LEAVING VINH BENEATH low-slung black clouds, we pedal through miles of
rice paddies dimpled with rain. In some, water buffalo, huge horns swept
flatly backward, plod through the mud pulling scrawny men balanced
barefoot on wooden harrows. In others, rows of bent-back women in bright
blouses and conical hats, green rubber boots calf-deep in the mud,
plant rice seedlings. Still other fields have already sprouted into
blankets of brilliant green. Rice, rice, and more rice. Domesticated in
China more than 9,000 years ago, rice is the staple for half of the
world’s seven billion people. Throughout Cycling Vietnam, especially in
villages, it’s part of every meal.
“I don’t know we going right way,” Chung says, stopping in the rain at a fork in the road surrounded by sopping rice paddies. Sue tells him to simply ask the rice farmers. They straighten up, grin at us, and point.
We pass through another village with a statue of Ho Chi Minh in the square. Ho died in 1969 and is officially worshipped by the Vietnamese. As we will discover, hagiographic statues of Ho stand in the center of countless towns, and Jesus-like portraits of him, or Lenin-like busts, can be purchased in almost every shop.
We arrive in Huong Khe at dark, covered in mud, soaking wet, hypothermic. Too cold to camp, we find a cheap hotel and take turns standing in the hot shower. The next morning we meet uniformed, one-armed Ong helping his granddaughter sell fried-egg baguettes to kids on their way to school. It is noon by the time he has finished telling his story and we are cycling again.
Sue, the strongest, is in the lead as always, her fierce little legs pumping like pistons, followed by me, followed by Chung, his feet splayed on the pedals like a little boy. Compared with the bikes that carried loads of 400-plus pounds along this jungle corridor, ours are featherlight—15 pounds of gear that includes a tent, sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and a rain jacket. Having bicycled all over the world, Sue and I are perplexed by modern tourers so burdened with heavy bags that all the élan, fleetness, and magic of two wheels is crushed. “Like pedaling a motorcycle,” Sue once said. “What’s the point?”
We are entering the Truong Son, or the Annamite Mountains. The higher we ride, the more jagged the slopes become. The Annamite Range is predominantly limestone, carved into steeples, towers, and barricades. Yet rainfall is so unceasingly heavy that even the vertical walls are thickly forested. All afternoon we push upward, through the bamboo, through barefoot villages of Khe Ve, Yen Lanh, Cha Lo. Switchbacking across a rainforest ensnared in vines, we reach the border town just below Mu Gia Pass at dusk. We spend the night in a shotgun hostel filled with sweaty stevedores. Trucks from Laos grind up the pass from the west, clear customs, then have their loads transferred by hand onto Vietnamese trucks. It’s a grim, grimy, vaguely dangerous place. During the war, Mu Gia Pass was identified as a choke point along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and was frequently bombed, yet the pass was so vital to the North Vietnamese supply chain that repairs always began within minutes of the destruction, and it was never closed for more than 24 hours.
Photo: Mark Jenkins
We eat sticky purple rice for dinner, then again in the morning for breakfast before apprehensively spinning up to Vietnam customs. Will they prevent us from riding across to Laos? They hardly look at us. We pay a $1.50 exit fee and bored officials stamp our passports, waving us through. The Laotian checkpoint is even less formal.
In big sweeping curves, we descend out of the vibrant and verdant rainforest onto parched and rain-shadowed plains. After 8 miles we hook left onto a dirt track. There are no signs for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I have pieced together the route from the declassified military maps in John Prados’s book, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War.
It will be a hot, miserable day of riding. We labor for two hours before coming upon the 100-yard-wide Nam Phanang River. Sue rides right into the tumbling current. We take our time pushing across the thigh-deep water, especially Chung, who, still wearing his heavy black vest and red-and-white Viet Cong scarf, seems on the edge of heat exhaustion. On the far side we stop at a roadside shack for cold rice and bottle after bottle of lukewarm Fanta. The Laotians here are utterly unlike the Vietnamese. They don’t smile or wave or yell “hello.” They stand barefoot in rags and stare at us in suspicious bewilderment. Rolling on, we pass several signs with a skull-and-crossbones symbol, indicating the region is contaminated with unexploded ordnance.
