I arrived at one of Hanoi’s main bus stations at 5:30am in a deleriously tired state. The expected moto driver feeding frenzy ensued, and I ended up at the Real Darling Cafe on Pho Hang Quat just as the sun was coming up to get myself a bed in their dormitory.

I’ve been wandering about the city for the past few days on foot and a rented bicycle. Compared to Saigon, it feels like a small town. In the old quarter, where I’m staying, all of the streets are named after what kind of shops it has (or used to have). Pho Hang Quat, for example, is “Fan street.” There are dozens of streets featuring all sorts of crazy stuff from bamboo rafts to joss (paper replicas of money and valuable items for offerings). Here’s a nice history of the old quarter.

In addition to the merchandise streets, there are tons of streets outside of the old quarter that each specialize in a specific dish. Hanoi is famous throughout Vietnam for its great food and I can see why. The holy culinary masterpiece of pho was invented in Hanoi. Im in heaven.

The other day I was riding around on my bicycle, completely lost. I was in no hurry to try and find out where I was, but I was growing hungry. I spotted a street full of food stalls with identical signs. They were all barbequeing some kind of meat on a stick; it smelled delicious. I parked my bike next to a table, sat down and made the international gesture for “food please.” I recognized one word on the signs: “Ga,” which means chicken, so I figured thats what I would get.

In a minute, a plate of 6 giant barbequed chicken feet landed in front of me. They had large talons. I’ve had chicken feet before, in Hong Kong, but never barbequed like this. I don’t care for them done Chinese-style (boiled) so my expectations were low this time around. Chicken feet are quite a lot of work to eat considering how little meat you get from them. The best technique seems to be biting off a finger at a time and spitting out the small bones as you eat the cartilage and skin around them. The process is sort of like giving a pedicure with your mouth. To a chicken.

These chicken feet are absolutely delicious. The spicy-sweet sauce and crispy skin puts them in an entirely different category than the bland, rubbery chinese variety. It took me almost 30 minutes to eat all of them, but it was well worth it. I also managed to order a side of sweet-spicy toasted bread by pointing at another table. Another successful weirdmeat adventure! Hanoi also has a famous street of dog restaurants, which I’ll be visiting sometime soon.

Last night at the ever-popular “Bia Hoi Junction” (a busy intersection with bia hoi places on every corner) I met Hiep, a fellow world-traveler who currently lives in Hanoi. We stayed up talking and drinking until 3am. He is full of really good tips and advice about exploring Vietnam and inspired me to cancel the tour of Halong Bay that I had booked yesterday in favor of doing it by myself. Tomorrow I’ll take a local bus to Cat Ba, try to get onto a boat, do some kayaking and snorkeling for a few days, and then head back to Hanoi. Next weekend I’ll rent a motorcycle and go along with Hiep into the mountains in the north for a few days of serious adventuring.

Nhat Ky Xe means “Motorcycle Diary” in Vietnamese. I will post my journal from the 12 day adventure in the mountains of northern Vietnam in chunks over the next few days. This is the first installment.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 1: Hanoi -> Muong Village
Approx. 60km

As of this morning, our departure date & time were still up in there air. I called Hiep before lunch and he said he was ready to go, so we met up and walked to a motorbike rental place Michael had found a couple days ago. The bikes are owned by an old, nervous Vietnamese lady. She was (rightfully) very suspicous of us and needed to be assured that we were not going to take the bikes far from Hanoi; leaving the province was out of the question! Hiep helped smooth things over and we took the bikes after leaving Michael’s passport and a $10 deposit.

We were each now equipped with a fearsome, rugged, mountain-eating beast. 100cc’s of pure muscle. A few days of back-breaking unpaved mountain trails? Piece of cake.

Hiep has been on many trips through the north and knows the roads well. He promised us that our mighty Honda Wave Alphas would carry us gracefully along the main highways as far as Sa Pa in Lao Cai province. The roads east from there, however, would require a “real” bike like the mighty Minsk. Our initial plan then was to drive with Hiep for the first 2 days until Mai Chau, when he would return to Hanoi and we would continue to Sa Pa over 5 more days, then take the train home from Lao Cai. Plans change.

We drove west out of Hanoi toward a small Muong village where we were to spend the night. On the way we stopped at a large indoor public swimming pool and had a swim, enjoying the you’re-not-from-around-here attention we would get used to over the next few days. We rode slowly all afternoon, taking in the scenery and trying to learn the finer points of Vietnamese traffic law. I learned that there are no finer points of Vietnamese traffic law. Yield to anything larger than yourself (everything), honk your horn at anything with ears (and everything else, too), and try not to die. Easy.

The village (the name of which no one could come up with) is only about 60km from Hanoi. It is home to a few hundred Muong people who have become nearly indistinguishable from the Vietnamese in recent years. The Muong language is close enough to Vietnamese for them to understand eachother when speaking slowly, but most of the Muong speak Vietnamese anyway so its no problem. When we showed up, they recognized Hiep and helped us bring our things into one of the stilt houses overlooking the rice fields. We enjoyed some tea while one of the women prepared a space for us to sleep and relax. When she was done, she asked if chicken would be alright for dinner. Sure! So she went right out front, killed a chicken and cooked up a huge delicious meal for us.

