Holiday in Vietnam - Hoi An

The big adventure of this small holiday was a bicycle tour that Ange organised.  It was a pretty adventurous thing for her to have done - I think I last rode a bike with her in 1999 - and she fell off.  Not her preferred form of transport.  Then there was Ev's cycling - shall we say a provisional skill - quite a bit more heart than ability - and then of course there was the heat.  This is the offices of the Heaven and Earth Bicycle Tour Company, before we started.  Ev's expression and colour says it all.

The first part of the tour is a very short ride to a pier on the Thu Bon River.  Hoi An is FANTASTIC - honestly delightful - we will definitely go back again.  The whole of the old town is a UNESCO world heritage site - and the town is described in Wp as "an exceptionally well-preserved example of a South-East Asian trading port dating from the 15th to the 19th century".  So it is also really old.  Where the rest of Vietnam has a zillion motorcycles - a huge percentage of people in Hoi An still ride bicycles.  The Thu Bon River is the waterway that made the place a trading port to begin with.  The ride itself was on one of the islands in the estuary mouth - the boat ride to get there took 45 minutes.  There was a wonderful breeze out on the water - and it felt like 20 degrees cooler.

While much of Vietnam is as you see it in the movies - green treeland - the island, much like the coastal strip at Da Nang was much drier and sandy.  The villages we rode through were quaint and slow, as everything absolutely roiled in the heat.  There's a photo of it later, along with the two above - but our guides were amazing - two young women - both of them wearing jeans, long hoodie type tops and gloves.  It absolutely defied belief - I half expected one of them to drop dead.  They didn't even sweat (!?!).  How does that work?

A much needed water break on one of the island roads.  Evan was mildly terrifying - I spent the day herding him on his bicycle.  He managed to half fall off a couple of times (on one occasion onto a fresh looking grave ;-) which made me giggle.  He also took an absolute shine to Flower - one of our guides - and hit an absolute chat-attack - which was engrossing for him - and definitely detracted at times from his two wheeled abilities.

Cycling through beautiful farms,  field and rice paddy all round - the ones on each side here growing sweet potatoes. 

Towards the late afternoon Flower and Gin suggested parking the bikes and going down to one of the beaches for a swim.  Everyone was keen.  I love this picture - Ev, deep in his infatuation, glued to Flower - Flower dressed for a Moscow winter - whaaaat?  Take a look at Ev's shirt in the two pics above as a comparison.  I was wet through and smelled BAD.

The beach was sort of lovely - though as it turns out the very hub of the Islands fishing industry.  The round thing behind Aiden is essentially a very large salad-bowl shaped woven basket, which is then painted on the outside with tar to make it waterproof.  The weave and materials are heavy - they are super-sturdy - but with the aquadynamics of a brick.  There were a few of the banana shaped boats in the left background too - also made of tar painted wicker.  The sea was clear, which was good, because you could also see that it was absolutely heaving with jellyfish of all sizes and colours.  Flower and Gin thought that perhaps swimming wasn't a good idea after all.  We were no longer considering it; but did get a cool family pic with at least half of Ange's face in it.

I reciprocated - so here are Flower and Gin in their winter woolies.

Walking back to the bikes for the next leg - gives you a good idea of the sort of villages dotted the whole place. Vietnam, like the rest of Asia is pretty densely populated - 90 million people in a sliver of a land.  What I liked most about this experience was the opportunity to interact with regular people's lives.

A rare rare pic of Angela on a bike - her smile (she says) was more one of absolute relief than anything else; I think at herself making it, and for all of us in Evan's doing likewise. About a hundred meters up the road, Ev managed to miss a concrete pillar of the sort visible between him and Flower.  He missed it by no more than a micro-nanometer - how he did it I just don't know. I was watching the event in horrified slow motion, and I thought he was going to middle it perfectly.  Then he was passed (though admittedly wide eyed).

The bikes head back onto the boat in lovely afternoon light; a fraction of the edge starting to come off the heat.

The boat dude let Evan drive - as you do - a massive public boat on a busy waterway.  No unnecessary rules here.

Plenty of action happening on the river on the way back...

...one of the boats running back to the city from the bigger estuary islands.

Back in the late afternoon streets of Hoi An - superlovely vibe, lots of friendly slow bustle; Aiden trying a bit of experimental cycling - all a parent wants - a good old crash in the last half kilometer.

Back at Heaven and Earth - managed to get the boys to do a jump for joy picture; everyone knackered, sore bums, dreadful sticky mix of sunblock and sweat - and damn hungry.

Aiden sorts that out by consulting the menu-board at the nearby Dingo Deli. A beer, a couple of hands of rummy - cracking day and a great way to round off the trip.

Holiday in Vietnam - DaNang

Tracy had to go to the airport to pick up Jordan's tennis gear which she left at OR Tambo Airport - so our holiday got off to the very positive start of not having to cram into a taxi with all our bags.

The first place we stayed at looked the part in a lot of ways - cool villas, lush surroundings etc.  It was snorting hot and humid throughout.   As soon as Ev got going on something he went a nice red colour (this was the aftermath of a game of One Bounce - with the ball ending up in someone else's villa - who wasn't in it at the time).  The people were great - the food was INEDIBLE - which was a problem in that the resort was a long way out of the town.  We moved after a couple of days.

