Monkey Island - Scooter Trip

Marshall, his co-worker Lance who was visiting from China, and myself went on a little scooter adventure to Monkey Island/ Can Gio. It was a 120 km round trip with tons of bridges and even a ferry ride. Each of us were on our own scooter - Lance was driving my scooter, Pipi, and I used his rental since it was a semi-automatic and Lance had never driven a scooter before, Marshall was on his sweet Honda CL. 

What I didn't realized before we set out was that it was a holiday weekend so I think traffic was exceptionally bad. The 60km trip there took over two hours - half was in super congested traffic on narrow one lane streets, the other half was cruising along a straight highway in the country side. 

The actual park was pretty surprising. There are no gates or fences to keep the monkeys in any particular area - they are free to roam. When we were parking our scooters, a monkey jumped onto the scooter next to me to dig through the picnic bags hanging on the bike. The monkey hissed, bared its teeth and tried to claw at my face. Little jerk.

We stopped at the concession stand to get some cold drinks and a snack. Lance was unwrapping his ice-cream cone when a monkey with a perfectly timed assault, dropped down from a tree and landed on Lance's arm. Luckily, Lance has a frightening scream and he managed to keep his cone. 

Further into the park there were monkeys and people being stupid... everywhere. I saw people handing out wrapped candies to monkeys, handing monkeys bottles of water and watching them chug  it, giving food to their small children to walk around with only to be attacked by monkeys. One woman gave the monkey a small piece of food and then coaxed it onto her lap and posed with it - as soon as the monkey was done chewing the food, it was looking for more and started clawing at her hat, scarf, glasses and bag. The lady started freaking out, completely surprised that a wild monkey would do such a thing. 

The worst part was that people started to throw bags of trash at the monkeys to watch them dig through it in search of food. I saw one monkey grab a plastic bag from the garbage heap and carry it away and eat it. It was incredibly disturbing and horrific. There was garbage all over the park - which, sadly, is sort of the norm in Vietnam. People seem to have no shame in littering no matter where you go.

Also at the park was a wildlife/vietnam war/anthropology museum. They had a bunch of stuffed animals (the dead kind, not the cuddly type unless you're really weird) that must have been very old as most of the animals' hair was rotted away. There were creepy jars filled with sea creatures, a display with an ancient human skull, and also weapons of all sorts that were used in the Vietnam war such as boards with 6" spikes that were hidden in the swamps and a heap of rifles that were randomly shoved together in a corner.

Supposedly, they have a salt-water crocodile sanctuary at this park but the bridge to get there was demolished. When it was open, you could pay to feed the crocodiles with meat at the end of a fishing pole. Maybe next time.... or not. I don't think I'll be going back.

To cleanse ourselves of the horrors, we decided to drive a little further to see the ocean and find a good place to eat. We took our motorbikes down the little oceanside path and found a cafe with and ocean view, hammocks and cold drinks.

Along that same road, we found a fresh seafood market and helped ourselves to anything that looked delicious. The drive back was a little more relaxing - the traffic was lighter and we had filled our wanderlust for the time being. This trip was pretty easy to plan out and cheap to do - I'm looking forward to other day trips out of Saigon in the future. 

Weekend Get-Away #2: Da Lat

Da Lat is a beautiful city located in a mountainous area where the majority of the country's produce is grown. Coffee, wine, vegetables are the major exports as well as what it's most famously known for,  flowers.

View from just outside the city of Da Lat.

Da Lat is the popular honeymoon spot for vietnamese and is adorned with cheesy, lovey-dovey attractions and tourist traps. For example, they have a large lake in the middle of the city where you can rent swan looking paddle boats or you can walk through "The Valley of Love" park where they have giant hearts to pose next to for photos.

Sounds exactly like our type of scene, right? Maybe to some people's disappointment, Marshall and I were not there for a sweetheart trip or honeymoon... we were there to ride mountain bikes!

Our friends, Bob and his wife Tayna, have organized a multi-stage mountain bike race for the past two years called the "Vietnam Victory Challenge" hosted in Da Lat. Marshall and I both signed up to race even though we had no bikes (still being shipped from the USA), helmets, or other usual bike riding gear. Luckily we were able to arrange rental bikes and borrow helmets and such to make it work.

The week leading up to the trip, I was suffering with food poisoning so I decided that it probably wasn't wise to try and ride mountain bikes for ~130km. The last thing I wanted, was to destroy my only good pair of cycling shorts that I have here. Haha, yuck. Marshall was feeling not so good either but he mustered up the strength to go for it anyway.

Marshall at the staging area with his rental bike.

While Marshall was racing, I took a shuttle over to the finish area to hike around (there were bathrooms on site!). The finish line area was at a place that was somewhat like a restaurant and also like a park picnic shelter. There were six or so different huts with hammocks and tables that overlook a river. A beautiful spot to relax and enjoy the view. I walked down to the river where there were small waterfalls and rocks to hop across on. A little further down the river, I spotted people on an adventure tour that were repelling down a waterfall. Looks like fun!

