Nhat Ky Xe means “Motorcycle Diary” in Vietnamese. I will post my journal from the 12 day adventure in the mountains of northern Vietnam in chunks over the next few days. This is the first installment.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 1: Hanoi -> Muong Village Approx. 60km

As of this morning, our departure date & time were still up in there air. I called Hiep before lunch and he said he was ready to go, so we met up and walked to a motorbike rental place Michael had found a couple days ago. The bikes are owned by an old, nervous Vietnamese lady. She was (rightfully) very suspicous of us and needed to be assured that we were not going to take the bikes far from Hanoi; leaving the province was out of the question! Hiep helped smooth things over and we took the bikes after leaving Michael’s passport and a $10 deposit.

We were each now equipped with a fearsome, rugged, mountain-eating beast. 100cc’s of pure muscle. A few days of back-breaking unpaved mountain trails? Piece of cake.

Hiep has been on many trips through the north and knows the roads well. He promised us that our mighty Honda Wave Alphas would carry us gracefully along the main highways as far as Sa Pa in Lao Cai province. The roads east from there, however, would require a “real” bike like the mighty Minsk. Our initial plan then was to drive with Hiep for the first 2 days until Mai Chau, when he would return to Hanoi and we would continue to Sa Pa over 5 more days, then take the train home from Lao Cai. Plans change.

We drove west out of Hanoi toward a small Muong village where we were to spend the night. On the way we stopped at a large indoor public swimming pool and had a swim, enjoying the you’re-not-from-around-here attention we would get used to over the next few days. We rode slowly all afternoon, taking in the scenery and trying to learn the finer points of Vietnamese traffic law. I learned that there are no finer points of Vietnamese traffic law. Yield to anything larger than yourself (everything), honk your horn at anything with ears (and everything else, too), and try not to die. Easy.

The village (the name of which no one could come up with) is only about 60km from Hanoi. It is home to a few hundred Muong people who have become nearly indistinguishable from the Vietnamese in recent years. The Muong language is close enough to Vietnamese for them to understand eachother when speaking slowly, but most of the Muong speak Vietnamese anyway so its no problem. When we showed up, they recognized Hiep and helped us bring our things into one of the stilt houses overlooking the rice fields. We enjoyed some tea while one of the women prepared a space for us to sleep and relax. When she was done, she asked if chicken would be alright for dinner. Sure! So she went right out front, killed a chicken and cooked up a huge delicious meal for us.

A few other villagers showed up soon with beer, xeo (rice wine) and a bamboo bong (for tobacco). With Hiep translating, we were able to actually converse with eachother, except for the one guy who was deaf and dumb. He did pretty well with squeeky bird noises and arm waving, though. It went along nicely like this for a couple hours…

Michael doesn’t drink alcohol at all and our hosts just couldn’t understand this. Every time they poured a round they filled his glass so Hiep and I had to pick up the slack. I may have been able to handle drinking my own share, but the extra bia and xeo sealed my fate: puking into the rice field out the window at the end of the evening. Everyone else found it hilarious. In the morning, everyone that saw me laughed and made barfing noises; word travels pretty fast in a small village. I apologized to everyone, but Hiep told me they loved me for it. I think it was their plan all along.

I arrived at one of Hanoi’s main bus stations at 5:30am in a deleriously tired state. The expected moto driver feeding frenzy ensued, and I ended up at the Real Darling Cafe on Pho Hang Quat just as the sun was coming up to get myself a bed in their dormitory.

I’ve been wandering about the city for the past few days on foot and a rented bicycle. Compared to Saigon, it feels like a small town. In the old quarter, where I’m staying, all of the streets are named after what kind of shops it has (or used to have). Pho Hang Quat, for example, is “Fan street.” There are dozens of streets featuring all sorts of crazy stuff from bamboo rafts to joss (paper replicas of money and valuable items for offerings). Here’s a nice history of the old quarter.

In addition to the merchandise streets, there are tons of streets outside of the old quarter that each specialize in a specific dish. Hanoi is famous throughout Vietnam for its great food and I can see why. The holy culinary masterpiece of pho was invented in Hanoi. Im in heaven.

The other day I was riding around on my bicycle, completely lost. I was in no hurry to try and find out where I was, but I was growing hungry. I spotted a street full of food stalls with identical signs. They were all barbequeing some kind of meat on a stick; it smelled delicious. I parked my bike next to a table, sat down and made the international gesture for “food please.” I recognized one word on the signs: “Ga,” which means chicken, so I figured thats what I would get.

