the water and rode off, leaving my cold water on the table. A mistake I would later regret. 

At the next stop, I received an email that the  hotel I booked was already full. Shit! So I went back to Orbitz and booked a resort on the river in Ben Tre, one mile further, for about $60. No more Trip.com.

Fortunately, about this time, the sun decided I deserved a break and hid itself behind some clouds. I pedaled and pedaled and sweated and huffed and puffed, but the clouds made it a little more bearable. 

I reached My Tho with some energy left and pumped Linh through the city with no major difficulty. I had never ridden 53 miles in this type of heat before. I felt stronger and in better shape than when I started 3.5 weeks ago. 

Right before reaching the Mekong River, I hit a traffic jam. Everything going south was blocked. I didn’t let it bother me. I just pulled Linh into the shade of a shop run by an old lady (probably younger than me) and bought a cold water. As I sat in a plastic chair two sizes too small for me, I checked my email, my distance to go, the temperature, the map, and other things, I realized my battery was almost dead. It might not make it. I had been on auxiliary power, using the external battery Tellie got me for hours. It too was almost dead. I shut it down to conserve what little charge it had remaining. I had given up music hours ago. 

When traffic started moving, I stood up. The old woman smiled and indicated with her hands that I could go. But when I pedaled around the cars, I saw just how big and tall the bridge was. I knew this was going to be hard. And there was no space to push Linh. It was afternoon rush hour, and everyone was rushing to get home. 

I didn’t make it to the top in one go. I had to stop twice and just let the motorbikes buzz and honk past me. On the third effort, I made it to the top and stopped to take some photos of the Mekong River. Then I pedaled on to the next bridge crossing the Ben Tre River. Next came a string of souvenir, candy, and fruit shops on both sides of road. My tire was getting squishy again. So I stopped at a motorcycle repair shop. He had to search three times for the right plastic hose to connect between my valve stem and his air pump connection before he could fill it. He absolutely refused to accept money no matter how much I insisted. 

I had to stop one more time before making to the Ben Tre Riverside Resort, which sits on the Ham Luong River.

The hotel was a really nice place, but they didn’t give me a hard time about taking Linh to the room with me. I paid $13 more to get a river view room. The place was so nice and I was so tired, that I decided to spend two nights here. I could explore the delta from the hotel, get my tire fixed, arrange a car for Saturday, get clothes washed, catch up on my blog some, download videos, try to synch my iPad, which had been stuck at over 400 photos and videos for several days, and maybe even rest a little. 

Day 23: Wednesday

January 25, 2023: Ho Chi Minh City (26.5 miles, 524 miles total) 

Last night, I didn’t get to sleep until about 10:30 pm. Before my 5:30 am alarm could go off, I was awake. Today would be another long day. I would take a taxi to Binh Hoa and ride my bike about four hours to Binh Tan. I need to get there before dark. So I figured I would be racing against the sun again. 

Another challenge I faced was uploading videos to the iCloud. I needed to free up space on my camera, but my ipad was congested with 427 videos and photos. The past two nights, the device had only delivered one video. So, while I edited and deleted photos on the camera and transferred them to my phone (for the first time), I reduced the size of a few of the larger videos on the iPad in hopes of unclogging the bottleneck. I needed to take a shower. And I was almost our of Vietnamese Dong, so I would have to ask the driver to stop at an ATM and then hit another one later on my bike. 

On the bright side, I wouldn’t have to pay for a taxi for three days, when I could hire a car to take me to the Cambodian border. 

I did what I could with the video transfers to free up a little space on my camera and deleted half the memory, but the uploading from the phone and iPad to the cloud was painfully slow. My phone data had lasted all day yesterday so I decided to risk it and leave it on and try to upload a few videos while travelling. 

I remembered that I had only half pumped up my back tire yesterday so I pumped it more. Packed everything and led Linh down two flights of  stairs. 

Fu is the driver (foo) today. We loaded Linh in the back of his vehicle. Then I went back into the lobby to deal with yet another problem with the payment of the room. They wanted me to pay again on my credit card. 

By 7:50 am, Linh, Fu, and I crept out through the throngs of foot and motorbike traffic. Fu plugged in I’m only Human, which reminded me of my son. He plays this song. 

Since my daily allowance of internet had lasted more than 11 hours yesterday, I decided to try to download videos from my phone to the cloud. Big mistake. Within 30 minutes, I was out of internet. That would haunt me the rest of the trip.

Just outside of town Fu stopped to buy us both an iced Vietnamese coffee. I don’t want to be rude, so I took it. 

Okay, okay. With ice, milk, and sugar, it is not half bad. I finish mine by the time we reached an ATM. He nursed his for the next several hours. I get out my $90 maximum allowed by this bank. 

The Highway out of Da Lat to HCMC is modern and well paved. For 30 minutes at least. Then we were back amid the same chaos along the four-lane highway QL 20. 

Fu gave me his phone and tells me to pick out music on his dashboard online radio. I punch in Hotel California, which he seemed to like. However this app produces this odd noise every few seconds that reminded me of an alien gurgling. 

Around the Da Nihm river, I caught Fu tapping his finger on the steering wheel to the beat of Martha Says.

I probably know in the neighborhood of 50 Vietnamese words although I can’t construct too many sentences. I primarily rely on one or two-word sentences, nouns and adjectives. In most languages, the cognates and loan words are the easiest: cà phê (coffee), ATM (which sounds like Ah-Tay-Em), toilet, ôtô (auto), ben zin (benzine or gasoline), kí lô mét (kilometer), calo (calorie)…

Then there are the site words. In many ways, I am like my grandchildren when they were learning to read. These are words that I easily recognize when I read them, but cannot easily access them when I need them, like pharmacy, barber shop, tire shop, beauty salon, happy new year, city, and orange juice, although some are gradually being absorbed into my active vocabulary.

Almost never can I pronounce words correctly because many seemingly simple words have depth and theatrics to their pronunciation. For example, yesterday morning the young hotel clerk told me her name was Hạ, which means summer. She corrected my pronunciation three times. In order to correctly pronounce it, you must start with one vowel sound that is similar the the English “a” but then the vowel drops to some deep sound we don’t possess and it ends with a higher intonation as if we are asking a question. And that is just the simplest example. 

Fu stopped at this bus stop restaurant. An open air food factory that produced plates for busloads of passengers at a time within two minutes. We had rice with pickled cabbage, and a thin slice of beef that possessed an amazing flavor, soup with pickled vegetables, including some porous vegetable I didn’t recognize. 

We passed several miles of rubber tree farms. 

Ben Hoa sits northeast of Saigon, slightly outside the city. Fu dropped me there. It is customary in many countries, for drivers to attempt to squeeze an additional $50 or $100 out of the customer at this point, using any excuse they can find: Traffic was bad so it took me seven hours instead of four; this is further than we agreed; ben zin was more expensive today than yesterday; whatever… But no Vietnamese driver tried to cheat me. There was a taxi driver in Hue who took advantage of the pouring down rain to squeeze an extra $3 our of me, but he is the only one. 

Following Kam, I peddled off the main road through a village into a cemetery. The main cemetery road would have been fine, but Kam led me to a dirt path right through the middle of tombs. It was about 88 degrees and the sun was bearing down. And my back tire was losing air. I had a choice at that point. Backtrack a couple miles or ride on. I checked Kam’s map, but I only had my offline stored route. Since I had no internet, Google Maps wasn’t working. 

I always tell my staff at work, sometimes you just have to pull the trigger. Decide. Study the options, but don’t over think it. Just decide. So I pulled the trigger. 

It was a mistake.

Just a few yards up the rocky dirt path, I felt the slushiness of the back tire. I found a tiny sliver of shade and pumped the tire up. It wasn’t good enough, but I was sweating and winded and I was racing against the clock. I needed to get to the hotel before sunset. 

Fifteen minutes later, I left that graveyard and travelled onto a bumpy gravel road that led to other graveyards. I entered a military graveyard as Kam instructed, but the two guards stopped me and made me leave. So again I was faced with a decision. Backtrack or plug away forward.

Again, I made a mistake and proceeded. This time there was no good way forward. Twenty minutes later, I found myself at the dead end of a crumby dirt pathway. I had come to far to backtrack now, so I pushed Linh along a footpath through a deep ditch and into a small forest beside a factory. This was virgin territory for a bike, and even foot traffic was discouraged. Then I came to concrete barriers interlaced with tree branches to prevent pedestrians from crossing.  I had to get across, but as I reached the concrete, another security guard arrived on his motorbike. I greeted him with lots of hellos in two languages, and he responded enthusiastically.

He even helped me lift the bike over a break in the concrete barriers. He spoke some English, and asked where I was going. I told him I was going on to HCMC. He told me he was a security guard for this industrial compound. I thanked him and peddled on, happy to be on blacktop once again. 

The soft back tire was slowing me down, so I stopped at the risk gas station I found. A very kind mechanic pumped my tire while his wife sat on an outdoor cot and watched. Both he and his wife refused any renumeration when he had finished, but I insisted on giving them $2. 

When I got to the address that Kam had taken me, I realized this was not my hotel. I went into a small hotel and asked if I could use their WiFi. The manager immediately connected me, and his wife came out saying something in a loud voice and smiling. I looked up my hotel. I still had eight or nine miles to go. And I was tired. Sweaty. It was almost dark. 

I bought some cold water, set Google Maps to my location, shook the man’s hand, thanked him and his wife, and strolled around the block and into late afternoon traffic. 

As it turned dark, the trip was almost surreal. Hundreds of motorists buzzing around me, beeping and criss-crossing, and halting and cutting, stopping in the middle of traffic.

Everyone who can still peddle should spend a couple hours navigating downtown Ho Chi Minh City traffic at night. My mind was racing, on high alert. I could not afford a single mistake. It was exhilarating.

There are over 65 million registered motorbikes in Vietnam, representing bout two-thirds of the population. An estimated 6,000 new motorbikes added to the list daily. And I feel like I have encountered every one of them in the month of January. 

After getting turned around once, and stopping to borrow WiFi twice, I finally rolled into Aiden Saigon Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. Glad to be safe.

Day 24: Tuesday

January 26, 2023: Da Lat (.5 miles, 497.5 total)

Da Lat sits 4,900 feet in elevation, and is largest city in the Central Vietnam Highlands. The city is very popular among tourists, not just with foreigners, but Vietnamese. In fact, when I reached Da Lat, the streets were so packed with tourists, that the car couldn’t reach my hotel. I had to get out, put Linh back together, strap on her saddle bags, and then ride her half a mile through a street festival to the hotel. 

During the Vietnam War, at the beginning of Tet (January 31, 1968), the Viet Cong seized the city, driving the Americans and South Vietnamese army out. Only after sustained battles, did the south regain control nine days later. 

My day started at the resort in Quang Ngai with my removing Linh’s back tire, changing the inner tube, and pulling a tiny wire out of the tire. The valve stem was really funky, and it took me 20 minutes to figure out how it worked. All-in-all, I had Linh ready to go in 35 minutes. 

At reception, I met Ha, which means summer, just like my granddaughter. I paid my bill and waited outside for about five minutes before Khanh, the driver arrived. Ha stayed with me, which is a custom I have seen from many hotel clerks. They like to see you off. 

Khanh had a new Toyota Fortuner, like a 4 Runner, and he kept it meticulous, which reminded me of my father. We packed Linh inside, and Ha asked me for photo. She seemed giddy to get a photo with the 63 year-old version of Chuck E Cheese. 

This was an 11.5 hour ride to cover 310 miles, which gave me plenty of time to observe and think. Write some and look up things on the internet.

I had been wondering for weeks about the huge stones in people’s yards, in villages, in front of shops. Somehow, it is linked to popular Vietnamese religion, which over the centuries has drawn on animist, Confucian, Taoist, Christian, and Buddhist beliefs and practices. Many people visit Buddhists temples, for instance, but are not Buddhists. When Christianity was introduced, the first priests did not use Jesus and the disciples to convert locals but drew on images and figures that the Vietnamese could identify with. Even in Christian churches today, you will find huge symbolic stones. 

Although less so today, village cults believed in village guardian spirits and spirits of the rock, which likely resonate from the special stones throughout villages today. 

My driver was nice in his own way, but a little quiet like me, which suits me just fine. Although he didn’t speak much English, we communicated just fine. He complained about Vietnamese drivers, that constantly honked their horns.

“America no peep peep… Vietnam peep peep,” Khanh said. 

He stopped at a tiny restaurant and ordered Pho Bo for us both. He treated. He pronounced Pho like Fuh, to rhyme with Duh! I guess everyone knew that but me. I tried to mimic him while eating. He used the chopsticks in one hand and the spoon in the other, sipping the soup sometimes after a mouthful of noodles. His wife called in the middle of the meal, and he put her on video chat so she could see that he was with an honest to goodness American cyclist. We exuberantly greeted each other. The Pho was really good. I couldn’t finish mine.

On the road, we came up behind two ornate funeral vans. The last one had its doors cast open. Two men holding flaming torches out the back guarded a decorative casket inside. 

At one point, I saw a mother holding her smartphone out for an infant to watch as the father steered the motorbike about 35 mph, which is the typical top speed. 

This is the Year of the Cat so there are decorations, statues, figurines, and assorted images of smiling cats abound. 

We rode along the coast line for about 230 miles, then turned west last 80 miles to ascend into the mountains. I began to see more and more sugar cane, pineapple fields, and clusters of banana trees. But for the writing on the signs, we could be in El Salvador.

The Duong 652 highway narrows to two lanes but is nearly as busy as before. So, it is slow going, each driver trying to find a relatively straight stretch of road to pass a few motorbikes.

Khanh stopped at a bicycle vendor of pork dumplings and ordered us two. I gotta admit, they were pretty good. A few miles ahead, a little girl of about six-years-old was running along side of the road with an infant in one arm and a plastic bag of goods to vend to a woman waiting on a motorbike. 

The rain started coming down hard, but this didn’t deter riders. They just stopped donned rain gear, tarps, or any type of impermeable cloth, and rode on. 

Then the road climbs more steeply along the mountains, misty clouds dangling above the peaks. Streams plummet from the rocks. My driver made the mistake of passing a bus and narrowly missing a car and two rows of motorbikes behind it.

Eventually, we climb into a cloud and slow to a crawl because visibility has dropped to a couple dozen yards. Just because we cannot see the bus or truck, doesn’t mean it is not there. Wind picks up and banana trees flap incessantly. A nice Toyota sedan deposits two clumps of litter right in front of us.

Gushing waterfalls more and more frequently. As the rainfall continues the intensity of the waterfalls increase, threatening to spill over onto the road. Visibility diminishes to ten yards, then less. The driver slows to 15 mph.

Three red buses pass almost forcing two cars off the road. I am glad I am not riding today. If it is dangerous for us in this huge heavy SUV, imagine the peril for motorbikes. 

I recognize a small crop of coffee. Then rows and rows of identical greenhouses with flowers. 

Finallly, we reach Da Lat, but the city is brimming with a street festival. There must be 50,000 pedestrians, and a thousand cars on the streets. Movement is slower than ever. We creep and crawl. 

After paying Khanh and riding Linh to the Sandals Flora Hotel, I face a couple hours of challenges. The clerk cannot find my reservation. I go through the same madness with contacting Orbitz for 45 minutes. Then the clerk refused to let me take the bike up to the room. This delays me more than another 30 minutes. In fact, this young woman is outright rude for any culture. Her colleague is a young man who speaks some English. He is the very opposite. Finally, they agree to let me take Linh to the room if I write on the registration that I will be responsible for any damage to the room and sign it. I do gladly. 

Then, I learn that the hotel’s restaurant only had drinks. So I go out into the throng of festival goers and try to find something to eat. It is all street food, and although it smells good, I don’t want to run the risk of food poisoning, so I order KFC online.

I have sent a nice Vietnamese hotel man to find me a reasonably priced car tomorrow to take me most of the way to Bin Hoa, just east of Ho Chi Minh City. After an hour or so, he finds someone at a price I can live with. 

It is 10:30 or 11 pm before I get to sleep. I need to get up early for another long trip. But I am safe. 

Day 21: Monday 

January 23, 2023: Quang Ngai (28 miles, 497 total)

During the Vietnam War, Quảng Ngãi Province was home to many Viet Cong units. Dating back to the 40s, the area had formed self-defense units to fight the French. In March 1968, just a couple months after the Tet Offensive, US soldiers rounded up more than 300 unarmed men, women, and children and shot and killed them. Women and girls as young as 12 were gang raped, and their bodies mutilated. Three US soldiers tried to stop the atrocities but failed. They would later be called traitors by some in the military and at least one US Congressman. 

The military brought charges against 28 soldiers, but only one was convicted. When I was about nine years old, I remember watching parts of the dramatization of The Trial of Lieutenant William Calley, Jr. on TV. According to Calley, he was just following orders. Parts of the dramatization stuck with me. I seem to recall the soldiers marching almost passive villagers in pajamas and conical caps into a row before killing them. He received a life sentence for his role in the My Lai Massacre. He served 3.5 years of house arrest before President Richard Nixon commuted Calley’s sentence. 

The Americal Division had a reputation for being the worst in the US Army. They lacked training and cohesion. The tension between officers and recruits became unhealthy. Colin Powell served for three months in the 11th Infrantry in this same year, moved his cot around to a different spot every night to thwart potential Viet Cong informants who might be tracking him, but also in an effort to avoid an attack by his own men. 

At this same time when the My Lai Massacre was taking place, a 25-year-old medical surgeon named Dang Thuy Trang was working in a rural clinic treating ill and wounded civilians, North Vietnamese soldiers, and Viet Cong. She also kept a diary. In 1970, she was killed with a bullet to the forehead. 

A gung-ho military intelligence officer named Fred Whitehurst came across one of the journals. Disobeying his orders to destroy the document, Whitehurst instead read it. “Human to human, I fell in love with her,” Whitehurst reported (see Last Night I Dreamed of Peace). He later came into possession of the second diary. These two books cover her experiences and emotions from 1968 to 1970 and present an entirely different perspective on the war. 

Whitehurst became an FBI agent but resigned after a bitter fight with the agency in the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He and his brother Rob, who was also a Vietnam vet, searched for the Dang family, and eventually returned the diaries to her 91-year old mother in 2005. 

On the 21st day of my trip, with only five days before I have to leave the country at the Bavet border crossing into Cambodia, I peddle out onto the pavement. I have to cover some 500 miles or more to see what I want to see in five short days. 

Today is only a 28-mile journey. I have ridden almost 500 miles. I cannot afford any more delays. Many thoughts and emotions are pumping through my body. Neurologically, I know that thoughts and emotions come from the brain, but for me, I feel them in my chest, my neck, my face and eyes, my arms. My legs as I peddle. As my left hand goes numb and my feet tingle with numbness, I feel the ghosts of past horrors. Everywhere I pass civilians who lost loved ones to American and Vietnamese combatants on both sides. They are the survivors of the survivors. For most of the younger generation, the age of my children, the war was hard to come to terms with. They have couldn’t identify with the dry accounts of their heroes in their history books any more than we could identify with the accounts of the Revolutionary War heroes in the textbooks when we were in school. But when Thuy’s diaries were published in 2005, they became an overnight hit. Young Vietnamese all over the country began to read them, identifying with the young woman who struggled with melancholy, loneliness, and disappointment at every turn. Although she believed deeply in the socialist cause to free her people, she felt betrayed by the Viet Cong bureaucracy, and injured by their ineptitude. 

As I read the first dozen entries in Thuy’s journal, I could easily identify with her on many levels. The profound sadness, the loss of friends and loved ones, the sense of bureaucratic incompetence and arrogance. She never recovered from a broken heart at the insensitivity of her beloved. She was an empath who was affected by everything around her: Illness, death, betrayal, suffering, injustices, love, hope…

As I rode through Quang Ngai Province, over concrete paths, mud trails woven with tropical vegetation, highways, city streets, and roads, I listened to Dido’s White Flag and was suddenly cast back in time some of the loneliest, saddest periods of my life: Baghdad. 

Although I have put those 24 months behind me, any one of a dozen songs that I used to listen to again and again on my MP3 player can easily return me to that emotional state I hated. The loneliness, pain, suffering, sense of injustice, incompetence and bullying playing out around me, death threats and a price on my head, and profound sadness was at times overwhelming. 

Once I entered my tiny trailer late at night and received a phone call. Al-Mahdi’s Army, a Shiite militia, had been threatening one of my staff members. We sent him and his wife to Erbil, Kurdistan for a period of time in hopes that things would calm down. The militia got tired of waiting, and because they couldn’t get to him, they opened fire on his mother and two brothers one morning on their way to school one morning. The mother and one young brother were killed immediately. The youngest brother was injured but survived. When we heard the news, I broke down and cried. 

On another occasion, a group of incompetent Iraqi managers threatened their boss, the first woman Director General of the Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in history, whom we had appointed and supported based on merit. She was a very talented chemical engineer. They warned her that they would come to her house with an RPG and kill her and her family if she didn’t illegally reward them with the highest salaries in the ministry. When I took these threats to the American military intelligence officials and asked that to investigate, they told me that she wasn’t part of the Coalition, referring to the CPA. I asked them if Iraqis supporting the CPA were not part of the CPA, then who was. They turned me away. In Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and other critical environments, I witnessed horrors and gross negligence and incompetence, abuse of authority, misuse of funds, arrogance, betrayal, and tragedies on a scale that only surface at times of war. These injustices were committed knowingly and recklessly by Americans, locals, and the UN. 

Years later, while I was working in Yemen, a colleague who would go on to become a high-level US State Department advisor told me, “We really screwed the pooch in Afghanistan.” The same could be said for Iraq and Pakistan. 

So, when I read Thuy, I empathize with her. 

The day after Tet is not much different than Tet. Everyone is celebrating with their families. Most shops are closed. Streets are relatively free of traffic. 

I left the hotel and rode through villages for a while. I needed water, so I stopped immediately for cold water. A very friendly woman who spoke good English happened by and spoke with me for a few minutes. I rode on and listened to music. I was having a wonderful time just breezing through hamlet after hamlet. 

I stopped on a railroad track to take a photo, and a railroad guard yelled at me to get off the tracks. He was standing beside a tree with a baton of sorts, looking for a train that was due to arrive at any time. He was right, of course. I scooted up until I was off the tracks, and then I took my photos. 

He smiled and waved when I left. Possibly because I gave him such a well pronounced Vietnamese good bye.  I turned a corner, headed down a road, and stopped to look at some stacks of bark. Then I heard the train whistle.

This road led me through hill after hill of cemeteries, which at time were paved with concrete and at times lined with mud and rock. At first I didn’t mind it. According to Kam it was 825-foot incline almost all at once. But then it got boring just pushing Linh up one hill after the last. After about 45 minutes of this, I came to a concrete bridge that crossed a highway. Then, I was back to the poor and inconsistent path. When I came back to a good road, I ignored Kam, and took the road back to QL 1. 

The road was boring, but it was better than more of the mud and hills. Eventually, I came to a city. I thought it was Quang Nai, but it wasn’t. Then, I came to another city. I got off Linh at an ATM and got a little money. Then, I rode on. 

At one little store, I found a family playing cards for money. I tried to understand what it was, but I couldn’t. It must have been some type of poker. They were laughing and having a good time. It didn’t look like it was much money. Just to keep it interesting, I guess. I drank my cold water, and before I left, I heard all the young people yelling at the older man in a friendly way. Apparently, he was cheating.

Eventually, I arrived at Cocoland River Beach Resort and Spa in Tu Nghia, Quang Ngai. It is a little south of Quang Ngai proper. And like all the resorts I have stayed at, it is remote. In other words, real convenience stores are nowhere to be found. 

Linh was the manager. I gave her a pretty good tip to motivate her help me find a car to take me 310 miles southwest into the mountains to the city of Da Lat. This was difficult because it was still Tet. Most drivers wanted to be home with their families. I can’t blame them. She got me two prices at first, but they were too high. So she went on Facebook and started looking, checking prices, and even vetting the drivers. She was really good. 

Meanwhile, I took a shower and decided that I would ride my bike out to see if I could find some fruit and some Diet Pepsi. But I no sooner had peddled a few feet than I realized my back tire was flat. If you are going to get a flat tire, the best place to get it is in your hotel room. 

