18 February. Late afternoon
This will be the last post of the BSV series. There will be a short update, in the future, when I get the camera pictures up and collect the photos from my fellow adventurers.
If this were not a real holiday it would have to be founded as Vergil found Rome.
Walking has become impossible. Congested city weaving at a reduced pace.
Families friends lovers children candy cotton sugar cane drums flowers motorbikes and more motos lights dragons drums and most of all joyous energy.
The trip might have been worth it just to experience Tet.
As to be expected most of the city has been shut down. A few stores, and of course the hotels and some restaurants are open.
Wandering bands or troups (10-15 in strength) do dragon dances and drumming. They go to an area or hotel, perform and then move on. They do not seem to have their hands out but it is ok to put money in the dragon's mouth.
City tour similar to the one of last visit except that some places closed. Went to a lacquer factory - to see the process but mostly as a shopping place.
There will be a final dinner tonight, fond farewells and then the departure.
So far I have avoided getting sick. One of the few, unfortunately. Mostly respitory as opposed to GI tract - though that topic is less discussed. A number of sore muscles and butts .
Your extremely well fed correspondent now closes the adventure summary and looks forward to seeing the QB and returning home.
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Feb 16 Midnight plus a bit so really the 17th. New Year's Eve - Tet
Looking out my window on the Dong Hong one sees the multiude. No free space for humans or motorbikes. Just masses and joy. Horns, ballons, cheering, talking. But, as usual I get ahead of myself.
Today was the final ride. Not a particularly interesting one. About a half day as we needed to get to the hotel, pack the bikes and get cleaned up for New Year's Eve. Well worth the early bike day. Hot and dry on Hiway one, not my favorite ride.
After packing up the bike and a long scrub went to join the party. It starts at 19:30 I could not imagine how it could continue until midnight. Now I know.
Got upgraded to a suite. About the size of a New York. Two bedroom apartment.
First the cocktails
And then the food. Some pics of the New Year's spread included. Then came lots of entertainment, singing, magicians, several fashion shows with beautiful women and men.
The pic of the three "Gods" are. Red for wealth, the elder for longevity, and green for luck/Joss.
Naturally there were dragons, many of them and drummers and acrobats and on and on.
The venue at the top of the Majestic hotel - overlooking the Saigon river - could not be better; especially for the fire works show. An excellent one. Lots of champagne, etc.
Food, all the traditional Vietnamese dishes and then some. Lobster, crabs, pork, lamb chops, sushi, salads rice and sugar cane and many many more dishes on the buffet. No food expense or service expense spared. This is (was) as first class as it gets - and on a perfect rooftop restaurant.
Some of you remember me talking of the and looking forward to seeing Tet in this venue. Met or exceeded expectations.
The streets, visible from the restaurant and from my street-river facing room are jammed. No other word for it. Yet, it is orderly and polite as (maybe) only the Vietnamese can manage it.
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14 February early am at breakfast
Dalat is an old French Colonial resort area at 1500 m. Being up high it is a lot cooler, 20-22 C is the common daytime temp. No A/C in the room - heater and fireplace instead.
The resort reminds one of Ventana in Big Sur. Up high, everything very rustic,
Designed to be rustic. Recently renovated so all is of good quality is not wise design (no handrails, a shower from the 19th century design with an oversized bathtub. Great for flooding and a sitzbath - standard flooding nozzle.
The dinner last night was an attempt, quite reasonable attempt, at California Asian fusion. Each dish carefully prepared with many ingredients. Good quality but not Vietnamese in any way. Basically here and in the previous Mandava Resort one would not know one was in Vietnam.
The ride from Nha Trang to Dalat was an experience.
The first 42 km was uphill at a very low grade riding about 200 meters. Later a climb of 600 m in 9 km (6.6% average grade - a real challenge). Road continues with long rolling sections. Rode until it got too dark and then had the bus pick me up.
Before the bike ride we stopped at a old and in excellent condition cham temple. High up on a hill, good to look at but not to climb .
One photo is of the meditation pagoda in Dahlat. The largest meditation center and quite lovely and serene.
The other photo is of the large Buddah and a monk striking the gong.
I did some 'sitting'.
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15 Feb. Evening after dinner
A day of biking extremes.
We spent one day in Dahlat (see previous post) visiting the Mediation center and a village and other tourist things.
