Tam Coc Bich Dong is even better than it sounds

The swarm of tourists, cameras around necks, visors against the sun, umbrellas against the rain, and socks up to the knees beat me to the entrance. Crud. But they milled a moment, waiting for someone to tell them what to do, so I smiled and slid through them like unfamiliar street food to get in line for a ticket.

I wanted to see Tam Coc-Bích Đông and its flooded caves, but preferably without 70 gawking foreigners. Granted they’d been born closer to this place than I had, but their mass seemed inauthentic, obstructive to the sort of Vietnamese experiences I was seeking. As with all other bajillion tourists, I wanted to be the only one.

The blob of them started oozing towards the boats, but in the unfocused way of passive participants. More of that time-proven tourism technique, aggressive-with-a-smile, and I cut through their shuffling tsunami to the line of waiting skiffs.

“Xxxxzzzz” I have no idea what she said, but the efficient woman pointed me towards the first boat, followed by the two women behind me. Our rower arrived, one of the women in conical hats who’d been chatting in the shade.

In my weeks in Vietnam I’d noticed a trend. Most of the people I saw working were women. The motorbike taxis and barbers were men, but women staffed the shops, hawked in the market, poured the tea, cooked the food, and now, rowed the boats. Most afternoons I’d take a low plastic stool by the side of the street with the men. They’d smoke and play a board game, we’d all drink a beer and share smiling motions before settling in for silent camaraderie. But the work? Women did most of that.

I’m not inclined to tell anyone how to run their culture, but having this lady do all the physical labor while I sat back and relaxed? Just not how I was raised. I accompanied my words of “Can I help you row?” with more useful gestures, and a big smile erupted under the conical hat. She passed forward an oar made from a section of a bucket strapped it to a piece of PVC pipe, and I dug in.

We passed through cave after cave, sometimes leaning low under the sharp karst stalactites and jagged cave mouths. We three visitors got out to explore temples and pathways, then rejoined our hostess in boat 11.

My companions were a mother and daughter from Hanoi, but that’s as far as our gestures could take us. They found it uproarious every time I thanked them in Vietnamese. “Cảm ợn!” they’d cry after I said it, and we’d all grin at each other. (I don’t think it’s supposed to have that dot under the o, but I’m lost in Fontlandia.)

As we moved from place to place, something else became apparent. We were the jet boat superstars of Tam Coc. I don’t really know what I’m doing with an oar, but it’s not hard to fly past everyone else when they’re not helping. Boat after boat of fit young men, doing nothing. It was weird.

My mother and daughter friends loved it. “Oh yeah!” the daughter would laugh and pump her fist every time we passed another boat, especially when they’d take up oars and try to race us, splashing ineffectually before falling behind. I admit it was a bit of an ego stroke for me, but more importantly, it was just fun. My Vietnamese ladies and I, out for a cruise on the cool green waters of Tam Coc, our laughter bumping around the karst canyons.

That set the tone for my time in Ninh Binh, smiles and Vietnamese encounters. A day-trip from Hanoi, it had its tourist enclaves, but if I avoided those I’d go days without seeing another white face. (It was a great place for local kids wanting to practice English.)

Yes, Ninh Binh was my semi-secret town, discovered enough to have good, cheap hotels, but not railroaded by tourism. Just as long as Hollywood didn’t come along and film a major blockbuster action movie in its gorgeous scenery.

Dang.

New ancient beauty in Phong Nha, Vietnam

“Sure, Myanmar’s great now, but you should have seen it five years ago!” Budapest ten years ago. Prague twenty years ago. Kathmandu in the 60’s, man, that’s where it was at!

8 Lady Cave. They say it used to be better

You hear this sort of thing a lot in the travel world. Mostly fond affection and glowing nostalgia, but a handful of pessimism thrown in as rank spice (my least favorite of the Spice Girls). The idea persists that everything is gradually getting worse, paved over, trampled and bleached by an overexposure of crowds, marketing, and facebook blahblah.