In a minute, a plate of 6 giant barbequed chicken feet landed in front of me. They had large talons. I’ve had chicken feet before, in Hong Kong, but never barbequed like this. I don’t care for them done Chinese-style (boiled) so my expectations were low this time around. Chicken feet are quite a lot of work to eat considering how little meat you get from them. The best technique seems to be biting off a finger at a time and spitting out the small bones as you eat the cartilage and skin around them. The process is sort of like giving a pedicure with your mouth. To a chicken.

These chicken feet are absolutely delicious. The spicy-sweet sauce and crispy skin puts them in an entirely different category than the bland, rubbery chinese variety. It took me almost 30 minutes to eat all of them, but it was well worth it. I also managed to order a side of sweet-spicy toasted bread by pointing at another table. Another successful weirdmeat adventure! Hanoi also has a famous street of dog restaurants, which I’ll be visiting sometime soon.

Last night at the ever-popular “Bia Hoi Junction” (a busy intersection with bia hoi places on every corner) I met Hiep, a fellow world-traveler who currently lives in Hanoi. We stayed up talking and drinking until 3am. He is full of really good tips and advice about exploring Vietnam and inspired me to cancel the tour of Halong Bay that I had booked yesterday in favor of doing it by myself. Tomorrow I’ll take a local bus to Cat Ba, try to get onto a boat, do some kayaking and snorkeling for a few days, and then head back to Hanoi. Next weekend I’ll rent a motorcycle and go along with Hiep into the mountains in the north for a few days of serious adventuring.

Dong Hoi is not a big destination for foreign tourists, but its huge among Vietnamese. I was impressed by the beautiful beach (a long white sandbar across the mouth of a river capped with palm trees) and was glad to find an avalanche of bia hoi places.

Upon arriving I found a decent hotel for the night and soon learned that one of Dong Hoi’s main attractions are some enormous caves about 55km away near the village of Son Trach. I slept early with plans to catch a moto to Son Trach in the morning.

I found a nice driver who agreed to do the round-trip journey with me. After the ass-numbing hour-long motorbike ride through the beautiful countryside I managed to get in on a Vietnamese tour group’s shared boat to the caves.

Phong Nha cave is a UNESCO world heritage site and so there are rules to keep visitors from doing things like smoking, littering and vandalising them. But, this is Vietnam after all… I guess there aren’t enough environmentally conscious westerners visiting the caves to keep things in line - I didn’t see a single other non-Vietnamese tourist the whole day.

The caves are incredible. Massive caverns with limestone formations the size of large buildings, dramatically lit with colored lights. I was warned by some other travelers that the lights make the cave a bit kitchy and cheesy, but I thought it was tastefully done. Without the lights you wouldn’t be able to appreciate the size of the cave, anyway.

After the tour, I checked out of my hotel and got on a local bus for a sleepless 12-hour journey to Hanoi.

During the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945, Hue served as the capitol of Vietnam. In and around the city are plenty of famous palaces, tombs and pagodas, including the forbidden purple city at the center of the Hue citadel.

I spent a day exploring the citadel on foot in the insanely hot mid-day sun, and another day in a boat on the perfume river to visit some of the old palaces and tombs. I haven’t been able to upload any photos in a while but I’ll write a little bit about the specific places I visited around Hue when I finally do. It was the standard tourist routine. Wikipedia knows what I’m talkin’ about.

For my last day in town I booked a tour of the former DMZ (de-militarized zone - a very ironic name considering that it became one of the most militarized zones in history) which marked the border between north and south Vietnam. I checked out of my hotel in the morning and took my big pack along with me on the bus. My plan was to find a new place to stay when i returned to Hue in the evening, but it didn’t play out that way…

The tour ended up being far worse than I expected. It was the standard tourist-bus routine with a guide who did little explaining and was very brief when answering questions. We stopped at a few notable places along highways 1 and 9, including the Khe San “firebase”. It certainly was educational, but, as I expected, everything on display was presented with a sharp anti-American slant.

After a stop at the Vinh Moc tunnels I was pretty tired of the “tour” so I pulled out my map and asked the guide where we were: Highway 1, about 20 km north of the DMZ. I politely asked the driver to stop the bus, asked which way was north, and hopped off with my backpack.

In the middle of nowhere.

I surveyed the situation: some uniformed workers doing landscaping work along the road, a com shack at a fork in the road a few hundred meters away, and nothing else all the way to the horizon. I do know, though, that highway 1 is the main route for buses of all types traveling along the cost toward Hanoi, and the map showed that the next major stop is Dong Hoi. Whenever I ride a local bus in Vietnam, people are constantly flagging it down and climbing in so I figured I could do the same and make my way to Dong Hoi.