Took the evening off in terms of dinner; blashphemy but as Nobue says "my stomach is tired" and I had been eating too much - just needed a break and the Dahlat place has wonderful breakfasts.
The hotels of the past two nights are at the very very high end. I discussed these two places relative to Ventana and Hans said that both were in the same price range. Discussed with Mai (she pays the bills at the hotel) and she said that the rack rate for the rooms that we were in are $200 a night and the villas and seaside rooms can run $400. Yikes for Vietnam. For contrast the very fine Majestic in Saigon runs $108 per night with the tour discount - not sure about the rack rate.
Excellent breakfast to energize the still tired legs - tired from the climbing of the day before. Past the Prenn Waterfall (turned off in honor of the Boog and a month without any rain and new record highs).
Then to the Chicken Village. I asked a few times about Avian flu but kept getting "no risk of Chicken Flu". Agree. Turns out to be an 8 foot high concrete chicken with souvenier shops nearby. Some negotiating (getting the hange of it) and then paying her the original asking price and getting a nice hug and soft punch in the shoulder - wonder where they learned that.
Through sugar cane, coffee plantations and lovely agricultural lands. No trucks or traffic on these roads, outstanding roads. Not flat but good quality and deserted. Would have been outstanding riding except for the very strong headwind. Oh, and it was 37C.
100 + km day with hills and headwinds and I packed it in for the final 46km hiway 1 ride to Phan Thiet.
Excellent Novatel, with Golf Course, in anoter place that does not seem to be part of Vietnam. Right on the beach.
So far I have ridden and or seen the Mekong, the Northern region with its mountains, ethnic minorities and real mountains. Then Hanoi as a architechtural Paris with just a bit more traffic but close to the same charm. The North Central Highlands with their challenging 'hills'. And the more southern ones with planations and beaches.
Housing has been of four varieties, seen them all but presented below in historical order.
A). Hay and mud
B). Cocunut leaves and some mud
C). Wood (various constructions including log cabins.
D) Brick with the clay from this area. Clay is converted to brick using the rice hulls.
Then comes modern contstruction looking much like our homes except more brightly painted.
Outstanding buffet at the hotel. Lobster (grilled to order, I had two), local crabs (grilled to order, I had three - as good a dungeness but I was very hungry and thé grilling in butter likely helped), shrimp and shrimp rolls, and baked clams and lots of other non seafood items bypassed. A couple of beers rounded out an excellent meal.
Will send this when I get to HCMH tomorrow evening, the 16th. New Years Eve. Dinner at the Majastic on their rooftop restaurant. Fireworks over the Saigon River. About $600K worth smoke and color.
Off early in the am to see the final day of sights and cycling.
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12 February.
A rest and tourist day in this old French resort town. Wonderful food in this 5 star hotel - one of the best in Asia according to them.
Two pics, one from outside my room and one of some of the tour riders eating breakfast.
Some observations overlooked.
Golf::
Much of the ride along the central and north central coast looks like golf courses. The rice fields are so verdent and widespread, with random flags waving (not sure if they are delinéators or scarecrows, that they appear as wonderful courses.
Wildlife:
The South was dogs and chickens and very tired and think cows on the road. Occassional pigs. Here we see Oxen, cows, ducks, and goats up on the higher passes.
The cows and oxen are working and often crossing the road, even the hiways. Have had to stop more than once to let them pass or push through.
Architechture::
South, as mentioned, is a small narrow house which doubles as a store front. Dirt in front and then the road.
Here, nice houses, real cities, far less living on the road, taller and more narrow housing and stores. Lack of the dirt frontage.
Temples::
This area is dotted with Cham temples. Each more beautiful than the previous one.
Food:
Excellent but not as fresh as the Mekong. More extensive preparations as not as immediate from the ground or river. Prawns, giant, the kind we pay $30/lb at home, are expensive in this area. About $9 per pound here. With a living wage at $100 /month for one single person prawns are out of reach.
Morning excercise:
Starting at 5 am, especially North of here, folks are out doing their morning routines. Walking, jogging and lots of Tai Chi variations. Done by 7 am as it is too hot. Very good to see but not join.
Tet:
As the holiday starts next week (first day is the 17th) the preparations are evident everywhere. Roads being cleaned with village crews. They seem to be converting the roadside garbage eyesore to air pollution by roadside burning. Wonderful biking through it.