I get it. I really do. But I don’t believe it. If the primary goal of travel is to widen your perspective and encounter variations of life beyond your domestic norm, then that is eternally available. And the purely physical, singularly esthetic? Is that all going down the drain? McDonald's in the Vatican, spray paint in Yosemite, and garbage everywhere else?

Yes. I mean no! Sorry, pessimism is sneaky. But the world has new beauty to show us. That’s why I rented a motorbike in Vietnam.

Phong Nha Ke-Bang National Park was added to the UNESCO list in 2003, with more of its remarkable caves found since then, particularly Thiên Ðường (Paradise) Cave in 2005 and Son Doong Cave not well-known outside the area until 2009.

I puttered on down to Eight Lady Cave first (can you blame me?) and while respecting the history and sanctity of a place where people died, as a cave it was underwhelming. More of a shallow grotto, now.

But I was happy as an albatross on my two-wheeled partner, so buzzed and swooped over to Paradise Cave. The guy at the hotel estimated I’d need an hour or so in there.

Paradise Cave entry stairs

I don’t wear a watch when I’m not working, but I doubt I was out in under three. A raised boardwalk extends a full kilometer into the cave, modest by Phong Nha standards, but it may have been the slowest, most awe-filled kilometer of my life.

So beautiful. Such an earth church. Walking in the body of the great mother, feeling hippy whether I liked it or not. Still and sacred, undisturbable, equanimity no matter how many jabbering tourists shook the walkway. Some checked their email in there, and still I felt love for all beings.

My eyes readjusted when I birthed myself out of that cave, and found it raining. A benedictory blessing of Earth by Sky, Water falling through leafy Life to land on Soil and me.

Sure, Prague was different 20 years ago, probably better. But Phong Nha wasn’t even on the map yet. So I’m excited to see what’s still in store for the open heart and grateful eyes of the traveler to come.

$3.50 changed (and risked) my life

I was in trouble. Both immediate and longer-reaching. A major part of my life had just shifted, bringing a serious challenge to the way I’d been doing things. Travel, this deep love and part of my life, might never be the same. For about $3.50

Moments like this. Local woman hacking off slivers of a
banana trunk with a machete to feed the buffalo.
How quotidian.

How many long bus rides, watching the undiscovered world out the window, seeing these unlabeled moments of interest blur past, nothing I can do, the driver’s in charge? But now, with the rubbery grip of a rented motorbike twisting its satisfying pull of kinetic energy beneath me, I was the decider. This day in Viet Nam might have changed everything. Would I be able to travel as I used to? Or would every trip have to be evaluated for its accessibility to motorbikes? And I’d need to learn about maintenance, quick.

But anchored in the present moment I had mist on my cheeks as they grinned out wide in a breeze of rice paddies and buffalo patties, the typhoon tingle of land washed for weeks, and I was moving in the world, not past it. The bajillion unknown niches of the nation all available to me, and life was good. I gave it a solid twist, opened her up, pushed that needle higher.

Felt like freedom

You already know this, but traffic laws in most of the world? Nah. In Southeast Asia? Hahaha Yeah, no. You just go. More of a vibe than a formal system, do nothing hasty, no sudden changes of velocity. And I was feeling the flow. Had been for weeks, and now with my own wheels. So I merged onto that road with just a glance at what was coming and what was ahead, cars and people, all manageable. No need for brakes.

But my stubborn American eyes just had to look one more time as I pulled onto the Ho Chi Minh Highway. To see the truck come around the corner in exactly the wrong spot, hidden from my first look but a bit too close now. I gave it more gas, accelerating to get ahead, turning back around, feeling the bike pull faster. That’s when the water buffalo stepped onto the road in front of me.

Now I could pull over for the lady
selling a head in her driveway

No sudden changes of velocity! Physics backed up the native system as my brakes slowed this wheel while combustion accelerated the other, or somesuch kinetic dilemma, and the bike went down, sliding across the pavement, taking me with it among the pretty tinkling shards of my side mirror glass.