I started chatting trading broken english and gesturing with one of the workers. I think I managed to communicate that I was waiting for a bus to Dong Hoi; He gave me the crazy eye and went back to digging up brush down the road. I waited only 15 minutes or so before a bus bound for Dong Hoi appeared. I flagged it down and asked how much the driver wanted. We haggled for a minute over the fare, but he seemed set on the riddiculous figure of 200,000 dong (about $12).

One thing I’ve learned about the art of haggling is that you have to make it seem like you don’t really need whatever it is you’re trying to buy. The problem was that I really needed to get on that bus. In a rather ballsy maneuver I threw up my arms, smiled, and told him to leave me alone as I started walking away. The bus took off, but, just as I was starting to regret my decision, it stopped again. The driver ran back to me and let me on. I paid 10,000 dong for the hour-long ride to Dong Hoi.

I only spent one hour in Danang. At the bus station.

The touts in Vietnam are a hard-working bunch. When I ride local buses, I’m usually the only foreigner onboard. Approaching a bus station like this always creates such a hoopla that its usually the best part of the ride.

It starts a few blocks away from the station. One of them will spot me looking out the window and start tailing the bus on his motorbike. A couple blocks later and there’s a swarm - 6 or 7 - competing for my attention. The more I try to ignore them the crazier they get. Some of them even hang onto the side of the bus, flying towards either oncoming traffic on the left side or the food carts on the right while they shout at me through the window.

Then the bus pulls into the station and the madness begins. I’m almost always asked to ride in the back with my bags so the moto drivers whip themselves into a frenzy while they wait for the rest of the passengers to disembark. I try to take my time as well.

Stepping off the bus is like jumping into a tank of piranhas. Normally I just set my sights on the table of a nearby pho or com place and let them devour eachother while I enjoy a slow meal. I was in the mood for some goofy fun today, though.

As soon as they started grabbing, pinching and yelling I started giving it right back to them. I pinched the pinchers, grabbed the grabbers and laughed and yelled along with the more obnoxious ones. I thought maybe this would dissolve the crowd, but instead everyone around took notice and came over to watch the nutty foreigner go crazy in the street. Everyone was laughing - at least the first set of moto drivers seemed to get the joke - so I just kept up the performance, and so did they. I jumped, poked and danced around with them for a couple minutes until I was all sweaty and then finally gave it up. Everyone had one last hearty laugh, and a couple of the drivers even sat down with me while I had some water. I told them I was from France.

I left Nha Trang for Hoi An on one of the ubiquitous “Open Tour” buses. These buses are by far the cheapest way to get around the country - so cheap that its hard to see how they can make any money on the fares alone. Actually, I don’t think they do. Instead, the buses - which are normally full of tourists, not vietnamese - deliver passengers to certain hotels at their destination cities and collect a commission on each person that books a room. The whole ordeal is just so typically … Vietnamese. Its easy enough to collect your bags and walk off to find your own inevitably cheaper accomodation, but I was surprised at the amount of people who played right into it and took a room. Maybe it was the sleepless, bumpy 14-hour ride that drained their motivation to lug their bags around town in the sun…

Anyway, I hopped off the bus, rented a bicycle and took to exploring the streets. I found myself a decent room in town and continued exploring. I managed to stay awake for the rest of the day riding around.

The next day I met Thong, a local tour guide who does multi-day trips through the highlands. We worked out a good deal for a day-trip to the Cham ruins at My Son the next day. He woke me up at 5am the next morning and took me out to My Son before the first fleet of tour buses arrive. After a quick ride into the site in an old US Army jeep, I walked around the ruins alone. The experience was much different than visiting the temples of Angkor - these Cham ruins are not only older but less effort has been put into maintaining them over the years. They’ve seen looting from Khmers, Chinese and Vietnamese people over the past 1000+ years and suffered significant damage from American bombs during the war. After I explored the ruins Thong took me on a ride through the countryside around My Son.

I hung out in Hoi An for another couple days to have some more clothes made. If I had known how much better and cheaper the tailors in Hoi An are than in Bangkok, I never would have had those first two suits made there! I had two shirts, a hat, 2 pairs of pants, a pair of shorts and a full suit made for a total of $60. I even returned for 3 fittings on some of the items and wasn’t asked to pay anything until it was all perfect. I was disappointed, though, that no one wanted to try making me a ninjahood. I sent it all home along with my broken iPod and some paintings. It should arrive in LA sometime in October!

I stopped in Nha Trang to spend a few days sitting in the sun while I waited for my visa extension to go through (I’ve decided to stay in Vietnam another month). Nha Trang Beach is really nice and the weather was perfect - I spent most of my time relaxing on the sand, reading books.