Doors and trees being decorated. Kumquat trees and many other types of flowering plants to decorate the entrance ways. Lights and cleaning.
Busses full of people mostly going North to visit their families. Busses so full that we would not consider getting on, let alone riding for several days. Motor bikes on top of the busses. Police stopping them to check papers (or bribes).
Fellow travelers:
Very experianced and wide ranging travel junkies. Cuba, Amazon, Alaska, Polar Bears, Europe, Barges, Cross (fill in the geographic area). Not a lot of Asia travel, except China, so far. This is not a stay at home retirement group.
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11 February 22:30
An eventful and challenging few days; catching up after having no connectivity for three or four days.
The ride to Quang Ngai a beach resort in a remote area held little in the way of new items. Mostly a very noisy, even more noisy and diesel filled air on the road. Not a pleasant ride. Wanted to see if I could ride 85 miles in one day and found that I could. The butt being the limiting factor. Discussed limiting factors with the more experienced riders and they concurred that the butt goes first. Interesting. Quite raw after the ride.
The resort is a dump with mosquitos. Nice ride into and out of the resort area.
After leaving Quant Ngai in the morning we headed to Qui Nhon, another beach resort. Rode less, mostly to avoid long stretches of Hiway 1. The full ride would have been 170km. No one tried to do anything close to that on the noisy smelly road.
Got to a fabulous resort, the best to date on the whole trip. Hoang Anh Resort. Of Ventana (Big Sur) class éxcept it is on the water. My room had a view to die for. Tub, shower, etc. Had everything, quite a contrast.
After some massages, I went back for a second go around, and dinner and some sleeps made an early start to Nha Trang, a resort area built by the French.
Great ride today! My butt problems mostly resolved by lowering the seat and moving it back a bit. The other riders giving good advice - took me a bit too long to figure out what they were suggesting and to get it right.
About 100km today. Three passes, one of 500 feet, others of 300 and 200 feet. Gotta love the altimeter on my watch . As it is Sunday the roads were marginally better. As it is the week before Tet the roads are full of travelers going to their homes North of Saigon.
Excellent views of the water, hills, mountains etc.
First rain in the trip but not really real rain. Up at about 400 feet some very heavy mist light rain. Stopped a few minutes after decending. The boog's record of warm dry weather continues. The locals say that this is unusually warm and they need rain. Quelle Suprise.
Approaching the Cai Pass we had a tailwind of sufficent power that the Pelaton was moving about 19 miles per hour for over an hour. Then the climb.
The full day's ride would have been over 200km so a sweep of riders at 4PM was necessary and then off to the hotel.
The hotel here in Nha Trang, the Ana Mandara Resort, is internationally famous. Look it up on the web or in the upscale travel magazines. Excellent but I think the Hoang Ahn is even better.
Good dinner buffet, a bit of blogging and then to crawl into the mosquite netting in the room. Yes, even in a very high end place. Insect repellent is provided in the bathroom - pump in the same form as the shampoo; need to be careful .
Tomorrow is a bike rest day. The city looks quite interesting and modern. Sort of like Las Vegas at night. From the late bus ride in I could not tell we were in Vietnam. Part of the bike ride today was in the dunes, looked a lot like the coast near Oregon. Rolling hills and dunes and great riding. One 26km section was particularly spectacular and pleasant - read no noisy smelly trucks.
Will try to get back to adding pictures now that I have connectivity.
Do not remember if I sent the pineapple boad with warm squid from the cooking school way back in Hoi An.
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Feb 9. Evening
A day of bookends and real contrasts.
First the bookends.
Leaving the hotel on small rural beautiful roads. About 20km of scenic and almost traffic free riding. Then 100km of Hiway 1 riding. Noisy, more noisy, more noisy with big trucks and even bigger horns, contantly blaring. Nothing really charming. Bad air from all the diesel.
Then at the end of the day 12 km of even better riding than the morning.
Long day ending at a dump of a 'beach resort'. Many mosquitoes on the room. Clean by non-beach standards. I showered as best as I could and thén put on all my Permitrian clothing and some deet. Will sleep this way.
Outside is a perfectly respectable beach. As we are leaving early in the am unlikely I will have time for a swim. Very hard putting on my right sock so I probably would pass anyway so as not to take it off and have suffer with each yank.
