Ba Vi - Rhymes with La Vie - Rhymes with My Tea (in Mississippi)

Motorbikes are ridiculously efficient. My motorbike cost me roughly $600. The last time I bought a car for that much, I spent one solid day every week squirming around underneath the car, kicking and cussing and generally insulting it and myself in as many ways as possible. After that, and buying gas in America (…), I had transportation.

I’ve had my motorbike for about two months. I fill it up with gas maybe once a week, for about $2.50 or $3.00. I had a flat tire last week. It cost me almost $4 to have the tube patched by someone sitting on the sidewalk with a screwdriver and a bucket of water, about 30 meters from where it blew out. It was making a funny noise so I took it to a shop where they washed it, changed the oil, greased and adjusted the chain, and replaced something that was missing which made the chain noisy. That was almost $4 too. That means I’m up to like $30 in maintenance. I just thought I should say that for anybody out there on the other side of the world who is living on ramen noodles to preserve gas money…

Anyway, last weekend I went to Khu Du Lich Vuon Quoc Gia Ba Vi – Ba Vi National Park. Allegedly about 60-70 km west of Hanoi, I figured it shouldn’t take so long to get there. Well at the edge of Hanoi there is a road which, for about an hour, is a solid mass of parked trucks and cars flooded by beeping revving smoking sweating motorbikes. Motorbike traffic jams are truly annoying. You breathe smoke. You try not to burn your leg on your neighbor’s exhaust pipe – and you really can, that is how packed it gets. You constantly bump into folks next to you, although usually nobody cares. Well after that is smooth sailing for a few minutes, then you have a long stretch of road construction. That was mostly too dusty to see anything, bumpy and missing bridges and all that. Well. Whatever. According to my map this is a reasonably serious road, I guess I just picked the wrong day to try it!

Ba Vi, on the other hand, is really cool. Almost cold, in fact. It is green and lush and flowery and switchbacks are fun on a motorbike. Thanks to my freshly greased chain I got up the mountain with no real complaints from my motorbike. I hiked a bit more to the actual top. The day was slightly hazy, but the place was beautiful anyway. Living in Hanoi, I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoy solitude. It is so rare to have actual silence here. It was only a day trip, maybe too short to really enjoy the place, but good anyway. And on the way home I went a longer way which involved and very nice road, paved smooth straight flat almost empty, and two hours flat instead of three and a half … go figure.

So, here are some photos of the park, as well as a thrilling video of cycling down the mountain… Enjoy!

These are flower pictures for all the flower people out there!