One afternoon I ran into Glen, someone I met in Franz Josef, New Zealand a few months ago. We exchanged stories about our recent travels - Glen was in India for most of the time and is now touring Vietnam on his way home to Ireland after being away for more than 2 years. Small world!

One day I hired a moto driver to take me out to some nearby Cham ruins (No Pagar Cham) and an old pagoda, and I spent another day doing a couple fun dives near some islands off the coast. The city is pretty touristy so it didn’t stand out as one of the best stops so far. Still, I’ve got no complaints about having a few quiet days on the beach…

I ended up staying in Da Lat quite a bit longer than I had originally planned - 6 days in total. Da Lat is a fairly large town up in the mountains of the central highlands, and thus has a much cooler climate. Its a very relaxed, sleepy place. Its also one the very few places in all of Vietnam that saw almost no fighting during any of the wars over the past century.

Before the French occupied the country, Da Lat was nothing more than a tiny village of montagnards. Only over the last few decades has the town developed into a college town / popular vacation spot for Vietnamese. The French built universities and elaborate homes in the area in order to avoid the harsh heat of the south.

Surrounding Da Lat are tons of waterfalls, mountain pagodas, montagnard villages and scenic roads. My first plan was to rent a motorbike and take off exploring by myself, but I ran into a nice driver who offered to take me around all day for what I would be paying to do it by myself.

Vinh turned out to be a great guide. He took me to several waterfalls, some temples, the “chicken village” (named for its giant concrete chicken statue), and a handful of landmarks around town. The sights were great and it was a beautiful day, but the best part was talking with Vinh about the war. I had just finished The Girl in the Picture the night before. Its the story surrounding one of the most famous photographs from the Vietnam War, of Kim Phuc running down the highway after being burned during a botched napalm bombing. The photo was taken just outside the city of Tay Ninh in southern Vietnam near a small village called Trang Bang. Just the week before, I rode the bus over that very same stretch of road on my way to visit the Cao Dai Holy See near Tay Ninh.

As it turns out, Vinh was born in Tay Ninh and served as a soldier in the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) in the area during the war. At 19 he had to give up his life as a student of mathematics and joined the army. He knew the photograph well and the general story behind it, and shared a few other tragic stories. He spoke english well and answered my questions very openly - I learned a lot.

During the rest of my time I hung out with my new friend Kieu, watched plenty of World Cup games, read 3 books and ate lots of strange food. I’m now in Nha Trang…

After realizing that I had already spent a week in Ho Chi Minh City, I decided to make one last day-trip and then continue on northward to Dalat. On advice from some fellow travelers I booked a cheap half-day excursion to Tay Ninh and Cu Chi to visit the Cao Dai Holy See and the Cu Chi tunnels.

The first stop was the Cao Dai Great Temple (Cao Dai Holy See) in Tay Ninh province to witness the daily 12:00pm ceremony. The Cao Dai faith is something unique to Vietnam and like nothing I’ve ever heard of. Here are some quoted paragraphs from OffTheRails.com (which is in turn quoted from an issue of Giant Robot magazine):

The Divine Eye gazes unblinkingly from the enormous globe on the altar. Twenty-eight dragon-encrusted columns, representing the twenty-eight manifestations of the Buddha, run the entire length of the immense chamber. The temple’s enormous windows, all emblazoned with the Eye, let in the muted sunlight. Lao Tze, the Sakyamoni Buddha, and Confucius share the stage with Jesus Christ on the fronton above the altar. The Great Divine Temple, epicenter of the Cao Dai religion, is unlike any other house of worship in the world. Cao Daism was founded in southern Viet Nam in 1926 and claims six million adherents. Cao Dai temples dot the Mekong Delta, but the faith’s world headquarters is the Holy See compound which lies just outside the Vietnamese city of Tay Ninh, about two hours northwest of Saigon, near the Cambodian border. A full appreciation of the temple requires some knowledge of the Cao Dai religion. While many other religions are insular, Caodaism trumpets its foundations in other faiths. Caodaists describe their religion as the unification of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism: These faiths are represented in Cao Dai theology through such concepts as reincarnation, vegetarianism and yin and yang and also on the Cao Dai banner - a tri-colour with one colour for each religion. Cao Daism garners inspiration from farther afield as well: Striding a spire high on the temple’s roof is the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Krishna. A mural inside the temple commemorates French novelist Victor Hugo, Chinese Nationalist Party leader Sun Yat Sen and Vietnamese poet Trang Trinh as three saints, witnesses to the 3rd alliance between God and humanity. And while Cao Dai theology is largely Eastern, the hierarchy is clearly Western: The organizational structure closely mirrors the Catholic Church, with bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and a Pope.