The hotel would rate a half star on the Boog Scale.
On the rural roads saw lots of livestock (cows, chickens, goats) crossing the road at their convenience. Hiway was not a good time for pictures.
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8 February 17:00
Still no connectivity.
Excellent day, just about perfect.
Weather was again sunny, not too hot, and no strong headwind. Off on rural roads, once we got off Hiway 1 (just the first 20 km). Then perfect roads both in quality, views and lack of trucks and horns.
Some minor rolling hills to break the flatness and then to My Son a UNESCO site.
The Cham people, one of the 54 ethnic minorites used to live in this area. Between the 6th and 10th century this was the center of Hinduism in Vietnam. Temples, what remains of them after we bombed them to oblivion as the VC were supposedly hiding here, are of three types.
Hindi - tall and windowless with Shiva and many other carvings
One old stone - sandstone - as the only Khmer (think angor wat ) remaining temple (ruins) left outside of Cambodia.
Viet with their typical square roofs.
The original stone work from the 10th century is evident. The restoration work is all erroding from the humidity. Modern concrete does not work. Not clear (asked twice and got different answers) if they ysed any mortor. My guess is that they did and once again the ancient recipie is lost.
Of the 70 structures only a handfull are still standing and only a few are not ruins. Walked into a few of them. The site is like a great park hidden in the hills and framed by the gates one sees "Lucky Mountain".
Later a ride along the beach - both directions and through a village. I think the proffered pens confused the children but they took them.
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7 February morning.
Will be sent later as no connectivity here.
Arrived last evening at about 18:00. Long day of cycling that had everything. Headwinds, a mountain pass of 1500 feet, distance (65-70 miles), wonderful scenery and outstanding views, beach (real sand with water at 20 C ).
Had a lunch of mussels and other seafood just before the Hoi An pass. Good that we ate first .
Hoi An is a world heritage site. Home of the Chaum peoples - mostly Hindu and Moslem. Own language of the Malay-Poly language group, most similar to Hawaii.
Hotel is another of the Victoria group. Excellent views and right on the ocean.
Cooking school via a boat ride:
First a walk through the market in Hoi An. Then off on a boat for about an hour to a restaurant / cooking school. Watched and made
-eggplant in clay pot
-warm squid salad in a pinapple boat (sweet and sour)
-bahn xeo (pancakes with shrimp filling)
-our own rice paper from rice or rice flour on a steamer with a linen cover
-lesson on decoration
Bike ride along the sea shore in the late afternoon. Hoi An is a UNESCO city (the market tour gave us a chance to see the ancient city center). The hotel is about 4km outside and right on the beach. Beautiful beach, water temp at 22 C
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5 February. Evening before and after dinner
Another perfect weather day, a little warmer but plésant compared to the Mekong.
A day of boat and biking. Both on the Perfume River, a river so named as about 100 km upstream there are romantic mountains with wonderful flowers and smells which fill the river. Did not notice but did enjoy the relatively clean water and good Junk boat. Once again asked all get in safety position when the river police are watching and then no OSHA concerns of any kind.
Bike ride to another Pagoda. Hué is home to 300 of them - the center of Buddhism in Vietnam. One pic included.
The stupa used to be bigger but the French took the top one. This is the Pagoda of the Heavenly Lady.
The local village ride was bumpy but peaceful. Off then to the Citidal, the original Hué capital imperial center. 2km by 2km with moats, and inner city and a forbidden purple (read dynasty of emperors) city. While the architechture is Asian (Chinese and Vietnamese) the feeling is the same as one gets walking into the Russian Winter Palace or Versailles or the Vatican Museum. Extreme wealth of the Emperor and abject povery in the cities. Shall we use 3000 today to dig a spot for me or should we use 5000.
The buildings are much nicer here but the logic is different. In the South they are wealthy as they have lots of rice and good food. Therefore they can spend all their money and do not need to save or bulld nice homes or invest. Life in the North is just the oppisite so they build nice homes and husband all their resources.
Dinner menu
-Phoenix shaped starter
-Crab soup with mushroom
-Fried seafood roll on melon boat
-Shrimp pie and rice shrimp cake
-stewed pork with beans and dumplings. (beans used to be reserved for the emporer)
-Grilled grape leaves with beef
-Steamed rice with lotus seeds
-fruit, tea, beer
Long ride iin the morning
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