Eventually, I decided I had more or less enough of the whole Đà Nẵng business. What more could I even get from that city? And one could loaf around in a hostel with jolly Russians only that much. So, my sacred errand of reaching good old Saigon was thus resumed with renewed energy.
30km down South was Hoi An ancient town, another highly acclaimed Vietnamese tourism gem. At least UNESCO held it on a pedestal. And I usually trusted UNESCO when it came to conceiving a world heritage list. I decided to spend one night there. And to me, it turned out one night had been all I needed to roam around the whole place.
Was it worth it? Well, definitely yes and no. “Yesn’t”, as an edgy zoomer with too much free time on the internet would say. Aesthetically, the place was absolutely fabulous. 10/10. A well-preserved ancient fairy land with all its quirks and romances was there for the public to marvel. Most of those houses were shaded mostly in dark yellow, terracotta and clay nuances. The old town didn’t have the extravaganza or the lavishness of the imperial complex in Huế, but there was still something about it. The simplicity of the place delivered a pleasant atmosphere. The experience of being inside one of those houses and having a cup of tea or a bowl of Cao Lầu[1] noodles was as worthwhile as it could get.
Concerning the “no” part, it had to be the crowdedness of every single street of UNESCO realm. One comes across a whole new definition of “crowded” when walking there during the summer time slots when it’s walkable. If one wished to have more space and find some of the streets more or less empty, one would have to walk there in plain afternoon. And since it was July, it would be so hot that even the gates of Hell wouldn’t feel so burning.
It was a real bummer because if the streets and alleys wouldn’t be so stuffed with tourists, Hoi An could be the best place to visit. I mean, it was just too much. I was almost getting claustrophobic at some point. But what could one do? Since we all lived in the heyday of internet and social media, many such spots were bound to face this atrocious fate. Still, things could’ve been much worse. Kuta in Bali, for instance.
Well, concerning Hoi An, I came, I saw, I left. And I wasn’t coming back. Not anytime in summer, at least. There was no rest until Quy Nhơn.
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The road was a blessing. I really stepped the gas for that one. During first 100km I felt like I was Han Solo[2] doing the hyperspace jump and my engine was the Millenium Falcon. I was midway through the Kessel run and no imperial fighter[3] was going to stop me.
I resumed my status of a random Romanian guy on a 150cc rusty motorbike the moment I paused my trip for breakfast. And I probably shouldn’t have done it, since I came across the place where I had the lousiest meal during this whole road trip ordeal. It was one of those rice canteen spots that bore a sign with huge letters saying: “Cơm Bình Dân” which literally translated as “cheap rice”. The thing with these places was that they could either be really good and fresh, or bland, tasteless and not so fresh altogether. It was hit or miss with these cheap rice joints and for me that turned out to be the biggest miss I could’ve possibly taken. Visually, the food choices looked appealing. However, I got reminded once again that appearances could be misleading.
My breakfast consisted of caramelized pork meat and a boiled egg served with a bunch of rice. I’m not kidding when I’m saying that everything tasted as if it had been two days old. The meat was also pretty chewy. It was one of the meals that you forced yourself to get down your throat as soon as possible so you could just fuck off right away and get as far as possible from that horrendous and disgusting pile of shabby horse crap rice canteen. It was one of the memories you’d do your best to remember to forget. Instead, it would turn out to be one of those exact things that would never go away, because that’s how life works for some reason and there’s nothing one can do about it.
Eventually, I finished most of that dish without spilling my guts and proceeded to pay. And that’s when things got even funnier. The lady managing the place, an opportunist auntie I reckoned, charged me an unreasonable amount, completely disproportionate with the quality of the filth she was serving there. I knew the prices of those rice enterprises too damn well, since I was no stranger to them.
Never in my life had I paid more than 35,000VND for any meal I had there, considering that most times those meals were plenty, diverse, fresh, tasty and with an overall satisfying mouth feel. Well, I had just experienced the exact opposite of that and this skank was charging me 70,000VND for it. As far as I was concerned, she had to pay me to eat in that shanty serving food. More so, since I was in the middle of damn nowhere on the national road and not in some high-end area of a big city. If Gordon Ramsay[4] would’ve had what I’d just had, he would’ve probably given up cooking, I swear.
I protested but she told me that the price was set. What could I do? Technically, there was nobody else in sight, except another auntie. I thought about rushing to my motorbike and rev up the engine, leaving nothing but dust behind. And in my rearview I would get a glimpse of the two crooked bints in the distance shouting a whole range of Vietnamese cussing while moving their hands in frantic disarray. Unfortunately, my consciousness wouldn’t let me do it. No matter how much satisfaction that act would bring me, it would’ve still screwed up my karma.
