[travel] Motorbiking day 2
Feb. 18th, 2009 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mattbellAfter the great success of our first motorbike expedition, we decided to go on another excursion, this time from Hue. This journey took us to a long sandy island that was filled with a mixture of schools and elaborate graveyards. The graves were all fairly recent and ran the gamut from simple sand mounds to incredibly ornate temples all mixed together. If the graves had some official name or significance attached to them, they'd probably be packed with tourists, as they are aesthetically fantastic. Instead, the only people around aside from us were massive throngs of schoolkids on lunch break. They all wanted to chat and practice their English, which was great fun.
At one point we took a side road and ended up at the entrance to a beach. The beach facilities were spare but massive – there were two enormous covered parking structures for motorcycles and cars, symmetrically placed to each side. Each parking structure had a symmetrically placed loud aggressive sales guy.. It was hilarious to watch the two of them symmetrically vying for our business from a couple hundred feet away, surrounded by a huge empty expanse of concrete and sand. We each headed toward one of them, made a big circle around them, and headed back out.
A few minutes later we were going down a small side street, and a guy sitting on his front porch waved for us to stop. Soon we were the star attraction of a family gathering on their front porch. Several other people from the neighborhood stopped by, and we found a lot to talk about despite the language barrier. There was arm wrestling, picture taking, comparison of heights, skintones, and shoe sizes, and what appeared to be an attempt to set me up with a girl who looked to be about 14.
We zipped along through several more small towns and rice paddies, and crossed back over a bridge that overlooked some ingenious mazelike fish traps.
Because most people on the road are riding bicycles or motorbikes, when you're on the highway you really see all the other people on the road. It's much more humanizing that way. I've watched many other motorists do double-takes as we pass by. Some of them have pulled alongside me and started conversations, which is charming but way too distracting for someone of my skill level. It's also beautiful to watch a flock of Vietnamese women all dressed in traditional white robes, bicycling along and talking.
This is why I like motorbikes... you can go all day without seeing another tourist, and you can meet people who are not yet sick of tourists.
At one point we took a side road and ended up at the entrance to a beach. The beach facilities were spare but massive – there were two enormous covered parking structures for motorcycles and cars, symmetrically placed to each side. Each parking structure had a symmetrically placed loud aggressive sales guy.. It was hilarious to watch the two of them symmetrically vying for our business from a couple hundred feet away, surrounded by a huge empty expanse of concrete and sand. We each headed toward one of them, made a big circle around them, and headed back out.
A few minutes later we were going down a small side street, and a guy sitting on his front porch waved for us to stop. Soon we were the star attraction of a family gathering on their front porch. Several other people from the neighborhood stopped by, and we found a lot to talk about despite the language barrier. There was arm wrestling, picture taking, comparison of heights, skintones, and shoe sizes, and what appeared to be an attempt to set me up with a girl who looked to be about 14.
We zipped along through several more small towns and rice paddies, and crossed back over a bridge that overlooked some ingenious mazelike fish traps.
Because most people on the road are riding bicycles or motorbikes, when you're on the highway you really see all the other people on the road. It's much more humanizing that way. I've watched many other motorists do double-takes as we pass by. Some of them have pulled alongside me and started conversations, which is charming but way too distracting for someone of my skill level. It's also beautiful to watch a flock of Vietnamese women all dressed in traditional white robes, bicycling along and talking.
This is why I like motorbikes... you can go all day without seeing another tourist, and you can meet people who are not yet sick of tourists.
