Saigon Busted

Well, we made it to Saigon, the big, swirling city that was the terminus of our trip, full of a swarm of motorbikes, buses, taxis, and pedestrians. It’s big and smoggy and quite, well, citylike, especially after our days in the countryside. I am here sitting, typing a letter so that they can film me hard at work. This is all rather ridiculous, but hey, that’s the price of fame. They are a vietnamese film crew of what will surely be the greatest tradgedy of all time. Guy goes to the US to get money to get the Girl, but when he returns with the requisite $30,000 (her father is aparently quite greedy) she has already married someone else. Of course, now he’s a rich man in a poorish country, so maybe he just buys a penthouse. We’ll find out when the movie is released in Arpil. We’ve been Saigoned into being extras on a film set for a day, a random but fitting ending to a trip characterized as much by its random occurences as by the singlemindedness of our treck from Hanoi to Saigon. Though we strayed from the straight and easy road, this city was always our destination, and in making it we have achieved the only goal we set for ourselves. I guess that’s not true, perhaps another was to always listen to the voice of spontinaity, which I think we have done as well. From crashing weddings to bushwaking by the river, this has been a good trip, and I’m ready to go home.

From the Road

This was written a couple days ago. As an update, it's still raining, and we continue on to Hoi An from an unplanned stop in Danang.


I've never updated from the road before, and indeed may not be able to do so. Blogspot seems blocked here at the internet cafe in Hue, but maybe it will work somewhere down the road. What have I to report? So far so good mostly. Vietnam has proved new and interesting, and very different from china. The people, the language the food, everything really. And yet, there are a lot of ethnic chinese around (as demonstrated by the chinese styling on the many graveyards we've been passing) and maybe I'll get a chance to practice my zhongwen on someone down the line. Hue is 600 and some kilometers from Hanoi (where we started this trip) but only by the direct highway. We've been trying to stay off that as much as possible, taking circuitous country roads up into the central highlands--but splitting the difference and coming down to quasi coastal cities (usually around 10 k or so from the beach) at night, mostly because they have hotels. The one night we tried staying at a town with no hotels, they told us to keep driving the 40 klicks to the provincial capital (Vinh) so we did, despite the rain. Tomorrow we head south through Danag to Hoi An, though a mountain pass which is Supposed to be the end of foul weather for this trip. After that we're looking at blue skies in the highlands, and pretty days on sandy beaches. It's hard to complain. We've named our bike Brunhilda, since she is both powerful, and a little surly occasionally. Specifically when shifting gears, but perhaps that's a function of our (my, really) ineptitude. The soreness experienced the first couple days has faded, and now, like putting on a heavy backpack, things feel right. We met some Quebecois yesterday riding all the way to Bangkok (and maybe beyond) but by the sound of it they've been doing nothing but driving, missing out on boatrides through caves, getting lost in small villages, and a couple days ago, driving around 30 k along a beach that looked like something from a scifi movie. But now, my hour is up, and we continue one. To your Good Health. Martin.