Day 61 - Kon Tum

Does not feel like Halloween at all! Just a note about SE Asia - from the sink in Battambang to the urinal in the random café on Saturday, and various hotel showers - plumbing is bloody leaky here.

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Somewhat amusing that I was giving out about water earlier, and am now saturated. Coming over a 2700m mountain pass, we put on wet gear to protect ourselves from the mist. Was kinda amazing, rolling through the clouds. Stopped at a big waterfall for a photo op. Then downhill - visibility dropped to about ten feet at one point, then the rain began to pelt down. Raindrops at 60kmph are kinda sore. Through some minor flooding (feet now sodden) to the hotel, which is unfortunately the most basic yet, but at least there's hot water!

Nicci and Peter

First stop of the day was Vinh Son orphanage in KT. Bought some fruit at the market to bring. Big wooden church there - original French building, about 100yrs old. All the orphanage is on Catholic church ground, along with some other charitable buildings, like a clinic and a school.

Saw some toddlers being minded by some young teenagers, before Frank arrived. A good friend of Spencer's, he's been involved in the running of the orphanage for ~6 years. He personally sponsors six girls in the sewing school. He walked and talked with us, telling us about his (wonderful!) work and the sort of children they care for.

Spencer and Frank

Some are deposited by their parents who cannot both care for the kids and work to support them. Spencer said last night that some of the villages will even bury children alive if their parents pass away, rather than have them suffer. One girl arrived with no clothes, only a blanket. Most come from Bahnar or Suda areas: ethnic minority hill tribes. This means that often they can't speak Vietnamese, only their own dialect.

Frank spoke of his frustration in trying to integrate them. Many people come to teach English (well-intentioned volunteers), but the children need to learn Viet. first.

At the sewing school they can learn a trade, and after 18 months return to their village and help their own people. Truly amazing work. We spent so much time discussing all the challenges, we hardly even saw the children. Any that passed said hello, giving a shy cute smile. Frank seems to have a 'friendly uncle' bond with most.

Sewing class

From there, we popped into a Bahnar hut - a raised structure with a tall, pointed thatch roof. The taller the hut, the stronger the tribe; the more beautiful, the more skilful. It's used as a town hall, to hold festivals and celebrations.

Then Hamburger/Charlie Hill, site of one of the first incursions of the VC into south Vietnam. Sinh gave us another history lesson, showing us some bomb craters that littler the hill. Đắk Tô for a war memorial with two tanks, and lunch, before racing down the old American airstrip nearby. On to the Ho Chi Minh trail proper after that.

Spencer, Peter and Uncle Sinh

Admire a rough wooden bridge, and high-five some children living beside it. High-fiving is international! Then through the mountains and clouds to our new hotel.

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Appetite's been in overdrive the past few days - ravenous all the time.

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Spencer's bike is a Honda Master, 125cc. He explained that to get a 250cc, he'd need to upgrade his licence, and also work in the cavalcade of any visiting ministers. 125cc is plenty though - I've quickly grown to love the sensation of being buffeted and whipped by the wind at 60kmph.

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Vietnamese houses tend to be narrow, but deep. They remind me of pictures I've seen of Dutch cities.

Day 60 - Kon Tum

Realised this morning that last night was the first time I've slept in a room alone since I reached Russia. Was nice to wake up at my own pace.

Today was our longest day of riding - 220km. Had a quick chat at breakfast with one of the groups we keep seeing along the route. Two of them are sisters from Norway. Hit the road after an ATM stop, first visit is a mushroom farm. Sinh describes how they put some rotting wood into a bag of damp sawdust (?) and let the fungus develop, slitting the bag open in spots to let the mushrooms sprout. The shed is like an alien nursery - so many containers hanging from the ceiling like IV bags in a blood bank, with black or white mushrooms bursting forth. Creepy.

Uncle Sinh also gives us a quick history/geography lesson on the HCM trail. BMT was the centre of a VC attack, and used as a staging base to invade the rest of the south. He has so much knowledge of Vietnamese flora, fauna, history, people.

Uncle Sinh

Next a war memorial, and Spencer relates the tale of his grandfather. Living at the border with two sons, he sends one north (Spencer's uncle) and one south (his father), not knowing which side is good or bad, or who will win, or if either son will survive. Both lived through the war, but his uncle had to arrest his father afterwards, whereby he spent 18 months in a re-education camp.

Spencer

I'm also surprised to learn that his father's south Vietnamese connections still prevent Spencer from doing things like becoming a policeman or politician. HCMC is still Saigon to southerners. He also confesses to teasing northerners at college, pissing on their army hats. He says the best thing HCM did was win over the hill tribes, who created the HCM trail, key to winning the war.

Seb & Nicci

Peter rapping

Me going vroom vroom!

Stopped at a pepper plantation then. Vietnam is such an industrious, productive nation - #2 exporter of coffee (after Brazil), #2 exporter of rice (after Thailand), rubber, tea, pepper, mushrooms, fruit... the list is endless when talking to Sinh and Spencer.

Pepper

Delicious fried chicken for lunch, meet the Norwegians again. Rubber plantation, scenic lake ("look at the whiteys!") and then tea, where we killed the atmosphere of some puppy love. Amazing sunset as we race into KT, dinner in a disgusting alley (but was actually yum!), and beers by the river.

Peter, Sinh, Spencer and chicken!

Field of tea!

Good night!

Day 59 - Lak

Random memory: HCMC, bia hoi. Playing asshole as a drinking game. Jake making a rule that people must accept whatever's offered to them, which leads to myself, James and Seb smoking the vilest cigars known to man.

