Chrass Landing

On our first morning in Hải Phòng, we asked the receptionist where to grab the ferry to Cat Ba island and headed off to the appropriate place.

Bia Hoi in Hải Phòng

As soon as we got there someone in a booth next to the road flagged us down and tried to sell us tickets to the ferry that was leaving in about half an hour.  We listened to her pitch.

This was our first mistake: We didn’t have enough time to shop around (it looked like there were several operations selling tickets to the same ferry).

She quoted us a price: 200,000 Dong for each of us one-way plus 200,000 Dong each for the motorcycles.  This had to be multiplied by two so we could return in two days.  She told us that we’d only be able to get our motorcycles aboard for our return trip if we reserved space in advance.

The price seemed really high, but the ferry was about to leave and we decided to just bite the bullet and paid her the 2.4 million Dong ($120).

She wrote out some receipts and we headed off to the ferry.

At the ferry, we were the only people with motorcycles.  It seemed clear that this was a passenger ferry and they were going through some extra effort in order to accommodate our bikes.  Stevedores lifted the bikes onto the roof of the ferry with much effort.

Stevedorable!

During the trip members of the crew came by to collect fares from everyone on board –we saw that Vietnamese people were paying 70,000 Dong.  We had obviously been way overcharged and paying 200,000 Dong each for a one-way fare (plus another 200,000 one-way for our bikes) was an exorbitant amount.

Oh well, caveat emptor.

Arriving in Cat Ba City

When we arrived on Cat Ba, the captain of the boat attempted to charge us an additional 100,000 Dong for the bikes.  He didn’t speak any English.  We refused to pay and wound up unloading the bikes ourselves which we somehow managed to accomplish without dropping any of them into the sea by using a rickety plank and three days’ worth of luck.

Cat Ba City itself is pretty touristy.  Still, the scenery was beautiful and it was nice to relax.

Ha Long Bay

On the second day we took a boat tour which featured a stop at the aptly named Monkey Island (no relation to the LucasArts video game series); some caves; and sea kayaking.  All in the very scenic Hạ Long Bay.

Can you spot the monkey in this photo?

When we got back from kayaking Grady realized someone had gone through his bag (he had set it in a particular way so he’d be able to tell if someone opened it).  When he pointed this out to me I counted my money: 200,000 Dong was missing.  Grady and Gordon weren’t sure if any of their money was missing.

The fucking crew robbed me/us!

When we got back to the hotel we told the hotel manager, who had sold us the tickets for the tour, about our experience.  (His English was far better than the people running the boat tour).  He seemed genuinely concerned and I noticed him having what looked like a very serious conversation with the tour boat captain later a little while later.

Tourist-friendly caves!

The following day, it was time to head back.

Because the woman that had sold us our tickets seemed so shady we had the hotel manager call the ferry people to confirm that both we and our bikes had a reservation.

Nope.  Of course not.

At this point we were getting pissed off.  It was bad enough we got charged more than double, but getting screwed completely on our return fare was just too much.

To make things worse, we were running out of time: we had to get to Hà Nội, sell our bikes, and catch our flight in two days.

Thoughts of vengeance and reimbursement coursed through our minds. We decided that it would be worth confronting the people that had sold us our ferry tickets and attempt to get a refund for our unused fare when (if) we got back to Hải Phòng.

After talking to the hotelier for a while we realized that there was actually a way to get to Hải Phòng by road involving traveling across the island on our bikes, and taking two short ferries.

“There’s a road ferry!?”

This had been, of course, what we wanted all along.  Grady’s paper map and my GPS map did not show the ferry.  It turns out, in hindsight, that Google Maps knew all about it, and would have told us so if we had asked:

If only we had known this in advance...

We rode across Cat Ba island and arrived at the first ferry about 5 minutes before it departed.  The fees were posted (I think it was about 30,000 Dong or $1.50).  We got on the ferry and proceeded to the next island.

One of fairies I mean "ferries" we took back (hey I didn't name the boat!)

When we arrived at the second ferry we again were just in time to get on.  The fare was similarly cheap.

Due to the serendipity of the ferry schedules, we actually arrived in Hải Phòng before we would have made it had we taken the passenger ferry.

We immediately sought out the people that sold us our useless ticket.

“We want our 1.2 million Dong back for the return fare!”

“The captain says you never got on the boat,” the woman countered.

“The boat wasn’t there, and we called in advance and were told they wouldn’t take our motorcycles!”

“No, I made arrangements,” she said.

“Look, you made a small fortune on our trip to Cat Ba… that’s yours to keep.  We want a refund for the return fare.”

“No, you didn’t show up.”

We had an ace to play: “I guess we should call the police.”

We learned through our travels that Vietnamese police can generally be depended upon to take the side of the Westerner.

“Yes, let’s talk to the police,” she ventured, “I’ll take you there.”

Grady stayed with our bikes and stuff while she led us down a street for about 300m and pointed at a closed business and said “The police station is closed, come back later.”

