A Hill and a Dirt Road

Since I got my bike here, I've never quite gotten up the energy, or had the right opportunity, to ride up a mountain like Ba Vi or Tam Dao – two mountains both within 100km of Hanoi and both with roads rising something to the tune of 1,000m upwards. I made a small step in that direction, on a small hill, last weekend.

Saturday morning, having packed up some water, a spare bicycle tube and a jar of Nutella, I took off at the pleasant (for riding) hour of 5.30am. After getting out of my neighborhood the first stretch of riding was over a bridge and on a new expressway. Riding this road at the crack of dawn always cracks me up – there are a handful of trucks, almost no cars or buses, and streams of joggers and cyclists from the nearby villages out getting their morning exercise in on this brand new six or eight lane highway.

Before long I turned off that road onto a two-lane going more or less straight north to Soc Son.  Along the roadsides were a lot of shops and industrial sites, with a fair amount of fields and ponds as well. Saw quite a few folks out fishing for breakfast (I guess) and, at that time of the morning, there wasn't much traffic so it was a pleasant ride.

A gravelly dirt road goes from Soc Son Town over to the bottom of Soc Son Mountain. Now it feels like you are in the countryside – rice fields, cows on the road, the smell of burning rice straw, locals taking a break from field work to gossip across the road as you go by, and the loud clanging of somebody beating on something metal which passes for the breakfast bell at an army base I passed by.

At this point I've gone about 30km, almost entirely flat like a pancake – a FLAT pancake. The road up this “mountain” I'm going to rises approximately 280m. That is something like 2/3 the height of the “Welsh Mountain” back in my quê, for those of you who know it, so you know this is really just a hill. When you are riding bike up something, it is helpful to think of it as a hill; when you are talking about it later, you are allowed to call it a mountain.

This mountain has a remarkably well paved road up to very near the top, probably due to the fact that there is a giant statue of Thánh Gióng on top, which is, well, a whole 'nother story. While the road up the mountain is so much smoother than any road to the mountain, it is still a very steep hill. On reaching the top, I collapsed into a heap and drank up everything in sight. After recovering my senses, I kind of wondered why I picked such a hazy day to ride up this hill – I could barely see the big statue on the peak up a long stairway, and there was no view at all, just fog and trees. I could tell, however, from the burn in my legs, that I had just climbed up a mountain, so I'll settle for that.

After flying down the mountain and putting my brakes to the test (they seem to work better now that I had them cooking hot, although they are not quiet...), I followed the road around the end of the hill, cutting across the last bit on a dump truck road to reach the next valley facing Ham Lon Mountain. After passing by a fishing lake (no fish yet, the guy sitting on the bank said), I turned up a dirt road/trail which goes up to about 180m and follows along the edge of the mountain for some 7 or 8 km before coming back down into the valley. 

 

This was mostly a beautiful route for a mountain bike, although the roughest stretch in the center was not ride-able, and hauling the bike on a steep sometimes muddy hiking trail through thick underbrush got old fast, even if it was only a km or so. Definitely worth it though – this was the first time that I've had this bike on a trail where a mountain bike is actually called for! A few breaks in the trees offered views down to Ham Lon Lake, a reservoir used for irrigation which was almost dry when I was up there in early spring – it appeared mostly filled now.

After finding the blacktop again, I stopped for another drink break,  and after gathering up some more energy I headed home the same way. The guy fixing a track-hoe on the dump truck road – I had asked him for directions on the way up – wanted to know if I had found what I was looking for. I guess I was just looking for a hill and a dirt road, and I found both, so yes :)

Blatant Domestic Bliss

I suppose that one of the things one learns with age is how to keep doing the same thing, but in a new way. One reason (excuse) that this blog is rarely updated anymore is that my experiences in Vietnam are not so often 'new' anymore. A few years in one place will do that to you! While I might regard this as a loss, I like to think that any lack of new locations in my daily geography is more than compensated by the fact that the life I live is manifestly of my own choosing.

I was thinking of all this recently after a rainy, cold winter weekend in Hanoi. (The fact that we live in a concrete and tile house with no heat gives me special dispensation to call 50F "cold"!) I did not go on a bike ride. I did not find a new lake, or ride along the river. I did not find out anything new about Vietnam.

I made pancakes. Now, my pancakes aren't as good as what my wife makes, but they are still fun to make.

We went to the mall. I actually suggested going to the mall, which should tell you how unpleasant it was outside! An out-of-town sort of mall which was refreshingly empty, we walked all four floors, the daughter charmed some bored salespeople, and we left after having fixed my coffee crave.

I made ginger snaps. Round bits of crunchy, zingy goodness, these things were almost as good as I remembered them to be, a rare result indeed! We lacked the hot spiced cider which would have made them perfect, but tea does almost as well. Might have to come back to that recipe.

My wife made eggs and bacon. Now bacon is something, like a good hamburger, that I never bothered to appreciate until I hadn't had it for a long time. Now my dear wife cures it herself, for Pete's sake, and it is worthy of profound appreciation.

My wife made coconut-covered donuts. I don't mean  far-from-the-tropics dried coconut from the store, I mean coconut from a coconut, of the Monty Python clip-clopper variety. I don't mean donuts from the store either, I mean donuts from a pot of boiling oil on the stove. Now I know I'm a touch provincial, but this seems extraordinary to me. It's like the muses of Entenmann's and Achenbach's both came to the Orient, collided with a coconut and landed in my kitchen on a Sunday afternoon.

Some days, when I think about how I used to wander around trying to find something new all the time, and eat street food day in and day out, I don't miss it at all. (I still eat street food, just not every day.) A few days after that weekend, it occurred to me how oblivious I am to the blatant domestic bliss which that weekend was more or less drowning in, as is most of my life these days. It sneaks up on you, domestic bliss!

I'm not suggesting that domestic bliss is best represented by food; clearly the food is only one of the more superficial aspects of the thing I'm trying to talk about. But, seriously, pancakes, the mall, bacon, donuts... all in one weekend? How could Vietnam get any better than that?