So I pushed Linh back to the room and decided I would change the tire tomorrow morning before leaving. I stopped and helped a man and his wife get a photo of themselves. Their little boy was yelling things at me in a friendly way. The father asked me to hold the boy so he could get a photo of us. Now, I know how Chuck E Cheese feels. 

Then I started walking down the strip of riverside floating restaurants and shops. Most the the shops were closed, but a few were open. Walking away from the resort, the floating restaurants were on the left and houses were on the right. Most of the houses were alive with card playing and music and screaming kids and laughing adults. Most everyone had to greet me. And it being Tet and all, I just greeted them back. 

I saw a dozen or so people huddle around and stopped to see men and women playing Bau Cua, a gambling game with three dice. They all greeted me, and one man asked me to play. I laughed and walked on. After a mile, I didn’t find any diet soft drinks, so I bought some fruit and went back to the hotel. 

Linh, the manager not my bike, found me a driver and car for 9 million Dong, which is about $400. It was too high, but I needed to advance or I was not going to see the Mekong Delta before leaving for Cambodia. My visa was set to expire in six days, and I had already gotten a hotel reservation for Phnom Penh for the 28th. I gave Linh another tip. 

Day 20: Sunday 

January 22, 2023: Binh Son (25 miles, 469 total)

Tet!!!

Quảng Nam is a province in central Vietnam, bordering Laos to the west and the South China Sea to the east. It’s home to Mỹ Sơn, a complex of Hindu Temples dating to the 4th- to 13th-centuries of the Cham Empire.

Cham was home of the Khmer people, related to the inhabitants of Cambodia today. Tam Ky is the capital of Quang Nam. 

Before I left, I had my photo taken in front of a Tet exhibition at the hotel. 

The streets were relatively vacant, but not entirely. I rode through town by backstreets and once outside, Kam took my through some hamlets by concrete and dirt paths. I came to a Catholic Church and stopped for a few photos. Then I followed a dirt path until I came to concrete one. I traveled over a tiny bridge but something caught my eye. I swung back around and peddled down a side street until I came to a Buddhist Temple. On Tet, it was buzzing with activity. I didn’t get off the bike, but took some photos. The visitors were very friendly.

All in all I probably peddled for 45 minutes and covered 5-6 miles, but once I got back on the main road, I had only advanced about half a mile. 

I got back on QL 1, which was more pleasant today because it was all but deserted. Naturally, there were families traveling on motorbikes and in a handful of cars, going to visit their loved ones, carrying flowers and balloons and other gifts. But there were almost no trucks or buses blaring their horns. A handful of shops were open to sell Tet baskets of food and drinks. But almost everything else was closed. 

But traffic and noise pollution or not, the QL 1 is not very attractive. After making some good time, I got off and rode through a town on the main street that ran parallel to the highway. I stopped for a breather in the town. It was pretty, but mostly deserted. Which suited me fine. 

Finally, I arrived at the DLGL-Dung Quat Hotel in Binh Son of Quang Nam Province. This hotel had received poor reviews, but I found the staff friendly. Unfortunately, nothing was open so I had to rely on the restaurant food. No Diet Pepsi, for instance. The clerk told me that the restaurant closed at 4 pm, so I showered quickly and went down and dined outside. The server was not very friendly, but she was probably not happy about having to work on Tet. Or maybe she was just shy. I think I was the only guest in the hotel. The cook was a man, and he was very friendly. 

Like most homes, shops, and businesses, this hotel had number of Tet offerings. I asked the clerk what they did with the offerings—including beer and Champagne—after Tet. She said that in a few days they would have a party. Made sense. I know in some countries, like India, the gifts are given to the poor.

All in all, my best Tet to date. 

Day 19: Saturday

January 21, 2023, (Saturday): Tam Ky (34 miles, 444 total)

Tam Ky was the site of an intense battle during the Vietnam War. A platoon of the US 1st Cavalry was on Hill 10 overlooking QL 1 to secure its protection on the evening of March 3, 1968. A second platoon was at Tam Ky Base Camp at Hawk Hill when suddenly the North Vietnamese Army struck the camp rockets and mortar fire. The US forces responded and called in an air strike. The fighting continued off and on for three days. The North Vietnamese suffered heavy casualties. More than 400 dead according to one report. 

Today Tam Ky is the capital of Quang Nam Province and home to about 165,000 people. Like every other city that I have visited, the people are nice. I rode in from the northeast and did find it a little hilly but didn’t see any big hills.

My day was really fun. At breakfast, I sat at a table overlooking the Thu Bon River at Hoi An. I had tiny bananas, fruit salad with muesli and yogurt, and a cheese omelet. A cute little girl, maybe three or four years old and wearing pajamas wandered all around the lobby-restaurant. She went into the kitchen to see what they were doing. She came out and spoke to her mom, who was sitting near me. She made her mom laugh. The little girl studied me and made a comment to her mom. This happens a lot. Kids will be riding on the motorbike with their parents and they will point at me: Look Mom, it’s a foreigner. The parents don’t chide their kids. They typically laugh. 

I read online about the Japanese Covered Bridge about a mile from the hotel. So, I went back to the room, packed up and checked out of the hotel by about 9 am. 

Tran, the very friendly lady who had helped me from the outset, walked me out to the street. “Be very careful with Vietnamese drivers. They don’t always obey the laws… Look [she motioned over her shoulder left] before you move into traffic. Did you check your room to make sure you didn’t leave anything?… Did you get your passport? Phone? Batteries?”

She was like a friendly mother although she was 30 years younger than me.

Although Kam wanted me to go east, I travelled west into the mouth of the bustling market on this Tet Eve morning. Shoppers were buying last minute items for their holidays. 

It was about 67 degrees, bright but slightly overcast, and the streets were teeming with tourists. The Japanese Covered Bridge was very short, but pretty. Tourists were lined up in a loose knit crowd awaiting their turn to get their photo by the bridge. I slid up on the bike and took mine without asking and puttered on. I passed through an riverside street with paintings for sale and coffee shops packed with tourists. Yes, I should have stayed another day here instead of booking the hotel, but it was too late now. I didn’t give it another thought. 

I crossed a bridge to land on another island which was prettier than the last. After weaving a little through the streets, I peddle onto a motorbike bridge to get off that island and onto another. Then I crossed a final bridge to put me back onto the mainland. 

The route took me east along the river lined with fishing boats. I stopped to take some photos. I peddled on for a minute before stopping to take more photos. Then I wound through a village and into a patchwork of beautiful green fields. Although it was just one day before the Tet holiday, many workers were tending their fields: Spraying, spreading fertilizer (I assume), hoeing… I even saw one man cultivating with a one-wheel plow.

Naturally, since my trip started out only being 29 miles, I could afford the luxury of stopping and taking a lot of photos. 

Suddenly, I reached a row of perhaps 30 identical tombs neatly aligned just off the road. I had never seen anything quite like this. Back on my bike, I reached the end of the tombs when I found a larger block of tombs aligned exactly like the last, but this time five or six rows deep. At this block, perhaps 20 people were milling about, leaving flowers and offerings, lighting incense, paying their respects and venerating their ancestors. A little girl about five years old stared at me as if I were the incarnation of Hello Kitty. I waved at her which drew a smile and healthy series of waves. 

I always worry that someone is going to be offended by my photography of their ancestors’ tombs. But the very opposite was the case. I was the recipient of a series of robust Hellos and thumbs-up and smiles, welcoming into their families’ final resting places. 

Feeling a little guilty for having only ridden about three miles, I peddled on. I was riding along a Ly Ly River on my right. And Kam insisted I cross it. But there was no bridge. I saw one half a mile ahead, but there was nothing but open water where she indicated I should ride.

At the bridge I crossed determined to make up time. On the other side, I passed a restaurant that was roasting an animal. So, I swung around and took a some photos. At first I thought it was a healthy goat. But it was too big. Then I thought it was a cow, but it was too small. In the end, I decided it must be a calf. And I asked the proprietor if it was a cow in Vietnamese. She smiled and nodded, Yes, but I am pretty sure she didn’t understand my butchering of the word cow. 

So, I bid my Vietnamese farewells and committed to no more stopping for a while. However, a block further on, I came upon two men in a fishing boat. One was preparing his net. I had to get a photo of that.

Then I peddled for a while through village after village followed by patchwork of fields after patchwork. The villages were always busy with last-minute shoppers and motorbikes buzzing about. Old men and old women slowly peddling through the mix. Kids staring at me or shouting their Hellos and asking where I am from. Music blared at businesses and from homes. Villagers milled about, running errands, hanging out freshly washed clothes, cooking, worshipping, visiting loved ones, conducting business. I slowed for street markets and the occasional passing car. And sped up through the rice and vegetable and fruit fields. It was exhilarating. 

I plugged in my earphones and listened to Hotel California, Bad Company, John Mellencamp, The Guess Who. I realized that I was on a natural, physiological high. Heightened awareness. Better than any virtual reality Meta can ever make. The physical exertion produced high levels of dopamine at a sustained level while my mind processed the unique experience of Vietnamese village and rural life on this very festive day. I just tried to take it all in. Enjoying every minute. Every sight. Every smell. 

After while I came to pristinely harrowed fruit and vegetable fields. The irrigation channels on either side of the row were deep, sometimes 12-24 inches. The precision of the length, width and depth of each row was awe inspiring. I had to get several photos. I wondered why then needed such deep channels. I thought I recognized watermelon leaves, but I couldn’t be sure. 

Once I stopped for water, and this old man sold me two bottles. I made the same mistake that I made last week. I poured the first bottle into my CamelBack without tasting it. I took a swig of the second one and wanted to spit it out. But the old man, his wife, his two little granddaughters, and several other family members had assembled to watch me. One young man in his 20s was filming me. 

I hate sparkling water. I cannot fathom why anyone would pay for the punishment of drinking this nasty liquid. The only drink worse than this is Vietnamese coffee. 

So, I poured it out, snapped some photos of the little girls, and peddled on. More and more village shops were closing for Tet. 

After about 2.5 hours, I came to a very nice road. I was about halfway. I had a decision to make. Either follow Kam for another 2.5 hours viewing much the same as I had to this point, or I could take this nice road and make a little better time. 

This road was good. It was wide, new, and sparsely trafficked. In fact, the two southbound lanes were blocked off. I had no idea why. No construction was taking place as far as I could see. 

I took my first rest break at about 20 miles into the journey. With all my detours, the 29-mile journey had now become roughly 34 miles. Which was fine by me. I was making good time now. I could travel about 13-15 miles an hour. I was still early for my next hotel. 

I sat on the tall curb of the median at the edge of the two vacant lanes. A father stopped on his motorbike with a toddler in the seat. He gave her some juice to drink while he crossed the road to attend the call of nature and smoke a cigarette. The occasional car and several motorbikes passed over the next several minutes while the toddler sat still on the parked bike and drank her juice. I couldn’t imagine doing that in the US with my grandkids. It scared me just to watch these people I didn’t know. She could have easily fallen or wandered off in traffic or the bike could have tipped over with her on it. But my worries were for nothing. 

On both sides of the road for miles were tombs. In college, I served as a teaching assistant for a class called “The Living and the Dead,” which explored how the living take care of, venerate, and pay respects to, the dead in different cultures. But we didn’t touch on Vietnamese culture. I still didn’t understand exactly why they bury loved ones where they do. As often as not, these are not cemeteries. The tombs are in open fields. Beside a house. Appearing randomly placed or packed side by side so tightly that one cannot walk between them. The coexistence between the living and the dead seems healthy. The Vietnamese don’t seem to fear tombs and graves and cemeteries like we do in the US. 

Just another item to study on my ever-growing “To Do List.”

If the illness, mud and sand ruts, 89 degree heat, visa problems, and other obstacles on this journey so far hadn’t put me in my place, along came Mark. 

I was riding along this very nice but relatively vacant road minding my own business, pretty much in my own head, when Mark popped up on my left. He is s 63-year-old retired personal trainer who has been biking for 15 to 17 years. He was soloing too, but with less than half the baggage. He had also been sick and out of commission for about a week, he said. To catch up, he was riding about 80 or 85 miles a day. Wow. My trip was 34 miles today. And while I could have gone 15 more miles, I am glad I didn’t.

Mark is from the UK and now that he’s retired he tries to take trips like this 2-3 months out of the year. This time, he only has a month, so he’s racing against the clock to get to Ho Chi Minh City and back on a plane for London. He had to slow down to keep up with me. 

We rode together and talked for the better part of 30 minutes. I didn’t realize how much I missed human conversation. 

At an intersection, we stopped and got a photo. Then he peddled south, and I west into Tam Ky. The outskirts was rural Vietnam. Even two miles away, I was in a village. It was a little hilly, but I didn’t see any big hills that could have been the old US outpost. 

When I got to the Muang Thanh Hotel, I met Tiem. A very professional desk clerk. The hotel was my most expensive since I arrived in Vietnam, I think. About $89/night. But Tiem didn’t want to let me take the bike to the room. She gave me a lot of resistance. But she was always professional. Finally, after about 20-25 minutes, she called her boss who was on her way in to work. She said I could take the bike to the room. 

Tiem said, “This is the first time that we let someone take their bicycle to the room.” 

I gave her a 100,000 Dong tip for her trouble ($4). She was very appreciative. But when she went to find my reservation from Orbitz, she couldn’t find it. She called a couple of people, and she looked on two different computers, and I showed her two emails confirming the reservation, and Orbitz’s website confirmation. She still couldn’t find it. I started chatting with a virtual agent at Orbitz, who put me in contact with Joshua, a humanoid agent, who promised me he would call the hotel.

In the meantime, Tiem gave me a key and said she would try to sort it out. Joshua told me to stay on the line, and ten minutes after I got to the room, he called me from Chicago, put me on hold, called Tiem, and then put me in touch with Arn in Relocation Services, who called Tiem again, and came back saying they were still trying to sort it out. 

After showering, I packed my valuables into a backpack and walked down to the lobby. Tiem said it was all sorted out. I walked about 1.5 miles looking for Diet Pepsi and fruit, following Google Maps to a WinMart that didn’t exist. I was tired and sweaty and I tried to flag two taxis. The next WinMart was another mile or so away. Which was another 1.5 miles from the hotel. 

After walking close to a mile, I found a parked taxi. The owner was already in Tet mode. Someone called down the alley to his wife who was upstairs hanging out laundry. She called down to her husband who came outside in shorts. I told him where I wanted to go, and he went back inside to get a shirt on. He took me to WinMart, which was closed. 

“Everything is closed,” he said. “Holiday. Closed for five days.” I tried to get him to take me to a minimart, but he insisted everything was closed. We passed a minimart that was open, but I didn’t want to argue. He wanted to get home to his holiday. I didn’t blame him. 

I ordered room service and looked for a hill that could have been the US outpost. I saw on one northeast of the city where a cellphone tower now sits. I doubt it was the one. I couldn’t see the other side of the city from my room. 

I watched the Pacers lose their sixth game in a row. Then fell asleep earlier than usual. 

Day 18:

January 20, 2023 (Friday): Hoi An (23 miles, 410 miles total)

In March 1945, Vietnam was under the control of the Japanese, who had just displaced the Vichy French Government officials as Vietnam’s ruling authority. It was at the tail end of World War II. An American pilot was shot down by the Japanese over Vietnam. 

The Viet Minh, a Vietnamese anti-French and anti-Japanese resistance front, rescued him. Archamedes Patti, an American agent of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) met with Viet Minh leader, Nguyễn Sinh Cung, to arrange the return of the pilot. Nguyễn would become know as Ho Chi Minh, the famous Vietnamese communist leader who ruled North Vietnam during most of the Vietnam War against the Americans. Patti stayed on with Ho to collect intelligence and see how he might support the resistance against the Japanese until the end of the war in August. 

The history of this nation is rich. And I don’t have time to study it in the detail I would like. Life is too short. So much to learn. So many places to go. So many cultures to observe. So many languages to learn. I can’t even begin to scrape the surface. But what I can do is enjoy.

And today was another fun day. 

I got out onto the road about 10:15 am. I peddled calmly over the Cam Le River, Do Toa River, and Thu Bon River. I cruised through the streets enjoying the celebratory atmosphere. I came across many open fruit, vegetable, and fish markets brimming with Tet sales. Women and men were shopping for food, gifts, flowers, loading their motorbikes with everything they could carry. Motorbikes were buzzing and honking in all directions. People delivering tiny trees on tiny trailers behind their motorbikes. I think it is Tet tradition. Kids were playing soccer in the street or in their small driveways. 

Kam led me to this industrial park that produced nothing but marble statues: Buddhas of all types, demons, dragons, lions, Greek figures, angels, and even an American man with a banjo and a woman. I rode around for probably 20 minutes taking photos of them. I could have spent two hours. The artisanship was amazing. 

I stumbled upon a beautiful park, lake, and elaborate Buddhists temple. I dismounted Linh and walked around taking photos, enjoying the area entirely to myself. Introverts get a kick out of wandering around alone sometimes. 

Back on the route, I quickly got lost. Kam wanted me to turn south on a road that didn’t exist. I think that maybe at one time a concrete path existed but someone put up a gate, suggesting private property. I couldn’t figure out why there was not a parallel road close by. I doubled back and tried one, but it let me back to a cemetery and narrowed to a sand path. After slipping around a little, I decided to double back again. Off on the left, I saw a huge factory that couldn’t be seen from the main road. That explained why I couldn’t find parallel roads. So, I finally headed due west until I came to a main road running north and south. I got back on the southern lanes. It was noisier, but at least I wasn’t getting lost in sandy graveyards. 

I passed a woman selling coconuts with a little boy playing beside her on the side of the street. I peddled half a block until I remembered I had a chocolate egg in my front bag. I swung around and went back. And I gave the boy the egg. The father was lying asleep on a bench. He woke up before I left and greeted me, but never sat up. As I was leaving, the wife went over to him to explain.

I rode on for a while before crossing over into Hoi An proper. Immediately, on the right, I saw a pagoda. I followed a small road to the pagoda and found it was actually a large compound. I went inside, parked Linh, and explored a little. 

Back out onto the road, I began to see more and more foreigners. And the streets were busy with markets and shoppers and motorbike travelers, who were scurrying around in every feasible direction. 

I passed my hotel twice, missing it both times. The Riverside Whithouse Hotel sign was so small that you would have to know it was there in order to find it. From the street the hotel looked worse than the one yesterday, which was a bit run down. I thought, Oh no!

But inside I was welcomed by a very friendly woman. And the interior of the hotel was as nice as just about anything I had seen to date. The woman spoke good English, and she moved my reservation from the third floor (no elevators here) to the first floor and upgraded me to a bigger room at no charge. I gave her a $4 tip for her trouble. 

The hotel is right on Thu Bon River. And my room has a nice view. This is a really quite little city. It is perhaps the nicest little city I have visited so far. I could have easily stayed an extra night here and enjoyed myself. The room was about $25 per night. It is no wonder that so many foreigners are here.

I showered and took her my laundry, which is due back in the morning. I walked outside beside the river and called my daughter who was the only member of my family who was awake at this hour. She works at a hospital. I FaceTimed with her for a minute so that she could get a realtime glimpse of the river. 

I walked on down to the bridge and crossed over to the tiny island and bought some fruit. I walked back to the mainland and went into a market. It reminded me of the San Vicente market in El Salvador. Back outside and onto a main street, I found what I was looking for: An ATM. 

I walked back along the river to the hotel and ordered lunch. They had to call the cook in because he was off. I had some excellent noodles. I didn’t like the fried dumplings. They were hard and just doughy inside. No meat or vegetables. I ate one and left the rest. I ate a fruit salad, which was pretty good. 

Now, I am unwinding in the room overlooking the pool and river. Boats are motoring up and down the river. I am having fun. 

Day 17: 

January 19, 2023 (Thursday): Da Nang (13 miles, 387 miles total)

The QL 1 from Da Nang to Hue was the main supply route for Americans and South Vietnamese. This was also how they supplied the Demilitarized Zone some 30 miles further north. Hue was also US Naval Base supply boats, which arrived on the Perfume River. 

At 5:35 am, I woke up. This was a good time. I had some things to work out. Because today was supposed to be dry, I figured I should press on to Da Nang. I had made a reservation for a hotel in Da Nang while riding in the taxi back from the mausoleum. However, when I put the destination into Kam, I was facing an incline toward the last part of the 60-mile journey that rose 1500-foot over maybe six or eight miles. I could not physically make that, nor did I want to try. I would have to find a taxi.

Riding down on the elevator, I met a man with a sweater tied around his shoulders and a French accent. He was a little older than me, but his hair was just as disheveled. He stopped at the 5th floor for breakfast while I went to speak to the desk clerk. She said it would cost about $75 for a hotel car to take me. I needed to go 45 miles, which was the longest taxi ride to date to get me over the hill. But the price seemed too much. I hadn’t paid more than $40 to take me 30 miles before. So, we agreed she would call me a taxi, and I would pay by the meter. This should be less. 

At the restaurant, I got passion juice and ordered an omelette. I picked out freshly sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. I can hardly eat a sliced cucumber that I don’t think of Brownstown Elementary’s former principal, Harry Spurgeon. 

When I was in 1st or 2nd grade, my grandmother, Helen Coleman, enrolled me in Brownstown for a short period while my parents were getting settled in Indianapolis or Evansville or somewhere. Harry was very friendly. He always called me Coleman, although he certainly knew my name and my parents. He took me into the junior high school teacher’s lounge (the old elementary school and junior high were side by side) while he looked for someone to help get me to the right class. One of the teachers had brought in a bowl of sliced cucumbers in vinegar. 

Harry told me to try them, and he left me. 

I didn’t really like cucumbers or radishes, although my grandmother loved them. 

However, I tried a cucumber. It was pretty good. I tried another and another. I liked them. From that point on, I have always like cucumbers.

To this day, I cannot stand radishes, though. 

At the restaurant in Hue, I went to the fruit bar and selected a few pieces of papaya, watermelon, and pineapple. All of the pineapples that I have seen in the markets here are tiny, maybe the size of an orange. Naturally, the sliced pineapples you find in the restaurants are tiny too. 

It is not due to rain until about 1 pm, but we shall see. One never knows. 

My driver was Tang. And Tang was quite a character. Tang was so excited to have me in his car that he immediately got his wife on video chat and had me speak English to her for a few seconds so she could share the American novelty. Before we left Hue, he was playing Abba and singing along. But when he played Hotel California, I had to film a little of it. He sang along to the chorus. I never really knew why the Vietnamese loved American culture, but now I get it. The Eagles transcend ethnicity and culture.

The ride was long but fun. We rode the QL 1 for a couple hours. I thought a lot about the American teenagers and young men in their early 20s who braved this road 50 years ago. They were just kids, who a year or two earlier were in high school, playing sports, dating, working in factories or on farms, trying to figure out who they were and what they were going to do for the rest of their lives. Then Uncle Sam decided that for them. 

I have no commentary of the war or decisions that were made. I just think about those boys. Their mindsets. Their fear and anxiety. Their bravery. Their resilience. 

My uncle Tom’s story is a chapter for another day. He was a complex individual with a complex mindset and worldview. 

But when I try to reconcile how these boys must have dealt with everything that was happening around them, I fail. 

By the time I went to Iraq, I was in my mid-40s. I had a dual PhD. I had studied Iraq’s history. I spoke Arabic. I did not really think a war an invasion of Saddam’s country was the wisest choice. But George W. never called me to ask my opinion. I went there to help my employer, the US Department of Labor, my country, and the Iraqi people. I didn’t have any military training, but to a large degree, I knew what I signed up for. 

These American youth who were drafted and sent to Hue and Da Nang did not. They didn’t know where Vietnam was. Its history. Its culture. Its language. Apart from military training, these young men and women were not really prepared. 

I once asked a teacher in high school who had served in Vietnam , what Vietnam was like. I expected to hear gory stories of battle. Instead he said, “We decided that next time, we are going to let the politicians go fight, and we’ll stay here.”

Tang asked me if I wanted to go the scenic route, and I said, yes. About 25 miles north of Da Nang, we turned off onto the Hai Van Pass, which is the scenic gulf coastal route that winds along the mountainous cliffs and overlooks the Da Nang Bay. It was stunning. 

At every scenic bend along the littoral highway were a half dozen motorbikes parked, and their owners were taking photos of the Da Nang Bay. 