  

After a few hours, Marshall finished the 50km stage of the race with no issues and was completely relived to have finished and be done for the day. Later he decided to not race the next day and instead we would go explore the area and relax. We rented a motorbike early in the morning and took it out into the country side. There are a ton of waterfalls in the area and we chose one called Elephant Falls that was about 30km away from the city and one of the less touristy ones.

The drive was amazing. We were on a newly paved road that twisted through the mountains. So much fun and great views!! Here's a little video that I put together of the day's adventure:

Back in Da Lat, we walked around the city exploring the large night markets and wondering around. We found a super unique and strange cafe/bar called 100 Roofs. A pet project of a famous architect/sculptor of Vietnam who designed a giant buddha with an oversized bellybutton big enough to sit in. The cafe was so bizarre. We ordered a couple of smoothies when we walked in and then took them down this garden gnome looking staircase to the basement. 

The whole cafe was a 4+ story maze of stairways, caves, crawl spaces and hang out zones. When you get to the top floor in the back of the building, there is a tunnel that you can go through that gets you to the next block where they had built a huge garden area with more caves and stairways going all the way to the top of a hill where you have a great view of the city. This place is completely insane - it's humungous and obviously hand made with a crazy amount of detail on every feature. We probably spent a good hour just wondering around inside. Much of it wasn't lit so it was a little creepy crawling through spaces in the dark. We were super glad we ventured in!!

Marshall and I were both feeling a little better the next day so Marshall decided to race the last stage of the mountain bike race. The stage was a circuit race at the Valley of Love, Marshall's category raced for 3 laps (about 30 min per lap) - an exciting finish w/ Marshall almost overtaking the rider ahead of him (short by only half a wheel!).

After the race we had a while until it was time to go to the airport so we just wondered around the city stopping by different cafe's and unfortunately having some of the worst pizza I've ever eaten. 

Da Lat is definitely more of my kind of town - a little smaller and more relaxed than Ho Chi Minh City and has tons of mountains, trees, lakes and rivers. I'm looking forward to making a trip back to explore the green hills and winding trails. 

Buying a Scooter

Meet my new scooter, Pippi.

Pippi (as in Pippi Longstocking) is a 2012 Suzuki Hayate SS 125cc automatic motorbike. I've had Pippi for about 48 hours and she's been back to the shop twice now. :/ The first time was 20 minutes after buying the bike, we went to put gas in it and the latch to open the seat trunk (to get at the gas tank) was jammed. I remember checking it out at the dealer and it was fine. Marshall drove it back and they fixed it in a few minutes. The second time, I brought it in because it runs way too lean on a cold start and dies anytime you touch the throttle. The only way to get it to run is to let it sit with the choke on for about 10 minutes until it put-puts its way to a warm engine. They spent an hour on it today so hopefully it starts right up tomorrow morning! 

With buying a used scooter, there are always kinks and pains to work through... at least I did some research and found a reputable motorbike dealer that gives the bikes a 1 month full warranty. And he's easy to talk to and doesn't seem to bullshit much. I really hope Pippi is just testing the waters with me and doesn't make this a long running game...

Marshall is still on the hunt for a more motorcycle style bike. With a bad back, the scooter position isn't great and also the auto transmissions kill the ride quality for him. Real motorcycles are a bit of a rare find here as anything over a 135cc engine is heavily taxed. There are some Honda 67's here which is like a scooter engine bolted onto a simple motorcycle style frame with a manual tranny that he's pursuing. There are a ton of cheap Chinese Honda knock-offs here that make it difficult to find an authentic bike. We'll see how that goes!

Another funny thing about Vietnam is that foreigners are not allowed to own anything like a car, scooter or a house. My scooter is technically owned by some local guy and the document proving this is a small blue laminated card that was issued by the government. How it works here is that there is no documentation of transfer of property. There is no standing in line at the DMV to transfer the title and pay tons of fees. What you do is just hand them your little blue card. The sale is done and who ever is holding the card, owns the motorbike. 

The learning curve to driving here is very fast, and it needs to be otherwise you'd probably kill yourself. I find the chaos and constant threat of impending doom to be almost... peaceful. Channeling your inner Zen Monk is the best way to make it through. If you start getting irritated, pissed off, or nervous it just makes everything worse and more dangerous. You just have to embrace it, love it and go with the flow.

I'm happy to say that my transformation into a local, seasoned scooter rider is almost complete. I've got a long sleeve jacket (even though its 90 degrees F), my backpack is hooked around my handlebars so thieves can't cut it off my back, and I've already carried two giant boxes that were held in place by my feet as I drove. I am one giant fabric face mask shy of being an authentic motorbike rider! 

Local style.

Also, for those who haven't seen the Top Gear Vietnam special - watch it here! It really is pretty accurate of how things are like here. I do appreciate how if you are in trouble or lost, people will come up to you and will try to help - and it's out of kindness and they never ask for anything in return.


** Posts are a little infrequent lately due to most likely the 'bamboo firewall'. Sometimes I can access the blog and sometimes it's blocked. If the blog disappears one day, just come back later and maybe the government has released the block.