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(photos by bee dietz) |
Our last day of cycling looked like a piece of cake, and that's what it turned out to be. We rode a couple of blocks out to the main highway, and turned left into the far bike lane. It was pretty much flat the whole distance. There was still a bit of countryside along the way; cemeteries for the war dead, and some industrial plants (Ford, Wonderful Foods Co.,LG Electrical). And some more odd sights along the road, such as women bicycling with long ballroom gloves.
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This little piggy's
going to the market. More air compressors in the bike shops, rather than hand pumps. Modern gas stations with names like "Caltex" "Petrolimex" and "Pemex." Motorized band saws cutting stripped logs; some woodworking as well, though we were to see more of that in the city.
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As we drew closer to the capital city, the stretches of row houses got longer and longer. I also sensed a little more disapproval about our attire. Despite the tropical heat, Vietnamese are not inclined to shorts, and biking shorts in particular are regarded as bizarre. In the countryside, we were truly strangers, and our eccentricities were easily forgiven as harmless and amusing. But standards seemed to be different in the metropolitan area where westerners were seen all the time. One rider on a motorbike pulled up next to me and shook his head disapprovingly, though he was smiling at the same time. Johnny told me at one stop that a very chatty queen rode along with him for awhile, curious about the tour and where we would be staying in Hanoi. Could it have been the shorts? I didn't know, and probably wasn't going to find out, because I had planned ahead and worn convertible shorts. Somewhere around halfway I zipped on the pant legs and became a perfectly acceptable foreigner. In fact, we weren't even a particularly big deal any more, though we could still elicit a mild look of surprise when we cruised past someone pushing a cart or riding the standard 3-speed bike. I was counting down the kilometers, doing the conversion to miles in my head, when we came to the van at an intersection. After waiting for everyone to bunch up, we took a left and were almost immediately in the city suburbs. The streets were narrower here, defined by curbs and sidewalks. A little older too, with trees softening the man-made geometries of planes and right angles.
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The banner glowsm --
red blood, the gold of flowers;
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We paused again to gather ourselves along a railroad siding, and the launched ourselves towards Hanoi on the walkway along the railroad bridge that carried us over two branches of the Red River (Song Ha) and into the eastside of the city. This was the old Long Bien bridge, which is only open to nonmotorized traffic now that the newer Chuong Duong Bridge has been erected a third of a mile downstream.
The Long Bien bridge was said to have been a frequent target of air attacks during the Vietnam War, but I can't say that I saw any signs of repair work or patches. (Of course, I can't say that I'm particularly observant, either.) As we approached the far banks of the Song Ha, we looked down on shanties scattered amongst the thickets of bamboo. This was clearly the low-rent district, without electricity or running water. We turned left onto a heavily-trafficed boulevard that runs north-south along the river. It didn't have the feel of a riverside drive, though, because the shantytown lay between. Within two or three blocks we got off of this bustling thorough fare and into the slower streets, these well-shaded and enjoying a quieter pace of life. The corridor seemed to be devoted to wood working, as we saw cabinets and chests-of-drawers in various stages of construction, with the finished products as well. The Dien Luc hotel was not far at all, and I was delighted to see a poster ad for Coronet ice cream next to the open air cafe. My last ice cream had been in Hong Kong; perhaps the amenity that I had missed the most. That evening, waiting in the lobby before boarding the bus to the restaurant, Jackie and the other women folk discovered several miracle products being sold at the gift counter. The armpit whitening cream and the nipple rouge piqued the most interest. "If I had known that this is what men wanted, it would have been much easier," Jackie exclaimed, as she gathered up the armpit whiteners to use as Xmas stocking stuffers. We were trundled off through a maze of streets and deposited without warning on the sidewalk in front of a modest little resturant in the middle of the block. It was modestly elegant inside; we were quickly (and wisely) ushered up to a private room on the second floor. The usual procession of dishes began. It was driving me crazy that they brought the fish and meats out in several courses before the rice. But, on the whole, I was being well-taken care of as a vegetarian, with at least one special dish a night. Richard, who was referred to as "weeds and seeds" also got a few specials until he became an apostate to the cause. Bee, on the other hand, was proclaiming that she might become a vegetarian after seeing one of the pigs strapped on a motorbike on its way to market, with "his eyes pleading." And where were the Buddhists in all of this? I wondered. There wasn't much evidence of the spiritual tradition. In Hanoi, it seemed to be the same old story -- those who had wealth tried to enjoy it as conspicuously as possible. The only difference was who the wealthy were this time around.
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The evening concluded with Johnny and Richard presenting a spontaneous "talk show" on camera with one of their newly-acquired Vietnamese flags as a backdrop. I promised them that I'd be sending pictures of Comrade Jenning down to Glenwood when Johnny next stands for reelection to the city council. Someone noticed that the wait staff seemed to be offended or at least nervous about our hijinks with the flag, and the talk turned to the next day's scheduled visit to the War Museum. At one point, we even posed the question to Zhi Wei -- did he think we could behave? Fortunately, we didn't force him to answer that one.
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After dinner, Charles, Jackie, and I found our way to a cybercafe, no thanks to our guide's vaguely allusive directions that petered out several blocks in the wrong direction. But Charles found a different listing in his guide book, and we had soon found our home for the rest of the evening in the "Love Planet," a wonderfully eccentric shop run by a Westerner of uncertain national origin. The computers were upstairs, but on the first floor the proprietor had lined up an odd collection of books, running the gamut from paperback science fiction to some obscure but interesting books about Indochina and neighboring countries. I would have scooped up a few, but the catch was that they weren't for sale -- you could only swap them for whichever books you had just finished reading along the way.
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