Tang stopped at a restaurant shack that sold drinks and packaged food and souvenirs. These joints are popular all over the world. The drivers get a cut of any large purchase you make. The view was beautiful. So I bought a Diet Coke and took photos. 

Had I known that we were at the pinnacle, I would have ridden from there. But my map indicated that we had several high areas to still pass. Looking back, I should have taken the time to plot a new route with Kam and then studied the elevation. But, I didn’t.

When we left the shack, we rode down hilll for a couple miles. Finally, I told Tang to drop me at the side of the road. He pulled into a little restaurant. While I assembled Linh, one of the restaurants’ only two customers emerged to watch me. He was European.

“Are you going up or going down,” he asked. 

“Going down.” 

He smiled and nodded as if to encourage me.

The twisting, turning ride down was gorgeous. It took several minutes. 

Along the way, a car started honking. I turned around, and it was Tang, awarding me the thumbs’ up. 

Tet had already started in town. One could feel the festive spirit in the air. As I wound through the most narrowed of alleyways, I encountered entire extended families of 12-14 adults who sat around tables eating lunch, all talking and joking at the same time. I came across several in the next 90 minutes. Often the small kids were outside playing. Probably with cousins. 

But this network of tiny alleyways was too tight and too complex. I got turned around as they narrowed into dead ends. I tried to navigate several, but even Kam got lost. 

I crossed railway tracks too only seconds before the trains came barreling down the tracks. When I reached the center of Da Nang, the traffic became heavy, with shoppers. I suspect Tet shopping.  

For 30 minutes or so, I rode along the Da Nang Bay, which was quite exquisite. For the first time, I saw a number of traditional round fishing boats with motors on them. I read that they are called Bamboo Basket Boats. According to one article they were born during the French Colonial Era, as a result of French taxes on fishing boats. Artisans began weaving these round baskets out of young bamboo because of its flexibility. I would like to see fishermen use them, but most workers had gone home for the day.

Finally, I arrived at Samdi Hotel and checked in. The two women at the desk asked me if I was going to take the bike to the room. I told them, Yes. They laughed but didn’t try to stop me. 

This was the first hotel since the first night that didn’t have an operating restaurant. I don’t know if they closed it permanently (except for breakfast) or if they only let the workers go for Tet. 

One of the major problems that the ARVN and Americans faced in 1968 when the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive was that the ARVN had allowed so many soldiers to take leave for the holidays, which left Hue and other areas vulnerable. 

A few doors down, I found a restaurant called SaSin open. The menu had photos, but was entirely in Vietnamese. I ordered two things off the menu and they served them separately. The first arrived in sizzling clay pot with a steaming hot kimchi, pickled carrots, flavored mushrooms, and spicy beef served on a layer of sticky rice. It came with cold soup. Sorry, I am willing to try a lot of things, but I just can’t enjoy cold soup, no matter how flavorful. When I had finished with that dish, they served a deep fried sushi roll, with a sauce on top that spelled SaSin. Both dishes were delicious. 

This spot must have been popular with younger couples. Two young couples were there before me, and one arrived after. No one could have been over 25. Most closer to 20. Two young women came in to get takeout orders on motorbikes.

Back at the room, I watched the Pacers lose. Six in a row! 

Day 16:

January 18, 2023: Rain Day (Wednesday) Hue, Vietnam (374 total)

The result of sleeping in till 6:15 am was both a feeling of renewal and guilty. It is difficult to shake a work ethic. Whether it is a weekend, holiday, vacation, or workday, I feel the need to be productive. I have a list of projects to do in my free time: List of silly videos to make with the grandkids, make a cat walk for our two felines, complete two social history books, convert our barn into a rental house, and so on. 

So, even while on this trip, I feel I need to be busy. Naturally, the blog and posts require hours and hours of downloading and transferring photos and videos, writing, reading, researching, as well as the trip planning for each leg…

The restaurant was so busy that I had to sit outside in a stairwell overflow area, meticulously decorated with a Vietnamese water pipe, among other artifacts. My morning diet is almost always the same: freshly sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, sometimes carrots; fried chunks of beef or pork, an omelette, and fresh fruit: Papaya, watermelon, melon, dragon fruit, and pineapple, depending on what’s available. A retired American couple from Massachusetts that I had met during check in, sat next to me. They were very friendly. Every winter they took a two month trip in the region. Indonesia, Thailand, Laos… This year it was Vietnam and Cambodia. They never plan, they said. They just listen from other travelers cool spots, and they seize the moment. Pretty cool, I thought. 

Back at the room, I sent my clothes out to laundry. I tried to send my dirty tennis shoes, but the man had no sooner left the room than I heard a knock. No, no, he said. He handed me my shoes back. 

Let’s face it! Some people are just shoe-a-phobes.

I worked on a report from Honduras. I had planned this since November, so it was no surprise. Fortunately, it was too rainy to ride anyway. 

Reading the report, I realized just how good my Honduran staff is. They are really good in project implementation and in writing. I am so lucky to have a good team. 

The rain was supposed to stop at noon. I hoped to go out and do some sightseeing. But the rain didn’t let up. Then it was supposed to stop at 2 pm, but it didn’t. So, after finishing the report, I walked outside, found a taxi, and went to the extravagant Mausoleum of Emperor Khai Dinh, who was the emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty from 1916-1925. The mausoleum was constructed on a hill on four different levels. There were a number of statues that reminded me of the Chinese Terracotta Army of Xi’an. 

By the time I returned to the area near my hotel, I resigned to the fact that the rain was not going to relent. I wanted to go to the Citadel and see a few other sites, but I didn’t want to get soaked and sick again. So, I ate Indian food, bought a few supplies, and went back to the room. 

I worked on the blog, finished downloading photos, and fell asleep watching the Incredible Dr. Pol. 

Day 15:

January 17, 2023 (Tuesday) Hue, Vietnam (21 miles, 374 total)

As I had done two days in a row, I ordered a taxi to take me halfway to my next destination. Hue. 

Hue was the Capital of Dang Trang Kingdom in the 17th and 18th centuries, and of Imperial City of Nguyen Dynasty in the 19th Century.

During the Vietnam War, Hue, sat near the border of North and South Vietnam and suffered considerable damage over the years. During the Tet Offensive in 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a massive campaign against the South Vietnamese Army and the Americans. A month-long battle from January 31, 1968 to March 2, 1968 in this city became known as the Battle of Hue. 

The strap on my sunglasses had fallen off the day before, so I wrapped black electricians tape around the strap and temples. I was proud of myself.

In Vinh, I had asked the bicycle repairman to tilt my seat forward, and he did about 1/2 inch. But that had annoyed me ever since. I felt like I was about to slip off. So, I got my tools out, and readjusted it back where it was. I was proud of myself again. 

My driver was named Thanh. We got Linh disassembled and inserted into the trunk of the taxi. And we were off again. 

We crossed the Ben Hai River. When the French pulled out of Vietnam in 1954, after an eight-year war, the Ben Hai River became the Demilitarized Zone along the 17th Parallel, the partition between North and South Vietnam. 

Thanh dropped me off at Phong Dien about ten miles south of the former Demilitarized Zone. It was the wrong spot. I had shown him the spot I wanted to reach, which was about eight miles off northeast of her, but he ignored my instructions. And I didn’t want to argue. 

He pulled into the village, a couple blocks off the QL 1, and I began putting Linh back together. Before I knew it, a little girl was there watching me. I gave her the chocolate egg, and she smiled. I could see in her eyes that she was trying to find the English word for Thank You, but she couldn’t remember it. Finally, she said, Goodbye and left.

A minute or two later, I mounted Linh, but my peddles slipped, so I got off to look at the chain. The little girl was back saying something to me. I think she was asking if I was OK, but I am not sure. I thanked her, told her goodbye, and took off. 

I only had 21 miles to do. It was sprinkling but not bad. I had about two hours before the harder rain was supposed to strike. 

For about 45 glorious minutes, I rode on tranquil side roads. But all good things must come to an end. And Kam led me out to QL 1. It was fine, but noisy as hell. I stopped to take photos of women who were trying to flag in customers off the highway to eat at local restaurants.

I arrived at the Bo River. I stopped to take some photos of an ornate ghat or stone stairway leading to the river. It had stone dragons chiseled into it. A young woman had arrived right before me on her motorbike. I took some photos of the dragons and of the Buddhist shrine across the road. I notices that she was struggling with a huge carpet. She must have set the carpet out to dry and then it started drizzling. She had rolled it up, but it was heavy. So I went and helped her carry it to her motorbike. She didn’t strap it on. She just go on her vehicle and balance it, but the carpet was not balanced. I adjusted it. She was very grateful and told me so in two languages. 

I decided that I am a helluva nice guy.

As I rode along the curves of the Bo River, I saw an extraordinary number of Buddhist shrines or pagodas. The pagodas that I was familiar with in Thailand and China are towering structures that seven stories or so high. However, these shrines that I have been seeing here are also pagodas. 

At one point, I came across a number of floating docks. I wonder if they are used for like floating markets. I have not seen them anywhere else. 

The drizzle continued on, and I was on a relaxed ride, but I also knew I wanted to beat the rain. At a gas station, I stopped to clean my glasses, which had accumulated a lot of sprinkles. I wiped off my Insta360, as well. The attendant spoke to me in pretty good English. He said he learned it in high school, which is pretty impressive.

When I reached Hue, I felt pretty good. I rode through the north gate of the old walled city and ten minutes later, I was exiting through the Thuong Tu Gate and over the Perfume River.

As I approached the White Lotus Hotel, I encountered a convoy of cycle rickshaws. 

The staff gave me a hard time—though very politely—about taking Linh to the room. But I won them over. I left immediately and went in search for an ATM. Still only $90. Then I paid a taxi to take me to get some fruit and Diet Pepsi from WinMart. It is becoming the only place that I can rely on to have Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke. 

I watched the Pacers lose. Frustrating. I applied for my Cambodian visa. Ordered room service. Ate lots of fruit. 

I will stay here two days. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain all day, and I have to review a report for work. I fell asleep at my normal hour, whether here on the road or back in Honduras: 8 pm. 

Day 14 

January 16, 2023: (Monday): Quang Tri, (28 miles, 353 total)

My legs are back!

Today’s 28 miles went smoothly. I didn’t even stop to sit down and rest. I stopped a couple times to check my phone or buy water, but that was it. I made the 28 miles in about 3 hours. It’s about time. I thought I was getting to old for this, but now I feel almost human again.

The hotel was empty. I ordered a taxi to take me about halfway to Quang Tri, and I asked the clerk about the fact that there were no guests. He said, “It will be busy for Tet.”

This reminded me that I must get myself organized and make sure that I have reservations for Tet or I might be out of luck for 2-3 days. It is the Vietnamese New Year, and hotels fill up. Many businesses close. I may not be able to find much open on the road, stores, repair shops, and restaurants, so I need to make sure I am sitting in a nice hotel in a place with options for a few days during Tet. 

The restaurant was empty. One server stood behind me the whole time to attend my needs. In the background played an easy listening piano version of Ain’t Misbehavin’. I had a one-size-fits-all omelette (they don’t permit options), fruit, some fried rice, passion juice, and a coffee, while I worked on my blog with my new keypad. The server brought me Vietnamese coffee, which is pungent. It is so thick and noxious that it makes Cuban coffee takes like sweet tea. Yuck!

At the room, I was packing when I heard a knock on the door. It was so slight the I thought I had imagined it. After the second time, I opened the door and it was the server with my keypad. 

I am an idiot.  

The driver had a bit of a cold like me, so he gave me some type of lozenge. We rode in silence, which is my preference most of the time. He dropped me at a gravel parking lot along QL 1. I put Linh back together, and I rode her a few miles until we came to a village. I am still amazed by the fields outside the villages. Large networks of fields with no houses in sight, much of the time. Perhaps these are communal fields, and the farmers live inside the villages, coming out to attend them. Perhaps, the villages themselves lent some type of protection in pre-modern times, so instead of building around the fields, they chose to live in the villages. I suspect that they have been doing this for centuries. Nothing new.

I read an article yesterday that said the average Vietnamese worker makes $150 per month. Farmers about $50 per month. I am not sure how accurate that is. I read another last week that stated that the average income was $3,500 per year. In any case, these farmers do not make much money. And life is hard. 

When I reached a village, I turned down a concrete path that Kam suggested. Two men on a motorbike signaled me to go in a different direction. I ignored them, but in the past when a villager tries to get me to go in a different direction, it is because there are no outlets the way I am going. 

Of course, this proved to be the result here too. After 15 minutes of riding down a hard packed dirt path on a levee, I came to some type of barns. One of them was up off the ground. Maybe shelters where workers could find some relief from the heat during the summer and store some seed? The other looked like maybe people slept there. But it didn’t really look like a home. 

Just beyond that, the levee broke down in two places. I had to backtrack. 

When I got to the main road, it was occupied primarily by motorbikes. It was a good blacktop structure, and soon the motorbikes took a different route. For several miles rode very quickly on it. I averaged between 13 and 15 mph on this road, and even got up to 18 mph for short distances. It felt so good to have my energy back. 

By now, I have learned about 30 words. I have tried learn double that, but I forget most of them as quickly as I study them. I figure out a few things by reading the signs or wording on products. không calo, for instance, means zero calories. Not a big deal, until you walk into a store or restaurant and tell them that you don’t want Pepsi, you want something that has không calo. This is how I communicated with a hotel clerk last week who went out and got me two Diet Pepsis. 

In the 17th century, a Portuguese Jesuit priest named Francisco de Pina, converted the Vietnamese language into a Latin alphabet. He is considered the first westerner to have become fluent in Vietnamese. Any time that you see a number of diacritical marks (dấu nhật ký) in the Latin alphabet as you do in modern Vietnamese, this is usually because the language does not lend itself so well to Latin. In any case, he is the reason that Westerners today can make some sense of the Vietnamese language, and I can read a highway sign that says đi chậm, or go slow. 

I made it to the hotel in short order. It was fun. I had plenty of energy left, so I went to search for an ATM. They are funny here. Some only allow you to get $90 per day. Others, like one in Hanoi, allowed me to get $300. 

As I walked along the street, trying to find an ATM, I saw little girl about the age of eight, my granddaughter’s age, and her older brother, maybe 12 or so, like another granddaughter. They were playing tug of war on the street with a long piece of cloth. By the time, I got my phone and camera ready to film, they had stopped playing. For the life of me, I don’t see how this younger generation are so quick with their phone cameras. By this time, I had drawn their attention, and the little girl followed me for half a block begging for some money. There are so few beggars here. I saw one in Vinh, and old man with a long white goatee. And this was the second, as I recall. But I didn’t have any small bills. So, I finally told her, “không,” as in No Calories, and shook my hand in the Vietnamese way. And she left.

Later after I had gotten my $90, I headed to a store to buy my first Diet Pepsi in two days. I bought a chocolate egg to give to the girl if I saw her again. But when I got back to the hotel, I looked for her, but she and her brother had gone. 

Day 13: 

Jan 15, 2023 (Sunday): Dong Hoi, Vietnam (25 miles, 325 total)

The old saying, “Sleep on it” is truer than we once thought. Researchers at Northwestern University a few years ago determined that we reorganize and consolidate memories and information while we sleep. So when we wake up, then answers are clearer. We actually solve problems through a good night’s sleep.

When I woke up, I had decided that I would take a taxi half way to Dong Hoi and ride the rest of the way. There are many advantages to this. I can cover more territory, and see more parts of Vietnam that way. I can stay in nice hotels. I can focus on rural and village area and more scenery. On the highway, there is almost nothing nice to see. These highways are not interstates outside the cities blazing paths through luscious forests and fields; these are ugly four-lane roads with commerce built up along both sides: Tire shops, car repair, cheap hotels, roadside restaurants, and other businesses catering to travelers. 

At 6am, I met Gai, who was working the desk. She was professional but not very friendly at first. Her English was not very good. I told her what I wanted and went to the restaurant. I had omelette, some fruit, and some fried rice and chunks of fried pork. It was really good. Maybe with a better breakfast, I would have more energy. 

Gai means chicken in Thai, as I recall. It is also a girl’s name. Ga is chicken in Vietnamese. 

According to a historian, throughout ancient and premodern history, women have always held a greater place in Vietnamese culture and society than in China and other Asian countries. One of the political and cultural struggles between Chinese-Confucian hegemony and Vietnamese autonomy was the role women play in society. 

I have no idea how this plays out in today’s society. I suspect it is really complicated. Many of the managers in the hotels are women. Many of the shop owners are women. However, I read an article that a few years ago, women were forbidden from driving tractors over a certain size. 

In any case, Gai was the supervisor on duty. She told me she was working on it, and I surprised her when I gave her a $1.25 tip. I went to the room. 

After a half an hour, she called to tell me that the taxi was here. At the elevator, I met an Asian man. I told him, Xin Chao. He responded with the same. Thought about it, and then said, “Ni Hao.” I recognized this because my granddaughter took Chinese for a year of preschool.

I responded with a healthy “Ni Hao.” I could see he was impressed. We stepped onto the elevator together. I asked if he was Chinese, and he said he was. He asked if I was riding a bike, and I said yes. 

I know one other Chinese word from my granddaughter: Finger. But I couldn’t find a good way to work it into the conversation. We reached the lobby and went our separate ways. 

I went outside and saw a truck. I said, Xin Chao to the driver. He responded but didn’t seem terribly interested in me. Well, this would be big enough to haul my bike, I thought. Once we got that stupid kettle the size of a big still off the back of the truck. I started looking up the translation for where I was going, when Gai came out. She shook her hand, No. 

This was not my taxi. Two men exited the lobby and carried the cauldron into the restaurant, and the truck driver left. Gai and I looked for the driver in the parking lot. She went to every one of the five or six vehicles. She couldn’t find him. She called someone. Then we went to the edge of underground parking lot. Nope. 

I got Gia laughing a few times, particularly when I tried to pronounce, “How much is the cost?” in Vietnamese: Bao nhiêu tiền?

Back to the room, I started to prepare myself, while downloading some photos off my Insta360. Gia called again. 

I met the driver, agreed on a price: 550,000 Dong (about $25). I went upstairs and finished packing. I was managing my anxiety really well today. What difference a good diet, exercise, and a good night’s sleep can make! I should share this revelation with the American Medical Association. 

The driver and I removed Linh’s seat, saddle bags, and front tire. We secured her in the taxi sedan by laying the seats down. I paid my bill with Gai and gave her another $2 tip. She was over the moon. That’s just the way I roll.

An hour later, the driver dropped me off right over the Gianh Bridge over the Gianh River. We put Linh back together again, and I started riding. I only had 25 miles to go. The first five miles were good, but I got tired quickly. I took my last antibiotic tablet today. I felt better. But not back to normal. Fortunately, it was only about 76 degrees and not expected to exceed 82. 

I stopped at a restaurant and bought two bottles of cold water  and drank one. I put the other in my Camel Pack. Yesterday, one of the only reliefs and energizers I encountered were sips of cold water. 

When I left the restaurant, I came to my first real push hill of the trip. I rode as far as I could and then got off and pushed Linh to the top. Was tired already.

Going down was fun though. I went into a village and before I got to the end, Kam directed me to take a tour along the Ly Hoa River. I was not quite close enough to the river, so I explored a few streets further east until I found a concrete road that ran along the river, which itself was running parallel to the Gulf of Tonkin. This was a lot of fun. Fishing boats lined the river. Some fishermen were repair nets or gear or boats before sailing again.

A man on his motorbike stopped and spoke to me for a minute. His English was good. Before long, a woman and her infant son who were riding on a motorbike stopped and asked me where I was going and if I knew the way. Her English was pretty good too. 

Before I knew it, Kam had led me onto a wide two-wheel dirt, mud, and sand path along the coast. Hatcheries populated the coast. Some seemed abandoned. Others had true signs of life. Dogs, for instance. I stopped to catch my breathe where two little boys were playing. Then, I rode off into a yet more deserted terrain. Shade was hard to come by. The trail turned to a lot of mud. Rarely did I see signs of life. The electric lines ran haphazardly either on the ground or draped over bushes or seemingly abandoned buildings on either side of the road. 

I travelled at maybe 4 mph for maybe five miles. It was painful. Finally, I came to road construction and took sanctuary under a sliver of shade. There was nowhere to sit, so I just leaned on the bike’s seat. 

I was hoping for a better road when I came to a new blacktop highway leading almost to the beach. It would be great when it was done. For now, it was abandoned. I found shade beside a toolshed. I hollered, Xin Chao, but no one responded. I sent my daughter a photo and some messages. She was at work and the only family member awake in the Western Hemisphere. I ate a tiny tangerine and a tiny pear, each about the size of a ping pong ball.

Instead of a better road, I got another mile or so of the same. It was draining. Slow going. 

Eventually, I came to concrete again. I was never so happy to see a village in my life. 

I stopped at a Karaoke hall and sat on the steps to rest. I took some photos of some murals at a school. It was Sunday, so no kids. An old woman carrying a sack of something on her back came to the school gate and yelled for them to open up. When no one came, she gave up and walked away. Another old lady came out onto the street and hung laundry on a bush. 

Then I plowed on. Then I came to a type of pontoon bridge over the Dinh River. I rode over it. It was the coolest thing I have experienced on this trip. 

On the other side, a man came up to me where I had stopped to rest. He asked where I was going and I told him, Dong Hoi. He motioned for me to follow him. I could tell he was one of those overly-energetic kids when growing up, who kept his class laughing and was always on the go. I followed him through a cemetery with ornate tombs.

He led me up a hill, which I had to push. I tried to rest, but he insisted that I follow him to his house. There were family members there eating outside in the shade. They offered me food, but I can’t eat much when I am riding. I get sick. My friend brought me a beer and a Red Bull. I accepted the latter. He was funny. Kept telling me “Vietnam number one… Not number two.” He had his family in stitches. Me too. There was no silence. At one point, he raised his hand to initiate a high five, and I didn’t want to leave him hanging, so I slapped his hand with enthusiasm. His family cheered. 

After about ten minutes, I knew it was time to move on. He wanted to take me all the way to Dong Hoi, but I told him I could make it by reading my map. So, he insisted on leading me to the right road. He stopped at a sign indicating a “Y” and emphatically signaled for me to take the left road. I was a good road that followed the coast. I stopped and took photos. I came to many hills but managed them.

Despite the couple of very hard hours on the mud and sand path, it was a fun day. Passing five miles on that path required the same investment as 15 miles on a good road. I easily expended the energy to cover 25 miles as I would 35 or 40 miles on a normal road. 

Even though it was in the 70s, people wore winter coats. Especially, women who sometimes cover their faces completely, wearing ski masks to keep out the sun. Here they believe that white skin is the most attractive. 

When I arrived at town, I came to a huge bridge over the Nhat Le River separating Dong Hoi and Quang Bien. Kam had warned me that bikes were not supposed to ride on this bridge. I saw plenty of motorbikes, but no bikes. So, I pushed Linh to the pinnacle and rode the rest of the way onto the peninsula . The east side of the peninsula facing the gulf if beautiful, but very isolated. No stores. No restaurants. Just hotels and resorts. 

When I got to the resort lobby, And was greeted by a young man who said, “Craig Davis?” That’s a pretty good feeling. It has happened to me a couple of times on the trip. The staff are waiting on you, partially because you are a foreigner, and partially because they are not busy. 

I paid extra for a seaview room: $54 a night. That afternoon. had cramps in my right hand and in my right foot.

I am still 100 miles or so north of the 17th Parallel, in what used to be North Vietnam. Today was fun! 

Day 12:

January 14, 2023 (Saturday 14th), Ky Anh: (44 miles, 300 total)

Today was no fun!

First of all, I didn’t sleep well. Maybe four hours. I typically get 7.5 on these trips. I knew I was in trouble. Then, the Pacers lost. After the game, I felt like lying down and taking a nap. I just can’t shake this illness completely. So I packed up and headed downstairs. 

By the time I checked out and stepped into the street, it was already 82 degrees. It was about 10:30 am. 

The downtown streets were buzzing with cars and trucks and motorbikes, each trying to out honk the other. Just a few blocks south, the traffic and noise melted away. But so did my energy. 

I knew I had waited too late to leave. I chided myself, swearing to leave earlier in the future when it is going to be hot. I know better.

