Day 17 - 650km until Hanoi | The World Is Full of Wonder I had to pry myself from Phong Nha today - Ive fallen in love with it the same way I fell for Moab, to the point where I want it in my bones, my blood, my soul. The friends I have made there are amazing, the land is full of beauty and secrets, and twice now in the last two days I have been riding and just broken into tears (MANLY TEARS) at how beautiful it all was. But alas, I have seven days left on my visa and Ha along and Hanoi are still on the itinerary. But this is not the end - right before I left, I met with the owner and manager of a local farmstay, who offered me a job as a resident musician in Phong Nha! Ill be back in May, this time for months! Ive ridden almost 400km today on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, dashing headlong for Ha Long Bay. North-Central Vietnam doesnt have much in the guidebooks, but the ride has been magical - glorious mountain passes, unbelievably blue rivers surreal and fluorescent with the calcium carbonate from unearthly beautiful limestone mountains, and get this - HERDS OF ALBINO WATER BUFFALO. WEIRD. THEY LOOK LIKE COW SHAPED PIGS. A spectacle occurred in the afternoon just about at sunset when I stopped to take a picture of some particularly picturesque water buffalo - seeing me, the farmer beckoned me over and let me walk the buffalo around, and then told me to hop on. The buffalo is clearly having none of this, and right after I manage to get on its back it breaks into a full gallop, careening towards the road and all I can see are its massive horns bouncing in front of me as it crashes towards another buffalo. Right before we have a buffalo-on-buffalo collision, it breaks left and I jump off of it, landing on my feet and barely missing the second one. Meanwhile, all ten of the villagers hanging out in the field are pissing themselves laughing, and on the road a crowd of kids on bicycles has gathered to watch me act a fool, so now Ive basically got an entire village gawking at me. What a world. Luckily I handed my camera to the farmer so I have pics! But no wifi. Those will come later. As long as were on the topic of buffalo, did you know that the sentence Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is grammatically sound and 100% proper English? It sure the crap is! Thats all for today - Im about to fall asleep on a traditional Vietnamese bed, basically just a giant slab of wood in a restaurant dining room, generously provided by an owner who speaks Chinese (it is SUCH a relief to be able to have a real conversation!) when I took shelter under his awning after a thunderstorm overtook me with shocking alacrity just after sunset. Im sharing the bed with a goofy Vietnamese dude who has very Vietnamese ideas about personal space, but beggars cant be choosers, I suppose. Good night moon, good night world. I cant wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 16:35:29 +0000
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