82 - Finding Ba Be (Bac Kan Province, Vietnam)
“No one was injured. Low speeds and zero traffic ensured this, but the potential was there. My gratitude sprang eternal, especially when I discovered a child (no helmet) on the back of the other bike. If eliciting a smile at breakfast proved challenging, imagine the reaction after maiming a toddler…”
by The Nostomaniac
I CAN READ A MAP. HONEST, I CAN. I’d done it many times. Mr. Hai (our guide from Ha Giang to Dong Van) offered to escort us to Ba Be Lake. The route seemed straightforward, so we declined. Did he know something we didn’t? Betch your ass he did. We had a map. We had faith. What more could we need, right? Wrong. Normally, I’d assume my disorientation predilection the root cause of any and all navigation shit shows, but I had someone to verify my sanity (or validate my insanity).
The map was wrong. Really wrong. Dead wrong, as in “make-believe roads” wrong. This was hard to accept. What are the chances? How could this be? Well, it was. We wasted two hours reconciling impossible circumstances. According to the map, we couldn’t possibly be in the town we were in. We turned to the proletariat. Inquiries/borderline interrogations followed. We were ignored, brushed off, or given more baffling information. How many ways can you pronounce 'Ba Be'? Answer: 1,946. Did a note (courtesy of Mr. Hai,) with “How do you get to Ba Be Lake?” written in Vietnamese help? No, no it did not.
We drove through Bao Lam twice in search of glory. No luck. We capitulated, opting for the long way (a.k.a. the only way) running east through Cao Bang, then west to Ba Be National Park. Travel time? Eleven hours to Cao Bang. Ouch. The mountainous, serpentine character of the roads and their relative disrepair did nothing to hasten our arrival. Throw in goats, a sudden bum-rush by a mud-soaked baby calf, large stone piles, miscellaneous debris, acute knee-back-ass pain, and you have the makings of an arduous journey. Arduous but beautiful—a highlight of Northern Vietnam. Map snafu was unfortunate as this area is ripe for lingering and then lingering some more. (You’ll have to take my word for it. I deleted my photos from this leg by accident like a big fat dummy face.)
Actual Route.
If you say so, Google.
Cao Bang is a sizable city. This meant decent hotel, comfortable bed, hot shower. “Grateful” didn’t begin to define our delight. After disrobing for soapy time, I noticed mysterious insect bites covering my torso. I fingered the culprit, t-shirts from a Hanoi market. Should you wash clothes purchased on the street before wearing them? Yes, yes you should. Or not, if cooties are your jam.
The next morning we made the usual attempt for coffee and breakfast. We went to a café and had the familiar helping of tar while receiving the customary congenial reception. Cafés don’t do food. That’d be ridiculous. We trolled a few hotels. None were serving breakfast. Why would they? That’d be ridiculous. At one establishment, the staff ignored us for ten minutes before we succumbed to shame and retreated. Awesome.
With empty stomachs and a taste of bile, we loaded up and pushed on. Turns out our map wasn’t just fallacious, it was minted by Satan’s cartographer. It tore free from its saddlebag confines and ejected. It deserved abandonment, but were we brave enough? Nyet. Call it codependency in a monkey’s paw sort of way. Time for a salvage operation, so back we went. I spotted the fucker, slowed down, and executed a u-turn… without looking back. (Thank you, Satan.) A woman screamed like an eight-year-old at a reptile exhibit and grazed us, smashing the side mirror and facilitating our collapse. We lay in the road for a second before getting upright and moving to the shoulder.
No one was injured. Low speeds and zero traffic ensured this, but the potential was there. My gratitude sprang eternal, especially when I discovered a child (no helmet) on the back of the other bike. If eliciting a smile at breakfast proved challenging, imagine the reaction after maiming a toddler. Shit. Shaken but not stirred, we remounted. The remaining drive to Ba Be Lake was uneventful and well-marked. We arrived in the afternoon, found a hotel, and organized a boat tour for the following day. Our efforts were not in vain.
“Often referred to as the Ba Be Lakes, Ba Be National Park was established in 1992 as Vietnam’s eighth national park. The scenery swoops from towering limestone mountains peaking at 1554m down into plunging valleys wrapped in dense evergreen forests and speckled with waterfalls and caves.” (See Lonely Planet online here.)
A boat to ourselves, the sun on our faces, a break from the chaos of road travel. It was glorious. Glorious, I say! Karst limestone cliffs stand sentry above the lake and river leading to the area’s highlight—Puong Cave. Stunning is the view, awestruck is the result. It’s one big-ass cave. And without throngs of tourists (our experience), it’s ever so easy to loiter indefinitely.
An older male Vietnamese tourist requested a photo. By “requested” I mean grunted and pointed with authoritarian affect—no eye contact, no smile, not even a “please” or a “thank you.” He would not be denied. I had my orders. If you’re going to be an asshole to gringos, that’s the way to go. Impossible to get angry when you laugh… on the inside, of course.
Ba Be is worth a couple of days at least. Get there during the low season, and you may have it mostly to yourself. Michelle had a life—things to do, places to be, so time was a luxury we could ill afford. Savor and keep on trucking. We finished our tour in the early afternoon, packed up the bike, and moved on (to the chagrin of our backsides). The next day and a half was a marathon to Hanoi.
Of all the time I’d spent on a motorcycle in the preceding eight months that was, without a doubt, wrought with the highest concentration of insanity. It made Indonesia and Sri Lanka feel like a pleasure cruise on a quiet Montana road after Armageddon. Avoid driving at night at all costs. Ask me how I know? Our timetable was tight, so I took the risk. Dumb. Death is a great way to clear your schedule.
The last leg to Hanoi was a doozy deluxe. Simple rule: If I see you, or if seeing you is theoretically possible, responsibility is mine… unless I’m mightier. Then, fuck it, no responsibility whatsoever. Pass, switch lanes, start, and stop with zero regard for the welfare of lesser mortals. Confused? Try living it. I saw pedestrians cross (day or night) without a glance in my direction. Was I not mightier than they? Gringo exception? Dunno. Blinded by oncoming lights. Swarmed by insects. Baffled by nonchalance.
I passed hybrid-vehicle mutations I couldn’t identify, bicycles sans reflectors, motorbikes carrying livestock, drivers talking, texting, gesticulating incomprehensibly. I paused for lorry trucks backing onto the highway with no warning and spent way too much time driving off-road wary of pedestrians, animals, food carts, potholes, etc. And then there were horns, the infernal and perpetual honkfest that is Vietnam. Incessant usage nullifies the potency, but nobody seems to connect the dots. Too slow? Honk. Too fast? Honk. Passing? Honk. Angry? Honk. Bored? Honk. Confused? Honk. Horny? Honk. My favorite was the honk ambush, i.e. sneak up on the gringo and his lady and let ‘em have it… hoooonk! Sorry, but some of those folks were fuckers. Real fuckers.
We beat the odds and defied the gods, arriving in Hanoi intact. The same couldn’t be said for my hotel reservation. Lost. Patience is a virtue, but I wasn’t feeling so virtuous. In fact, I wanted to start swinging. (Why? See recent fiasco here.) I was forced to find lodging elsewhere… again. And I still had to return the motorcycle. I thought it would get ugly. I had no energy for ugly. My fears were unfounded. Besides some pushback on crooked handlebars (like that from the start), they accepted the bike without incident. Fairy tales can come true, it could happen to you…
And along came a typhoon.