I didn’t have small money to pay the auntie. All I had, apart from 500,000 notes, were 60,000 VND. I showed that to the scamming lady and she reluctantly agreed. Damn that place and damn my intuition for choosing that exact spot. Bad luck I guess, since not much was open at that time.
At least I wasn’t starving anymore. I was back in the Millenium Falcon and its glorious hyperspace speed. 100 more kilometers passed. I kept cussing that skank who scammed me at the not so cheap “Cơm Bình Dân” place but soon enough I had other issues to make my mind boggled. I felt a drop hitting my face. And then another one followed. And another one. I looked up. A menacing, wicked cloud was right above me. As I looked, the cloud, as if acknowledging my presence, increased the frequency of the drops coming down.
After all that time, my worst fear was coming to fruition. It needed to happen, at some point. Luck always had its expiration date. My good times in Đà Nẵng had to be counter balanced somehow. The rain started to gain momentum and I thought about something which wasn’t proven to be that clever. Visually, it looked like I was on the edge of that evil grey cloud. In front, in the distance, the sky was clear and bright. So, I thought to myself that if I speed up and push that motorbike to the limit, I would get myself out of the cloud’s range and be on the dry side of things again. But it didn’t work that way.
By the time I was self-aware of my complete and utter idiocy, the rain had already swallowed me. There was no place to stop for a while so I just had to come to terms with the situation and not give too much thought to my drenched sneakers or any other of my drenched clothes. Drenched everything.
Eventually, I stopped at what looked to be a massive eating place with fancy tables. Right when I parked my motorbike some other busses arrived, full of old people mostly. They all descended and stormed the whole space, occupying every single table. Fortunately, there was one table left where I could sit. All around me were aunties and uncles who seemed to be very passionate about their ideas, because they were talking as loud as they possibly could. Their chatter echoed in the whole restaurant. How lucky could one guy be?
I got myself a beer and pondered on the rain. The guys running that restaurant turned out to be the rudest, most unhelpful Vietnamese people I’d ever come across. They didn’t display any form of hospitality on my behalf. They started bitching right away because I parked my motorbike at the only spot where it could be covered from the rain. They didn’t like that, even though it didn’t bother anyone, and they told me to move it away just so it could get soaked. They seemed really cross and they didn’t even bother bringing me a beer when I asked for it. They just pointed to the fridge at the other side of that big room and told me to help myself. It was as if they were deliberately persuading me to leave. And they did that anyway but the angry storm outside just wouldn’t let me show them the finger and make myself disappear. So, I just stood there, holding my beer while counting the rain drops. The cloud up above must’ve been really proud.
◆◆◆
No sooner had I opened my second beer than the rain stopped. So, I downed the whole can, put on my rain equipment just in case, paid my bills and gone I was.
It seemed that it wasn’t my day. The rain got me and I came across only the wrong type of Viet folk, which didn’t represent their country one bit. But once on the green engine again, everything became water under the bridge.
I thought that the worst had already passed and that the remaining 100km would be cake. But after half an hour mother nature turned out to be unforgiving once more. I was blessed with a 2nd round of rain. And this time it was a storm of biblical proportions. The rain before had been just a warm-up. So thick and brutal was the 2nd round that I couldn’t really see the road no more. Only rain and nothing more. I thought to myself that the apocalypse was nigh. I was expecting Noah’s ark passing by any moment.
I had to stop. And that I did, at a little café where I encountered the first actual hospitable Vietnamese fellas of the day that were glad to have me there. Finally, some nice people. I got myself a Coke and pondered on what appeared to be the final flood in the making, as predicted by the Old Testament.
But lo, for Noah didn’t turn up and the ancient prophecy had to be postponed. After an hour the rain diminished to just a few casual drops. The road still had the shape and form of a road so I put the keys in the contact.
VROOM VROOM, MOTHERS AND BROTHERS! THERE AIN’T NO STOPPING NOW! I arrived right after sunset at this beach hostel outside Quy Nhon that I had found through the power of internet while stationed at the previous café. And bless my soul, I made the right choice. The place was grand, with bungalows and dorms on either side of a small, windy alley going uphill. Down under, one could go on wooden stairs to reach a large, quiet and untouched private beach, where the mountain met the ocean. On the opposite side of the beach was the reception, bar and restaurant, all decorated in colorful hippie fashion. Some nice Viet staff guys greeted me when I got there. They began laughing at my countenance. And I would’ve laughed too if I were them.