Although our Vietnamese is terrible it was obvious that this was not a police station.  We knew the initials for police from seeing them on various police vehicles in our travels and the name on the building did not match.

“This is not the police station! We’ll call them.”

We began walking back to the bikes and the stand.

During this time, Grady watched the other woman at the booth looking warily at Westerners walking by.  She realized that as long as we were standing there they would not make a sale.  By the time we returned she had begun to haggle: “How much do you want?”

At this point we knew we were going to get our money back.

“All of it, 1.2 million Dong.”

“I can only give you 600,000.”

“1.2 million Dong.”

“How about 800,000?”

“1.2 million Dong.”

This went on for a while.  Eventually they offered us one million and we took it (getting your asking price will never happen –the negotiators have to retain a little bit to save face).  The 200,000 Dong they were keeping was about $10 –split three way it was about $3.30 each.  Not worth spending too much more time to recover.

Small victory!  Woot!

We rode off to Hà Nội to find a touristy spot to stay and sell our bikes.

A touristy spot to sell our bikes

Hà Nội seems like a nice town but by this point I was travel weary and really wasn’t up for exploring much.  The hostel area (where we’d be most likely to sell our bikes to another tourist) was in an alley and it had several bars and restaurants catering to Westerners.

Unfortunately there was a glut of bikes for sale.  There were several other Minsks and several other Win knock offs available.  We only had one full day to make a sale.

Competition!

Our hopes of nearly breaking even were disappearing, but we weren’t too concerned: even if we had to give our bikes away the price we paid for them would have been cheaper than renting.

Gordon managed to find someone who gave him $110.  Grady and I both wound up giving our bikes away on the morning our flight left.

Mission accomplished.

We left Huế and engaged in another death march of about 350km. This left us in Vinh which is generally described as a overtly centrally planned, decaying communist industrial complex by the tourist books. The map Grady had brought showed a ferry going from Cừa Lò (about 20km away from Vinh) to Hải Phòng where we could arrange a ferry to Cat Ba island.

We could ride the 300km or so to Hải Phòng, but Central Vietnam from Hué up to around Hà Nội/Cat Ba is pretty boring and there’s not much to see.  Why not take a ferry?  How much could a Vietnamese ferry cost?

The ferry ride looked to be fairly long and we were figuring we’d be able to jump on the ferry and spend a day and/or night riding to Hải Phòng.

Or at least that was the plan.

Vinh is dreary and generally unappealing and Grady and I almost instantly disliked it.

Grady unsuccessfully trying to find something fun to do in Vinh in the guide book.

We found a hotel next door to a military barracks which featured blaring, amplified bugle music whenever the guard changed, or it was time to wake up, or someone flushed a toilet.  Our hotel felt like it was designed by the East German Department of Housing and Prisons.

We were happy we’d be getting out of it in the morning. At least we would have been happy if Gordon’s bike’s name, “Rattle Can”, wasn’t becoming more and more apt.

Over the previous few days Rattle Can (a four stroke) was gradually burning more oil until it was actually going through more than the Specter of Communism (which is supposed to burn oil). It was losing power and it sounded terrible.

Rattle Can was in dire need of an overhaul.

Gordon was unable to find a mechanic that was open when we arrived in Vinh, so we planned on Gordon finding a mechanic in the morning while Grady and I investigated Cừa Lò to figure out the ferry schedule (which, suspiciously, no one seemed to have any information about).

The next morning Gordon found out that the entire top end of his engine needed rebuilding (including a new piston) and it would take all day.  He visited two separate mechanics and the best price was one million dong.

Grady and I headed off to Cừa Lò in search of the ferry terminal.  Cừa Lò is pretty small and after riding around for about 30 minutes we had found a fairly large port with a gate and sentry, but no obvious ferry terminal.

Out of desperation we asked the guard if he knew anything about a ferry.  Knowing that this would be a particularly difficult thing to pantomime we came prepared.  We pointed at the map and showed the sea route we were hoping to take.  Grady had previously translated the phrase “Where is the ferry?” into Vietnamese.  Of course no one understood us when we said it, but we could point at the phrase in Grady’s notebook.  As usual a small crowd gathered.

It became pretty clear that our question was both understood and that there was no ferry.

Grady and I prepared to get back on our bikes and head back to horrible Vinh when someone came running out of the gate.  He couldn’t speak English but he gestured for us to wait.  He got on his phone.  Perhaps he knew something about a ferry?

We sat down at a nearby beverage stand and had some beer while we waited.

Eventually someone arrived and he began talking to his friend and asking us questions.  They wanted to know how many people and how many motorcycles.  They seemed incredulous that we’d want to take a ferry.  It seemed they were trying to tell us, just ride to Hải Phòng.

We did our best to indicate we understood we could ride to Hải Phòng, but we were trying to avoid another 300+km death march.

Eventually someone wrote down a price for us: “$700″.  We both emphatically shook our heads: “No.”

We were invited to produce a counter offer.  We wrote down “$100″.  They emphatically shook our heads: “No.”