You remember that jarred feeling. When you realize something happened? The abstract awareness that the quiet is louder because you were just listening to the crunch of collision? The idle curiosity as you assess your body for bones sticking out, glass sticking in.

REALLY never expected to post this online,
but seems a bit too perfect, taken at the very
beginning of the day. (The buffalo in question
was as big as all those mere cows put together.
I promise.)

I had none of those. Just another bike lying on its side in the maelstrom of Vietnamese motorways, palm a little scraped, mirror shattered. And a very large water buffalo showing me no interest whatsoever as the truck drove past.

I still feel that deep shift, the pull of a motorbike beneath me, tugging me into a different sort of adventure. But maybe I can take it a little slower.

You need a break

That's how I feel too, Dan

It’s all just so obvious. A couple of Trump’s nominees misled their confirmation committees, so the Democrats used what tiny power they have to delay in an effort to have their questions answered. The Republicans just change the rules to push them through, and Orrin Hatch scorns the Democrats as “pathetic” and claims Republicans never treated Obama’s nominees poorly. Hatch led the Republican refusal to even consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court. Garland being a candidate Hatch himself had previously approved of.

Hypocrisy like that deserves anger by his constituents, and laughter from the rest of us. But when I read it, I didn’t feel like laughing. Which is why it’s so obvious: I need a break. And so do you.

During this bizarre and atrocious period in America’s history, it’s important to stay informed. It’s crucial not to normalize the affronts against democracy, honor, and human decency itself. But listen to this crapcakery every day? You’re gonna lose your marbles.

Advanced Relaxation

So take a break. Two days? Deputize a friend to keep track of any particularly important stories you might miss, then you can return the favor when they take a siesta from insanity.

So as of right now, I’m going on break. Most likely until Monday. I’m going back to Vietnam. Wanna come?

I’m going back to the promenade on the Perfume River in Hue, where it was two young Vietnamese girls who asked a question I’d heard before. “Excuse me, do you speak English? Do you mind if we practice our English with you for a moment?”

Weather. The Royal Palace. Pop music and street food. We talked about everything and I was not surprised when our three became four. Then six. That’s how it went in Vietnam. On the banks of the river in Hue, or the lake in Hanoi, or a cafe in Hoi An. A shy hello that quickly led to new friends sharing an impromptu language group of laughter and human contact in the warm evening air.

My impromptu language buddies in Hue

The Vietnamese people were an inspiration. Suffering in their past, challenges in their present, and threats in their future, but they greeted me every day with smiles and welcome.

I like this vacation. I’m staying until Monday.

Hue welcomes you

Hue's Dong Ba market

So much rain. Beaded on dragon fruit, dripping off those iconic conical caps, and blending in with the wet scales of freshly caught fish waiting in baskets for today’s buyers. Markets are one of my favorite places to people-watch, and Hue was a pristine example of their beauty, stink, and chaos. I barely had to step outside my hotel to find the first of the street food stalls boiling savory soup over wood fires, around the corner to the kinesthesia of a meat market, and across the river to the biggest sprawl of traditional commerce in Hue (pronounced hwe, sorta hway).

But behind and between those market stalls were the shattered remnants of another city. Hue wasn’t treated as well as Hoi An during the Vietnam War. It’s importance in heavily disputed central Vietnam (just 43 miles from the Demilitarized Zone) ensured that both sides fought obstinately to hold the city. And when the violence of men is involved, the “hold” something is to destroy it.

The centerpiece of Hue is the Imperial City, where the Nguyen Dynasty ruled on the banks of the Perfume River. Massive rampart walls reflected in a moat where flagrant red and orange koi drifted around, waiting for food, a painter, the next dynasty, all of it with equal ichthyal patience.

