The second evening after our arrival we were entertained by the
Ministry of Tourism at a reception on a floating restaurant, complete
with video coverage, welcome speeches, and plenty to eat. On the
day we departed Hanoi there was a photographer from AP - I later
found out that an article with photo showed up in numerous U.S.
newspapers the next day! One of the veterans on our trip was later
filmed running the Saigon marathon and was featured the following
evening nation-wide on the CBS Evening News. Twice we ran into
expatriates living in Vietnam who knew who we were, as they had
been following our progress on Voice of America radio.
We were truly famous, at some
level. Phil, a rider currently living in Taiwan, accurately referred
to our ride as the "1200 Mile Parade Route." It was.
Everywhere we went we were mobbed by crowds of curious onlookers.
It was incessant and required, later on, serious concentration
to maintain a proper ambassadorial attitude. As much as I liked
this sort of thing, I reached a point where I had tired of saying
hello and of smiling to everyone and of people demanding attention
(which included an occasional friendly rock thrown at us).
We really enjoyed Hanoi; it was complete sensory overload to bike among hundreds of other people on bicycles. One had to be careful not to make radical maneuvers while flowing along with all the bicyclists. Intersections were what could only be called 'managed chaos.' I was unable to determine how the Vietnamese manage without frequent collisions. We toured the capital area, got to see "Uncle Ho" in his mausoleum, and saw the house where he lived while ruling North Vietnam. It was a very pleasant little house, so simple and functional - we all wished for a place such as this to go to. The lower floor was completely open, with a bench seat around the perimeter and a table for six where Ho received visitors. Supported on posts above this breezeway were his living quarters, simply an office and a bedroom. All in beautiful dark hardwoods.
Another interesting site was a very old university that taught Confucianism and graduated one person every three years. A Masters Degree carried some weight in those days.
We were also taken to a Water Puppet show, theater borne of the monsoon season when everything is flooded. Vietnamese in origin, the puppet masters were behind a screen, thigh deep in water, operating figures with sticks under the water. Even without the knowledge of the language, the show and accompanying band was interesting, mostly humorous. Twice on the trip we were entertained with live Vietnamese music, and I was very impressed. The unique instruments and talents of the players were unforgettable. The music was upbeat and happy. After a speech by the Minister of Tourism extolling Vietnamese-American reconciliation, we departed Hanoi and quickly got a taste of what the trip was going to be like. Frequent looks of disbelief and friendly waves from every direction.
The country's landscape was fantastic. The northern portion of the journey was generally flat, and the hills were in the distance, leaving us with less to break up the view. But it may have been the most interesting because it was here, at the start of the trip, that we first saw the people, the paddies, the brick kilns, the pig and chicken farms, the vegetable plots, the cemeteries, the oxen and Brahma and carts, kids working and going to school, the women carrying huge loads suspended across their shoulders, the trucks and buses and motorcycles and bicycles; the sites of Highway One.