Can Gio or Can't Ya?

Can Gio (to pronounce it you have to say "yuh" like a retarded Looney-Tunes villain), the closest patch of green space to Ho Chi Minh city, is still pretty far away. Still, I risked taking my electric bike. Big mistake. The one road I needed to get there was one-way, so there are more turns than I was prepared for. I got lost for about a half-hour, and after less than two hours I ran out of juice and had to pedal the entire way home.

But I had a few more days off, so I swiped Jenny's motorbike for another go at it. The journey was made more adventurous by Jenny's mom imploring me not to go for fear of bandits. But, the 1.5 hour drive to the ferry was pretty uneventful.

Here we are herded like cattle while we wait for the ferry.

The ferries are pretty big hulks, taking on trucks and city buses as well as cramming as many motorbikes as possible.

After only a 5-10 minute journey we approach the hovels of Can Gio.

It is quite a beautiful drive, though on a gravel road. I can't say I'd want to live in one of these makeshift huts, but it would be nice to camp out here for a while.

After a couple of bridges the scenery changes dramatically to a huge mangrove forest. It's just what the city needs--mangroves purify the air and water. They also trap sediment, eventually creating islets where other trees and plants grow. They serve as natural erosion and typhoon barriers. The waterways shelter countless fish and attract lots of birdlife--at least I hoped.

There were lots of black-capped kingfishers, birds that do not venture into the city.

Bird watching has many occupational hazards, steamrollers were a new one for me. There was one rambling steamroller every 50 meters, so every time I stopped to look at a shrike or kingfisher I had to park between them. Maybe the roads are unpaved so they can provide jobs--might as well let them lounge in a steamroller than a hammock, or whatever the proverb is.

"Life on your own" sounds nice, coming from the city. But the resorts are so far removed I never saw them, just the murderous coaches plowing through the tiny village streets.

As I feared from checking out the map, there are no trails through the mangroves or anywhere to pull off the road. There were thousands of little blue crabs with red fiddle arms and mudskippers waving their fins at each-other, but there were no birds by the roads, possibly because of all the noisy steamrollers. I passed by this, but there isn't much English on the signs to tell if it is visitor-friendly. Anyway, it was national siesta time and no one was home.

With perfect timing, I pulled into the village of Can Gio with a flat. Had to wheel my bike around until I found a sua xe who was awake enough to do 15 minutes worth of work. Fortunately, two patches only cost 15,000 dong.

Tourist trap, government building or spaceship?

The village is very quaint, with rice paddies, schools with kids on bikes pouring out of them and not much in between.

The "beach" is very hard to find. I squeezed through a driveway to get it but there was no place to park. Anyway it's more like a mud-flat, and with only a few Kentish Plovers stuffing themselves on the plentiful invertebrates I pushed on. In fact, I never left the motorbike. There were no shops worth looking at, no restaurants apart from the usual local plastic stool joints--just a market with a few items on the floor.

So, I went all the way back to the ferry. I was planning on going to Monkey Island to break the tedium but missed it on the way back. Probably a good thing--I was informed later that it is a place where you go to be watched and abused by the animals. Yes, see you again Can Gio, though I'd better bring someone who either knows what they're doing or can egg me on.

Hanoi Eats

Hanoi food is very special. Especially bland. Fortunately, there are a range of food options, even Mexican food.

Nothing beats the cold (50 degrees is cold for us Saigonese) like a good cinnamon hot chocolate.

A wonderful and adventurous home cooked meal of crocodile and ostrich. The crocodile tastes like toasted chicken skin and ostrich is just like beef.

Groan, another Vietnamese hotpot. I hate it--you wait 3o minutes for them to set up the pot and bring raw meat. Then you have to cook the meat for another 30 minutes, and the end product is like instant soup with gristly meat. We stay in the restaurant for 3 hours eating little bits at a time. Eventually the staff hides for their evening nap and leave us alone barking orders. Meanwhile I'm completely bored with no one to talk English with and after an eternity leave tired and hungry. Like I said, not my favorite.

There are loads of wonderful restaurants and cafes totally hidden away. Here we walk down a bamboo lined path to a room with a full sized cherry tree replica and a fountain that simulates rain.

Here we sample specialty foods from Hue--the stuff I didn't get to eat while I was there, and thankfully not the shrimps that poisoned me. My favorite is the glutinous Banh It Ram, and my least favorite is yet another hotpot--chicken a la plastique.

So Long Ha Long

It's about a 3 hour drive from Hanoi to Ha Long--not a very interesting drive except for the murderous traffic circles on the highway, the occasional accident site, and row after row of pineapple stalls.

We take a break at a highly tacky tourist trap selling all kinds of junk you wouldn't buy, like wine made from scorpions, snakes, or Geckos, like this one:

These giant geckos (Gecko gecko) are famous for scaring the hell out of campers with their loud "Gecko!" calls, but are becoming scarce because they become products like this.

The area is decorated with the most beautiful mountains. Unfortunately they are being totally quarried away for their marble to make brummagem. But who could bare to pass these up?

Fortunately, the beautiful Karst formations in Ha Long Bay are protected by Unesco and will be here until they crumble away. It is like being inside a beautiful watercolor painting on rice paper.

The Islets often keep a shear 90 degree cliff face as fresh limestone sheets peel off, while they are hollowed out from the inside. there are many caves here, though not many are accessible.

Here is our hotel for the night, the Emmeraude. It's a replica of one of the first French tourist steamboats in Ha Long bay in colonial times. There is a vast fleet of tourist ships, but except for the Emmeraude they are all wooden junks--they look very appealing, but I'd imagine they wobble and creak a bit more.

We are often followed by remora-like traders selling all kinds of crazy crap--mostly carved and uncarved shells, but also cookies, soda, junk food, beer, and anything else you can imagine. At hugely inflated prices, of course.

Our cabin is small but super quiet, thankfully blocking out the noise from our rowdy Vietnamese poker fiend neighbors. Unfortunately it is about as cold inside as it is outside--about 55 degrees, but cold for us Saigonese.

Elsewhere, people live their whole lives on floating villages in the bay. Unfortunately, visiting them is not on our itinerary.

The largest tourist stop, with hundreds of boats bumping and grinding together, is Surprise Cave, where the French have trained their little poodles and practiced their miming for ages.

The guides are pretty useless. They point out indistinct animal shapes in the muck. Otherwise, the cave is massive and a fun place to run around.

This one is supposed to be a turtle, and apparently a rich one. But don't bother wetting your beak, these are worthless 1,000 dong notes.

It's too cold to kayak, so we're ferried to a little pearl farm. Farming pearls is a complicated process which is filtered through a guide with only a smattering of English. So "mantle" becomes "mental," and somehow "gonads" becomes "coconut." They sell pearls here, but this is no place for bargains.

There's not much to do on the boat. However, Jenny picks up a new culinary skill--making a beautiful rose out of a tomato and mint leaves.

Dinner is fairly good, but the spring rolls are out of this world.

The next day we head for home. One major flaw with this trip is this: it isn't our first. Sadly, Ha Long Bay is a once in a lifetime opportunity and no more. People come so they can look around and realize they are not in Kansas, or New York, or London, and are as far away from home as it gets--not quite the same effect for Saigonese. There is snorkeling in the warmer season, though the waters are very murky and you won't see the absolutely amazing fish beneath you. But, thanks to Jenny's work benefits, it's all free for us.