Ngo Môn, the Noon Gate of Hue's Imperial Citadel

Outside bustled everyday streets with a little extra dignity, but inside the walls meditated the Imperial Citadel where the business of empire flowed down red lacquer hallways and under the upturned eaves of temples. Ponds dappled with typhoon drops, intricate carvings below ornate balustrades, and dragons guarding the rooftops. And in the center, the Forbidden Purple City, where only the emperor, his concubines, and chosen few were allowed, trespass on penalty of death.

This lady made me lunch, going under the
old arch to get me tea, smiling beautifully
(despite the blood-red stain of paan

American bombing destroyed most of those buildings. And mass graves from the Massacre of Hue by the occupying then retreating Viet Cong defiled large areas around the rest. The Tet Offensive. “Offensive” is on the right track, for all war.

But those memories have taken their place in the horde, all of it washed by the typhoon drops that fall like years to wash under the feet of Nowadays. And nowadays in Hue are good. Kids playing soccer on fields where troops once massed. Smiling women under remnant archways cooking banh canh and the various dishes perfected by the palates of emperors. And a grinning boy too shy to take a picture but too interested to look away.

The sights of Hue were beautiful. Its food clearly made an impression. But it was the people who made me love Hue the most. Violence comes through, but smiles come back. And Hue is smiling.

Things got a bit Biblical in Hoi An, Viet Nam

Nobody bombed Hoi An. North Vietnam, South Vietnam, even the Americans in their flying fortresses decided the ancient port city of the Champa Empire with its softly Southeast Asian old town and 16th century Japanese Bridge was not a place for the ugliness of war. (Or maybe they were just focused on Hue. But that can Hue-t.)

After escaping the festive plane I headed for Hoi An, which is kin to Bruges, Rothenburg, and to some extent Venice. Powerful merchant centers, all lost their influence when the tides of trade shifted elsewhere, leaving behind period pieces to be preserved by their neglect. Whoddathunk that forgetting something could make it so easy to remember?

Spared from the abrasive concrete edges and phlegmy pollution of its modernized neighbors, Hoi An is a beautiful place to walk, down streets made elegant by centuries of spice trade flowing from Indonesia up to China, ceramics shipped off to Egypt, and an amalgam of international styles that persist in the city’s impressive tailoring sector.

For long slow hours I walked the quiet ways of Hoi An, past the unintelligible slogans of bicycle vendors selling food to the locals, and the proffered meats and fried treats of those hawking snacks to foreigners. Dark alleyways with Vietnam’s delicious street food where I continued to eat all my meals on low plastic stools, a bowl of soup while kids peered at me and their parents coaxed them to break out a shy “hello.” I enjoyed Hoi An, but my experience was deeply underwritten by one other factor.

It rained. Nonstop. For days. The Old Town was underwater, streets for blocks around rising liquid to the tops of taxi tires. Flooding blocked off the section of the city the hotel map told me to see, but it didn’t take much effort to enjoy what I could reach. I figured I’d come back another time to see the sights.

Yes, I liked Hoi An. Despite the rain. Then I heard of the city’s fame for ruthlessly overcharging foreigners, its notoriously crummy museums with their inflated ticket prices, and all-around tourist gouging practices run rampant. Huh.

So thank you, typhoon whatever-it-was. With your deluge of assistance I saw a muzzled version of modern Hoi An, most of my fellow foreign friends holed up in their hotels, and the ambition of voracious vendors muted by your constant cool downpour.

Tourism is a hell of a thing to do to a country. And Vietnam’s got it bad. But it’s a veneer, a sideshow distraction of mutual exploitation, and it’s not so hard to get past. Sometimes you just have to walk two minutes away from the tourist hub (Hanoi), and sometimes a mere relentless rainfall can restore an ancient city to its fundamental character.

What Christmas means to me this year

A friend recently informed me that there is indeed a War on Christmas. “Oh yes,” she said with the utmost gravitas, “They’re making it very hard for us to celebrate it.”