Aiden aims a piece of grass from the roof of our Villa out of it's door in the falling evening light.

This is China Beach, which was the surf and sun hangout for a while for US troops during the war, at which time Da Nang was the major US Airbase.   I say for a while because we were told by a Vietnamese guy that the Viet Cong got wise to the spot being the US R&R site, and infiltrated snipers into the area to pick off people riding the shore-break (which was conspicuous by it's absence in our time there).  The beach is massive - probably 15kms long - white sand, spotlessly clean with crystal clear water.

The outskirts of Da Nang along the beach were something of a wasteland - though in the interests of accuracy it should be said that the absence of a whistling motorcycle in the picture is something of an achievement photographically.  The zebra crossing is, I venture, largely decorative.

Inside the town things were a bit greener, quite quaint little streets and houses.  We were walking along this road because we had heard that there was a landmark restaurant experience called Tam's Pub and Surf Shop - which reputedly had the best burgers in the whole of Vietnam (some say Asia), and had been a feature of the town right back to the war days - so something of a western institution.  After the horrors of a couple of days of badly done Vietnamese food (three meals a day of it) there was a lot of traction for the burger idea (Ev dissenting with a hunger for Spag Bol).  So we kept walking, expecting I'm not sure what -  until we got to it.  "It" turned out to be more like a garage and repair shop with a whole lot of photos, and various bits of junk, interspersed with dogs and cats - and a couple of small tables.  The bloke running it was extremely relaxed, and very nice.  To our delight the burgers were indeed terrific - sadly for Ev the Spag Bol was not.  So he drank several litres of very sweet lime juice instead and felt ill.

Chilling in Tam's.  The photos were very interesting and very moving actually.  For example, on the wall to the left and behind Ev's head (above the jeep) is a photo of a helicopter gunner standing in the door of his helicopter.  It's probably a bit hard to see, but in the bottom corners of the frame are photos of the same guy, recently taken.  On the other wall - next to where I am taking the photo - was a magazine article with his recent picture from a local magazine.  The gist of it was that he hadcome back to Vietnam and started working on a number of self funded projects related to reconstruction and development of the country - after 30 years of trying to live with himself and the things he had done.  Next to him was a photo of a Vietnamese soldier with a caption saying that he had been wounded 14 times in 54 months of action.  An all-round nasty bit of business.

Evan

"Motorcross" party

Aiden's party was great fun.  To begin with it was something novel, miles out in rural Hong Kong, not far from the Chinese border - and it was an absolute dream of a day.  From all the rain (you know what that is like) it was verdant and lush, and very much felt like the start of summer.  We took a bus which dropped us off at some distant dead-end, and then the guys who ran the place came and picked us up in an assortment of battered vehicles - including a bakkie - very novel for these guys.  Before getting kitted up, I said they all needed to take a pee - where - in the bushes man - great mirth - and then hopped on a big earth moving tyre and (of course) started peeing on one another.  The pic below me doing my shouting teacher best - 10 year old boys are fundamentally feral.

They had an assortment of rides - perhaps could have been a bit more organized in their sequencing - but at least had a good idea that this lot needed to learn first.  I was thinking that with the video game generation, people just learn by doing - which is fine if you are going to get another life after a spectacular crash - but this of course is different in that participants literally do have skin in the game.  So they started off by kitting them out properly and then they had turns with an instructor on a quad bike, learning motorbike controls.

 - then went on these electric pee-wees below, on which they had great fun - lots of lifting one another; Aiden in the foreground - appalling driving - the odd crash - Evan in the far background wrestling with his helmet.  Thereafter they had turns by themselves on the quad bikes, and then little scramblers.  Evan managed to knock over one of the instructors with his motor-bike (perils of the job - it was not something you wanted to watch).

Pete and Lettie (Seb's sister, who was at dinner) came along for the jol.  Pete is a seriously good motorcyclist (as in very fast superbikes on a track) owns a number of them including a Ducati Hypermotard (look it up - the devils own motorcycle) which looks like the thing below here, honestly must be the wildest thing on
earth to ride - perhaps apart from his 1970 something Kawasaki 750 H2 (above) - which is certifiably the baddest bike ever built - a 750 two stroke that looks like this on the left - do not be fooled by that 80's delivery bike appearance.  He also has some trail bikes at home in the UK, so he's pretty accomplished at this too.  We had quite a jol - I've not really ridden on trails before - more dirt roads - these were tracks with a boulder strewn river crossing, jumps etc.  Only problem was that I'm not sure the bikes were really built for 90kg south african ass - and we had managed to hammer their suspensions pretty badly.  It would - I think - be the best ever fun on something light with lots of hard long travel like a KTM250 or some such nastiness.  It is definitely something that I intend to be doing again.  I was the only one who managed to fall off properly - what a tusk - but hey, with all this kit it was a doddle.  The guy who owns the place says that he has a new one opening right next to the Chinese border in Yuen Long - which has a 45km enduro track - I think maybe that would be well worthwhile when next you are in Honkies?

And one more...

Tried to send this to you in the mail, but it bounced back, mailbox full maybe?  Really like it - not smiley on your behalf, but somehow perfect :-) ...but first ... the mine train (can't seem to make it mobile friendly - have to watch it on a pc (mouse over the empty space below - the link, which insists on being hidden, will jump out).

http://youtu.be/z9YZ_KKKOQg

My delight