But at least the scenery was nice in the beginning. I rode the familiar patter of rural villages and fields. I turned off the main road, navigated a network of side streets through a village, and came to a bike path on a levee. This couldn’t be right. I meandered on trying to find a parallel concrete motorbike path. Instead, I came to a dead end. I circled back, checked my map, and took the bike path wide enough for one tire. The entire levee was about the width of a sidewalk. It was slow going, but then the path turned to mud and Linh slide but pressed through. 

With all my gear, this was tiring. And slow. I was going maybe five MPH. On the right was a canal, and on the left rice fields covered with water. At times the drop off was steep. Maybe 8 feet. If I made a mistake, if Linh lost her footing, it could make for a really bad day. 

Then, I saw a motorbike coming. I slowed, pulled over to the edge. Stood firm and let him pass. After about a mile, I came to a narrow concrete road. I took it until I came to a village. Kids were traveling on motorbikes in both directions. I had only gone about five miles, and I was already beat. And the heat was sapping my strength. 

Ahead on the left, I saw a row of trees shading a curbed walkway. I slowed and tried to ride up the slanted curb, but the bike went out from under me. I landed on my feet and prevented Linh from hitting the ground. 

As I sat there, I realized that I had not fully recovered. As always, though, the kids were shouting “hello” and “where are you from?” and “what is your name” as they passed, buoying my spirits. 

By the time I drew a crowd, I figured I could continue. As I worked my way through the village, trying to follow Kam’s directions, several school children on motorbikes followed. But finally, I left them as I left the village. 

I continued on the concrete path, past some farmers, standing in the shade. One was shoving his tiny two-wheeled wagon onto his property, while two more watched. Shortly, I came to my levee. The very same thing as before. Bike path. I started down it until I found a fence. This is the first time that I saw a fence on a levee. I turned around and backtracked to the village. 

I decided, I would take QL 1 the rest of the day. It was shorter, quicker, and more direct. I just didn’t have the energy to mess with Kam today. 

The rural roads to QL 1 were nice. People were friendly as always. Right before the highway, I saw a table in the shade. The woman owner was sitting out front with her toddler. I stopped and bought some water. Consulted Kam. I had gone about ten miles, added two by back tracking, and had about 34 to go. And I did not have the energy to match the distance required. 

Back on the road, I quickly remembered why I hated riding the highway: Loud blaring horns that actually hurt my ears. One would think that when you are going deaf, loud noises wouldn’t bother you. For me, it is worse. In fact, background noises annoy the hell out of me. Loud music in a restaurant or bar make communication with others almost intolerable. I remember in 2018, when I started the new job in Honduras, we held these project launch events where they played loud music before the event started. It was very difficult to make conversation with anyone. I had to strain to understand my colleagues. Asked an American colleague, why? She said that this new generation liked loud music in coffee shops, restaurants, events, even supermarkets. 

My legs just didn’t have any energy. You talk to yourself during these tough sections. “Come on, Craig! You can do this… Come on!” 

When you climb on the bike after a rest. “Okay, you got this!”

The drivers make the highways much more dangerous than they need to be. Motorbikes and bicycles ride the wrong way, taking up the little shoulder that there is. The riders feel that they own that shoulder, and that you should veer into the traffic lane that you cannot see from behind you. Trucks just park on the shoulder and well into first lane. Many times, I had to peddle really hard to get around a truck so I wouldn’t be smashed by two vehicles vying for the remaining one lane. And naturally, they blare their horns like there’s no tomorrow. 

Buses are the worst. Especially, the red passenger buses. They are the most demanding of the road. They stop wherever they want with no notice. They back into the road, and you must navigate the lanes to get around them. And they pass you, giving as little space as possible. While allowing maximum horn volume for your distress. Once I saw four red buses and one yellow bus pass me, taking up both lanes. 

There is no margin for error when you are trying to navigate QL 1. 

Once I stopped at a gas station and sat on the steps of the office and toilets. I just rested. I doubted my legs. If they could make it the rest of the way. A king manager brought me two bottles of water and a big smile. 

As the temperature climbed to 89, the hours daylight greedily yielded their miles. Each mile took more and more effort. More one-minute stops. More 3-minute rest breaks. More 5-more minute timeouts. I was depleted. Finally after about six hours, I realized I had about 10 miles to go. And only 90 minutes of daylight. I DID NOT want to be on QL 1 after sunset.

With nothing in the tank, I peddled on, stopping frequently, and talking to myself: out loud. “Come on, Craig! You can do this.”

Once I stopped in front of a house where there was some shade. I dismounted Linh and heard a woman’s voice. I could see through the steel bar fence that she was operating a sewing machine. 

“Can I sit?” I asked, indicating down with my palm facing the ground. She nodded, and I sat on the tile. Here concrete sidewalks are not common. They construct them with one foot square tiles instead. 

The lady then appeared with here curious children. She offered me a plastic chair. I thanked her and sat down. I didn’t really have the energy to engage in much back and forth with the kids like I normally do. 

I kept hoping for a second wind, but it never came. Then I reached the edge of Ky Anh. I continued to stop. I stopped in front of a house. A jewelry shop. I was racing the sun. Sunset was 30 minutes away. My hotel was a few miles on the other side of town. 

Then I met Ky Ahn’s hills. One rolling hill after another. I continued to stop. And somehow, I made it. I don’t know how. But I made it. 

At the Muong Thanh Grand Hotel, a welcoming committee of eight girls dressed in long blue formal dresses were lined up in two rows inside the lobby waiting on some special guests to arrive. You can imagine their surprise when a stinky, sweaty 63-year-old man on a dirty mountain bike arrived. But they smiled like I was a celebrity as I entered against the wishes of management. 

After 7.5 hours of riding in heat as high as 89, I made it. Behind me came a couple busloads of Chinese construction workers with their hard hats. I guess they were the celebrities. 

In my room, I struggled to find a hotel for tomorrow within riding distance. The closest was about 60 miles. No way I could do that. I was too tired to think. Both hands were cramping. Nearly 8 hours of gripping the handlebars was too much. Way too much. 

I couldn’t have made two more miles. I had given that day everything I had. I didn’t even plan tomorrow. 

I ordered room service: a meal and lots of fruit. Unfortunately, I was too remote for Diet Coke. I crashed. 

Day 11: 

January 13, 2023 (Friday 13th) Ha Tinh: (35 miles, 256 total)

Friday 13th!

Every time I woke up throughout the night, I had a loud hacking cough. However, it felt like it was improving. By morning, I was feeling better. I had slept really well for the past four nights. It was time to hit the road. 

My first order of business, though, was a short spa treatment for Linh. She was caked with mud, and there were some adjustments needed. Around 7:55 am, I pushed her down into the lobby and over to the first bike store. The husband and wife owner were sitting out rows of new bikes for sale. The wife told me that their mechanic didn’t come in for another 15 minutes. The husband shook his hand at me, signifying, No. He wasn’t interested in my business. The next shop that was almost next door was an entirely different story. They were very interested in helping me. I explained what I wanted, and the husband told me to return at 2pm. 

I told him I would give him extra to have her ready at 10am. He agreed. I went back to the hotel restaurant and ordered American coffee. I got some of the doughnut holes and transferred maps for the entire trip. I had been postponing this. 

After about an hour, I went back to the bike shop. He had removed Linh’s back wheel and sent it off to reengineer the ball bearings, as the translation came back. The back wheel was slightly crooked, maybe 3/4 of an inch off center, and I feared it was going to create problems down the road. I also had him adjust the seat a little. While we were waiting, he asked me some questions, and I answered by Google Translate. I told him I needed the bike to be right because I had to ride to Ho Chi Minh City.

A man appeared with Linh’s wheel after about ten minutes. They put the wheel on but were not satisfied with it, so they removed it again and tightened several screws on the sprocket. When they couldn’t get them as tight as they wanted with the allen wrench, the took a hammer and screwdriver to pound them into submission. 

The second man told me, “Ho Chi Minh, no problem.”

After doing everything I asked and a few other problems that occurred to me at the last minute, like installing a new water bottle holder (I like two), he charged me about $13. I gave him a $5 tip, and he was very happy. 

A couple stalls down, I found a carwash or rửa xe máy. Literally, this means machine carwash Funny, because after learning these new words, I started recognizing signs everywhere for rửa xe. These are essentially a spray wash, bucket, and lots of detailing skills. 

The man was reading a magazine when I arrived. He was happy to primp Linh. He sprayed her down, got all of the mud off of her, and then took his bucket with soapy water and rubber her down. 

He took a steel wool pad and began scrubbing her wheels. But anxiety had been building on me all day. I hadn’t ridden in four days. I felt like I was behind schedule overall. At nearly 10 am, I was starting very late. I was worried that my head was not clear enough to get out of the city. I still had to take Linh back to the room and pack. Would the hotel clerks give me a hard time when I tried to take a wet Linh inside? 

So, I told him that was good enough. He smiled but he was having none of it. He kept scrubbing and primping until he was satisfied. Then he took her over to an air compressor and dried her off. He charged me less than $1. I gave him an extra $.50, which he tried to refuse but eventually accepted. 

Happy with Linh’s grooming, I pushed her through the commercial area to the hotel, backed her into the elevator, and then got her into the room. I was nearly crawling in my skin with anxiety. But I tried to breathe and calm myself. Again and again.

By the time I got her packed and got back to the lobby, it was 10:35 am. Perhaps my latest start. But it was only going to be a 35 miles day. I should be fine. Because I had been out, translating on the phone, taking photos, and filming Linh’s wellness treatment, my phone was down to about 80%. Adding to my worries, my battery was already in the front bag, and I couldn’t remember charging it. I knew the phone would not make it 5-6 hours. The question was: Did my battery have enough charge left to keep me going? At checkout, there was another delay. They were trying to add up all bills, some of which I had forgotten. 

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I paid up, gave them a healthy dose of Vietnamese “Thank Yous” and “Goodbyes” and pushed Linh outside. The sun was out for only the second time in 11 days. I stopped to put sunblock on. Then I took a deep breath, threw my leg over Linh, and plowed into traffic. 

I came to an embarrassing realization a couple days ago. Something I knew, but had not really reconciled with my experiences. Not only do Vietnamese learn Hello in school, but Hello is the term they use when greeting one another on the phone. 

When I was doing research on Jackson County history, I learned that Hello is a modern development that emerged out of the invention of the telephone. The first switchboard operators were called “Hello Girls.” 

Whereas, Hello existed before the telephone, the advent of the phone drove its use internationally as a greeting. You see it all over Vietnam. An entire Vietnamese conversation will begin with Hello. I will be walking or riding down the street and hear, Hello. Naturally, I think they are talking to me, but often, when I turn around, I see them talking on their mobile phone.

As a result, every Vietnamese child knows Hello is a greeting, and one that foreigners use. And not only Vietnamese children. In many other countries, Hello is used.  

On several occasions throughout the day, the fresh air filled my lungs, and I hacked like a sick smoker. Still I felt like I was improving. 

At repair shops, the repairmen always try to adjust my seat higher than the handlebars. I didn’t understand why, but I always adjust it back down as far as it will go. Today, though, I decided to put it back up a little. Give it a try. I think that maybe it helped a little. My legs are almost completed extended when they reach their lowest point in the peddling cycle. I read that this is supposed to optimize your effectiveness.

One day in the hallway in my last hotel, I came across a man smoking. For whatever reason, guests can smoke on the lobby, which leaves a nauseating smell near the elevators. It reminded me of the smoking area outside a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, where I stayed last year. I had to pass this smoking area every time I went to wash or check upon my clothes. I tried to hold my breath until I got out of stench range. 

But a few blocks south of the main “drag,” as my grandma would call it, in Vinh, I found a relatively secluded and calm network of neighborhoods. It was actually welcoming. 

I stopped and took a photo with an old man with a long white goatee. My Vietnamese doppleganger. I know he was old enough to remember the war. He was my age or older. But instead of watching the war on TV, he lived it. We are very close to the demilitarized zone. He must have known lots of men and women who fought on the side of the North Vietnamese Army. Probably many who lost their lives. Maybe his own family. 

However, he was very friendly and accepting.

The temperature was into the 80s by now. It was close to noon. I kept peddling, but I felt really drained. 

I realized that I would have never made the mountains along the border of Vietnam and Laos. Not in this condition. Even 35 miles is hard. And even if I had been in really good shape and somehow made those mountains, it would have not been any fun. 

As the temperature climbed, there was little respite from the sun. I didn’t feel very hot, not like last summer during my ride, but my energy was drained by 1pm or so. It was about 86-88, and I had to start finding gas stations or other spots to stop and rest. At one of these gas stations, I found a woman attendant for the first time. I motioned to a stone bench and asked her if I could sit. She was only too happy for me to rest there.

She went in side the gas station and called her daughters, who came out to speak with me. Apparently, they had converted part of the building to a living area. I asked the oldest girl, maybe 14, if they lived there. She said, Yes. 

Out of the back streets of a village, I reached a main road, crossed a bridge, and the countryside opened up. It was pretty exciting.

Several miles later, I stopped at a stone bench under the shade of a tree. I was about halfway and already whipped. After ten minutes of rest, I peddled on until I came to at a little fish market on the gulf. I took some photos and spread a wealth of Vietnamese hellos, thank yous, and goodbyes, and peddled on. 

During one leg, I rode on a levee and noticed fish flopping in the rice fields. I figured they were there, but this was the first time I saw some. I came across a man spraying in the ride fields. And two plastic chairs mired in the mud. Several scarecrows in one spot. Pretty cool. 

On a few occasions, I stopped outside people’s homes and sat at their wooden or stone benches. And I just slouched, trying to regain just a little strength. Some times when I got back on Linh and peddled a couple dozen strokes, I realized that I had not recuperated at all. My legs were like jello, and my energy was depleted. Still I headed on.

By the time I reached the outskirts of Ha Tinh, I was dead tired. I worried that my head would not be clear enough to make good decisions. But I had little choice than to stop, rest up, and try again. I also think the heat, which had climbed to 88, was draining me more than I had expected. 

I began to doubt that I would make it. I was just light headed and weak. But sheer determination forced me to plow ahead. It is a little like what we do as parents. Sometimes we are so tired that we don’t know how to move forward. We want to just stop for a few days and rest. But we can’t. We have little, innocent ones, who rely on us. For food, clothes, shelter, protection, toys. We must dig deep and push on.

When I finally got to the Melia Vinpearl Hotel I was whipped. The kind hotel staff tried to get me to park my bike outside the entire time I was checking in, but I refused. In the end, one kind woman, Ngam, I think was her name, called and got permission for me to take it to my room. 

She accompanied me to my room on the 29th floor, and I gave her a tip that she refused to take. But finally I convinced her. I booked my room for tomorrow, 42 miles, and I showered. 

I ordered room service and tried to stay awake until it came. I ate a big platter of fruit in addition to my tiny cheeseburger and fries. Then I went to WinMart in the complex and bought a few supplies. Back at the room, I finished a series on Netflix, but I couldn’t sleep. I was too tired to sleep. Maybe the fact that I had slept so well and so long the last few nights kept me awake. That happens at times. 

Day Ten:

January 12, 2023 (Thursday): Vinh (Rain Day, 221 miles total)

This Vietnam trip is special in lots of ways, not least of which is the fact that my son was in Vietnam a few months ago. He spent much of his time in Hanoi, but also visited Thanh Hoa, Vinh, and Danang, where I hope to reach in a week or so. 

The Pacers blew it this morning. 

I felt a little better when I woke up. I hope that I continue to improve. It had stopped raining by 10am when I left the hotel. Had I felt up to it, I could have ridden to Ha Tinh, my next destination about 35 miles away. 

Just southwest of the hotel is the ruins of the old citadel. I walked that way and took some photos. Profusely received and gave flurries of hello, thank you, and goodbye. Even in the city, people are nice. While taking a photo of some melons and watermelons, a young woman gave me a slice of their product. It was not the Jackson County watermelon of my childhood, those donated by Friday Robison to the Watermelon Festival, but it was good. I made my way to the Hong Son Buddhist Temple and took many photos and then meandered through a market that sold largely bulk to distributors, it appeared. One man tried to give me a large piece of jackfruit. I ended up taking a small piece to try later. I took a photo of his baby. 

I saw a pizza place that was offering Tet Pizza, so I decided I had to try it. Tet holiday is approaching. Tet is the Vietnamese New Year, and it falls on January 22nd this year. 

While I was waiting for my pizza, I booked a room in Ha Tinh. Tomorrow morning I am back on the road. I have never taken three straight rain days. But it did rain, and I felt pretty crappy. It was the wise thing to rest. 

In two days, I should be close to the former De-Militarized Zone, at the 17th Parallel, near the mouth of the Ben Hai River. I have no idea what to expect. Maybe it is worth taking a day to ride through. 

I am trying to sort out my visa situation for Vietnam and Cambodia. Now that Laos is off the agenda because I can’t get a visa to travel by road at the border crossing I needed to, I want to go to Cambodia. However, looking at the Cambodia government’s eVisa site now, none of the border crossings permitted are the ones I want to use. So, that means I will have to go back to Bavet, near Ho Chi Minh. That is fine. Not ideal, but fine. 

I contacted two cycling travel agents, and both gave me different information. I wrote the website where I bought the Vietnam visa, and they promptly responded, saying I could enter any of a whole host of ports of entry for Vietnam. But they didn’t really answer my question. I asked about port of departure. I wrote them back.

Last night, the cleaning lady showed up a few hours later with my shorts. She typed into her phone something in Vietnamese and gave it to me.

“Sorry, the woman is not working today.” I gave her $4. She was happy.

It is a curiosity here that off the main street you will find four out of five shops closed—often with steel rolling security shutters locked—at any one time. I am not sure if the businesses are permanently closed, or if the businesses only open part of the time. 

Once in Costa Rica around 1992 or so, I was taking a Spanish course for second language speakers at the University of Costa Rica in San Jose. I invited a Russian classmate home for lunch. She brought her daughter and immediately felt so comfortable at our house that lunch turned into supper, and supper into spending the night. Her Spanish was better than mine. I remember her laughing at Chavo del Ocho, a silly Mexican comedy. I hated it at the time although over the years I had only seen a minute “here and there” of it. 

In Russia, she was a medical doctor who worked at the clinic, who’d married a Costa Rican man and left before the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. She said that she worked a four hour shift per day, and was happy to leave as soon as the shift was over, because there was no incentive to work longer or give additional effort. 

I have no idea if all of the closed shops have something to do with Vietnam’s brand of communism or not.

I drank lots of water and juice. I coughed more today than ever. I coughed so much that I got a headache. I suspect my neighbors thought I was suffering from full blown COVID-19. Despite that, I feel a little better. The cough was a little looser, and I just feel slightly better.

Day Nine:

January 11, 2024 (Wednesday): Vinh (Rain Day, 121 miles total)

This morning I woke up feeling lousy. I realized that I am not getting better on my own. I will go to a pharmacy today. I have been trying to avoid it because I am worried that they might think that I have Covid and send me to a testing center, or alert the authorities, which could be a real hassle. However, I will ask for antibiotics.

Around 1994 or 1995, I lived in Bloomington. I got a virus, something like this, and it turned into pneumonia. My dad had to take me to the hospital. The doctor told me: 1) I should have gotten a flu shot and 2) I should have had this looked at sooner. That the virus had turned into an infection. He gave me antibiotics, and three days later, I was much better. 

I soaked in hot water in the bath tub for a short while. This seemed to help. I then sorted through all of my dirty clothes and then logged them into a the laundry sheet. I set them by the door. I went downstairs to reception and paid for another night. 

Breakfast is from 6-9 am. Many people turn out at 6 am, and by 8:05 am when I walked in today, the place was busy and pickin’s were slim. I ate a small portion of the same thing I had yesterday: fried pork. I also had fried rice. And then some small donut hole-like things. A couple of them were not bad. I found out I could get American coffee, but you have to pay $1.20, which was fine by me. 

There is an egg station too, but I didn’t want to stand in that line of 8-9 men ahead of me. There was a really cute little girl, about 18 months old, I suspect, sitting with her grandfather and drinking juice and eating dragon fruit. The rest of her family came in. Grandmother, mother, and two teenage sisters. The teen sisters looked bored, carrying their phones. Reminded me of American kids. 

I went to the pharmacy. I gave her the google translation that I had prepared: Can I buy antibiotics? And she said, Yes. All my worrying for nothing. That is my nature.

She asked me if I had a runny nose, and I said, Yes. She asked me something and I said that I don’t understand, and she understood me to say, No. Only after I left did I realize that she was probably asking me if I had a fever. I don’t. So, it was OK. She gave me a cough suppressant and Claritin for the runny nose. She gave me Melatonin to sleep, but I am not having any problem sleeping.

After I left, I walked down to the Buddhist Temple. Two men moving from religious icon to icon praying. There were several shrines, Buddhist garden, and a huge temple. There was another two-story building as well, which I thought might be a monastery, but I have yet to see any monks. In Thailand, Buddhists monks were very common. But not here. 

Today is my second consecutive rain day. Rain is forecast for all day today and all day tomorrow. Once I was out walking around, I realized two things: It was more of a fine mist instead of rain, and I could have ridden in this. My next trip is only about 30 miles or so. If I feel better tomorrow, and the precipitation is a light mist, I can do it. You just have to be more careful. Other motorists and bikers cannot see you as well. And the road is slick. These mountain bike tires are better suited for that type of thing, but you still have to be careful. I will see how I feel in the morning after the Pacer game. 

After the Buddhist compound, I felt like walking just a little. The air was clear and felt good in my lungs. I crossed the street and entered a park. No one was there. I took some photos of workout machines. Every big city I have been in has free workout machines for residents to use. Then, I went to a coffee shop, but they didn’t have the type of coffee I wanted, so I pressed on to WinMart. I bought some short socks that I can use while they are washing my clothes. And a few supplies. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that I might leave early tomorrow morning and risk the drizzle and the rain. 

The cleaning women showed up, and I asked them to take the laundry. I also gave them the shorts with pocket problems that I have been trying to get repaired for over a week now. One of the women told me she would see if they would repair them. 

I also don’t mind the solitude of a couple of rain days. If I felt better, it would be even more fun. But it is fine. Months of solitude in Baghdad was certainly no fun, but a few days here to read, rest, and stream videos is welcome. 

One thing I noticed about the young man at the electronics store the other day was that he had long fingernails. About 3/4 of an inch. Not painted, just long. And not just his pinky nail either. His female colleague has short ones. I was too embarrassed to ask, but next time I will.

I rested in the room. Took two naps. I just couldn’t shake this cold. I was teetering on the precipice of profound illness. My lungs burned when I coughed. The cough didn’t wake me up, but I had to cough every ten minutes while awake.

I wanted something different to eat. There was a buffet just a block or two away, but I didn’t feel like walking. So, I ordered KFC. You can take the hillbilly out of the country… In many ways, I see myself as an educated hillbilly. JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy resonated with me. While I don’t share many of his political views, the book rang true with much of my upbringing. In fact, some of my happiest childhood memories originated on that tiny red block house on the hill near Freetown, Indiana. The house with no interior doors, no running water, a plastic bucket to serve urgent middle of the night calls of nature, one window fan cooling the house in the summer, and a potbellied stove heating home in the winter. In fact, with the stove smoking up house and both grandparents burning cigarette after cigarette, it is little wonder that I never took up smoking. Nor did any of their four kids. My grandfather kept a shotgun leaning in the corner for hunting or home invasions, come what may.

During his drinking days, Grampa would “fight anyone who’d put up his dukes,” my grandmother once told me. He and I didn’t talk much. I was always in awe of him. And damned afraid. After his first stroke in 1978, I sat with him in the hospital and asked him about a rumored bar fight, where he bit off a man’s ear and swallowed it. He looked at me as calmly as if I had asked him to pass the gravy, and said, “That wasn’t me.” He was there and witnessed it, he said, but it was a friend of his from Medora who swallowed the ear.

Day Eight:

January 10, 2023 (Tuesday): Vinh (Rain Day, 221 miles total)

In 1980, I flew to El Salvador to witness the presidential election between José Napoleon Duarte and Roberto D’Aubuisson. I found myself in a tiny village just outside of San Vicente. When I walked into the central park—many Central American villages and towns have central parks—I began drawing a crowd of locals of all ages. As I tried to communicate with my very limited Spanish skills, the throng of curious villages kept growing and pressing in on me. I felt smothered. So, I climbed a tree just a few feet to be able to breathe freely. Finally, a little boy of maybe 12, who had just returned from the US with his mother, appeared and we started talking. He told me not to worry, but that most people had never seen a foreigner. I was quite the spectacle. 