North Pole swag, Hue, Vietnam

As always I sought to respect the beliefs of others and to offer compassion to those in distress. Wasn’t easy this time. Because as far as I can tell Christmas is the single most dominant and widespread cultural construct in human history. No other holiday, religious or secular, comes close to globalized Christmas. Even New Year’s, a factual necessity of having a calendar, is more diverse and scattered.

If anything Christmas is TOO dominant, having already won its war when it supplanted the midwinter festivals and traditions of the pre-Christian pagan world. I’m pretty sure Christmas can hold its own.

Okay, so sexy wardrobe malfunction
Santa is a little nontraditional...

Or can it? Has modern consumerism killed the Christmas we cherish? Depends on what Christmas means. (And who “we” are.) Does Christmas mean the birth of Jesus? It surely can. Granted, the older tradition says January 6th, but the Bible doesn’t say. It’s religion, not science, so if you say it’s the 25th of December, then that’s true for you. But as long as they don’t delete the 25th from the calendar, skip straight from 24 to 26, you’re pretty safe.

Is it giving gifts to tell your loved ones that you care about them? Another beautiful interpretation. As far as I can tell, a prohibition on buying stuff is the single most unlikely event in our human future. And since no one can tell you what spirit to give with, not much concern here either.

And if Christmas means going around saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone without caring who you’re talking to, then even if that were in danger (which I don’t believe it is) that would be a pretty shallow meaning to the holiday, wouldn’t it?

So maybe Christmas is something more abstract. Deeper. Felt but hard to articulate. That’s the one I’m feeling this mangled freeway wreckage of a year. When democracy failed on the global level and love was defeated on the personal. 2016 feels like one big dark winter right now.

What do you need in the middle of winter? Warmth, light, hope, love. A reminder that winter is a season, and as with everything in life, it passes. But even better, it’s beautiful in itself. The cold and the dark are just more facets of Beauty. It’s the other side of the “Everything shall pass” coin, take solace that the bad will pass, but appreciate the good because it is finite too.

And holy Christmas crapcakes there’s a lot of positive. The world as a whole is still a peaceful place. The human spirit still wants to do no harm, yearns to offer support, and needs to offer love. I’ve certainly got a lot of love in my life. Family and friends, old and new, so many faces of goodness at an individual level.

And loss? What do I do when I remember that this time last year I was in Holland with my lady? The lady who’s no longer mine.

I remember that to focus on the painful end is to forget the joyful entirety. What an incredible thing it is to love! And that relationships don’t always last forever doesn’t invalidate this, it only makes it stronger. What a marvelous gift to have held something so strong and so delicate, so finite yet everlasting.

I sit with that. And the faces of my loved ones. My folks in their new home. My siblings on their paths. My friends at home and abroad. Each of these is a shining point of connection and caring, spread around the world until a map looks like a star chart.

I sit with it. Like a warming fire in the middle of winter. And it feels like Christmas.

Update: nevermind, there's a War on Christmas after all. This was playing on loop. 15th time around. I cut it off before the part where baby noises take over.

Merry Christmas anyway!

It's all one world

My bus pulled up for a WC break on the way to Phuong Nha, Vietnam. A man drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany. Thousands of miles apart, but it’s all one world. And lately it feels like it’s all going to shit.

But it’s not. And Vietnam has reminded me of that.

Found these in an overgrown lot in Hue. Not on anyone's Things to See List.

When my demographic thinks “Vietnam” we think of pho (soup), Vietnamese friends, stories heard or told of travel’s beauty here. And probably those movies about someone else’s war. I arrived knowing little about it beyond what Oliver Stone told me and it’s entirely possible I could have left without learning much more.

The possibility is both troubling and beautiful. Troubling, because visitors, especially Americans, should know about what happened here during the twenty morally reprehensible years of war my country inflicted on this region in order to take away their freedom and advance our economic interests.

