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Entries made in January, 2011

Cold Start

Monday, January 31st, 2011

Tyler gently shakes me awake when the skies are light enough to ride by. He and Pete have been up tending to our fire—without which sleeping would have been impossible. It's bright and early, six thirty to be exact, and it's time to hit the road....

Freezing in a Bamboo Shack

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

Tara: "Tyler," I whisper, trying not to wake our friends. "I can't feel my toes. Let me in!" I'm trying to squirm my way under his legs for warmth, but he's enviably asleep and his leaden body refuses to budge. I let out a huge sigh and stare...

Wild Camping With Friends

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

A golden sun is sinking fast behind the mountains, urging us onwards in our futile attempt to reach the highway before dark. At the crossroads we're looking for, where dirt meets pavement, there is sure to be a guest-house. But the road ahead is ...

Dirt Tracks to Nowhere

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

Tara: Brilliant blue skies stretch out above us, more heavenly than any magnificent cathedral's dome. The scent of woodsmoke (one of my favorite smells) drifts through the air, and I am filled with happiness, hugging Tyler as he pilots our moto...

Motorized, Again

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

I had trouble falling asleep last night. I must have lain in bed for three hours staring at the ceiling, thinking about riding motorcycles, feeling for all the world like a kid on Christmas Eve. I don't remember when I finally drifted off, but it...

Resting in Luang Prabang, Sort Of

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

The last three days have been intense. They kicked off with a truly awful ride through Hanoi, which lead directly into a nauseating and exhausting twenty-eight hour bus trek through the mountains of Vietnam and Laos. Immediately after, ready to...

Welcome to Laos, Part Three: Music & Petang

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Tyler: After the goat feast, the festivities continue with music and games. Behind our table is a long strip of dirt where men gather for a petang match, one of Lao's favorite past-times. It's a holdover from French colonization, known there as...

Welcome to Laos, Part Two: The Goat Feast

Friday, January 28th, 2011

When the soccer game is over, it's time for the feast! This party is special because our hosts are serving numerous traditional but rarely eaten dishes, all made from a single, freshly-slaughtered goat. We're honored to be included in the festivi...

Welcome to Laos, Part One: A Soccer Game

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Tyler: Bleary eyed and delirious with fatigue, after a full day (and then some) of bus riding, with barely a night's sleep between us, we carve ourselves out of bed this morning to join our friends. As we stumble around, fumbling to find shoes a...

A Very Long Bus Ride: Part Four

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

4:45 PM / Tara I feel like Frankenstein's monster, stumbling around groaning as I leave the bus during one of our many rest stops. My brain hurts and my stomach feels like death, but I find hope in the fact that we're almost there. While stopp...

A Very Long Bus Ride: Part Three

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

10:00 AM Our trek through Laos begins with a stop at a roadside restaurant for a noodle soup breakfast. Back in the open kitchen where we place our order, a woman and a girl dish bowls of the de-facto meal, while a mama cat and her scraggly kit...

A Very Long Bus Ride: Part Two

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

7:00 AM A dull light hits my eyelids, rousing me from my restless sleep. One night down, one day to go. Outside, the world is all steely grey skies and foggy mountain villages. For a brief moment, I regret taking the bus just a little. This ...

A Very Long Bus Ride: Part One

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

We've hardly been on the road an hour when our bus executes a wide left turn into a roadside restaurant parking lot. Lit up like a beacon in the night, the place has drawn a herd of giant coaches just like ours. They've all stopped here to fuel t...

Race to the Station: Part Three

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Tyler: Headlights fly by, momentarily blinding us, adding a hefty dose of disorientation to this impossibly hectic ride. At last long, we pull into the bus station, a crowded, chaotic parking lot, filled to the brim with motorbike touts, taxis a...

Race to the Station: Part Two

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Tyler: Hanoi's traffic is worse than Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh combined. It is manageable only because it moves slowly, a seemingly inevitable consequence of the complete anarchy which composes it. Still, riding safely in this unholy mess...

Race to the Station: Part One

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

A cold draft blows through the open door of the travel agency, causing a slightly kooky receptionist behind the counter to shiver in her fur coat. I sit on a chilly plastic chair, hands shoved beneath my thighs, eyes affixed to the clock on the op...

Surprise!

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

I have a present for you! I think you're going to like it. Do you how I know? Because it's awesome and dorky, just like you! Can you guess what it is? No? That's okay. Are you ready to open it? Here it is: psst: y...