So far, traveling in Vietnam has been similar. I don’t draw large crowds, but curious villagers do seem to gather to see what my deal is. Their curiosity is likely piqued by the fact that I am an out-of-shape sexagenarian, who is peddling a mud-caked mountain bike loaded with saddle backs through their small town. As I have mentioned many times, everyone is as hospitable as they are curious. They ask me to come to their homes or shops and eat, drink, or smoke with them. They give me gifts, like water, cold drinks, and snacks. 

I am still sick. I need to go to a pharmacy. I am not getting any better. Nor any worse. But I don’t want this to turn into riding pneumonia.

Although I didn’t ride today, I spent nearly 14 hours catching up on the blog now that I have the new keyboard, which I love. And downloading photos. Now that I use three cameras—iPhone, GoPro, and Insta360 x3–transferring photos to my iPad is slow and complicated. It is easier than it was five years ago, but it is still challenging. The iPhone, for example, will upload onto the iPad fine, provided the traffic to and from the iPad it not too heavy. But since I have a lot going on, the photos from the phone go to the iCloud with no problem but become bottlenecked moving to the iPad. As a result, I have to send key photos and videos from the phone to Messenger and download them from Messenger to the iPad. The GoPro is simpler in a sense. I remove a data card and insert it into an adapter, transferring them to the iPad in 10 minutes. However, they are stuck there because of the bottleneck to the cloud. One large video on the iPad can plug up the entire gateway to the cloud, so that no traffic moves in either direction. So, I have to edit the videos once they make their way to the iPad. 

The Insta360 is great, but I am just learning how to use it. The actual transfer from the camera to the iPad is quick and easy, but you have to edit the videos before transfer. Large videos will not upload to the iPad. It doesn’t have enough memory. Plus, all of the cool editing features are on the Insta360 app, so you have to meticulously edit each video, break long videos into 2-3 shorter ones, and delete footage you don’t need. Once you add the videos from the camera to the iPad, they sit there for a long time, waiting for their turn in line to move to the cloud.

You need the videos and photos to go to the cloud, not only so that you have access to them everywhere, but because the iPad’s memory is limited. You have to free up the space. 

As a result, catching up on three days of blogs and several days of photos took me almost all of my waking hours yesterday. Which was fine. I don’t mind it. But it was exhausting. 

In the morning, I went down to breakfast. There were already a lot of people there by 6:30 am. They had a lot of leftovers, it looked like, from the night before. In fact, I got a small portion of fried rice and chicken, which was exactly what I had the night before. They didn’t have coffee out as far as I can tell. They did have a container, but I think it was hot water. Because I can read the word for coffee: cà phê. And the little sign read differently. And the last time I asked for cà phê in a restaurant, I got this noxious syrup that I couldn’t finish. They pour it over ice here, which I find chilling.

But the instant 3-in-1 coffee they have is excellent. Almost a milk coffee. I bought a box of it to take with me. In every hotel, except for the first one, they always have an electric kettle, which I use to heat the water for this coffee. 

Around 2 pm, I ordered seafood fried noodles and fried pork. It was amazing. 

It rained all day. Gray, murky rain and fog covered the city with no break. I am on the 10th floor, so I have an excellent view of part of the city. 

Around 5 pm, right before dark, I left the room and took a taxi to WinMart. I bought a few things and came back to the room. I te a few snacks, finished downloading the videos, and fell fast asleep around 8 pm. 

Day Day Seven:

January 9, 2023 (Monday): Vinh (26 miles, 221 miles total)

For days now, I have been thinking about these women working in the fields. Almost all of the rice paddy workers are women. I can’t help ruminating on their lives. First of all, working in the fields in any country is hard. I have done some of that on occasion when I was young. It is hard. In the case of rice paddies, it is back-breaking work. All day stooped over. These women are wife’s and mothers. So, they most likely get up, prepare meals for the family, see the kids off to school, then go the fields, take off their sandals and then get calf-deep in the mud and water, planting rice seedlings. Then come home, wash up, wash the clothes, clean the house, cook the evening meal, and are likely the last ones to bed. Although, I notice the women working in the fields the most, I have also encountered a woman butcher, women shoveling debris, hauling cargo on their bikes, sweeping streets, hauling and selling fish, and many other strenuous jobs. These are supermoms, not unlike the women in Africa, South America, and most anywhere else in the world. Women do the bulk of the work almost everywhere. And we do not thank them enough. So to any woman working at home, in the field, or any workplace, let me say, Thank you for everything you do.

Today I woke up with a cough in my lungs. It has been there for days, but it is worse today. Sometimes, as I am riding, I think, it is getting better. Then, I feel the rasping cough grate my lungs, and I think. No, it is getting worse. But I don’t have a fever. I just don’t physically feel that well, nor do I have the energy I wish I had.

The alarm woke me up at 4:30 am so that I could watch the Pacer game. I simultaneously downloaded photos from my cameras to my iPad. I have given up on my keyboard. It just refuses to work. I removed the plastic knob from the phone holder, and tightened it with the screw driver. It was tight for the first time in days. 

After the Pacers won, and I had downloaded as much as possible, I packed up Linh, and we headed downstairs. 

Today I left through the backroads of Dien Chau. I rode through a little market, then stopped to photo the roasting of goats. The first half of the day would be spend in rural areas before getting back on QL 1.

Much of the land was higher and drier today. Different types of crops. Corn, soybeans, among other crops. I saw a lot of Roman Catholic Churches. Then came to my first Catholic cemetery. The tombs are concrete with crosses at the top, but lack the ornate Chinese influence.

The next hour or so was spent romancing the Gulf. The Gulf of Tankin has a brief but significant spoke in US history. On August 2, 1964, the US Destroyer Maddox was performing an intelligence signaling patrol when it encountered three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The destroyer fired a warning shot, and the torpedo boats responded with torpedos and machine gun fire. The Maddox returned fire, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed. Two days later, the US claimed a second confrontation took place. 

As a result, US Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, broadening President Lyndon Johnson’s authority in SE Asia to protect against “Communist Aggression” and served as the legal justification for deploying conventional troops to South Vietnam and open warfare against North Vietnam. But the US had boots on the ground three years by now. President Kennedy deployed 400 advisor in 1961, and that number had grown to 16,000 by 1963, when he was assassinated. 

While I mulled this over in my mind, I stopped to enjoy the gulf. It had existed for millennia before the US engagement of those three North Vietnamese vessels, and would exist for millennia after. I was happy to enjoy a few minutes with her.

This stretch of road along the coast is under repair. There are currently no hotels, but there are lots of small restaurants, which remind me of the coast of El Salvador. But even these businesses are mostly closed. I pulled Linh into a closed restaurant and took photos. I tried to breathe in the experience. I love large bodies of water. We live on the Gulf of Mexico in the US. The prevalent fog forbade much visibility, but the crashing waves were majestic and powerful. 

As Linh and I rode on, we came across one restaurant that may have been open. A mother and three kids greeted me. Or perhaps they were just the caretakers who lived their year round. 

As I got further, I passed several heavy road construction vehicles. I rode up on the newly constructed shoulder so that I could witness the coast more closely. I hope this would not get me in trouble. One man stopped me, and I thought he was going to chide me, but he just wanted me to take his photo. 

When the road finally veered away from the shore, I came to a small, inland fishing port. The fishermen and women were selling fish to passersby. There weren’t many, but there were a few. 

Further inland, I stopped at a fish market to take a few photos. When I say stop, I mean I was astraddle Linh, snapping some pictures and entertaining them with my abundant Vietnamese vocabulary. Hello, thank you, and goodbye. I had also added, “I am going to Vinh.” 

I probably have a vocabulary of maybe 20 words and growing. 

Vinh is the major city in central Vietnam. The name means Gulf. 

All good things must come to an end. And I had to climb a big bridge and get back onto QL 1. Although the trip was short today, I am getting tired earlier. I think it is the cold I have. I stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant if I could sit. He didn’t like the looks of me. He was really reticent. I served upon him a healthy dose of Hellos and I am going to Vinhs, which convinced him, I think, that any foreign idiot that invested enough time to butcher his language like that deserved a plastic chair to sit on. So finally, he let me. 

I sat in a chair while he disappeared. When he returned, he had a package of a dozen small bottles of water. He gave me a bottle. I got up to get into my pack for two sweat buns, and my phone went flying onto the backtop. It cracked. I gave him one of the buns. This made him happy. But I was bummed that I had cracked my screen. Then I remembered that I had a screen protector. So, I was less bummed. 

When I got up to leave, he gave me another bottle of water. 

About ten miles outside of Vinh, I saw a small Apple shop. Inside I tried to buy a keyboard from the husband and wife proprietors. The wife was feeding a toddler in a wooden high chair while the husband worked behind a desk. She was very friendly, particularly after I astonished her child with a series of hellos. 

“Hello, he said,” the mother told the child, who seemed much more interested in climbing out of the high chair than my hellos.

While she was showing me a keyboard another man came in to watch the spectacle. As she and I were trying to connect it to my iPad, the child decided he wanted to climb across the table to do some typing on the new keyboard. She told him, no, but like most kids his age, that only encouraged him.

He then climbed over and grabbed mine. She scolded him and pulled him out of his chair before he fell over. On the floor, however, he was a wrecking ball. He tried to push his high chair into the glass display case, grab both keyboards from different angles, pull his bowl of food off onto the floor, and run out of the shop, all the while she kept scolding him. 

The father looked at him but said nothing. 

In the end, we couldn’t get the keypad to work right, so I conferred on them several thank yous and goodbyes. The toddler followed me out onto the walkway, only 10 yards from the busy QL 1, bent over and spit on the dirt. 

My kinda guy.

As I got close to the hotel, I began looking at both sides of the street searching for electronic stores. I found several within a mile. 

When I entered the lobby, I encountered the same resistance as always. The guard relented more easily, though. The clerk had to go get her boss, who had to see the bike for himself before giving judgement. He gave us an adamant, NO. 

But I talked him into it. 

I showered and went out keyboard shopping. On reason, I wanted to arrive early was to search for a keyboard. I couldn’t go a single day longer without one. 

Just three blocks from the hotel, I came to a store called Cellphone. Inside the four workers were all kids in their 20s. Pretty cool kids. I found an external LogiTech keyboard that worked well with my iPad. Then I had them replace my screen protector. It looked like new.

They billed by credit card, but when I looked at the price, I realized that they charged me about $5 too little. When I asked, one of the young men explained that they gave me a discount. 

I studied the four colleagues—two women and two men—laughing and joking. All very professional, but congenial. Pleasant. Modest. They knew electronics. One of the young men kept making fun of his own English skills, saying something like, “Ten years of English and all I can say, is Hello.” He had them cracking up. 

They were good kids. 

It took me about five minutes to walk across the QL 1 at rush hour. Once across, I went into a WinMart. These are like a chain of convenience stores. Sometimes, their selection is poor. At other times, not too bad. These are about the only places you can be assured of finding a few western supplies, like a Diet Pepsi. This one, however, was huge. It was a supermarket with fresh meat, vegetables, baked goods, and much more. 

I took a taxi back to the hotel and ordered supper in the restaurant that was to be delivered to my room. While I waited, I started looking at tomorrow’s forecast. There was a 95% chance of rain. I would stay here at least an extra day. 

The food was very good. I had some type of chicken in a spice tomato sauce and fried rice. Always with freshly sliced cucumbers. 

My chest was bothering me a little. I needed to stay hydrated. Around 8 pm, I fell asleep. 

Day Six: 

January 8, 2023 (Sunday): Dien Chau (34 miles, 95 total)

I woke up with a sore throat. Thought about staying another day, but the hotel isn’t great. It is a resort, and the rooms are more of efficiencies. Which is fine if that is what you are looking for. I think it is geared for Japanese workers or tourists. Part of the menu is in Japanese. But the only store within miles is part of the hotel, and the selection is not great. I needed to push on, and I knew I could make it. 

I tried to write in the morning on the iPad with no keyboard, and I just couldn’t do it. 

Today was the very opposite of yesterday. The first 13 miles were dedicated to the notorious QL 1, making good time, and last 21 miles were through villages. 

When I was researching the trip, I read many comments from westerners that warned cyclists to stay off the QL 1 because of how crazy the drivers are. I swore that I would avoid it. However, it is really not any more dangerous than many of the highways in the US. Take US 231 in Bay County, Florida, for instance. Many Floridians warned me against riding on it for the same reason. A man outside of a Dollar General told me that a cyclist was struck by a vehicle just a couple months before I was there in 2019. 

This is not to say that QL 1 is safe. It is not. The drivers, however, attempt to give me great leeway. They move into the far left lane just like they do in the US. However, the difference, I would say is that there are scores of motorbikes and many bicycles for every car or truck. So you have to factor them in. The motorbikes are trying to pass you, and they are in your lane. They will not give you wide berth because they cannot afford to. Many of them sound their horns many times more than they need to, but others don’t let you know they are there. They just zoom past within inches from you. 

Fortunately, I bought a left hand mirror for this bike in the US and attached it on Linh. It is less than perfect, but it does give me a good indication of when vehicles are coming up behind me. Otherwise, I must twist my neck and look behind me, which can be very dangerous. Sometimes, Linh veers out into traffic when I look behind me. Even a few inches could be disastrous. So, the mirror helps out a lot.

Another problem on QL 1 is that cars, trucks, and buses just stop along the side of the road. In cities in particular or in commercial areas, instead of pulling off the road, they just stop. Park. Drop off or pick up passengers. Also, bicyclists can ride very slow. Sometimes, school kids are goofing around on this busy highway. 

So I have to navigate this without losing my wits. 

I learned in Hanoi, in that busy traffic, that one has to sort of flow along, maintaining a vigilance through peripheral vision on all sides, as buses, trucks, cars, motorbikes, and bicycles just flow in and out of your traffic flow. And at any intersection, there are eight or ten different flows melting together and separating at the same time. I try to relax, remain in the flow, act decisively, sort of like a sedated root-hog-or-die attitude. There is a logic to it. However, if you have grown up here, it comes as natural to you as eating with chopsticks. As a foreigner on a bike, I had to understand, analyze, and adopt it quickly. 

Up ahead on the QL 1, I saw an older lady who was struggling with a stack of broken down cardboard boxes on the back of her bike. Her bike fell over. With dozens of Vietnamese on bikes and motorbikes passing every minute, and several more working out of the shops nearby, no one took any interest in her. I supposed this was so commonplace, that her light distress didn’t raise any alarm bells. So I stopped and went back and helped her. 

The woman had packed so many boxes on there that she had almost no where to sit on her tiny seat. Also, the load was not balanced. She’d probably been doing this all of her life. I didn’t feel it was my place to interfere and try to get her load balanced. Finally, she took off very slowly.  Once I figured out that she was going to make it, then I passed her and went on my merry way. 

An hour or so later, I found a second woman also struggling with a load of what looked like seed. As I stopped to help her, a husband and wife shop owners came out to greet me: Not to help the old woman. I greeted them, but made it clear that I needed to help the woman. I held the bike while she tried to strap a rubber cord around her oversized cargo. The husband went back into the shop, and the wife stood around giving encouragement to the old woman. Again, I noticed that there was almost nowhere on the seat for her to sit. And again it struck me that she knew what she was doing. 

When all was safely strapped down, the husband reemerged so that I could take photos with him and his wife. The old woman offered me a piece of fruit, but I declined. I thanked them all and departed.

Off the road was naturally my favorite part. Kam took me through some villages and then led me through a type of construction area where I was met with a herd of goats. Further along, the path entered a gate, narrowed, and then further along became blocked by an electric wire that someone had strung for some unknown purpose. So, I was faced with either trying to lift the wire and go under it or traipse through someone’s property right up next to their house. Instead, I turned around.

As I emerged from gates, a father, his son, and three other children were awaiting me on a motorbike. A woman on a hill off to the right stood yelling something, and the man was speaking to me in Vietnamese. Essentially, they were telling me to go back to the village. I told him Dien Chau, which is my destination. After a couple of minutes of photos and thank yous and good byes, I peddled on. 

At an intersection a little further along, I stopped to look at my map. A ten-year-old girl with her tiny brother pulled up beside me on a motorbike. She just wanted to greet me. After 30 seconds or so, she left.

I thought about my grandson who is about the same age. There is no way I would turn him loose in the US, even on his bike. Let alone on a motorbike. Much less with a small child on the back. 

Although as I think back about it, I was probably about 11 when I started driving a tractor in the fields with my grandparents. Those were different times.

These Vietnamese kids are really responsible. 

Although there was only a 0% chance of rain, I got rained on. It was mostly sprinkles but it turned into a light drizzle. I stopped and covered my saddlebags with the yellow plastic covered. All the field workers left. Can’t say that I blame them. With the sore throat and bronchial ailment, the last thing I need is to get drenched. But it never came to that. 

Before long, I came through a village and saw a Buddhist compound of some type. I took some photos and rode on. It would have been nice to has wandered through the compound and learned more about it. From what I could tell, it covered one or more square blocks.

In 968, a warlord named Dinh Bo Linh defeated the other 11 warlords of Dai Viet (northern Vietnam) and established himself a sole ruler. He renamed the kingdom, Dai Co Viet, or the Great Buddhist Viet, and Vietnam’s unique version of Buddhism flourished. 

Later in the day, I came to a village and heard music. I saw several motorbikes parked at a compound. Several citizens were sitting on the ground at a small structure watching a performance. When the high school students saw me, they left the performance and came to see me. You know the high school students because they all wear the same, government-mandatory (I assume), blue jacket. One girl told me it was a festival. Again, I wanted to go watch the performance for a few minutes, but I couldn’t leave my bike. And I was whipped. I wanted to get to my hotel. So, I thanked them and departed. 

After a couple dozens twists and turns, I came to the Gulf of Tonkin, which flows into the South China Sea. After riding about 20 minutes. Two boys on a motorbike greeted me going the opposite way. This happens at least ten times an hour, so I didn’t think anything about it. 

But about ten minutes later, they caught up with me. They brought me a Red Bull and some sweet bread. I stopped to accept and take some photos. I was so tired that I felt the Red Bull would give me the energy I needed. But when I was getting off the bike, trying to hold onto my Red Bull, the bike fell over, and I hopped into the road four strides. Had a car been passing, it would have made for a very ugly end to my day. 

One of the boys picked up Linh. They couldn’t speak English, but they were full of smiles. A couple of minutes later, a dual cab pickup stopped. I think it was carrying the parents of one of the boys. I greeted them profusely with the Vietnamese hello: xin chào, which tickled them. 

The boys rummaged around in the back and pulled out a package of Phu cake, which he gave to me. Phu cake is a thick, gooey, sticky taffy-type sweet. Apparently, this is a speciality sweet served at weddings. Also called, husband and wife cake. 

After I bestowed on them an abundance of thank yous and goodbyes, and was on my way. Another 20 minutes and I came up one these small round bamboo or wooden fence-like structures surrounding tombs. They are decorated with flowers. 

Ancestor veneration has been part of Vietnamese belief for a long time. As in other parts of SE and East Asia, Vietnamese decorate and leave food on the tombs of ancestors (and at shrines). In return, the ancestors will look out for their descendants. 

A little further along, I came to a village. I saw a man with a machete. He picked a piece of fruit from melon like vines growing on his roof. I stopped and took some photos of him, his wife, and their neighbors. Like elsewhere, these people were giddy. Childlike. Fixing their hair. Joking with each other. Although the photo below doesn’t show it. I think the sun was in their eyes. And I was just as giddy. 

When I finally, got back to a main road, I saw a bridge crossing over Hoa river. It was a little high, so I rode on a gravel road hoping to find a bike and motorbike bridge, but couldn’t find one. So I backtracked and took the high one. It was narrow but well constructed. I realized that this was indeed the bike bridge but also small cars could use it. Trucks had to use the QL 1, I suppose.

All along the 60 or 80 acres of bottomland to the right were small concrete hut structures, constructed equidistance from one another. At first, I thought maybe these were government homes from perhaps the 30s or 40s. I had seen them earlier in the day too. But now I noticed a network of gutted tomb-like structures in between them. Then I started thinking that perhaps this was a massive graveyard that had flooded over the years and that the government had dug up the remains and relocated them. 

At the top of the bridge I had to stop because suddenly the traffic got a little busy and several cows were lying around in both lanes chewing their cud. At the bottom, I came to a small town on the outskirts of Dien Chau. Tiny shops buzzing with activity. 

My phone holder had broken hours earlier. I tried to fix it with a screw driver, but the knob was beyond repair. I would have to look for a new one. 

Further up, I crossed back onto the QL 1, which was busier than usual. But I wasn’t far from the hotel. 

The hotel security guard wouldn’t let me take Linh into the lobby. He insisted that I take her to the parking garage. I can’t do this, particularly until I have checked in. All my valuables are on her. I suppose I could remove all my bags, lock up Linh, and try to carry all my luggage up to the lobby and check in. But it is a hassle, and I want Linh in the room with me. I don’t want to worry about her that way. I kept insisting that I bring it inside. Finally, the guard opened the door and yelled in to the reception that I was coming in with a bike. He was not happy.

Inside I explained, like I always do, that I want the bike with me. And that every hotel lets me. Even big ones in big cities. And they agreed. I went back to the guard and gave him 25,000 Dong ($1.10) and he was really happy. He insisted on helping me and the desk clerk take the bike to the room. I had made a friend.

The Vietnamese are honest people. At least with foreigners. I asked the him if he could help me find a new phone holder. He took it and about 90 minutes later, he returned saying he could not find one. I gave him $9 for his trouble, which was too much, and he didn’t want to take it. Finally, he did. Then, when I ordered supper, I asked him to find zero calorie Pepsi or Coke. He returned with two, but refused to accept any money. He said that they were his gift to me. 

This happens all the time. The lady who brought the meal collected the money and left. Five minutes later, she knocked on the door. She must have inadvertently shortchanged me by about $5. She returned it. Even at the first hotel that I didn’t like, the lady who took my money, overcharged me. I was too tired to argue. And it was only about $3. Then just before I was headed to my room, she realized her mistake and stopped me. She refunded me the difference.

Each afternoon after arriving at the hotel, I am so tired that I do little more than remove my gear, put my electronics on the charge, shower, order room service and eat, and lay down to stream something until I fall asleep. 

Day Five:

January 7, 2023 (Saturday): Tinh Gia (42 miles, 161 miles total)

Vietnam is almost exactly halfway around the world. A 12 hour difference. When I wake up at 5 am on a Saturday morning, it is 5pm Friday afternoon back on the east coast. Because I try to watch Pacer games live and chat with my father during the game, and communicate with my family in the Western Hemisphere, the days bleed together. I get confused. 

Immediately after starting, I left the QL 1 and entered a village. Kam, the name I have given to the lady’s voice on Kamoot, took me through a cemetery. This was a big one with huge tombs. These exhibit Chinese influence, which is quite understandable. For hundreds of years throughout Vietnam’s history, China ruled northern Vietnam, called Dai Viet (or Great Vietnam) and Champa, central Vietnam. China and Vietnam fought many wars, and at times enjoyed peace and healthy economies.  

The cemetery became gravel and then Kam led me down a path through the grass and onto a thin strip of land that was flooded. I turned around and backtracked a short way. 

Finally, I found myself in a different village on blacktop. I stopped at a tiny family-run supermarket. I think the family wanted to adopt me. I bought two tiny KitKat bars and some Strawberry milk. It is not easy to find diet drinks or juice. There are many different flavored green teas, but some some reason the people like flavored milk. They are not bad.

The father called for his 12-year-old daughter to come from the back, which I am sure was their residence. We talked a little and took some photos. Then, I went outside and started to sit on the edge of a concrete post. The father rushed out and adjusted a wobbly chair for me. I sat on it, and the daughter came. As I ate and drank, we talked. The mother then brought me out a cold water, as a gift. I also picked up a few Vietnamese words from her, like Hello and Goodbye (tạm biệt). Ten days in country, so it was about time, right?

After bidding lots of tạm biệts, Linh and I were back on our way. Then it occurred to me about two blocks away, that I had forgotten the word for, Hello. Oh well, everyone of every age knows that word well.

