Chrass Landing

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.