Done Waffling

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

With one week left on our visa, the question of what to do with the last of our time in Vietnam is looming. Normally, we stay in a country as long as we can, soaking up as much as possible. The thought of leaving early and "wasting" an entire wee...

Bus-Lagged and Weary

Monday, January 24th, 2011

I feel like a zombie this morning, bus-lagged and altogether weary. I've been drained by Vietnam's non-stop barrage of stimuli, and now find myself overwhelmed by the prospect of exploring her sprawling capital. We've just ridden eight hours to r...

On the Bus Again

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

Tyler: After some long discussions and lots of hypothetical mapping, we've decided to catch another bus. This time, we're headed all the way to Hanoi. While we could likely ride there before our visas run out, it wouldn't leave us much time to ...

A Walk in Huế

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

It's another somber day in Huế, a perpetual dusk of sinister silver skies and drenching rain that comes in fits and starts. During a brief lull in the foggy drizzle, we leave our cozy hotel room and start a sightseeing tour, walking towards the hi...

Where to?

Friday, January 21st, 2011

It's another grey day; rain pelts at the windows, and outside on our little balcony, all of the gritty, dirty clothes we hung out to dry are no doubt soaked through. Neither of us can be bothered to look, much less deal with them. We're staying i...

Mizzle-y Day

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Mizzle is a term used in Devon and Cornwall for a combination of fine drenching drizzle… …it is known for being capable of soaking you in a matter of minutes, and the feeling is best described as if one would stand under a Fire Brigade fine n...

Hai Van Pass

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

Tara: On this trip, we've observed more times than we can count that hungry cyclists are two year olds, who cannot be trusted to make good choices. In a prime example of this truth, Tyler rejects the idea of turning around to find food after our...

Scenes From a Day on the Road

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

In Which We Cycle a Bit Here we are, cycling along the coast of Vietnam, and we can hear ourselves think! We can hear each other talk, and we can ride side by side, all thanks to an unusually quiet road. Thrilled about this change of circumsta...

A Puppy On A Bed of Silk

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

I met a puppy today, curled up in the arms of a little Vietnamese girl. They were stationed at the entrance of a grand Chinese meeting house, ready to welcome guests inside. The hall itself was okay, but by the time I got there, I was over t...

Art Tea

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

With Tyler hard at work in our hotel room, I've bundled up for an afternoon of solo sightseeing. It's my favorite kind of weather for photographing old, aging places: grey and cloudy, not quite raining, but with a slight dreariness that throws int...

Hội An Lantern Festival: Part Two

Monday, January 17th, 2011

In a small cobbled park, situated between a pair of buildings in Hoi An's old town, a crowd has gathered. People shout and laugh raucously, while a man announces something in Vietnamese through a car-battery-powered PA. As we work our way through...

Hội An Lantern Festival: Part One

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Every fourteenth day of the lunar calendar, Hoi An puts the complications of modern life to rest in favor of a romantic, nostalgic celebration of a quieter era. Once a month, instead of playing host to noisy scooters, the old quarter is reserved f...

Tailored

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

There is only one thing more ubiquitous than the colorful lanterns hanging everywhere in Hội An: tailors. Every second building in the old town is a shop overflowing with fabric, just waiting to be hand-crafted into a one-of-a-kind garment. In fr...

Nightfall in Lantern City

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

From its famous Japanese covered bridge: …to the smattering of lanterns everywhere: …and candle-lit food stalls overlooking the river: This town is almost too quaint and colorful to be real. Hội An is like some kind of Disney v...

Street Food in the Rain

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

Under heavy gray skies, a steady drizzle bounces off the conical rice hat of a roadside chef—she is sitting in front of a cauldronful of embers and ash, tending to an array of pork skewers. As we take a seat next to her, she turns them one by one,...

Sightseeing in Historic Hội An

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

It is grey, drizzly and downright cold outside this morning, but the weather suits me just fine; the somber mood it brings about lends even more character to the ambiance of this already atmospheric town. In order to explore the history-steep...

All Alone in Hội An

Friday, January 14th, 2011

For the last two years, every time we've made friends with anyone, we've had to part ways almost immediately afterwards. In fact, before Pete and Natasha, we'd only twice had the good fortune of being able to spend more time with the cool people we...