“You look like you had a really rough day!” This smiling Viet fella told me. And he was right. A soaked lad clad in dirty rain proof clothes who had a haggard appearance due to hunger and exhaustion couldn’t have had anything but a rough day.
“Yeah man, woke up at 6am in Hoi An and drove all the way. Didn’t miss a single drop of rain!”
“Oh brother, you sure got lucky. But good news! We offer a free beer to every newcomer here! Would you like a beer?”
“You bet, man.” I said what I needed to say, as I watched my glass getting full of the fizzy golden liquid that would heal my soul.
I savored my beer, took a shower, changed my clothes and felt like a decent human being again. I jumped into the ocean straight away. That day finally took a turn for the better as it was getting dark.
I joined the daily hostel dinner gathering where I stuffed myself with Vietnamese delights, played bingo with a bunch of chaps from South Africa, Ireland and England and then crashed on my pillow. Babies couldn’t have slept any better.
◆◆◆
I started the next morning with a portion of Bò Né on a spot with the best view of the hostel’s beach. There was simply no better way to begin that day. Bò Né was more or less the Vietnamese version of the English Breakfast. Sizzling beef with 2 fried eggs, tomato and onion slices with some coriander, all served in a hot pan with butter. And unlike the English Breakfast, I had that dish for actual breakfast.
After I licked my fingers, satisfied, I was thinking about leaving. “Should I stay or should I go?” was continuously coming back in my head, along with the song having the same title.
I spoke with one of my good Vietnamese friends a few days back and he told me I ought to come to Đà Lạt and crash at his crib for a few days. It was around 9am and I reckoned I could get there before sunset, including the stops for eating and various body waste matters that would come along the way. I kept thinking. What to do? Decisions, decisions.
I lit a cigarette and went down the wooden stairs that were leading to the hostel’s beach. And then I had the moment. With the cigarette puffing I sat down on one of the steps and watched the sands, the scattered rocks, the blue sea and the distant islands, all untouched. Moved only by the incessant passing of time. Bothered only by the breeze.
I kept on watching. It was one of those “me and the ocean” moments. One, by one, waves were coming. And every wave had something to say. The ocean was talking to me through every single one of them. Each wave was like a line of poetry. And I was right there to see it, following every stanza. There was no end to it. A wordless poem was coming together right before my eyes. It was better than anything that had been ever put on paper.
It was exactly then, as the casual witness of the ocean’s progressing poem that I found myself to be, that I made a decision. I decided to stay.
However, the ocean’s poetry was not the sole reason. My only pair of sneakers was still wet and needed another day to be more or less dry. I hated wearing wet shoes with socks and there was no way in hell I’d drive a manual motorbike in flip flops a whole day. I saw a lot of people doing it but to me. It simply went against the right principle. I never quite understood those chaps. Yet again, there were a bunch of things in this world that didn’t make a whole lotta sense to me and any effort of putting logic into them was futile.
That hostel had everything. Food, snacks, smoothies, beers, cocktails, hammocks, a pool table, a ping pong table, game boards. You name it. There were absolutely 0 reasons to leave that spot. An oasis in its truest form.
I went for a swim and killed a few hours in a hammock reading a book I stole from the other hostel in Đà Nẵng. I didn’t plan to steal it initially, hoping I would read the whole thing before leaving that hostel. But hey, it was “Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger. One does not simply let that book go before it’s done. Not me at least.
Sometime in the afternoon I drove towards Quy Nhon city to get an oil change for the engine and just explore the town, including a wholesome ridge walk along one of the cliffs out there.
My plans took a different turn, though. That was when I stopped at some place which had a big sign containing the word “xe”, which meant “car”. However, the place had nothing to do with that word. All I found there was a shop with an old tube TV and a table filled with 7 dudes and around 20 times more empty beer bottles lying on the table, under it, next to it, and far from it. I don’t think I had ever seen so many empty beer bottles all piled up in a single place. The boys didn’t even bother putting them back in the crates lying a few meters away. And then there were the not so empty beers being held by each of those guys and the other ones sitting in a crate next to the table. The whole spectacle looked quite cinematic if you include the puffing of cigarettes, the sunflower seeds consumed in between gulps of beer and the instant cup noodles packages left on the table still smelling of curry chicken and chili shrimp.
I asked the chaps if they offered engine oil. They told me they didn’t but if I turned around and drove a few miles down South I’d find what I needed in the first village. And right away one of the lads cracked open one of the beers and invited me to take a seat. I obliged and told the fella I’d be right back once I’d solve my little quest for the engine oil.