A few other villagers showed up soon with beer, xeo (rice wine) and a bamboo bong (for tobacco). With Hiep translating, we were able to actually converse with eachother, except for the one guy who was deaf and dumb. He did pretty well with squeeky bird noises and arm waving, though. It went along nicely like this for a couple hours…

Michael doesn’t drink alcohol at all and our hosts just couldn’t understand this. Every time they poured a round they filled his glass so Hiep and I had to pick up the slack. I may have been able to handle drinking my own share, but the extra bia and xeo sealed my fate: puking into the rice field out the window at the end of the evening. Everyone else found it hilarious. In the morning, everyone that saw me laughed and made barfing noises; word travels pretty fast in a small village. I apologized to everyone, but Hiep told me they loved me for it. I think it was their plan all along.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 2: Muong Village -> Mai Chau
Approx. 75km

I had a nice, slow morning, stewing in my hangover. I washed a couple shirts then walked through the village with Hiep and a gaggle of excited kids, which took all of 10 minutes - its not a big place. We returned to the house and Hiep payed two of the kids to give a massage which was great entertainment for all. I took some videos: one, two and three.

We left the village around noon and started off on the next leg: about 75km on highway 6 to Mai Chau. Mai Chau is more of a collection of villages than a proper town and is home to many White Tais, who sell all sorts of traditional garments and handicrafts around their homes. The villages are spread out inside a large valley filled with rice paddies, of which there are spectacular views when approaching from the highway. We rode in and explored some backroads before finding a stilt-house where we could spend the night.

We lazily walked around the village, checking out all the random stuff for sale. Crossbows, slingshots, hill-tribe clothing, etc. When night fell, we returned to the house for a fantastic meal of traditional White Tai food. Then we ended the evening with a marathon karaoke session at a very strange little place in the middle of the fields. The speakers were cranked up too loud causing the mics to feed back constantly when we stopped singing, so we just didn’t stop singing. The best thing about singing Vietnamese karaoke is that unlike most other asian languages, it uses roman letters so english-speakers can sort-of see the words and make the sounds. Sort-of. It was great fun trying, anyway. I woke up hoarse the next morning.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 3: Mai Chau -> Son La
Approx. 185km

Hiep left us in the morning on our way out to return to Hanoi and we continued west on highway 6 (He is preparing to move to London and had an appointment at the British embassy). Michael and I enjoyed the scenery on the way, stopping in Moc Chau for lunch. The roads were great, the weather was nice; It was a pleasant drive. Nothing extraordinary to comment on. When we arrived in Son La, we found a decent hotel at a good price and turned in early.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 4: Son La -> Dien Bien Phu
Approx. 150km

After a good sleep, we left early. The rain began falling soon after, although it wasn’t heavy. We hit some muddy bits of road early in the day but the conditions were generally good. In the late afternoon the rain let up, the sun came out and the roads began to dry.

We were feeling good and started taking the turns a bit faster. Just as I was pulling out of a particularly sharp one, I heard that gut-wrenching sound of plastic smashing againt asphalt and turned to see that Michael had dumped his bike in the middle of the turn. He tumbled a little bit but he and the bike got right back up with only minor injuries (scraped up leg and arms, sore hip, bent pegs, crooked handlebars, cracked thingy). Since we were only a couple km’s past the last town, we decided to go back briefly to borrow some tools and bend a few things back to normal.

A few hours later, we hit a temporary road-block due to some construction going on. Several dozen people were waiting with their vehicles (trucks, motorbikes and some fellow tourists in a land rover) to be let through. After 15 minutes or so, they let all the motorbikes go, causing a wild, honking, mad-dash down the hill. In the chaos, Michael scored a flat tire.

He waited by the road while I went ahead to find some kind of solution. Luckily, only a couple km’s up the road I spotted a moto-repair shack. It took a few minutes of skillful pantomime and highly technical diagrams to explain that my friend up the road had a flat tire. They kept looking at the tires on my bike and shrugging. Finally I got the point across and the mechanic climbed onto the back my bike with a new innertube and some tools. 15 minutes and $2 later we were back on the road for the last 8km to Dien Bien Phu.

Dien Bien Phu (a small city just minutes from the Laos border) is a historically important spot as it is the site of a crucial battle against the French which marked a turning point in Vietnam’s history as an independent nation. Wikipedia has got the details. There are plenty of monuments, a couple cemetaries (one of which Hiep designed!), and a museum, but we were too tired to visit any of them. Instead, we found a hotel and food and slept. The next day was to be our longest leg yet.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 5: Dien Bien Phu -> Tam Duong
Approx. 250km or something

This was a really long day. I think we ended up in Tam Duong as planned, but I can’t be sure. We couldn’t have been far from it, anyway.

We checked out early. After a breakfast of pho, we were on the road by 9:30. The first few hours of the ride were in solid heavy rain and it was considerably colder out. The muddy stretches of road grew more frequent and we hit some rougher rocky bits, but nothing too bad. Most of the time we were on the “new road” aka highway 12, which is a huge improvement over the “old road” aka highway 6, so I hear. To take a break from the rain, we stopped to eat some warm food and play cards (in Pa Tan maybe?) for an hour.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that Michael is incurably addicted to chocolate. He strives for “at least 100 grams a day.” Good chocolate is hard to find when traveling through southeast asia, especially when your only hope is the occasional dusty Vietnamese convience-store-shack. Every time we passed by one his eyes would light up.

“Maybe they have chocolate!”
“Uh, sure. Maybe they have chocolate…”

We only found good chocolate once, but thats later in the story. Today we found two packages of really promising-looking “pure cacao” that turned out to be compressed, dry, buttery-floury-sugary bricks of nastiness. Michael was not satisfied.

On the way out, we got a bit lost but some helpful locals pointed in the right direction and we ended up in Tam Duong (I think) just as the sun was going down. Same old: hotel, food, sleep.