“I don’t know we going right way,” Chung says, stopping in the rain at a fork in the road surrounded by sopping rice paddies. Sue tells him to simply ask the rice farmers. They straighten up, grin at us, and point.
We pass through another village with a statue of Ho Chi Minh in the square. Ho died in 1969 and is officially worshipped by the Vietnamese. As we will discover, hagiographic statues of Ho stand in the center of countless towns, and Jesus-like portraits of him, or Lenin-like busts, can be purchased in almost every shop.
We arrive in Huong Khe at dark, covered in mud, soaking wet, hypothermic. Too cold to camp, we find a cheap hotel and take turns standing in the hot shower. The next morning we meet uniformed, one-armed Ong helping his granddaughter sell fried-egg baguettes to kids on their way to school. It is noon by the time he has finished telling his story and we are cycling again.
Sue, the strongest, is in the lead as always, her fierce little legs pumping like pistons, followed by me, followed by Chung, his feet splayed on the pedals like a little boy. Compared with the bikes that carried loads of 400-plus pounds along this jungle corridor, ours are featherlight—15 pounds of gear that includes a tent, sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and a rain jacket. Having bicycled all over the world, Sue and I are perplexed by modern tourers so burdened with heavy bags that all the élan, fleetness, and magic of two wheels is crushed. “Like pedaling a motorcycle,” Sue once said. “What’s the point?”
We are entering the Truong Son, or the Annamite Mountains. The higher we ride, the more jagged the slopes become. The Annamite Range is predominantly limestone, carved into steeples, towers, and barricades. Yet rainfall is so unceasingly heavy that even the vertical walls are thickly forested. All afternoon we push upward, through the bamboo, through barefoot villages of Khe Ve, Yen Lanh, Cha Lo. Switchbacking across a rainforest ensnared in vines, we reach the border town just below Mu Gia Pass at dusk. We spend the night in a shotgun hostel filled with sweaty stevedores. Trucks from Laos grind up the pass from the west, clear customs, then have their loads transferred by hand onto Vietnamese trucks. It’s a grim, grimy, vaguely dangerous place. During the war, Mu Gia Pass was identified as a choke point along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and was frequently bombed, yet the pass was so vital to the North Vietnamese supply chain that repairs always began within minutes of the destruction, and it was never closed for more than 24 hours.
Photo: Mark Jenkins
We eat sticky purple rice for dinner, then again in the morning for breakfast before apprehensively spinning up to Vietnam customs. Will they prevent us from riding across to Laos? They hardly look at us. We pay a $1.50 exit fee and bored officials stamp our passports, waving us through. The Laotian checkpoint is even less formal.
In big sweeping curves, we descend out of the vibrant and verdant rainforest onto parched and rain-shadowed plains. After 8 miles we hook left onto a dirt track. There are no signs for the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I have pieced together the route from the declassified military maps in John Prados’s book, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War.
It will be a hot, miserable day of riding. We labor for two hours before coming upon the 100-yard-wide Nam Phanang River. Sue rides right into the tumbling current. We take our time pushing across the thigh-deep water, especially Chung, who, still wearing his heavy black vest and red-and-white Viet Cong scarf, seems on the edge of heat exhaustion. On the far side we stop at a roadside shack for cold rice and bottle after bottle of lukewarm Fanta. The Laotians here are utterly unlike the Vietnamese. They don’t smile or wave or yell “hello.” They stand barefoot in rags and stare at us in suspicious bewilderment. Rolling on, we pass several signs with a skull-and-crossbones symbol, indicating the region is contaminated with unexploded ordnance.
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