But beautiful because of the way the people here have talked to me about the war. 40 years is long enough to fade from America’s awareness but not to erase the memories from those who saw it firsthand. Trauma like that stays with an individual and a society, whether you fought or not, your village burned or not, your family died or not.

Yet when my bus pulled in for that bathroom break and I got to chatting with the driver in words and gestures, he communicated the same thing I’ve heard again and again in this wonderful country (if I bring it up).

Would it matter where she's from? How
she worships? No. You'd protect her too

“You say ‘I from America’ and” he made that relaxed shoulder shrug gesture of peacefulness. “No problem! America, Vietnam, friend friend! War is over. Friend friend!” He wanted me to know that even if his father was in the war, even if we were about to drive over Hien Luong Bridge that divided North and South, even if these towns watched their children die and the very land burned bare by toxins dropped without conscience, that’s in the past, and he holds no grudge. Feels no separation between us. And that’s what I’m holding on to today.

Because there are people trying to pull us apart. They are small in number and vast in influence. They want this religion to blame that religion. This nationality to hate that nationality. These people at peace to distrust those people fleeing war. Our division is their gain. Our fear is their advantage. And our misplaced antipathy is our own destruction.

Because Berlin is Phuong Nha is Damascus is San Francisco. It’s all one world. We’re all one people. And if my Vietnamese bus driver, whose father was killed by a US bomb, can pat me on the shoulder and share his food then we are brothers, no matter what came before. And my German friends, regardless of what faced our grandparents, are all family on this sad day. As are my Syrian friends, grieving kin as bombs murder the entire city of Aleppo, feeling our anger but united in hope for a better future for us all.

That's exactly it. Vietnamese kid in a New York shirt,
and it's the peace sign for everyone.

So yes, lately it feels like it’s all going to shit. And in some ways damn right it is. But then again, maybe it always feels like it’s going that way, every year’s “lately.” But the fact I cling to, the firsthand observation I trust, is that even if some other guy drove a truck into a market today, my guy drove our bus to a moment of friendship. And the latter is more common by far. The latter is the majority, the hope, and the future.

Yes it’s all one world. And no it’s not all going to shit.

Trekking in Sapa, Vietnam, and a moment anyone who's done it remembers

“Oh my god, she’s the cutest thing EVER!” cried Megan, one of the two other tourists besides myself following our local guide down the mountainside of Sapa, Vietnam. “I want to take her home!”

Su looking out over Sa Pa valley

She was talking about Su, and I knew how she felt. Something over four feet tall and with a smile that could warm up winter, Su was simultaneously an instant friend and a cultural experience. After rescuing us from the relentless souvenir sales pitches of a scrum of local women, Su led us down from Sapa to her village of Lao Chai.

Along the way she answered all our questions, about the ethnic groups (including her own Black Hmong), life in the valley, and many we hadn’t thought to ask yet. But asking how she learned to speak English so well was obvious.

Su told us about the bugs they dig
out of the bamboo, how they're
cooked, and how they taste.

“We learn from talking to tourists.” That made sense, and the people of Sapa did seem to speak much better English than the lowland Vietnamese I’d met, but given the range of her vocabulary it didn’t do justice to her hard work and initiative. I’d bet Su was particularly fluent, an impression reinforced by the silence of the two other local women who accompanied us down through the terraces where buffalo looked at us without curiosity.

Were they on the path by coincidence, to keep Su company, or were they apprentices? One carried the customary woven basket and the other had a ruthlessly adorable sleeping baby strapped to her back. Halfway to Lao Chai the baby woke up, and was quickly passed to Su.

Su peeling sugar cane for us
It's the favorite treat of the Sapa area

“He is my son,” she explained. We all cooed over the cute little fellow, who had inherited his mother’s radiant smile, and I added aunts to my list of possible statuses for the two women. We reached the village, saw the traditional rice milling devices and hand loom, and sank with sighs into our seats for lunch. That’s when it all came clear.

