27 April 2011

SpiceRoads Cycling Tour – Day 10
Hue to Hoi An (80 Km)

Mr. Hau is on the prowl for a fifth wife.  Preferably tall, blonde, and American.  I think he’s eyed himself a potential candidate in a certain someone we all know and love.  But first he’ll need to keep himself out of jail.  This requirement was in serious jeopardy this morning when Hung informed us that Mr. Hau was just arrested.  Not arrested in the terms we think of; more like “detained”.  It seems that his truck, his wee little truck, was too big to be travelling on the main street out of Hue.  At least that’s what the officer told him, despite the fact that the nearest sign indicated that his wee little truck was well under the restricted tonnage.  Apparently that is the way things go with the police here in Vietnam.  They are powerful and rich.  Powerful because they can stop you whenever they see fit and rich because if you get “detained” for a traffic violation, a little cash will go a long way toward securing your freedom.  (That or stating that your bus “is full of Western journalists”, which is what our own bus driver used just a few days ago when we, too, were pulled over by the Vietnam police.)  As our bus headed back into Hue to rescue Mr. Hau, he was busy greasing palms to rescue himself.  Crisis averted, we now can go back to getting shuttled a few miles out of Hue rather than pulling our bikes out of the impounded truck to pedal out of the congested city.

It’s becoming quite the hot and sweltering day as we ride south along the coast through the City of Tombs, a local roadway decorated with thousands upon thousands of colorful family temples and monuments on one side and rice paddies on the other.  Mr. Hau trails behind us and is stopped once more by the local police but this time it’s simply a routine stop, his detainment lasting only long enough for the officer to review his paperwork.  I’m starting to think that if we had these sort of police in the States, OJ Simpson may never have gotten away with it.  Certainly he would have been stopped much sooner on the San Diego Freeway.

A welcome break from the heat comes at our lunch stop, this one not at a roadside cafe with kindergarten-sized plastic chairs and bowls of fish-head soup but at a real resort and restaurant, the kind of place we had envisioned we might be staying at on this SpiceRoads holiday but which had failed to materialize thus far.  Time for a dip in the pool and a lunch served on china before tackling the biggest mountain pass of the trip – Hai Van Pass.  Today’s goal:  pass the 21-yr-old.  Yes, I know, here we go again getting all competitive, but it’s been a long trip and as we mentioned yesterday, sometimes it feels good to accomplish what no one around you expects or thinks you’re remotely capable of.  And today that would be passing the 21-yr-old on the highest (500 m) and longest (11 km) climb of the trip.  Did we do it?  Damn straight we did.  Our legs may be twice as old but today they were twice as strong.  Score one for the old ladies, boys and girls.  Nothing like peaking at the perfect time.