Villages here are not what I expected. They are relatively modern. The houses are mostly concrete. Streets are narrow, primarily wide enough for bikes and motorbikes. Many of the businesses have internet. I suspect that vehicles very much indicate your socio-economic status. Almost no one owns a car. But if you do, then you are important, successful. Many adults ride motorbikes. In fact, entire families, two adults and three children, navigate the streets on a single motorbike. If a teen has a motorbike, then I suspect your family is a little better off. And there are several of these, as you have seen in the videos. Most teens, however, ride bikes, which seems the normal. In fact, even a number of those working in the rice fields have motorbikes parked on the side of the road. The older men and women who ride bikes are likely of a lower socio-economic tier. And there are few walkers. Not like I have seen in other countries though. 

Then there are the motor bikers who carry their water bong with them. I saw one smoking it as he was riding. One man stopped as I was looking at my phone for directions, and he wanted me to smoke with him. They fill it with a very strong type of tobacco, I understand. Some riders carry their dogs with them. Cargo of all shapes and sizes.

Several villages later, I passed a group of women working just off the main road. A woman laughed and blew me a kiss. This was the first time I saw this, but not the last. Another woman in a rice field asked me to come and join them in the muck. I am way too lazy for that.

Kam took me through a network of rice paddies. The panorama was exhilarating. Before long, the blacktop turned to concrete, concrete to gravel, gravel to grass, grass to dirt and sand. I found myself riding on the bank of a nearly-dry channel where cows were grazing. I stopped to rest. I sat on the grass, drank some water, and tried to soak in the experience. 

I rode on and about six hours into my ride, when my energy was sapped, I came to a big hill. I was not far from my hotel, but I would have to push Linh. I stopped a few times to catch my breath, and criticized myself for the self-indulgent diet through Christmas, but I made it. 

It was here that I changed my diet. I added in fresh fruit and vegetables and cut out much of the junk. I started feeling a little sick again. I need to take care of myself. 

Day Four: 

January 6, 2023 (Friday): Thanh Hoa (42 miles)

The Vietnamese people are kind, hospitable, and fun loving. It doesn’t take much to get them to laugh or giggle. To say something silly. My taxi driver in Ninh Binh told me his name was long, and then extended his hand on each side and laughingly said, “Long” as opposed to short. 

This morning as I left Than Hoa, I stopped to look at my phone for directions. A man at a machine shop greeted me, and tried to get me to come in and drink tea and smoke the điếu cày, the Vietnamese water pipe. A little while later, I stopped for the same reason, and a second man tried to get me to come in and drink tea. 

I rode on Highway QL 1 for half an hour and then took the app’s self-guided tour midway into it. I went into a village and stopped to buy water. Again the people were very friendly. They treat me as if I am the highlight of their day. It is a pretty good feeling.

The shop owner was a lady, and she let me know with hand signals that she didn’t like my flashing light, so I moved the front tire so it wouldn’t flash in her face. A neighbor running another shop yelled something to her in Vietnamese and the lady beside me asked me why I had it. (They are not on the bikes that locals ride). I tried to tell her that I used it so other cars would see me, and she answered to the other woman something. 

Back on my bike, Kamoot got me confused. I rode on through the village but the voice kept telling me that I was going in the wrong direction. I crossed an area three times before I figured out she was right. Half an hour later, I passed the same shop owner. After a few minutes I found myself on a path in the middle of a cemetery. It was pretty cool, but it took me down a very narrow path to a point that was flooded. So, I had to back track again. Finally, an hour after I left QL 1, I rejoined the same highway about 500 yards closer to my destination.

At the city of Dam Tiep, I took a couple of short Kamoot detours that ran parallel with the main highway. I liked those. They were quiet and almost as fast. And I saw a lot of people: Children, women chatting, construction workers. Everyone wanted to greet me. 

After a while, I came to my main Kamoot detour. It looked like maybe six miles. The countryside was gorgeous. But the road turned from blacktop to gravel to dirt and then to grass, with a small bike path at times through the grass. An old man riding a motorbike and hauling some long poles stopped and yelled at me. He motioned for me to join him and eat something. I thanked him, one of the words that I have learned is kam-un for thank you, and told him that I had to keep riding. He insisted. But finally relented and wished me well. 

By now I was probably in the Province of Thanh Hoa, which was the birth place of the Vietnamese emperor Le Loi. In my book, I read that in 1524, a Vietnamese general named Mac Dang Dung captured the leaders of the two leading families and had them killed. He put a member of the Le royal family, Le Xuan, on the throne as emperor, but in June 1527, he killed all of the Le royal family members he could find and proclaimed a new dynasty, that of the Mac.

I looked around and tried to recapture the land in the time of this political strife. Much of the fighting was done here. Rich and aristocratic families fought against Mac rule on the land I was covering today.

After many wrong turns and backtracking, I came to a steep hill. Halfway up, I stopped for my first time to sit and eat some Oreos. I wasn’t that tired, but Linh was exhausted. 

At the top of this grassy hill, I found breathtaking views of fields of trees and crops that I couldn’t identify. A large lake sat beyond. I also found an even steeper and taller hill. I pushed Linh up and at the top, I found another hill. But this time, at the top I saw a Buddhist shrine. This motivated me, and when I finally reached it, I was in for a treat. I realized, This is why I came here. I was so happy that Kamoot took me on this trip. I asked a lady who was leaving flowers if I could take photos and she said yes. I thanked her profusely in Vietnamese, quite proud that she understood me. For the first few days, no one understood my Kam-un. 

I sat at a bench for ten minutes then enjoyed the rapid trip down. I braked the whole way because I knew the very real danger of coming down a hill in SE Asia going too fast. 

At the bottom, I went through the outskirts of a small city and came back to QL 1 and started heading south. It was slow going, and it was as ugly as the previous leg was beautiful. On the right was a railroad track for much of the way. Then truckers’ rest stops with men, women, and youth on the edge of the road trying to flag you in to their businesses. 

Also, I was beat. Those hills had taken it out of me. I stopped a lot for breathers. My legs were weak. I haven’t fully recovered from whatever illness I had on the morning of Day Two. About 20 miles after the shrine, I realized that I was in the second set of gears. Without my glasses, I can’t see very well. I slipped it into the third set, and pressed on. This was faster. 

I arrived at the Melia Vinpearl Hotel in Thanh Hoa city, which is absolutely gorgeous. I knew it was going to be a problem brining Linh inside with me. A kind man held the door open. A bride and groom were getting professional wedding photos in the palatial lobby as I pushed the muddy mountain bike inside. I was sweaty and stinky, and just as muddy as her. Even my glasses had a splotch of mud on them. A woman came running across the lobby to stop me, but I kept pushing.

The women, including the manager, were so kind and professional, but insistent that Linh couldn’t stay with me in the room. But I kept pushing equally as polite until finally they made a phone call to another manager, and decided if she would fit in the elevator, I could take her. 

At the room, the first order of business was a hotel room for tomorrow night. That was hard. The options were so limited. And I had to use about five or six different apps (Booking.com, Priceline, Google, Expedia, Orbitz, and another one or two) and counter checking distances with Maps and Google Maps before I found one that was within my riding distance. It was 34 miles by car, but 41 by bike according to Kamoot. Unfortunately, Maps and Google Maps don’t have bike routes, which makes it harder. So, I have to use three GPS apps to figure it out. 

In addition, not all of the towns are in these three apps. Or the name of the town is there, but it is in a different province. There are Ha Noi’s (Hanoi’s) for instance, all over the place. Like Greensburg. Probably most states in the US have one. One mistake, and I could commit to staying in a hotel with my credit card that is either close enough by car, but too far by bike, or is 300 miles away. So I have to take my time and check and double check, and then triple check before I reserve. 

Day Three: 

January 5, 2023 (Thursday): Ninh Binh (R&R)

This is genuinely Rest and Relaxation. I have to recover from whatever ailment I had. It felt a little like heat exhaustion. I don’t know. But this morning I felt a little dizzy and still weak, but much better. I awoke at 4 am. 

And I accomplished a lot today. I feel like I organized myself. I figured out how to download photos and videos from my Insta360 x3 camera. I thought I needed yet another cable, but I don’t. It can be done wirelessly. I edited and downloaded all of them to free up space for more. I chatted with my dad during the Pacer game (we lost in overtime). I got my stupid keyboard working a little better, although it needs replaced. I downloaded photos from my GoPro the kids bought me a few years ago. I sent dirty clothes off to laundry. I walked 2.5 miles and took a taxi ride with Long to downtown to buy some supplies. I charged all of my lights, cameras, iPad, phone, and other gadgets. I booked a hotel for the next city: Thanh Hoa. I planned my route on Kamoot.

I downloaded Kamoot because Google Maps and Maps don’t have cycling routes in SE Asia. I looked at other apps, but this one had a good reputation. But I am still figuring it out. I couldn’t figure out why it was not keeping me on the main route, like HCM Highway, and was taking me on all of these detours. The app lady speaks to you, giving your directions like all GPSes, but she also indicates when you have missed your route by saying things like, “Your tour is 0.2 miles behind you… Your tour is 0.45 miles east of you… You are now back on the tour and navigation will resume.” 

Finally, at the end of the first day, I realized that this app is a self-guided tour. It is suppose to take you on through villages and on backroads. There are settings so you can go on mud paths if you want. Or stay on highways. In any case, it is really fun once you figure it out.

I heard years ago, some woman say, “Boys never grow up. They just get more expensive toys.” She was spot on.

I still haven’t gotten my back tire sorted out. It is nearly rubbing the left side of the bar. Maybe when they replace the tires they didn’t put it back on correctly. I will try to adjust it in the morning.

I am stopping for the night. Hope to watch something on Teddy (the Frenchman’s Netflix account) and enjoy the evening. I will log him off in the morning. Thanks Teddy.

I just realized something: I am on vacation.

Day Two: 

January 4, 2023 (Wednesday): Lac Thuy to Ninh Binh (35 mile)

Many years ago in Costa Rica, I gave private classes to this woman named Annabel. She was very, very nice. From an upper middle class family. She told me that her father was in his seventies. And that every year he rode his motorcycle from Costa Rica to the US. And this particular year, his family was worried about him. Not only was he not the young man he used to be, but Mexico and El Salvador were very dangerous.

Although I never met the man, I have thought about him in the last few years. He had raised his kids, retired, and now he wanted to enjoy himself. I decided I am going to enjoy myself as well on this trip. It was very liberating. I would not make the 1200 miles. I would not see Laos, but I would have fun, and I would do my best to see Cambodia, particularly the ancient city of Angkor Wat.

But on this morning, I woke up sick. Headache, weakness, dizziness, nausea. I thought maybe it was just dehydration. I couldn’t eat. Barely felt like sipping water. I laid down and suddenly the room started spinning. I had to sit back up. Finally, I laid back down and slept for an hour.

I finally decided that I was much better off to try to push on. One of the hardest things I have ever physically done was to pack my gear and carry it downstairs to Linh. I pressed on very slowly. 

Outside in the cool 60 degrees fresh air, I began to feel better. Still slightly dizzy if I got off the bike, and very weak, but I plugged on one slow mile at a time. 

I took a lot of back roads today, which was slow, but much more fun. Despite my condition, I had a fun day. 

While I was taking photos of some women working in a field, a man stopped his motorbike and got off, asking for a photo with me. He didn’t know how to reverse his phone camera for a selfie. I reversed it for him and he snapped a shot. I took some photos too.

For a little while, I followed QL 21. 

A while later, I stopped to have some Vietnamese coffee. It was thick like syrup. Tasted nasty. The lady restaurant owner also brought me tea. 

A few miles further, I became a little hungry. I stopped at a little store that had a slightly better selection. I got a Tropicana juice, an ice cream bar, and some cookies.

I don’t know if you know this or not, but ice cream is a magical remedy for almost anything: Break ups, bad day at the office, migraines and dizziness. You should try it sometime. I felt better after the first bite.

I sat at a little stone table to rest and eat. The shop owner ran across the parking area to the gas station that he also ran. Then he ran back with some tea to serve me. It was not very good and had a strong after taste.

I pressed on. I saw banana trees, grapefruit, papaya, bamboo, sugar cane fields, and what may have been tea fields. 

Almost without exception, everyone was kind. I stopped a lot, but didn’t sit much. I stopped for one minute and then got back on the road. 

When I got to my Ninh Binh according to Kamoot, there was nothing there. Certainly no hotel. I was on a busy highway with the blaring horns. Fortunately, I had saved my data all day for precisely this need. I switched the phone data on and put the address into Google Maps. I was four miles away. Fortunately, I was not back tracking. 

I really didn’t have the energy to go on, but I made it by stopping about every mile. Twice I sat on the guard rail along a very busy road.

When I finally got here, it was about 3pm. The young manager met me on the steps. I told him I wanted to take Linh inside. He resisted at first, but finally let me in with a smile. He absolutely refused the $2 tip I tried to give him.

“You will need it” on your journey, he told me. What a good kid!

He helped me get the bike in the small elevator. It was tight but I was able to back it in. Then he showed me to the door and used my key card to get me inside. 

Finally, I felt comfortable. This is a nice hotel and nice room. I showered and ordered room service. I flipped on Netflix and fortunately some French guest had been kind enough to leave me his account already set up, so I watched a movie. 

Fried seafood rice was not bad, but the meat dumplings were delicious. And the passion fruit juice was splendid. 

Day One: 

January 3, 2023: Hanoi to Lac Thuy, Vietnam (35 miles)

I slept well. Maybe seven hours. Woke up and looked at my phone. It was 4:56 am. Perfect. I wanted to get up at 5 am. However, after moving around a little, I looked at my phone again. It was just 4 am. But I was awake now, so I decided to enjoy the additional hour.

Most everyone wears winter coats although the temperature has been in the mid-60s. This morning it was 57 degrees when I woke up. Should be about 60 when I depart can climb to 69 by mid-day. 

My anxiety has decreased. I am largely packed and my keyboard has decided to cooperate again. Linh looks good. I have internet to track my trip to Hoa Binh. I have no idea what is awaiting me. If I will have decent Wi-Fi in the room or not. But I am happy!

My dad and I chatted during the Pacer game. I stayed in the room until the game was over. I figured that without my coaching, they might not make it. But with my help, they won.

My first stop was the ice cream shop to buy a longer charging wire for my iPad. Then, I rolled into traffic. It was fine. Heavy. But I managed. It was actually exhilarating to be among the flow. 

Outside of town, I went on a narrow alley through a village. I stopped to drink something and to rest. Just outside the village, I came to my first set of irrigated fields. 

As I rode through them, it felt surreal. At every village, people greeted me. Laughed and smiled. 

Just outside one village, my bike started making a noise. A young man in his 20s stopped to help me. We got it going, and I went on my way. 

When I got to my destination, I couldn’t find a hotel. I went to a resort, but the guard called someone and told me to go, waving his hand in the opposite direction, as if shooing away some kids. My internet was not working on the phone, but Google Maps sort of works offline. It is really slow, but I was able to find another hotel with a photo that made it look big, and it’s about 1.5 miles behind me. No one likes backtracking, but I felt it was the best option.

However, when I got there, it looked less like a hotel and more like a conference center. At an office in the back I found a man having tea with a couple. I asked him if this was the hotel, and he shook his hand in the Vietnamese way to say no. 

I was striking out. Part of the problem was I didn’t know the word for hotel in Vietnamese. At the next place I saw that looked like a hotel, the guy told me, No. He shook his hand and walked off. I was sure that this was a hotel. What was it about foreigners that made hotel managers refuse to rent them rooms. Were they loud? Drunks? Try to bring women into the rooms? Heck if I knew.

Then I looked at the last the common words in the sign here and the hotel I had just visited: Nha Nghi. Once I knew the word for hotel, finding the next one was easy. In fact, I started recognizing Nha Nghis all over the place. Left, right, and center. 

These two women were different. I thought it was a mother and daughter. The older lady was probably my age or older. Both were very friendly, but they wouldn’t let me take my bike up to the room. I paid $10 for the room and the mother started leading me to the shed where they parked motorbikes and hung laundry. Suddenly woman in her forties appears saying something and shaking her finger emphatically, saying, No.

The other two women started arguing with her. Was she saying no that I couldn’t take the bike up to the room or no I couldn’t stay in the hotel because I was a foreigner? 

I smiled and said, Hello. She smiled back, and let herself be persuaded by the other two women. 

I locked Linh on a pole and removed all her valuables, and hauled it all upstairs. The mom, or grandma perhaps, carried one of my saddle bags and a bag of water I bought. Inside she laid everything down, and then she stuck out her hand and put a finger in the palm, signaling it was tip time. It certainly was, and I gave her 25,000 Dong ($1). She left happy. 

Although it was only 42 miles, and relatively flat, it took me nearly six hours to make it. I was out of shape, sure. But something else was going on.

Maybe there was a time when it was fun, but not anymore. No toilet paper, no heat, no TV. Outside the options for dining and goods are very limited. You can get Pho Bo or Pho Bo. Stores sell cold green tea and water, chips and small sweet breads. And all of the options are open air businesses next to the HCM Highway with dirt, mud, and blaring horns. 

The hotel is really a cheap alternative for low budget Vietnamese and foreign travelers. In fact, I saw another man, staying there. And several workers who were repairing a vehicle, likely stopping for the evening to repair the vehicle before traveling on the next day. And I heard a family pass on the balcony after I showered. So there was nothing wrong with the place. It was just not what I wanted at 63 years old.

I wanted the ability to turn on the heat when it dropped to 55 degrees at night. Some cable. And some toilet paper would be nice. Maybe a mini-fridge. 

I got a message from Tommy, the agent who I bought the bike from. He said that two of his travelers had been turned away at the Lao border on bikes. He sent me the eVisa details, which stated that you could only enter Laos by eVisa through six ports of entry. None of them were the border I was going to. In fact, it was impossible for me to go through them. This is was exactly what I read in August. Which is why I kept asking him if he was certain I could get a visa on arrival, and as recently as Sunday, he had assured me, Yes. 

It still could be possible. The website was unclear about visa on arrival. But if I were to run the risk and go to the only border on my route, I might go three days out of my way to a border that was closed to foreigners on bikes. To make matters worse, this was the worst part of the trip. At about a 3000 foot incline in 10 miles. I was not at all sure I could make it. And hotels were spread out, so it looked like I would have to make a minimum of 20 miles that day. 

After I ate, I came back to the room. I was too tired to do anything. I tried to sleep, but was too tired. I sat up and started looking for hotels online. I made a decision right there and then: I was going to have fun on this trip. Nothing else mattered. I was going to enjoy myself. No more nights in places like this. No more stressing about borders and visas. 

I would ride 30-40 miles a day. Rest as frequently as I wanted. And stay in relatively nice hotels. I would stay off the highways as much as I could, travel through villages. Stop and take photos, and get back to the reason I came. But at the end of the day, I would try to arrive in a bigger city with a mid-range hotel, one that welcomed foreigners, and had a few options for meals and shopping. I need my daily ice cream for health reasons. I will enjoy the experience. I will never be back here. 

I reserved a room at Ninh Binh about 35 miles southeast of here. And most of the way were backroads through villages.

I finally drifted off to sleep, but woke up a lot. I had a headache. Maybe I was dehydrated. 

January 2, 2023 (Sunday): Hanoi, Vietnam (12 miles)

On October 26, 1967, US Navy Pilot John McCain was shot down while flying a sortie over Hanoi. He parachuted and landed in Trúc Bạch Lake.

I read one of McCain’s biographies many years ago. As I recall, his collarbone, one arm, and one leg were broken. As a result, neither arm worked. 

He sunk to the bottom of the lake, kicked off, and came up for air before sinking back down. Thinking he was going to die, he pulled the cord of the inflatable vest with his teeth and floated to the top. 

A Vietnamese man named Mai Van On was eating lunch at his home near the lake. He saw the pilot plunge into the lake. He started to make his way towards the lake, but many other civilians told him to let the American drown. Bullets were falling all around the area. 

On grabbed a bamboo pole and drove into the lake. He fished McCain out and dragged him to shore. 

The civilians began beating McCain. Finally, the military came and arrest him. 

McCain ended up in Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the Hanoi Hilton, a penitentiary known for its brutality. The French had held and tortured political prisoners there. McCain was refused medical treatment. He was tortured. Beaten. 

Because McCain came from a prominent military family, the North Vietnamese authorities offered to release him in mid-1968. But John refused unless all the men taken before him were released. The authorities denied his request, and as a result McCain remained nearly five additional years as a prisoner of war. 

It is impossible to overstate the depth of John McCain’s character. 

A decade or so ago, I suffered a broken collarbone, broken scapula, and seven broken ribs. I came down a hill on a motorbike in Ko Samui, Thailand going too fast and tried to take a turn. The bike jumped off the road and flipped, driving my shoulder into the ground at about 35 mph. At first, I was in no pain. I crawled out of the grass and onto the road. Then kind Thai people began stopping to help. By the time the ambulance (a Toyota truck with a camper) arrived, I was in pain. Every bump in the road sent torrents of pain through my body. I screamed and pounded on the truck wall for them to slow down. By the time I got to the emergency room, I was begging them for pain meds. But they were waiting to verify my insurance before they gave me anything.

They moved me to get x-rays, and I screamed in agony. I could feel ends of broken bones grate at each other.

I probably suffered two or three hours before I was given pain medication. McCain was not only denied medical treatment, he was beaten and tortured. His wounds healed wrong, and was never again able to lift his arms over his head.

McCain said, “Every man has his breaking point.” I had reached mine within a couple hours. I would have signed anything or done almost anything to release me from the pain.

March 14, 1973, the North Vietnamese released McCain along with 108 other prisoners.

McCain returned many times to Vietnam. He became a supporter of the Vietnamese, particularly during the war with the Cambodia and military tensions with China. Those who remember him, love him. The Vietnamese erected a memorial to John McCain at Trúc Bạch Lake.

In 1996, McCain was reunited with the man who saved his live: Mai Van Ho. It was an emotional reunion, 29 years after the rescue.

But McCain never surrendered to his principles. When he returned to Vietnam in 2000, one of the North Vietnamese commented that the right army won the war. But McCain replied that “the wrong guys” won the war. 

Today I had many things on my agenda, but the two most important, were to see Hoa Lo Prison and Trúc Bạch Lake.

I was awake at 5 am. I could have slept more, but I had too much to do. And it was a good thing I did.

Immediately, I learned that my keypad is not charging. I think this is my third year with it, but the battery must have gone bad. Linh’s tires are also bad. I need to replace them. I bought a wider, more comfortable seat in the US, and when I tried to replace it, I realized I didn’t have the tools. I had some other things on my To Do list to prepare me for tomorrow’s departure. 

I left the room a little before 8 am. 

The desk clerks tried to convince me that I had to park Linh down in the parking garage, but I resisted. I want to keep her in my room. Finally, they said, OK.

The first bike shop that I visited was closed. Maybe shops closed today for the holidays, too. I spent 20 minutes trying to find a second. Google Maps is not always that accurate here. I gave up and rode on to the next. I couldn’t find it either. I went to a fourth. They didn’t sell tires. The fifth was closed. I called Tommy and he said he could do it tomorrow. His mechanic doesn’t return until tomorrow. 

I decided I should stop stressing and just stay an extra day. 

Then, I started a search for a new keypad. One shop owner was kind enough to search for another online (on my phone) and send me there. Suddenly, my internet stopped working. I couldn’t send text messages. My plan had run out, which was odd because I have 4 GB per day. It was only about 10 am. 

This shop was an Apple repair shop. Naht was the young man who helped me. We communicated with Google translate on our phones. He called around, and told me he would call me if he could find a new keypad. 

I rode my bike to Hoa Lo Prison. Today it is a museum. I left my bike with a one of two guards who are responsible for watching 60-75 motorbikes and bicycles. They are not locked. These uniformed men just walk up and down the rows of bikes on the sidewalks guarding them. 

I wondered as I bought my tickets if all these Vietnamese think about me when viewing Hoa Lo Prison. as I thought about the Japanese who were watching that movie about the Atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when I was at the University of Chicago. 

But once, I got inside, I realized that the vast majority of the exhibits were honoring Vietnamese political prisoners at the hands of the French.

