A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
I finally got a full night's sleep! The room I switched into is smaller and has no windows, but that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned considering the rooster problem. The new room doesn't smell funny either, and has decent water pressure and a remote for the TV. I'm living in the lap of luxury!

After doing more wandering, art viewing, and coffee sipping during the morning, I decided to rent a bike for a half day. Bicycles in Vietnam tend to be rusty, heavy, poorly maintained and minimalist. It would be quite generous to describe my rental as a one-speed. Really, it was more like a half or quarter-speed. First of all, it was too small and too big at the same time. The seat was too high, so I kind of fell over upon stopping. Yet the frame was so short that my knees practically hit the handlebars when I pedalled. There were two other minor problem. The brakes were practically non-existent, which made it especially unfortunate that the seat was too high for me to stop Fred Flintstone style. Good thing it's flat around here. The other challenge was that there was some critical mechanical problem with the bike. When I started to pedal it would take a couple of seconds to catch, so about a quarter of the time I was pedaling with no corresponding forward movement. Oh, and don't get me started on that torture device known as a "seat". I'm still feeling it today. You know that scene from the Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch is flying around bolt upright on an old timey basketed bicycle, pedaling too fast for the speed she's going? If I had had her costume designer, that's about what I would have looked like yesterday. Once again, you get what you pay for -- it cost me 33 cents for my half day on the bike. This time it wasn't because I'm cheap, however. All the rental bikes in town suck in similar ways.

Despite the drawbacks, I'm glad I rented it. It was nice to take a leisurely, if moderately painful, ride through the countryside, and I ended up at Cua Dai, a lovely beach on the S. China Sea. You can picture me sitting under a thatched beach umbrella drinking pineapple juice and eating fresh crab while watching the surf come in. How's that weather in Seattle these days? There was only one surfer, though, a foreign tourist from the look of him. Looks like that sport hasn't taken off around here, despite its promotion in Apocalypse Now. Charlie still don't surf, I guess, to paraphrase Robert Duvall. And that guy at at Cua Dai wasn't so hot at it either.

© 2003 Katy Warren

posted by Katy at 7:07 PM