My Kind of Town

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

As we stroll around town, talking, laughing with our friends, and getting caught up on the last few days since we hung out in Da Lat, it is quickly becoming apparent to me that I am going to feel right at home in Hội An. It's my kind of town, seem...

Arriving in Hội An

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Gritty and dim, under an overcast early morning sky, we've arrived at just the right time to witness this historical town coming to life. On narrow streets filled with dark wooden homes, we cycle into the heart of Hội An; a living, breathing relic...

A Night on the Space Bus

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

A few days ago, we came to the realization that cycling the entire length of Vietnam was not only unappealing to us, thanks to the non-stop traffic, but also infeasible due to the duration of our visas. So, having made it to the coast as planned, ...

I Want to Go Italy

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

When we were in Tunisia, barreling down the road towards Douz in a louage, we shared our van with a cute pair of Italian guys who had flown over for a week's vacation on a whim. Lorenzo and Giovanni, fresh off the plane from Milano, knew little to...

Down the Misty Mountain

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Tyler: As we round the bend of our last (uphill) switchback this morning, we're greeted by an ethereal vision in the distance: a swirl of fast-moving white fog drifting across the road. As we approach the hanging mist, the chill clouds rush arou...

Morning in a Mountain Village

Monday, January 10th, 2011

I'm not sure how early it is, but I'm ready to go. As I clumsily dislodge myself from the hammock, all knees and elbows, I leave Tara curled up like a burrito in the netting, dead to the world. After I've padded around camp gathering twigs for a ...

A Long Cold Night

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

As the sun sinks into the horizon, coloring the sky a rusty shady of red, the temperature plummets with alarming speed. Crap. Why oh why did we send home our tent, and why oh why did I just send home our long underwear as well? Just a few days a...

Free Camping Again

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

Pedaling away from the tiny mountain shop, we round yet another bend, revealing a foreboding indication of more climbing: there is another wide, sweeping curve of a switchback before us. Well, I guess that little village wasn't at the top after al...

It's All Downhill From Here

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

We're mentally prepared for an easy day of coasting, excited to reap the rewards of our labor. But as we cycle out of town, a freakishly steep hill looms before us, and I am caught off guard. I thought we were leaving the mountains—why are we sti...

Motorbike to the Falls

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

At the behest of Pete and Natasha, we've rented a motorbike this afternoon. They did a loop in the mountains around Da Lat a few days ago, and hearing their story convinced us we should head out for an adventure of our own. This will be the secon...

Trying Betel

Friday, January 7th, 2011

In Vietnamese there is a saying that "the betel begins the conversation", referring to the practice of people chewing betel in formal occasions or "to break the ice" in awkward situations. Wikipedia, Betel Before we arrived in Bangkok to...

Hằng Nga Hotel: Da Lat's Crazy House

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Hằng Nga guest-house, more affectionately known as Da Lat's "Crazy House" is a totally bizarro hotel designed by the Vietnamese architect Dang Viet Nga. She built it after receiving her PhD from the University of Moscow, and being heavily influenc...

Da Lat Market Fun

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

This morning, in a slumberous daze, my flickering eyelids open, and I find myself face to face with a stunning view. A raging sky of fiery orange and bruised purple obliterates the last remnants of my sleepiness, luring me out of bed and onto our ...

Our Process: Automation: Journal Photos

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

This entry is part of an ongoing series about how we've documented our adventure. As of this writing, our journal contains approximately eight thousand photos, distributed over eight hundred and five published entries. We store this ever g...

Working in Da Lat

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Yesterday, after a windy ride up our eight hundred meter climb into Da Lat, we were spared a long, drawn out hunt for accommodation. Just a few minutes after arriving in the city, we hit the lodging jackpot: Le Phoung Hotel, a new construction rig...

Climbing to Da Lat

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Stepping out of our guest-house, the chill bite of an early morning wind blows in our faces, sending up an army of goosebumps. Our exhaled breath is white like cigarette smoke, and this means one thing: we've finally left early enough so to have s...

Coffee Country

Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

The ride out of Bao Loc this morning is a lovely one. Instead of starting the day with switchbacky mountain climbs, the early part of our route is full of easy rolling hills. As we pedal through the winding picturesque scenery of coffee plantatio...

Happy New Year

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

I love ringing in the New Year. Not so much for the booze and parties, but more as a set time to reflect on my life, and make sure I'm heading in a direction that is meaningful to me. Tyler, on the other hand, is pretty irreverent about holidays ...