It was somber. No one was smiling or laughing. The museum had nice exhibits. Mannequins of prisoners sitting or lying like the prisoners of those horrible days. I went through a couple wings, and into a couple cells, and it was very interesting, but I had seen enough. It was overly crowded. We were bumping into each other. I was worried about my bike sitting out there without being locked around anything. And this was depressing. I no longer have the stomach for this type of relic. Too many years in war zones. Witnessing the horrors of warm.

I had to get out. 

A few years ago in Pakistan, my Christian cook gave me a CD that the Pakistani Taliban had been distributing to terrorize Christians and other communities, like Shia and those who resist their interpretation of Islam. I put the CD in, but after one beheading of a Pakistani man, I got sick to my stomach. I stopped watching it. A week later, I gave it to a former military colleague who worked at the State Department. I figured he would get it into the right hands. 

The security guard had protected my bike with no problem. I offered him a $2 tip, but he refused. I had to try three times before he took it. Most people are like that here. 

So, I rode up to Trúc Bạch Lake. It is the smaller twin of Tay Lake. I got off my bike and took some photos. A fisherman was plying his trade. A young couple were taking a selfie. The girl put a finger to her chin as the man took the photo. (I hate the word pic.) A man had parked his motorbike on the sidewalk while he sat alone on a park bench. There were Vietnamese tourists everywhere. And a handful of westerners about. I had thought about McCain all day long. Trying to reconcile his suffering in 1967 with the Hanoi I was experiencing in 2022, some 55 years later. Trying to reconcile the contradictions of Oh who risk his life within a rain of bullets (Oh’s words) to safe an enemy pilot who had been attacking his city just minutes before. The complexities that would bring McCain back and embrace this nation while being embraced by them. I couldn’t reconcile the contradictions, so I just accepted what I couldn’t understand.

My battery on my phone was dying so I decided to head back to the hotel. If it died before I could get back, I would have a hard time finding the hotel. The address was stored there. 

But I was thirsty. And it was nearly lunchtime. So I pushed my bike to a restaurant on the lake. It was a nice restaurant. Two waiters were sitting at a table looking at their smartphones. I walked up to the Maître d’. 

I asked him, “Are you open?”

He looked me up and down. I was pushing a bike, wearing my helmet and was sweaty. 

“No,” he said and walked away. 

He was the first person in four days who has been rude to me. Everyone else has been extremely nice. 

A distance further, I found another restaurant. A nice seafood restaurant. The female Maître d’ carried a walkie-talkie to communicate with the second floor, where they had a few guests. No one was on the bottom floor. 

I ordered and waited. I didn’t want to use my phone because the battery was so low. 

The food was very good. A type of pork stir fry with seafood fried rice. The pork reminded me of cracklings that I had as a kid.

These men were very nice. He refused a tip, but finally accepted 200,000 Dong, or about $9 to split between the three of them. 

Back on my bike, I was enjoying the curvy road along the lake when I came across a big bike shop. Open. I went inside. They had two 29” tires, so I bought them. I gave him my seat, and he said he would install it for free. Two of his colleagues replaced the tires while he changed the seat. 

Back at the hotel, I started grooming Linh. She had two new tires, one new inner tube, and a new seat. I installed the front and back lights, the new camera bracket, the front bag, the phone holder, and three saddle bags. 

The keyboard only works if it is plugged in, but Naht couldn’t find a new one anyway, so I will survive with this until I get back to the US. 

I decided to go ahead and leave tomorrow morning after rush hour. 

I wanted a nap badly, but I still needed to do laundry and try to get more credit for my phone. 

This hotel not only gives you access to free washers and dryers, but they provide a little packet of laundry detergent. I started it, and then embarked on a journey to find Viettel credit. But again, it was a holiday, so most places were closed. At one WinMart shop, a young girl offered to transfer credit from her phone if I would pay her back. But I couldn’t get data that way, so I kept searching. 

Finally, I gave up. On the way back, I found shop I had passed earlier that sold ice cream. The son and mother were running the shop. They were very friendly. They sold me a new phone card and then spent the next 45 minutes trying to activate it. Since it was a holiday, they were having trouble activate it.

The son spoke good English. When I asked him where he learned it, he said, “I watch a lot of YouTube videos.”

He was a really, really good kid. 

When they learned I was riding my bike 1000 miles, the mother showed me her bike. The son said, “We love riding bikes. We have four of them.”

The mother showed me some photos of herself. She had once ridden 100 miles in one day. She was maybe 50. 

On the wall, they had a huge map and I tried to trace my route on to Laos and Cambodia. I read a name that I had not heard for years: Kampuchea. Kampuchea was a name for Cambodia when I was in high school.

January 1, 2023 (Sunday): Hanoi, Vietnam

Today I flew from HMC to Hanoi. Anxiety was barely manageable. I have so much to do and can’t afford mistakes.

After about seven hours sleep, I woke up, at 2:10 am. I thought the Pacer game started at 2:30 am, and I thought I could watch it live and chat with Dad. 

After a quick shower, I packed everything that could remain in my small bag and checked the game. It said it was due to start at 3 am, so I rushed down stairs and checked my bag with the hotel. Then I went to 7-11 to get coffee. I got a double Vietnamese coffee, which is like espresso. They serve it in a clear plastic cup with a lid and straw and then place it in a carrying bag with a handle. I have seen people use those to accompany them on their motorbikes. I also bought a croissant for me and three for the three clerks at the hotel. Yesterday, I bought the security guard an ice cream, so I figured it was only fair. 

Back at the room, the game didn’t start until about 3:40 am. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but apparently, my transmission got stuck more than a quarter behind the live game. 

I was able to advance the game, pack everything, and watch all but a couple minutes in my room. Downstairs I turned in my key and sat down with about eight people to wait for the shuttle. The Pacers beat the Clippers by one, despite Paul George’s 45 points. We were the better team tonight.

The shuttle dropped off the international passengers first. I was the only domestic flight passenger. Inside the line went quickly. I was more than two hours early. However, the agent made me take my bag to get it wrapped it in plastic to cover the damage, which cost about two dollars. That was ideal. And exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t look for the plastic wrapping machine when I came in. I was too anxious. All in all, it worked out perfectly, and I crossed security with my Diet Coke and no problem. 

I sat for a cup of Americano and decided to write to reduce my stress. It helped a little.

When I get to Hanoi, I have to get my bag, take a taxi to my hotel, check in if I can, then meet Tommy to pick up my bike. I need to check it out to see if it needs anything else, a new chain? Brakes? Cables? Then take it to my room with the hopes that they won’t give me a hassle. I read that several small hotel managers won’t allow bikes in the room. Anxiety to spare. These are the things I think about. 

Looking at myself in the mirror today, I realized that I am really out of shape. Worse than in June of last year, which was my worst condition ever. I am close to 15 pounds over my typical riding weight. Maybe 5 pounds over that of July. The two last days of walking certainly helped, but it is not riding condition. 

Despite the challenges and the anxiety, I am enjoying myself. 

My wife and I were talking before I left. She takes trips overseas to hike almost every year. In countries such as Tanzania, Pakistan, Ecuador, and Peru. The last overseas trip we took as a family vacation was Guatemala from Honduras, which counts, I suppose. But it was a van trip. As a flight, it was the UK in about 2013 or 2014. We visited five countries in two weeks. This is the first time I traveled alone overseas for fun in many, many years. 

The flight departed late, and we arrived late. But once we landed, I got a taxi quickly, and the traffic on a holiday was minimal. The room at the Roygents Park Hotel was very nice. I deposited my valuables in the safe and took off on a four-mile walk to pick up my bike. 

The city is huge. Lots of very tall buildings. From a distance, I saw what looked like rows of small shacks, but as I got closer I realized that it was a cemetery. The graves here are elaborate. 

About three miles into the hike, I stopped at a restaurant. They were closing, but because I was a foreigner, they welcomed me. In fact, the mother of the family was in the middle of a Karaoke song when I arrived. They also were preparing a family meal. It appeared to be run by three generations of a family. I sat and used the Google translate camera to translate what I was seeing. The mother sat beside me with an order pad and pen. I ordered chicken and went to the bathroom to wash my hands. When I got back, an uncle brought me the phone. And English speaking man on the other end asked me what I wanted besides chicken (I didn’t know it at the time, but I had ordered only one piece). I finished ordering, and the two teenage daughters set all of the meals for the evening crowd. 

After they served me, they served themselves at a different table. There were about ten of them. The chicken leg was tough, but the rest of it was good. The sliced cucumbers had a sweet pickled sauce. The mushrooms and other vegetables were really good too. The entire meal, including a bottle of water, cost $4. 

When I arrived at Tommy’s office, he served me black instant coffee. It was good. Then we had green tea. Tommy is 42. Has a son who is 21 and another who is 16. Tommy studied Economics in college and then got a business degree. He’s been doing this for 20 years. I asked him what Vietnamese thought of Americans. He smiled and said, “They like them. The war was between governments. Not people.”

I bought a pump and some other items and rode back in the relatively tame Sunday traffic. It was still stressful but allowed me to ease into the blaring horns, swarming motorbikes, and incessant flow of cars and SUVs. It was only a four-mile trek back and I stopped several times, but it felt good to dip my toe in the traffic. 

At the hotel, I pushed my bike in and waved to the two desk clerks. They waved and bowed back. 

I like the bike. I named her Linh, meaning gentle spirit in Vietnamese. She has wide hybrid tires and easy gears that can be shifted with the flip of my fingers. We will see from here, how she does when we put some weight on her back. 

At the room, I showered because I was sweaty from the walk and bike ride back. I napped, but forced myself to get up. I need to get on a Vietnamese schedule. I am trying to decide whether to leave at 6 am or 9 am on Tuesday. Rush hour is 7-9 am. My first day is only 35 miles. I want it to be easy. From there, it gets more challenging.

When I woke up, I bought some snacks at the mini-store (a few shelves and two coolers), and ordered room service: A chicken and egg bowl. It was pretty good. 

December 31, 2022 (Saturday) Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

Before the French colonized Vietnam, a city did not exist where Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) sits today. Until that time, Vietnamese rulers, practicing geomancy—or the philosophy of determining auspicious sites—had determined that this vacant space should remain largely unsettled. 

Today HMC is the largest city in Vietnam, bustling with a population of more than 9 million people. 

It’s my birthday. I turned 63 years old. It felt really good to wake up in HMC. I’ve been waiting most of my life for this opportunity. And I have been dreaming of the bike trip for about five or six years. 

I got to the restaurant a little after they opened at 6am. I had coffee, dumplings, and some leathery eggs and bacon. The dumplings and coffee were superb. After breakfast, I had three big tasks to accomplish: Wash my clothes, get a SIM card and internet, and book a room in this same hotel for February so that I could leave one bag tomorrow.

I have had this rash between my fingers for a couple months. It was minor but has been getting worse. It is a little like poison ivy but I cannot think where I might have gotten it. When I got to the US, I put calamine lotion on it, hoping that would do the trick, but it only dried it out so that it looked like psoriasis. Once I stop using the lotion, it reverts back to a red, bumpy irritation. This morning I looked up shingles on the hands. It sort of looks like that. I had my first shingles shot in June and the second one I didn’t get until December, when I came back to the US. So, that is a possibility. My biggest concern is that I will be wearing gloves and rubbing it raw while shifting gears 60 or 80 times a day. 

The people here are very nice. Not just those in the hotel, which you expect, but those on the street. 

I sent the clothes to the laundry. They are supposed to be back at 7pm. 

Finding a mobile and internet plan without a functioning mobile and internet plan is challenging. I read about the different service providers and asked Tommy, the biking travel agent who sold me my bike. He said that I am better off getting Viettel because it has better service in the mountains where I will be riding. So, I found a representative about half a mile from here and took off walking. Google maps for some reason works without internet, but it is slow and sort of freezes at times. I walked all around where this place is supposed to be but couldn’t find it. I asked an office worker and a security guard. They couldn’t speak English and couldn’t help. I walked around and explored. Stepped in slightly wet concrete, much to the ire of a fruit saleswoman. And ended up back at the hotel. The clerk told me to go to 7-11 next door, but they didn’t sell Viettel SIM cards. So, I went back to the clerk. He finally found a shop a mile away. On the walk, I came across a park and snapped some photos of kids playing. The shop was closed. However, another shop was open. The 15 and 12 year old sons of the owner spoke English. The father was out front in this little shop with the boys and the mother was in the back. They didn’t have Viettel cards, but they said they could get one in ten minutes. I paid in advance and a lady on a motor bike showed up. The owner gave her money and a few minutes later, she was back with the card. Fascinating how businesses function in other countries.

In about three minutes, the owner had my phone working. I walked back and entered the park. I asked some adults who were exercising if I could take photos of them. They got a kick out of that. I walked past a children’s playground bustling with activity. Then returned to the hotel. 

I tried to nap, but sleep wouldn’t come. Around noon, I walked to a little restaurant and had rice, soup, greens, and chicken bones with tiny chunks of meat. And a bottle of water. It cost about $7. 

Back at the hotel, I booked the room for February and arranged for my bag to remain at the hotel until I return. When my clothes get back tonight, I will pack up what I don’t need and leave it in the bag, only taking with me tomorrow what I will carry with me on the trip.

My pink hard case suitcase (I thought it was gray) was broken on the trip from Honduras to Florida. But by the time it got to Vietnam, a huge chunk was missing. 

Jet lag has me in its grips. I tossed and turned in the room and finally wrestled out maybe 30 minutes of sleep over a couple of hours. My feet, legs, and left knee are sore. My back is sore from the horrible sleeping positions on the plane. I need to be up early to catch either a 7am flight or a 7:50 am flight. I received two different updates today. So, I need to go to sleep early on New Years Eve, which won’t be a problem for me. But I was thinking that if I don’t get acclimated by Tuesday morning, I could be overly fatigued with disruptive sleep patterns during my first days of cycling. According to some travel gurus, it takes one day to adjust for each time zone you cross. I crossed 11. 

We shall see. Today is day one.

I fell asleep at around 7 pm. I got a call about 8:20 pm from the Laundry. I have a pair of socks (I guess, if I understood) that were not dry. They wanted to bring them to me in the morning. I said that was fine. Ten minutes later, a young lady showed up at the door with my laundry. I gave her a $1 tip, which she didn’t really understand. 

And then I went back to sleep and greeted the new year in my dreams.

December 30, 2022 (Friday): Tokyo, Japan and Departure for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Tokyo was fun. But I am sore. My feet, calves, and left knee. I walked about six miles for the first time in months and months. Normally, I walk three miles or four. Seldom more than that.

I woke up at 5 am. I was glad that I had chosen to sleep. I showered and walked down to the lobby to get coffee and bread. They had good coffee, but only 3-4 types of bread. Nothing more. I wrote in my iPad for at least an hour. 

I paid $15 extra to extend my checkout from 10am to noon. I took a photo with the desk clerk. But when I went upstairs, I realized my iPad was not with me. 

Rookie Mistake!

Anxiety was getting the best of me. Trying to organize everything perfectly. I was screwing up. Back at the desk, the kind clerk came out from the room behind with a smile and my iPad. 

Around 8 am, I walked a few blocks to a Shinto Shrine. It was fascinating! Then, I faced two options. First, I could walk toward town and explore. Second, I could walk toward the Tokyo Bay. So I set my sights on Higashi Park and took off on foot. 

An American is struck immediately by the cleanliness and orderliness of the alleyways. Likely because space is so valuable in Japan, every alley has become a small, clean street. Really fascinating. Pretty. Clothes hanging off tiny back porches. People walking and riding bikes in the alleys. Even the trash was deposited in neat paper bags. At first, I thought they were deliveries of food or other items.

At the Tama River, I enjoyed the view of the bridge. A few people were out riding bikes on this brisk Thursday morning, maybe 45 degrees or so. A few miles east, I stopped in a Family Mart, a convenience store. The bread hadn’t really done the trick, so I bought a slice of breaded chicken breast, like a large finger. A chicken palm, perhaps. It was delicious. I finished it on the nearest bridge as I crossed into the Kawasaki Port industrial neighborhood. I stopped at the nearest Family Mart and bought a second. When I reached the final channel before crossing over onto the little island that hosted Higashi Park, I started walking down a narrow concrete shoulder (not really a sidewalk) into a vehicle tunnel. A security officer in a yellow taxi-looking car honked and motioned me to go back in the other direction. He motioned for me to walk down the opposite side of the road into Chidori Park, which is where I saw a snow monkey. 

The gray-haired primate was sitting on the sidewalk about 75 feet in front of me. When sitting, his head probably came to my knees. Unfortunately, I was speaking into my phone at the time and when I switched from video record to photo, he disappeared. I tried to find him, but I couldn’t.

I saw a couple of feral cats and continued on to the channel, where several men were fishing. But there was no way across. I went back to the park, where I found a white haired motorcyclist in his 40s who was feeding the cats. He didn’t speak English, but he tried to tell me I had to go toward the channel and down to get to Higashi Park. I went back, but all I found were the fishermen. 

I gave up. My feet and legs were sore. I had been walking about two hours by now. At least five miles, and I was ready to get a taxi and head back. My checkout was pending at the hotel, and I still wanted to take a shower.

But when I emerged from the wooded area back to Chidori Park, the same security officer flagged me down. He got out of the car, and I told him where I wanted to go. He couldn’t understand English, but he walked me to the entrance of a pedestrian tunnel. 

He was a very kind and concerned man.

This tunnel was about a mile long. I never met anyone in it except a cyclist who passed me. On the other side, my time was running out. I walked and got some photographs of some ships. Then walked to Higashi Park. 

“Nothing to see,” as a woman once told us in China, referring to a park. Here in Kawasaki, apart from a family training their ten-year-old boys to run with a weighted plastic or metal circle, there was indeed nothing to see. I realized I had walked six miles in the wrong direction. 

At another Family Mart, I asked a lady to call me a taxi. She seemed put out but walked me around to a wall with some advertisements posted on it. There was a list of taxi companies. 

She told me to call them myself in Japanese. I explained in English that my phone didn’t work here. She snorted to clearly express her disgust and went back behind the counter and got her phone. She called a taxi. I thanked her, but she didn’t smile. 

I figured I was in for a 30-minute wait, but the taxi arrived within two minutes. This driver was no more happy than the lady. He didn’t know where my hotel was. He didn’t speak English except, “Pay… Pay.”

When we arrived, I paid him and rushed upstairs to take a shower. I had to wait in the airport three hours and then fly seven more to Vietnam. I showered and checked out exactly one minute late. The clerks were very friendly. I left my bags with them and went to a restaurant down the street for some really good Japanese food. Go figure!

Then to the airport. I had checked in online, I swiftly got through security and immigration. I bought something to drink and started watching last night’s Pacer game. But it was so blurry and interrupted by poor free internet, that I gave up and started reading the history of Vietnam. 

With little problems, I boarded and got my seat. I tried to nap, but my feet and legs and knee were really sore. Finally, I dozed off. Woke up when the meal came. Then dozed again. 

At immigration, I breezed through. My eVisa did the trick. A hotel shuttle arrived and took several of us to the hotel. I got in the room and again thought about going out. But there were two small bottles of water, so I finished the Pacer game and slept. It was about 12:30am when I shut the iPad down. 

December 29, 2022 (Thursday) Arrival in Tokyo, Japan

It is my son’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Trevor!

Naturally, I became anxious about not having the QR Code for COVID. As we left there was a small army of health officials, each one more polite and helpful than the last, who greeted us. I stopped twice to ask questions. An American woman came up and showed two QR Codes that she’d gotten online but neither were the Health QR Code. I was ushered into a small open space with others who hadn’t found the online service or requirement, and a very kind health professional helped me fill it out. I got my Health QR Code, and went to another lady who looked at my passport and US health cards, and then she let me pass. The line in Immigration was large, but not as large as I have seen in the US. I needed an Immigration QR code too, but I couldn’t find where to complete it. Not on the Japanese Immigration site, not on the APA Airlines site, not on the Tokyo Airport free internet site. 

While standing in line at Immigration in Tokyo, I got a notification that my flight to Hanoi was cancelled on January 1, 2023. And I rebooked it while in line. But I was able to reschedule my flight for January 1 from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi while we moved sluggishly through the line. 

I started thinking about how Japan and the US were enemies 80 years ago. How we had used the first nuclear weapons on them. If I remove from the equation the “military justification” for nuking xx men, women, and children, I have to ask myself if by any stretch of the imagination the horror we caused was worth the “victory.”

Many years ago, I was sitting in an entertainment room at the University of Chicago International House. It was a type of dormitory building for students from all over the world. I was studying Arabic for the summer, and they were showing a movie on the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing. Across the room were three or four Japanese students. Suddenly, I became very embarrassed. What did they genuinely think about this tragedy? How had they been able to come to terms with it growing up. Naturally, part of it was the luxury of time. None of them, nor I, was alive when it happened. So, it was not much different than, say, the Revolutionary War for Americans and Brits. We love the Brits today, although they committed many atrocities against us, and we them. 

Those were stories in the history books and for movies. Wounds that our grandparents endured, not us. 

In the 1980s, I sold cars in Florida. A lady came in to drive a Toyota, Corolla. She was considering it and the Chevy Nova. The Nova was built by Toyota back then, in fact. And when describing the advantages of the Corolla, I didn’t have a lot to say, except resale value, I suppose.

In the end, she bought the Chevy, telling me that her deceased husband had fought in the war against the Japanese, and she couldn’t justify buying a Japanese car. However, she bought the Nova, which was still a Toyota. Go figure!

But now, here we are 80 years later, and we love the Japanese. And they love us. And as descendants of those who suffered, we don’t have open wounds and we don’t have scars. Our grandparents had those. 

In the 1990s, I believe, I recall watching a segment on the TV news that described Vietnam’s fascination with American culture. Youth were wearing American clothes and listening to American music. While their parents might still have memories and wounds, the youth didn’t. 

Today, it is 50 years beyond the Vietnam War. While I have memories of my uncles and community suffering, those are their wounds and their scars. And most of the people I will meet are of this new generation. They don’t have any scars. We have moved on. 

I needn’t have worried. Immigration processed me quickly, and I changed $100 into Japanese Yen. I was only going to be in town for one night. That should do it. I went out into the cold to get a taxi. I had read many years ago that it cost $100 for a taxi from the airport to Tokyo. I had booked a room very close to the airport, but I had no idea how much it would cost. My driver didn’t know the hotel. Thankfully, at the last minute in the US, I had copied the hotel name and telephone number. I didn’t have the address. So after ten minutes of searching, the taxi driver called the number I had stored. He found it quickly. With a tip, the ride cost about $25. 

At my room, I vacillated over going out into the near midnight streets to explore and trying to sleep. I needed the sleep, and I needed to explore. I decided to set my alarm for 7 am and try to get some shuteye.

December 28, 2022 (Wednesday) Day of Departure

I completed all the things on my written To Do list, and then some. That hasn’t happened in a while. I played UNO with the family, watched the Pacers beat a good Atlanta team, and then finished The Recruit with my wife while my granddaughter brushed my daughter’s hair. My packing was done. I had switched important items from my work backpack to my biking backpack, which is much smaller, has a camel pack, and an emergency cover for rain. I had removed the work backpack from the closet twice to double check for things I was missing.

All in all, it was a pretty cool day with my family. Relatively relaxed. One daughter recovered from COVID and went in to work. The other cooked spaghetti and meatballs, and enjoyed her last days with us before returning to Maryland to grad school and a new job. My wife and the grandkids settled into the post-Christmas vacation before flying back to Honduras next week. I enjoyed their company, more this year than ever. 

Around 10 pm, I went to bed and nearly fell asleep when it occurred to me that I had left my Vietnamese visa in my other bag. I hopped up and removed my bag from the closet for the third time, pulled dozens of outdated documents from two pockets until I found it. I secured it in the biking backpack, and just left the other one out. 

I slept well until 5 am. Anxious, I woke up. Funny, in Jackson County, I grew up thinking that anxious only meant excited. That is how I had heard it used all my young life. 

“Are you anxious for Santa to come?”

Not until I was an adult in my 30s did I realize that most native speakers use anxious in an entirely different context: worried or nervous.

My insulated water bottle. I misplaced my first insulated bottle in the move last year, and had to buy a new one for my summer ride from Indiana. I had planned to take it with me this year on the bike trip, but I hadn’t packed it. I was drinking out of it. So I got up, dumped the water, and tossed it dripping into my suitcase.