Arms full of scarves and shirts, hands holding an array of earrings and bracelets, the two women descended on us with calm intensity, knowing full well that we already saw them as part of our team. It was an awkward mess. On the one hand we wanted to show our respect and friendship for these women and their people, but on the other hand it was a souvenir ambush when we thought we were safe.

As with so much of life, I can’t find a clear feeling about this. I certainly can’t blame them for wanting to make a living off the wealthier visitors who swarm into their homeland every day. And a lot of what they are selling really is superior goods to what you find elsewhere, actually homemade in an age of “homemade” stamps on factory presses.

Crossing the bridge to Lao Chai,
our vendor friends close to their target

But what of the implicit deceit? The snake in the grass routine of putting you at your ease, then exploiting what you thought was friendship? But who are we to expect friendship from people for whom we have done absolutely nothing, can’t even talk to, and into whose faces we routinely thrust our foreign cameras?

I had it easier than the other two, since women are subject to a much wider array of articles. Once I had a couple ribbon bracelet thingies they left me alone. Alone, a tourist, a resource milked, a visitor whose entrance price had been settled.

Lunch was good. Su was still incredible. And the rest of the walk only got better.

Hanoi is many things, let's start with the loudest

Hanoi is of course many things, but one seems like a logical place to start. And nevermind that two come to mind first. So we’ll begin with the primary denizens of the city, filling its streets like those industrious ants, buzzing through its byways fit to put the flies to shame. Even when they’re still, they line the sidewalks like ribs, or cluster in alleys that no one else needed.

Everybody has one. The humans that coexist with them. Or at least, every family has one, both kids held in mother’s arms while dad steers, and she’s not tense, it’s just too everyday for that. Because you have to take the scooter. Everybody does. Drives. Walking is a precarious dare, in among the handlebar horde, since didn’t I already warn you that everybody drives? It’s a feedback loop, 49 cc’s of inevitability.

I smile more these years after giving up on auto ownership, but on those times when I have to pilot one of the things, or more precisely when I have to park one, I wonder at the foolishness of people owning four-wheeled transport in San Francisco. Everyone should just have a scooter. You can fit so many more, scoot so much quicker, and get much better mileage. And you’re out IN the world, not hidden from it!

Why, how do you deliver dishware?

So while I love walking the streets of a new city for hours at a time, in Asia I always make it a point to catch a scooter ride somewhere. Rickshaw? Tourist gimmick. Scooter? Cultural interaction.

“Have you noticed how many Mercedes there are here?” my Vietnamese friend asked me yesterday. I hadn’t, but that seemed impolite. So instead I asked something I’d been wondering.

“Speaking of expensive cars, back home I’ve learned that BMW drivers are more likely to be assholes,” I haven’t seen any Priuses so didn’t need to include them, “Is that true here too?”

My friend scoffed. “Anyone in a four-wheel is an asshole here.”

Seemed true, on yesterday’s walk that took me along Hoan Kiem lake, past the Opera House, and through byways and backstreets until I caught a bus in front of the Soviet Friendship Hospital. (Because that’s a thing.)

Sorry about the blur, but you can still see his method, no?

So after dinner, somewhere off my map, I grabbed a scooter taxi guy dude thing. I don’t know if they have uber/Lyft here, but I’ve seen plenty of Grab Bike guys in their uniform green jackets and helmets. He handed me his spare, which perched on top of my massive cranium, squeezing a headache in but that’s the price you pay, along with about $1.00 to cross the city.

Taking photos while riding?
The things I do for you people. ;)

Motorcycles technically have their own lane here, a great idea, but traffic is a fluid concept, lane lines and red lights whizzing past all around like so much decoration as we squeezed between trucks and two-wheeled clusters, wrapped a roundabout and dodged the people going the wrong way. It’s another of those times when you just have to sit back, relax, and wait to see if you make it.

I did. Home, to another day, and tonight, I’ll head to another place. 300+ kilometers away, I think I’ll pass on the scooter this time. My overnight train is out there somewhere, waiting for me...