Clearly we weren’t negotiating about a public ferry, we were negotiating about chartering someone’s boat to take us this distance.  The ferry shortcut wasn’t out.

We went back to Vinh.

By now we had received news from Gordon that his bike wasn’t going to be ready until 5pm or so.  Far too late to leave Vinh.

The reason Rattle Can was taking all day to be repaired.

During all this time, Gordon was hanging out in the mechanic’s house with the mechanic’s family while the mechanic fixed his bike.  The mechanic’s kids were fascinated by Gordon’s camera and running around the house taking pictures of things (strangely about 90% of the photos were pictures of the TV).  This might sound like a lucky break, but this type of thing consistently seems to happen to Gordon.

Grady got some repairs done to Sneak Attack and we managed to kill the rest of the day.  In general everyone we interacted with seemed suspicious and/or tried to rip us off and our opinion of Vinh never improved.

The broken instrument cluster on Sneak Attack before it was replaced.

Gordon’s opinion of Vinh was much higher than ours.  By the time the repair was done the mechanic, who had taken a shine to Gordon, had dropped his price from one million dong to 600,000.  Gordon paid a million anyway.

Gordon’s opinion of Vinh was much better than ours for some reason.

Vinh sucks! There's a clue in this photo that explains why Grady's instrument cluster was smashed and why I wanted to rename Sneak Attack to "Blood Mobile"

And so, the following morning we engaged on our third death march.  This time 350km to Hải Phòng where we knew for certain we could catch a ferry to Cat Ba Island.  I somehow managed to get ahead of the group and Grady and Gordon showed up after dark.

Hội An was a great town although a bit touristy.  The waterfront is very beautiful.

We all went to the tailor’s and got ourselves some custom suits made overnight.  The tailors in Hội An do not sleep.

We left Hội An yesterday morning for a relatively short 120km ride to Hue.  Almost immediately we got separated.  My GPS told me to take a right turn down a suspiciously narrow highway.  Remembering the highway that we used to get into Hội An this now seemed perfectly plausible.

The road became narrower and narrower until finally it was about the width of a sidewalk.  It took me past rice paddies and small houses.  There was barely enough room for two motorcycles to pass each other.

Eventually the road turned into a dirt track at an intersection with another sidewalk-sized road.  My GPS had long since decided I was in a field in the middle of nowhere and had no guidance about how to get me the hell out of what I would quickly realize was a maze.  I didn’t want to take the dirt track, so I turned towards Highway 1 (at least my GPS knew where I was in relation to the highway).

This continued for a while where I’d travel  several kilometers and either reach a dead end or make another turn in the maze.  Frustratingly, at several points I crossed under Highway 1 but the embankment was too steep and guard rails were in place so there was no way for me to get onto it.

Eventually I escaped the maze and made it onto Highway 1.

It was a pretty uneventful ride to Da Nang which I just passed through on my way to the first of three mountain passes.  I was a bit hung over and wasn’t really feeling like doing a long set of switchbacks so I was relieved to see a sign in Vietnamese and English advising me to turn if I wanted to take the tunnel through the first pass.

I took the turn and rode about ten kilometers to the tunnel.

At the entrance, a guard pointed at me and told me to turn around.  Apparently motorcycles are not allowed in the tunnel.  Unfortunately what I didn’t notice (and would later find out when Grady and Gordon went through the same experience) was that there were people with trucks nearby willing to ferry motorcycles through the tunnel.

I turned around, retraced my 10km route (making a wrong turn along the way that added an additional 10km) and took the mountain pass.  The road was good and on a better day I would have loved it, but for some reason, I just couldn’t get into the zone.  It took about 45 minutes to clear the pass (with some breathtakingly beautiful views of the sea) and, as the road began to level out, I saw the exit of the tunnel which surely would have saved me half an hour had I been able to figure out the protocol for getting through it.

Tunnel on the left, mountain pass on the right

A little later there was a second, smaller mountain pass that I navigated without issue.

This whole time, I had assumed that Grady and Gordon were ahead of me because I had spent so much time lost in the maze.  I hadn’t seen or heard from them since we left Hôi An.  I was about 45km from Hue and decided it was a decent time to take a break and checked my phone for text messages to find out what hotel I’d be staying at.

It turned out that Gordon had had a flat tire, and Grady’s throttle cable had snapped en route.  They were actually still in the mountain pass.  Somehow I was well ahead.  Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise me: “Progress” and “The Specter of Communism” are practically synonymous.

By the time I arrived in Hue, I had had enough time to ride around the city, drink a couple of beers next to the Perfume river, book a hotel, unpack, have a shower, and catch up on my email before Grady and Gordon arrived.

For those of you keeping score, my “unreliable” Minsk has had one failure on the road –a slipping clutch; and even that didn’t stop it; I was able to limp to our destination (albeit slowly).  Grady and Gordon’s Chinese Wins have had more problems than I can keep track of, ranging from broken cables, faulty ignition coils, bent swingarms, and flat tires –clearly not the reliability that most everyone associates with Belarussian vehicles.