I followed the given instructions and it turned out they didn’t lie to me. I got the change I needed and drove right back to the beer sanctuary. And oh boy, were those Viet boys glad to see me back.
◆◆◆
Joining that table was easy. Leaving it turned out to be quite a challenge. They simply wouldn’t let me. When my beer was near empty one of the lads made sure I’d get another one. And this whole act perpetuated itself to the point when I didn’t feel confident to drive back the 1-2km that separated me from the hostel land.
At the same time, I knew too damn well what I was doing. And I can’t deny the fact that I was enjoying every minute with those Viet chaps. I simply couldn’t resist. Every single time I venture to a new corner of the world, I aim, among other things, to get totally smashed with locals, in local fashion. And every time I fail to do so, I feel as if I downgraded myself from the eclectic traveler to the base everyday tourist. Therefore, I did the right thing.
The boys didn’t really speak too much English. Actually, all they knew were a few words that could be counted on one hand. It didn’t matter, though. The more we drank, the more we understood each other. And when we couldn’t, Google Translate would come to the rescue.
They insisted I had some of their fried squid that someone had brought for them. They insisted I smoked their local cigarettes and they did their best to convince me to sit with them and down beers all night until the next morning. If they didn’t do any of that, then it wouldn’t be considered Vietnamese hospitality. They told me it was their day off and the sole thing they planned on doing was sit in that very corner, eat, booze and smoke all day long.
I almost felt bad for refusing their generous offer, as I declined the next drink handed to me while I stood up and almost fell on the beer crates. It started to get dark, so I offered my best regards to the lovely chaps and proceeded to pay for the beverages. Despite my persistence to hand them money, they told me it was all free and that my mere presence there had been sufficient for them. It was unreal how kind and welcoming could people be once you would tap into their energy and offer nothing but honest and good intentions.
I drove back in the most cautious manner I could, not even blinking on the road shaking all over. I arrived at the hostel right in time for the dinner gathering. I was so hungry and inebriated, I pigged out like a Balkan peasant after a full day of toiling on the field.
Later on, I befriended a Vietnamese lady from Saigon who had just arrived at the hostel. Despite her young appearance resembling a student girl, the lady was in her mid thirties. Many ladies in that country and East Asia in general, despite ageing like everyone else, didn’t really show it. After all those years in that part of the world, this whole fountain of youth magic thing was still a mystery to me. Maybe there was a local spell I didn’t know about. Or the magic was simply in the genes, traced all the way back to times primordial.
We had some conversation and for some reason she felt like telling me a lot about herself, like how her husband had died a few years ago and how her father had been a pro South Vietnam fella who’d attempted to flee the country on a raft sometime in the 70s after the North Vietnamese had won the war. Apparently, her whole family had been bitter ever since the fall of Saigon and wished to escape Vietnam, but didn’t have the means to do it. So, they eventually came to terms with the new regime. Despite all that, to this lady, what had once been the Republic of Vietnam had always been her true Vietnam. What was funny was that she was so jolly and full of optimism while telling me about all this business.
She went on saying that she had had enough of the city life and that she’d spent the last few years living on a ranch she’d bought, together with her 2 kids who were already in middle school. Her plan was to create an organic, self-sustained environment where she’d grow everything she’d needed. And judging by the pictures she showed me, her plan was going quite well.
I also told her about my plan to drive all the way down to Saigon and after hearing that she mentioned that I should visit her farm which was only 50km out of Saigon. I had met this lady for about an hour and she was already inviting me to her farm. A widowed lady, mother of two kids, invited me, a complete stranger from Europe, to check out her estate. It felt eerie. I told her I’d think about it and then went to sleep. For what was supposed to be a lazy boring day at the hostel, there sure was a lot more juice at the end of it. I really can’t explain why I keep bumping into such interesting characters. But hey, they get this story going and for that I can’t thank them enough.
Part VI: https://andyvansen.com/2024/09/motorbike-notes-part-vi-entering-the-da-lat-magic/
[1] Cao lầu noodles: regional Vietnamese dish from Hoi An, typically consisting of pork and greens, on a bed of rice noodles made from rice which has been soaked in lye water,
[2] Han Solo: fictional character from the Star Wars movie franchise. Smuggler, scoundrel and hero, he is the captain of the famous space ship Millenium Falcon, which did the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs
[3] Imperial fighter: villain star ships who from the evil galactic empire in the Star Wars movies
[4] Gordon Ramsay: renowned chef and TV personality, famous for shows such as “Hell’s kitchen” and “Masterchef”