If you’re interested, googling “Cao Dai Religion” turns up several nice articles about Caodaism.

We arrived just before noon and had some time to walk around the outside of the temple and then get settled inside for the start of the ceremony. Although those who practice Cao Dai normally refuse to be photographed during worship, the upper balcony of the temple is open to tourists and their cameras - and the temple is now one of the major tourist attractions of the region. At 12:00 sharp, the congregation of white-robed worshippers filed into the main hall and seated themselves on the floor in an organized pattern, grouped according to sex and rank. The hall is “stepped” in nine levels, representing the nine main levels of rank within the church. At the moment, none of the priests are qualified to replace Cao Dai’s first and only pope who died in Cambodia (where his body still remains) so there are a set of empty seats nearest the altar on the ninth level. Upstairs, a choir of young singers and musicians play and chant the Cao Dai prayers in an eerie continuous flow while the people below sing along in lower tones. The acoustics of the temple create a hypnotizing and beautiful sound.

After the ceremony I got back on the bus and rode to Cu Chi. Cu Chi is the province made famous during the Vietnam war as a Viet Cong stronghold which helped Ho Chi Minh’s soldiers fight off the Americans who otherwise occupied most of the south. The secret to their success was an elaborate network of tunnels, some of which were left over from the earlier war against the French. At the height of the war, hundreds of soldiers were living underground in the middle of enemy territory in some 200km of tunnels. One of the US bases in the region was unknowingly built right on top of an old set of tunnels, which the VC used to gather intelligence and launch devastating surprise attacks. The more elaborate parts of the tunnel network were 3 levels deep and even had underground hospitals, kitchens, bunkers and meeting rooms.

Visiting the tunnels nowadays means a trip to one of the most blatant tourist-traps in Vietnam. The most enjoyable part of the otherwise horribly kitchy tour was the introductory propoganda film, produced in Hanoi by the VC during the war. My camera’s batteries had died while shooting a ton of photos at the Cao Dai temple, but there werent too many inspiring photo-ops anyway.

During the tour I was hanging out with a lovely couple from Australia (originally Poland). Since my chef friend had bailed out on our plans to meet up for a big meal the other day, I invited them to join me for dinner. I called up the chef guy to get the address and after the tour we walked out to the restaurant (Au Pagolac in District 1). Their specialty is a 7-course affair called “7-ways beef” so we ordered enough of that for everyone. It turned out to be an amazing meal, and even better than the food was sitting, drinking and talking with Eva and Ted for a while afterwards. They gave tons of great advice about visiting Poland which is one of my planned stops in Europe (when I finally get there…)

Back in Ho Chi Minh City now… It’s nice to be back on the tourist-trail for a change! The bia hoi places are always full of other backpackers and theres plenty of things to see and do. I’ve been spending my days exploring the city on foot, cyclo and moto and my nights making friends over bia hoi.

A few days ago I hired a cyclo driver to take me around Cholon, the chinatown district of HCMC.

A sidenote: most people that live here in the south refer to the city by its old name, Saigon. It’s official name is Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) - Saigon is technically only the name of district 1.

Tho (the driver) spoke very good English and I learned quite a bit from him about the recent history of Vietnam. He fought alongside the Americans during the war, but when the south was “liberated” he lost his right to live legally in HCMC (his home) just like most south vietnamese soldiers who survived the war. Now the only way he knows to make a living is by operating as a freelance tour-guide with his cyclo. He was very pro-America and excited to show me around; He told lots of stories and took me to some places I would never have known about otherwise. The last stop on the tour was the War Remnants Museum, which presented the complete opposite view on the American War (its only the “Vietnam War” to us). There were several exhibitions of photographs, a short film and displays of various weapons. The underlying theme of everything there, though, was to put America and its agenda during the war in a bad light. It was a very good visit just to be able to hear both sides of the propaganda machine.

I also paid a visit to the Fine Arts Museum and ended up liking the tiles far more than the art:

The food is a major highlight of Saigon as well! I’m adding another layer to my noodle-soup obsession with pho bo and hu tiu… Last night I met a Vietnamese chef who lives in San Diego and is spending a few months here as a student at a Vietnamese culinary school before he plans to open his own restaurant back home. He gave me a very detailed recipe for pho, including the chinese names of the 6 spices and cuts of beef involved so I can buy them in any city with a proper chinatown (SF!). Later on this evening I’ll be joining him for a 7-course gourmet meal at his friend’s restaurant… I’ll bring my camera.

I’ve posted some videos to show how insane the traffic is here on YouTube. Here’s a link.