Today starts our first real day....

Okay, some background: the nonprofit, usually self-led Bicycle Adventure Tours contracted, in this case, with a commercial NZ firm, Pedaltours, to arrange the trip, and they, represented by Mr. Tim DeJong, hired the vice-president of Ecotours, Mr. Phuong, who in turned hired the support vehicles, extra guides, and other details relating specifically to Vietnam (and requiring fluency in Vietnamese). Tim's duties covered the more general responsibility of keeping track of us, maintaining the bikes and making executive decisions.

There were some other issues we needed, as guinea pigs, to work out. One was the overall scheduling and routing. It didn't take me (and anyone else with any pretensions to morning larkness, and maybe even some of the night owls) to conclude that the ideal time to ride was from when it was light enough to be safe till 11am or so, and then 3pm on (but not in the dusk or dark, as we didn't have lights, nor even blinkies) so as to avoid the worst of the heat. Vietnam is a long thin country with a north-south axis, near the tropics, and as such has one time zone and the day-to-day changes in sunrise and sunset are not as great as further north (like Michigan). In April and May, this means dawn is around 5:30, maybe six. Unfortunately, most of the hotel restaurants don't serve breakfast until 6, but much as I loved the baguettes, I think I would've been willing to start at first light and eat pho later on the road; nor was I the only person of this opinion.

Our first impression with Highway 1 left an indelible impression of diesel exhaust, heat, and honking: we rode near the city, it was mid-day, the traffic was heavy. Ugh. Try as I would to savor the experience as riding in the real Vietnam, looking at all the little storefronts (Vietnam doesn't have much in the way of megastores—yet) it got old very quickly, and I focused on grimly finishing the ride (which by the way I totally and completely failed to do, not having acclimated to the heat nor recovered sufficiently from jet lag. In fact, I would not manage to do a complete route until the last day of riding.) That desire to finish is one reason I have so few pictures. Another is that I hadn't really learned what to photograph yet.

Tim tended to load us on the buses, drive out of the city, unload us and the bikes, water us up and then send us on our way, which meant it was already hot by the time we got going, say around 9 or even 10. (City Vietnamese like to get their daily exercise out of the way early—say by 6am. Very sensible of them. Country ones still get plenty just in their day-to-day existance.)

As the tour progressed, Tim and Phuong adapted our routes so that we could ride out of town early, get swept up for lunch (as we slower ones almost inevitably were) and if we were really lucky, we could loll around on a beach for awhile during lunch, and then get bussed 20-40k out from the final destination around one. That worked out pretty well, and the diehards, like crazy Rick, could then ride the whole distance (sometimes as much as 200+kilometers.)

The routes are more of a problem, because Vietnam really has only two kinds of roads: potholed dirt tracks and highways. Okay, okay, some of unsealed roads were decently graded, but trust me, this is not an experience you want unless mounted on a fully suspended mountain bike. (Our hardtail rental bikes had front suspension, which I grew to appreciate very much.) Highway 1, with which we became intimately familiar, is the main road; it is newly and nicely paved, with one lane each way, and nice wide shoulders, on which we were theoretically to ride. Of course, sometimes those shoulders had rice drying, or motorscooter riders going the wrong way, or oxcarts, but hey, the Vietnamese aren't about to waste all that perfectly good asphalt...! And I will say, the paved roads were in good shape: the country is pouring millions into infrastructure.

Then there was the issue of hotels. I'm not positive what Tim's criteria were but I suspect private bathrooms with western-style flush toilets (i.e. with seats), hot and cold running water and air-conditioning were among them. Some of the hotels were (in my opinion at least) positively luxury resorts, such as the Victoria, to which we were headed in the pix above. Guess what? You don't find luxury resorts in the middle of nowhere. Accommodations therefore were the limiting factor that made going along little back roads impossible. Rats. I would've preferred more spartan accommodations in exchange for less-traveled roads, but then, many of the participants were in their 50s and 60s, and I think they really appreciated that air-conditioning. (Well, it does feel good, but too much messes up my heat adaptation.)

Wikipedia doesn't have much to say about culture shock, and to be honest, because we were merely on vacation (as opposed, say, attempting to make new lives for ourselves) I found adapting to climate far more stressful than the culture. One thing I have learned on the outdoor art fair circuit is surviving summer. If you're truly serious about adapting to heat and humidity, that means committing to it, or, to be brutal, giving up A/C (as much as possible), drinking lots of water (more effective than pouring it over your head), and adjusting your schedule to rhythms of the sun (getting up really early).

Next: Floating Market; or back to Cu Chi Tunnels; or return to the Vietnam index.

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Sylvus Tarn