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Discovered in Mui Ne that my hard drive has a virus, and all my files on there were lost. Angry, frustrated for a few minutes. Up to Beijing is online. Most of those after that, in fact, all of those after that are still on SD cards, which I have saved. And files are also copied to S&N's hard drive. Not so bad. Only thing missing is my compact card, which I know Dom has. And one SD card is corrupted - from Battambang through PP, HCMC to Mui Ne - but I think it's recoverable. Always have a back-up.

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Lying in a long house in Lak, enclosed in a mosquito net. The family who live here have been preparing breakfast for themselves since about 5am. At 6.45, some one them tries out all their ringtones. SOme things are the same the world over! The wind is blowing strongly outside, S&N are still asleep.

Spent the 27th doing nought. The others slept late, so I didn't disturb them. Got a little lost wandering around town, did our laundry, called in to Tuan. He invited us back for pool later.

When we call in, there's a hotpot of fish on the go, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker. One of our drivers, Spencer, lost a bet, and buying the bottle is his forfeit. Several shots are consumed, then some beers. Some more whities arrive - Max and Lisa whom I recognise from the bus, an American Guy [that was his name], and James from England. Conversation flows. Lee, from Mui Ne, drops by as well. Turns out he's doing the same trip as us (5 days to Hoi An), but a day later. All the while the music is fantastic - Whipping Boy, the Frames, Radiohead... did they know I was coming?

Made a racket on the stairs in the dark at the hotel, am sent to bed by the owner.

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Yesterday morning we were greeted by our drivers/guides/interpreters/mechanics. Spencer is mine, a speed-loving stoic type, though he comes out of himself after a beer and some cards. He takes coners skilfully and with apparent ease, and appears to be in charge - himself and Tuan were in college together.

Spencer outside the train station

Seb rides with Uncle Sinh, an older veteran, full of tiny details and wisdom. He cackles often, though is mostly silent at the dinner table. Late fifties?

Uncle Sinh with Peter

Nicci is on Peter's bike. A family man, he is full of smiles and laughter, teaching her snippets of Vietnamese - "this is the 'yessir' road". Yessir being scary.

Peter with Nicci

We stop at Dalat train station, the crazy house (a mixture of Dali and Escher, in Alice in Wonderland), a flower farm, elephant waterfall, a 'happy water' (rice wine) house, a silk factory, a silkworm farm, past a floating village... lunch is delicious, dinner more so. I have to stop myself over-eating, everything tastes so good.

Silkworm cocoons

Silk

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Sinh and me at Elephant Falls

Lunch with a view

Silkworms

The roads vary from rough trails of rocks, to potholed dirt tracks, to smooth tarmac. All the while I am entranced by the reflections in the back of Spencer's helmet - scenery rushing by, being hoovered up into a vortex behind my grinning visage. When I lower my visor, there are reflections of reflections.

Sitting on the back at 60kmph, there's plenty of time to take everything in. Swathes of coffee plantations, lush greenery everywhere. As we pass through small hamlets, piglets amble across the road like stray dogs. We pass Lee and a Dutch guy several times - Less on a day trip, the latter on his way to Saigon.

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Peter and Uncle Sinh

We arrive at Lak, in a 'tourist' village - the only place where foreigners are allowed stay in homes in the highlands. It is a small peninsula jutting into Lak Lake, and we sit on the shore with a beer and watch the sunset. Simple pleasure.

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I must narrate a conversation I had with Crystal in HCMC, while discussing religion. She explained the communal view of life in China. That the view of the individual self does not matter, except in the eyes of the community. There is development nor encouragement of the sort of self-entitlement that exists in the west. It sounds like the only way a society that dense and crowded can get by, but the more I consider it, the more I prefer it. The greater good. It was something about the earnestness with which Crystal explained it.

It's most obvious in Asian road behaviour - constant flouting of the rules, but nobody gets angry. As long as the general greater good is preserved, all is well, and no horns are used in anger - zero road rage.

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The Vietnamese countenance is one of innocent vulnerability. I find it hard to see how Americans, Japanese, French, etc., all came here with a hard enough spirit to not only dominate, but try to completely obliterate these people. The children are cute nd friendly, and the women attractive. There's something innately becalming and joyful toi them, so much so that it baffles me they suffered civil war.

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Homestay is an odd term for what we did last night. I mean, we definitely stayed in a home, but zero contact with the family. Overnight we heard a neighbour's party, pigs squealing, baby crying, someone testing their ringtones, but no visibility bar the silhouettes through the dividing sheets.

When we went for breakfast, there were elephants loitering outside. At the first stop of the day, a hill overlooking the village, we could see an elephant crossing the lake. Second stop was a brick factory (at long last!). It was actually quite fascinating - from wet clay they have a giant play-doh machine that squeezes out a long brick shaped tube, which is then spliced by wires. The bricks are left to dry in the open, then in a shed, and finally they oven baked, turning them red.

We paused at a burnt out church next, and Spencer told us of the Catholic dictator Diem, and the self-immolation of Buddhist monks in 1963, protesting their lack of freedom of religion.

Two pythons next (less said the better), before a visit to a coffee plantation, and a strong blended cup. After that was the highlight of the day - a shower in a waterfall in the jungle, and a swim in a pool of the Serepok river. Amazing! Just the waterfall was a breath-taking experience, but to swim as well. Felt like I was Mowgli. Saw the Dray Sap falls then - massive, before heading on to Buôn Ma Thuột for our hotel.

Coffee berries

Me as Mowgli! With Uncle Sinh, and Seb behind

The turquoise pool is where we swam

Dray Sap Falls

Dinner of frog and more, though Nicci wasn't feeling well. Watched some footies afterwards with the lads to socialise a bit. Man U vs Everton (1-0) and Chelsea vs Arsenal (3-5). Back to the room to do nought, but hear Michael D Higgins is now President of Ireland. Happy days!