Raining in the New Year

Leaving phong nga, we attempted to wait out the rain while our coffee slow-dripped, but instead it only thickened. With one last look at the karst mountains looming into the clouds, we put our heads down and rode east. The terrain mellowed, and the rain lessened as we moved east. The eastern ho chi minh highway, while not as spectacular as the west, was a pleasant and easy pastoral ride. Cars still honked every time they saw us, but there were so few cars it almost didn't matter. Several hours in, it felt less easy. We rode fast to stay warm in the rain, and I stayed well outside of Jove's draft to avoid his rooster tail of Vietnamese road grime.

Buffalos add to the road grime

70 miles in, we turned south onto Vietnam's famed highway 1. It runs the entire north-south length of the country, serving as a combination of superhighway and local main street when it passes through towns. Traffic was fast, but riding on 1 was not as bad as we had been led to believe. The dedicated buffalo/bike/slow scooter lane felt quite safe, when it wasn't doubling as a parking lane, mechanic workshop, or storage area, forcing us into the main stream of cars. 

Just before the river delineating the north edge of the DMZ, we turned off the highway to reach the south sea coast. Thach Nam appears to be a popular beach resort town, with karaoke/restaurants and karaoke/guesthouses stacked end to end along the beach. In the middle of central Vietnam's cold season, most of these were empty or closed, and the ocean was rough and grey. We stopped at a beachside mansion to check the price of a room, assuming it would exceed our price range. Instead, the hotel guy quoted us half the cost of our previous hotel, and showed us a corner room with windows and balcony looking directly onto the crashing waves. The architecture, the gray sky and the waves all reminded me of the northern California coast, as if we were in a Victorian b&b in half moon bay. After I cleaned up some dust and mouse droppings, it was a decidedly glamorous place to spend new year's eve.

From our balcony

Directly below our window

For dinner, we squeezed into a seafood restaurant packed with well dressed locals celebrating new years. It was so crowded and hectic, the neighboring table adopted us as a charity case and yelled for a waitress whenever they saw us looking around fruitlessly for help. Between the menu and a downloaded dictionary of food words, we managed to order tasty prawns, squid and vegetables, but definitely no rice. Also no bread. Apparently the holiday called for meat and seafood, not for plebian starches. This was somewhat disappointing after 140 kilometers in the rain. We dodged invitations to join other tables for beer Saigon and whiskey, and found some pineapple and ginger coconut peanut brittle for sale on the walk home. We celebrated the new year two hours early with hot chocolate on the oceanside deck of the karaoke bar next door to our hotel. At the end of a 400 mile week, midnight felt too far away. White noise from the ocean helpfully drowned out the karaoke next door.

Early on the first day of 2018, we pedaled a few kilometers north to the Vinh Moc tunnels. During the war, villagers started digging bomb shelters, and as bombing intensified, expanded the shelters into a full underground village, with kilometers of tunnels in three tiers extending up to 30m underground. They didn't live underground full time, like the Lao cave dwellers in Nong Kiao, but would relocate underground for hours or days at a time as bombing necessitated. Exit tunnels to the beach were concealed in jungle, and used often by the NVA for moving supplies. We arrived before any tour groups, and wandered the tunnels alone. They are impressively extensive and impressively cramped - it's hard to imagine moving around and breathing during warmer seasons, with more than a few people crammed inside. The maternity ward tunnel was the largest individual room we saw, and was no more than 5x8 ft, and less than 6ft tall. 

From Vinh Moc, we rode south along the coast and straight through the DMZ towards Huê. These days there are no signs of the intense fighting that took place in the area during the Tet offensive,  but we missed several monuments and battlesites further west. Approaching Huê on back roads, the terrain grew wetter, with more swampland interspersed between  flooded rice terraces. The roads looked more like levies. Oddly, in this zone of swamps,  much of the minimal dry land was taken up by elaborate cemeteries and individual elevated tombs. Farmers had planted rice around little tomb islands, and erected stilt huts for themselves on wetter ground. This, and the occasional nearly submerged tomb, made us wonder about how the area would cope with rising sea levels. We learned later the cemeteries date from the 18th through early 20th centuries, Huê's time as the imperial capitol, which at least provided an explanation for this unique land use. 

Huê sits on a bend of the Perfume River. Our ride got more and more aquatic (and more spicy traffic-wise), until the road suddenly narrowed into an arched bridge over a moat, and funneled through a stone entry arch into Huê's historical center, called the citadel. We rode along in a stream of motorcycles, trying to decipher on the fly the anarchic mores of two wheeled city travel. We made it to a nice guesthouse inside the walled city with no moving violations. Jove did have one stationary incident, when he struggled to unclip his foot while picking up a street-side snack and toppled sideways onto the vendor's plastic table. The table exploded into shards, but fortunately for Jove the snacks were soft. The vendor did her best to look scared and sad as we picked things up and gave her a few dollars for the table, and then broke into hoots of laughter with her neighbors as we rode away.

Some french\imperial architectural fusion atop the Hue imperial city wall

Inside Hue's walled citadel, another set of walls encloses the Imperial City. Ringed by a moat and topped with large guard houses, this wall makes another effective fortress. During the war, NVA forces that infiltrated Hue were so hard to dislodge (and were executing so many civilians) that the U.S. army lifted its ban on bombing historical monuments, and destroyed most of it. Walking around now, we mostly saw impeccably restored palaces, but also some empty fields and ruins. The walls surrounding a lovely calm bonsai garden were pocked with bullet holes and scorch marks.

This guy compiled a jarring set of photos comparing the Hue citadel now and during the war: 

http://peteralanlloyd.com/one-of-the-vietnams-wars-bloodiest-battles-photos-of-hue-then-and-now/

We toured the imperial city in the morning and prepared to ride 100k to Cam Lo in the afternoon. The few city blocks between the imperial gate and our guesthouse housed tens of coffee shops and dozens of shoe shops, but few restaurants. We noticed a sign for food poking out of an alley, and followed it to a cafe in someone's driveway. Jove ordered one or two of everything on the picture menu, and the cook spent the next hour happily serving us three or four lunches in a row. Gummy (but pleasant) rice dough cups topped with dried shrimp and a sweet sauce are a specialty of Hue, and Jove's bold ordering netted us a dozen each. They were good- much better than the translation "dirt cups" suggests. These, another steamed shrimp-rice thing, barbeque pork noodles, and two varieties of wrap-your-own spring rolls made up our best meal in the country by far.