I decided to make coffee and catch up, relax, enjoy the moments while everyone else is sleeping. 

The truth is I reside in a nearly constant state of anxiety. Not debilitating in any way. But I have learned over the years to tame it. There are benefits to a healthy level of anxiety. It keeps you alert, for instance. But it can also be a nuisance. 

In my inbox this morning was an email from the management of the hotel where I will be staying in Tokyo. They needed confirmation that I would arrive by 10pm, or I might lose my room. I wrote them immediately to tell them that I couldn’t get there before 10:30 or 11pm, and they responded immediately that I was safe until midnight. 

I am a little nervous about the 1 hour 8 minute layover in Houston. That is short. Not just for myself to rush out of one terminal and to another, but for my bag. The airlines have a solid system and know minimum time required to connect with flights and ensure your bags make it, which in and of itself is pretty amazing. But if we are delayed by 10 or 15 minutes, all bets are off. 

I admit that I think more about the last stages of my life now that I have received the cancer diagnosis. But more in a positive way. Smelling the roses. Reducing my anxiety. Trying to worry less and enjoy the family more. Plan out my last trips and strategies toward retirement a little more carefully, cognizant that each step brings me closer to the end. As of right now, I don’t find anything scary or sad about it. Sort of like approaching winter. There is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it. But there are steps required to ensure we are all more comfortable. And since I have no choice in the matter, I might as well try to enjoy the sports and holiday seasons that accompany it. Enjoy the warm weather days and sunshine when I can. Even in the middle of winter in Indiana or Maryland, we can see days in the 60s, right?

If not for the diagnosis, I would not be taking this trip to SE Asia. It has forced me to reevaluate priorities.

The anxiety only increased at the airport. The arriving flight was already 15 minutes delayed. The agent, however, was very friendly. 

At the gate, the United agent called me to the counter to tell me I didn’t have a connecting flight. She could find my reservation but no flight. Her screen read, “Not available” when she punched in my flight number. I showed her the info on my United app, but she still couldn’t find it. Fortunately, months ago, I had the ANA airline app. In it, I was able to check-in, find a gate, and download my boarding pass onto my phone.

The advances of international travel nowadays is quite amazing. When I first travelled to Pakistan on my first trip in 1983, I had to go sit with an agent in Carmel while she sorted through flights. Once we landed on one with an affordable price, she charged it to my father’s credit card. I was broke. And she gave me a hard ticket. There was no internet to check on the flight. If you wanted to ask a question, you had to call and speak with a representative. You found the number either on your ticket or in the Yellow Pages. Sometimes, those agents weren’t available until right at the time of the first flight of the day. I just arrived at the airport on the day of the departure. They gave me boarding passes, and I left. 

For the return flight, everyone had to call a day or so before to re-confirm your flight. Once I forgot in El Salvador, when my wife, the kids, and I were flying out, and her entire family accompanied us in the back of a pickup to see us off, in the middle of a civil war. They had given our reservation to someone else. I was nearly broke, but I scraped up enough to pay the driver another day back to the my in-laws, maybe 90 minutes away, and then back to the airport the next day.

As everyone knows, today it is much different. You book yourself. Get the best available flight. You get updates on your phone.

But the United flight to Houston arrived a little late. I boarded, put my backpack into the tiny overhead compartment. A lady behind me moved my backpack in the overhead compartment around so it was smashed into one corner. This way, it took up less space and she could lay hers out in a sprawling position that covered over half the bin. Then a man came up and shoved his monster briefcase in smashing hers up and leaving his sticking out. 

There was a time that I would have said something. I remember leaving Afghanistan once and when I boarded there was a bag laid leisurely that took up half of a big bin. So, I moved it with care and shoved in mine. 

An American private security officer was sitting nearby. He said, “Hey, you could ask next time before you move it.”

I was really in a dark place in my life. I had been nursing pure vodka out of a water bottle so that it looked like water for the better part of the three-hour wait. I looked at him. I knew guys like this from Iraq. In Basra at a guest house, I saw an American or British security officer yell at a poor cook because the food was bland and always tasted the same. A group of South African security officers whom I respected one night got drunk in the room of a Baghdad hotel and physically forced an Iraqi to drink alcohol, which was a serious offense. They were all demobilized within a couple of days with no explanation. A German friend of mine and I went to complain, but once we heard the offense, we fell silent.

Many of these security officers were navigating dark territory of their own, and the guy on the plane in Kabul was likely looking for a full blown argument. I had to good sense not to say anything. 

United Airlines gave me 19A on the flight to Houston. But on my app, it read 18A. When I scanned my ticket upon boarding, it beeped. The attendant said, “It is an exit row. Is that OK?” I said it was.

Since my ticket said 19A, I sat in that. The plane was only three seats wide. The exit row was 18A. A father, mother, and small child came to my row. The little girl sat by the window (19C), the father took the aisle (19B), and the wife said, “I have 19A.” I told them that I had 19A and showed them my ticket, but I admitted that the airline may have given me the wrong seat. 

“I can take that one,” I said, indicating the exit row seat. 

“Thank you,” the father said.

“That’s better, unless you want to sit with a toddler,” the woman said. 

I don’t know why, but that upset me. Her attitude. I am glad that I am at a better place in my life. Less darkness. But I took it, and the father thanked me again. I told him it was no problem.

We arrived at Houston 25 minutes early but sat on the tarmac because a plane was in our gate nearly 16 minutes before advancing toward the gate. When we disembarked, I rushed to Terminal D, which was under construction. I was 20 minutes early. At the APA Airlines (Japanese) counter, the lady told me I needed a paper boarding pass. That struck me as odd. Nowadays everyone uses QR codes on their phones. But I got it, showed her my visa for Vietnam and my baggage claim ticket. 

I noticed that I was the only one in the airport who wore a mask.

We boarded on time. It was painless. We were informed many times that we would have to wear a mask the entire flight, which was fine with me. At my seat, way in the back of Economy, I slightly moved a bag to make room for my two bags.

An elderly Japanese woman said, “Careful. I have something fragile in there.”

I said, OK.

The rest of 13.5 hour flight was uneventful. But when we arrived in Tokyo, it was 9:10 pm Thursday, 29 December 2022. And the airline asked us to remain seated until Quarantine Services allowed us to disembark. 

“You will show your QR Code,” they told me.

I didn’t have one.

December 24, 2022: (Saturday: Christmas Eve)

Our family traditions have special meaning. Their roots can often be traced back to learned behavior adopted at childhood from our parents or grandparents. When we marry, our traditions often become spliced, and we create new ones, ultimately passing on hybrid traditions to our children, modeled from a lifetime of repeated experiences and gestures and emotions. We are constantly trying to revive past experiences through new reenactments. This is particularly true for me during Christmas time. 

I have never been able to identify with the horrible family experiences at Christmas gatherings that we see in the movies. I loved to get together with family during Christmas. Looked forward to it for weeks and dread the departures after the get togethers. 

My earliest Christmas memories were at my grandparents’ house on the hill. The house had only five rooms: Three bedrooms, a small living room made even smaller by a Christmas tree and a potbelly stove in one corner, and a kitchen so tiny that the table was shoved up against the wall so people could walk past. We drew water from a hand pump outside and all used the outhouse. We kept a plastic five gallon bucket in the corner at night to urinate in.

Some of my happiest childhood memories were in this house. I still dream about it.

As we approached December 25th, my parents, two brothers, and I would pack into the house, like clowns in a fair car. My aunt and uncle and their three children would join, bringing a total of seven adults and seven children to sleep, eat, and sit inside during the cold winter days. There were no internal doors, just open walkways. Many of us would make pallets on the floor. Grama would sleep with me on the floor, ask me to brush her hair and rub her back, and talk to me. Grampa would sleep in the bed. 

My parents would allow us to open one gift on Christmas Eve. When we woke up the next morning our stockings were filled, and Santa’s gifts were never wrapped. That’s just the way it was. 

Years later, at my aunt Regina’s trailer, we would play cards, during Christmastime. Always Euchre. We ate and overate. Played and laughed. Watched IU basketball and the Pacers. It was a jovial atmosphere, where jokes kept us smiling and laughing. All petty family skirmishes were forgotten till the new year. 

My uncle from Cincinnati told me, “Christmas isn’t about the presents. It’s about family.” And he was right. I loved those gatherings. His wife would bring Christmas cookies, and we would snack on those throughout the holidays. 

Some Christmases, we spent in Cincinnati, playing cards, eating, and laughing. There we played Oh Shit if there were more than four. But always Euchre if the numbers were just right.

Naturally, traditions evolved over the years by necessity, departures of loved ones, arrivals of new loved ones by marriage or birth. I married a Salvadoran woman, and she quickly adapted to our interpretation of a Hoosier Christmas. And we lived several years overseas, and spent Christmases in places like Pakistan. That year, my wife, her brother, and I sat on mattresses on the floor, drank Chai, and played Rummy and UNO. We slept on those same mattresses, and were warmed by space heaters in the corner. I bought a black and white TV, and we got two or three channels. One of them had English for one hour each night. One evening, my wife and I went to the American Center to see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen. It was the first time that I had seen it. I loved it. 

In Costa Rica, my wife would make and deliver an assortment of Christmas cookies to our neighbors each year, and they would send us pork or chicken tamales. A neighbor and I would walk into the woods a cut the top off two trees and bring them home to decorate for Christmas. 

Christmas for the locals was December 24th, when we would allow the kids to open one gift, and the next morning the kids would wake up to filled stockings and unwrapped gifts from Santa. 

Back in the states, divorces and out-of-state residences forced new strategies to celebrate Christmases on different days in different homes. 

Loved ones departed. Newborns grew into teens, and eventually had their own newborns. The eating, snacking, and playing cards perpetuated the Christmas cheer. We watched IU basketball, the Pacers, and the Colts.

Now we host Christmas out of a tiny, two-bedroom condo in Florida. We rent an additional condo for the days when our two baths, two beds, and sofa bed aren’t enough. Cousins, in-laws, children, aunts and uncles, parents, all come for a few days or longer, overlapping, or barely missing each other. Some drive. Some fly in. During the day, guests stop in for coffee or a movie or a quick card game. But we all go our own way, shopping, eating out, running errands, visiting in beach or the pool. Walking, running stairs, or going to the gym. But the evenings are dedicated to serious affairs, like UNO, sports, and key lime pie, adopted since we moved to Florida. Until a few years ago, my father and his wife would visit for a week. He is Grampa to my kids. And I am Grampa and my wife Grama to our grandkids. 

My aunt Regina adopted Nanny instead. My cousin Kevin assumed Pap. We have evolved and adopted. My wife, the grandkids, and I fly in from Honduras, drive up to Indiana a few days before Christmas, visit family in four or five different cities, play UNO or Euchre, and overeat. Some of them visit us in Florida, right after Christmas most years. We play UNO, Euchre, Hearts, and Rummy. 

My wife makes Christmas cookies, we watch a host of Christmas movies, including It’s a Wonderful Life. We watch IU basketball, the Pacers, and the Colts. 

Every season is a little different. This year, my pending medical procedure restricted our Indiana trip. One daughter and granddaughter stayed in Florida while we left immediately after a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. Wednesday we stayed at Regina’s for a couple hours in the afternoon catching up and the evening at my dad’s for a Pacer game, capped off at Kevin’s for a midnight political argument that went a long way towards solving problems in the civilized world. By Thursday midday, we were with the grandkids at ChuckECheez. At mid-afternoon, we were back at my dad’s to look through photo albums, and the evening was back at Kevin’s where I gave UNO and Euchre lessons.

Friday, we met my brother, went shopping, and I babysat the kids, which mostly included feeding them warmed up pizza and tacos, and napping. That evening I was back at Dad’s for a Pacer game. And Saturday morning by 6:30 am, we were in Kentucky filling up with cheap gas on our way back to Florida. 

Cassie from Maryland was already at the condo when we returned, as was my brother-in-law—who seems as much my brother as my wife’s—and his family. And the UNO and Rummy lessons were only interrupted by the medical procedure, Pacer games, overeating, walking and stairs, movies, shopping and errands. 

Today, Henry and his family leave. Makes me a little sad, but I go to the garage and roll my bicycle up to the condo, remove lights, and begin packing small tools, my helmet, and other items for my trip to Vietnam in a few days.

Tonight we’ll likely watch It’s a Wonderful Life and let the grandkids open a gift. Tomorrow they will wake to find filled stockings and an unwrapped gift. More movies, overeating, and card games. 

But Christmas is not about gifts. It’s about family.

December 11, 2022: (Sunday)

None of us slept well. All 4 foot 11 inches of my 105 pound Salvadoran wife crowded me out of the full-size bed (no way these are queens), so I slept on the floor. Covered myself with a towel because all the blankets were taken. I woke up around midnight and my wife was already awake. My oldest granddaughter was awake. At 4:30 when my alarm went off, my daughter was awake, and within ten minutes the grandkids woke up. 

I did learn that I can sleep on a carpeted floor with little difficulty. Wasn’t the best sleep in terms of hours achieved, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I figured at my age in my state of frailty, I figured that I wouldn’t be able to sit right today. But after checking out, my grandson (whom we call The Wolf) and I walked from one subway stop to the other with bags in tow. 

Remember when bags didn’t have wheels? I remember back in 1987, we were living on a houseboat in Kashmir, India. We flew to Amritsar to cross the border into Pakistan. However, as we got off the plane, we were detained by security. There was a state of emergency in Amritsar because of an insurgency in the State of Punjab. Sikh separatists were attacking and killing non-Sikhs, among other atrocities. The state was off limits to foreigners without a special permit. But my wife, my infant son, and I had taken a 30-hour bus ride to New Delhi and attempted to process a special pass, however, the government official ended up telling me that since we were crossing the border we didn’t need the permit. 

I explained all of this to the Sikh official at the airport, and after some hassle, he let us proceed to the border with the understanding that we would cross on that same day. We took two rickshaws (tuk-tuks) to the border just to learn that the border was only open one or two days a week. We would need to spend a couple days in a guest house and await the border opening. We were hassled a couple of times by Indian officials over the next couple days, and defended once by a kind Sikh tea shop owner.

A few days later, we arrived at the Greens Hotel in Peshawar Pakistan late at night, only to find out that we couldn’t afford the steep nightly cost. We were nearly broke, and needed to save what little money we had so that I could take a bus back to Islamabad (maybe 3 hours one way) and go to the American Express office and withdraw $1000 or so to get us by. So, my wife carried our toddler son, our two other kids carried their backpacks, and my brother-in-law and I carried our seven or eight suitcases about six or eight blocks. This was way before someone had the idea to add some rollers on suitcases. And these puppies were packed with a year’s worth of heavy clothes, speakers, and other items. We would carry everything we could half a block, and then go back for the others. We did this for maybe 45 minutes until we reached a cheaper hotel. I was sweating, my heart was pounding, and I feared I might have a heart attack, at the age of 27. 

But on this morning, and the age of 62, The Wolf and I walked briskly, pulling behind our light bags on wheels. We walked the two-block distance for fun, while the rest of the family waited for the subway. They passed us, but we reached the destination of Terminal B about the same time. The escalator was out, so The Wolf and I carried our backs up stairs for fun, while the others took the elevator. We all arrived to the United kiosks about the same time, checked our bags in, paid a small mortgage for bag fees, and breezed through security to our gate more than two hours before our departure. I started unwinding. 

When we arrived at the condo, I bummed a jump start and drove to the carwash to strip six months of grime from the van. There was a non-stop warning alert of some time that was nerve wracking, so I checked YouTube to try to find a solution. I finally forced open one of the sliding doors and forced it back closed. That put an end to it. 

At Publix, I bought the necessities: Key Lime Pie, Swiss Rolls, and Diet Pepsi, among them. A box of cereal set me back $6.95. What was all that about? 

Back at the condo, I sought out Donny to tip him for jumping the van. I didn’t have any small bills at the time. Then I carried the bags upstairs. It was nearly 3pm when we all ate. We were famished. 

Tomorrow, I have to go collect the packages from the office. Half of them are gifts for the kids. The other half are items for my bike trip. I bought a used bike, sight-unseen (except for the photo), from a man I have been in contact with from a bike tour company in Hanoi. But it requires saddle bags and gadgets, like lights and items, some of which I can cannibalize from Lucy. Others, though, like a new camera, I need to buy.

December 10, 2022 (Saturday)

Travel days are always fun and chaotic. There are two types of people in the world. The first type enjoy arriving at the airport at the last minute and at the gate just before the gate closes, sort of like the McCallister family rushing through the airport on their way to Paris. That’s my wife.

The second type are more like me, as my worrying nature demands that I leave the house early and arrive at the airport early. Once I get to the gate, I begin to relax. I can always read to pass the time. Or get a coffee or snack.

This Saturday morning was no exception.

My alarm went off at 4:30 am as always, I worked on some internet tasks, walked three miles, and double/triple checked passports, yellow fever cards, and COVID-19 vaccination cards for all of us. I did the last minute packing of my electronics and tripled checked with the owner of the transport company to ensure the van was on its way, and hopped in the shower. 

It is fascinating how pets intuit one’s departure. For the past day or two, both the cats were behaving oddly. They were very needy. This morning the gray cat was mad at us. He refused to be touched by any of us, which is very unusual for him. 

When the van didn’t arrive at 9 am, I texted the owner. “Two-minutes out,” he responded in Spanish. 

We hauled all of the bags onto the driveway, and I snapped a photo of the family, and poked my head out onto the street, and there came Naun, the driver in the silver Hyundai van. 

On the 90-minute drive to the new airport, we played a Christmas game. What do you like about Christmas? We go from youngest to oldest, indicating one thing we like for Christmas. We cannot repeat an item. So, each one made a few rounds reporting cookies, shopping, songs, movies, and so on until one by one we fell by the wayside. My wife won.

Inside the new Palmerola International Airport, we were greeted by a long line. This is relatively unusual. But after about 50 stressful minutes, we persevered. Dropped off our bags. Got our boarding passes. And headed to migration. Once there, a kind woman asked us if we had secured permission for the children to depart. I had totally forgotten that when departing the country, both parents must go stand in line in an entirely different migration area to secure permission for minors. This procedure is designed to reduce human trafficking, but I have my doubts. At the old airport in Tegucigalpa, the minor desk was in the same building, but in this new airport, the official informed us that is as located in a different building. Fortunately, the officials agreed to conduct the lengthy process here. They directed us to a pair of officials who took our passports, asked questions, took our fingerprints and photos, and Presto: 50 minutes later, we advanced to security. This was the fastest part of the process. We breezed through in about ten minutes.

I took a breath of reduced stress and settled into a soft arm chair to guard the bags as the family browsed the different shops. After snacks, we moved down to Gate 3. The passengers had thoughtfully filled all the available spots with their bags to ensure only one in six seats were occupied with human beings. We found some soft chairs with high backs in a closed bar and sat down. 

The United Airlines security staff called my name, and we went to back to the gate. I was informed that I had been the lucky winner of a second security check, so I left my family and advanced to another line where a kind young lady donned gloves and searched my carry-on bags. Half way through she asked me if I was the former director of Asegurando la Educacion project. I said that I was. She excitedly informed me that she was one of my interns (we had a few hundred) and told me that she’d had a wonderful experience. This was the highlight of my day. There is very little more professionally gratifying than meeting a former youth who has succeeded after completing one of our programs. 

The flight to Houston was uneventful and short. But we were accosted at US Immigration by the longest line I have ever experienced. About 23 of those back-and-forth rows that you encounter at Disney World. With our youngest now at 8 years old, the kids travel well. They don’t whine much, don’t misbehave, they know exactly what to do. They are patient in long lines. To pass the time, we decided to play a game after we had moved to about row 5. How many rows till we get to the end? We all guessed: 12, 17, 18, 20, and 22. I chose 22. Time passed quicker. We joked. Told stories. And one hour and ten minutes later, we passed through Immigration and to Carousel 11, where we found our six bags. 

We then took the subway to our hotel. 

Here was another problem. They couldn’t find our reservation. Soon there was a big line behind us. When they found the reservation finally, they couldn’t find the authorization from my company to pay for it. Finally, after about 25 minutes, they gave us our keys. 

I was rushing to get to the Pacer game. But I had to pay for internet to be able to stream the game, while the family ordered pizza. When the pizza finally came, he had forgotten 5 of the 6 waters. And with a price tag of $6 per bottle at the hotel, we insisted that he return with them. He didn’t return. An hour later, they whole family was parched. So, I called the restaurant. But on Saturday night, customer service and honoring their commitments, like delivering pre-paid drinks was pretty low on the priority list. Finally, we decided to drink tap water. Not a big deal, I guess. But you just never know what you are drinking. 

I had a Persian professor once who developed leukemia, and he was certain it was due to the drinking water he and his family had drank in Michigan as a child. So, I try to avoid tap water if I can. 

To cap off a stressful and disappointing day, both the Pacers and IU lost. On the bright side, we are in Houston! Hooray! First leg of a multi-leg two month journey.

Living with Cancer: 1,200-mile southeast Asia bike-packing tour

Seymour Daily Tribune

December 10, 2022

The mysteries and complexities of Vietnam have always fascinated me. For those of us who grew up during the 1960s and ‘70s, Vietnam narratives, movies, and veterans living among us have been inextricably woven into the fabric of our culture. 

As a child, I recall sitting in the living room of my grandparents’ tiny, red-block house constructed on the top of a hill just off State Road 135 near Freetown, Indiana. The year must have been 1968 or early ‘69, which would have made me eight or nine years old. My grandfather would religiously watch the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. My uncle Tom was deployed there, so naturally, my grandfather never missed a broadcast. I hated just about anything that was not in the genre of “The Wild, Wild West” or “The Wonderful World of Disney,” but I was also inexplicably drawn to the frightening clips of corpsmen carrying wounded American soldiers on stretchers through billowing waves of elephant grass to awaiting helicopters. 

When my uncle returned from Vietnam in June 1969, we all drove to Columbus to greet him as he stepped off the military plane. He brought us all gifts. Mine was a silky jacket with Vietnamese writing on it. Over the next several years, I observed his struggle to reintegrate into society. We all knew these veterans. They were our teachers, mechanics, and neighbors. I wanted to understand their experiences, and I often asked them directly. Not just about the battles, but I wanted to know about the culture, landscape, people, and customs. 

As an adult, I read many books on Vietnam, and my intellectual curiosity grew. I wanted to visit Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and learn about the human spirit. How had these three tiny nations that suffered so much managed to recover? 

In 1984, I lived in El Salvador, which at the time was suffering from its own civil war. I spent the year reading, writing, and trying to understand how humanity responds during times of conflict and crisis. I met some of the finest human beings on earth during that year. I fell in love and got married. I made friends and learned Spanish. I played basketball with soldiers and civilians. Lived in the countryside where leftist guerillas meandered at night. I hiked up a volcano, body surfed in the Pacific Ocean, and visited Mayan ruins. I went for days at a time and even forgot there was a war going on.

Since then, my career has largely focused on helping civilians recover from conflict, on peacebuilding and reconstruction, as vulnerable populations attempt to transition from some of most brutal civil wars in world: Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia. 

Now at the end of that career, in late December 2022, I will finally visit Vietnam. I plan to ride a used bike 1200 miles from Hanoi through Laos and Cambodia and back to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in about 32 days. 

See, it’s a bucket list item, and I am trying my best to spend the entirety of my children’s meager inheritance. 

Naturally, I have concerns and self-doubts. I will turn 63 in Vietnam. I have prostate cancer. I am overweight. Nothing on me works as well as it used to, except my appetite. My longest cross-country bike trip ever was last July: 800 miles from Indiana to Florida, through the foothills and mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. The January 2023 journey will cover elevations every bit as challenging as anything I saw in the US, only 50 percent longer. The weather will be hot, humid, and rainy. The SE Asian roads are notoriously perilous. Aside from riding short distances one year in Pakistan, I have never cycled overseas. Nor have I visited Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia. I don’t speak the languages. Visas and land border crossings are more complex and restrictive since COVID-19. I am travelling alone. Bike-packing means that all of my possessions are packed into saddlebags on the bike so I must be vigilant every single moment, or risk losing my phone, tablet, cameras, credit cards, and passport if I go into a store or restaurant for two minutes. 

But a handful of Australian and European cyclists make similar trips alone each year. Some sleep in tents they pitch along the road when they can’t find accommodations. If they can do it, so can I.