Dong Ha is, as cities in Vietnam go, quite charming. It's actually quite a bit nicer than some places in Korea I've been to. It seems to me that the cities have been getting nicer as I make my way north. They are cleaner and the buildings are better and people seem to have more money to spend. Maybe I get this impression of Dong Ha because it's so near to Hue and Dong Nang, which are, as far as I can tell, the biggest tourist cities. Maybe the southern cities get less funding because of the war. It never dawned on me until recently that the renaming of Saigon to Ho Chi Mihn City is a bit of a smack to the face.
Regardless of it's relative charm, I had no plans to spend two nights in Dong Ha. I spent the first night in Dong Ha because I had been driving for six hours and was running out of daylight. That, and I felt that if I pushed my motorcycle and further the engine would have ceased up again. I'm spending the second night because I have to wait for the mechanic to finish the repairs.
Despite feeling stranded, I've actually been enjoying my time here. At the moment it's cool and breezy and I've been enjoying walking around the city. I've also been taking much needed naps, doing exercise and studying in my room. I definitely needed some time alone, and what better place for it than in some town of no special importance in Vietnam that I wasn't aware existed until I got here?
Yesterday I was in Dong Nang, the surprisingly nice, and extremely touristic city, which lies about half way between Saigon and Hanoi. There, I took a couple days out to see my friend Heejay, whom I know from working in Korea, and who I had just seen a couple of weeks before while in Bangkok, enjoying the Songkran festival. It was nice to stop somewhere nice and relax for a bit.
Heejay was staying at a ritzy hotel right on the the beach, so I took a room at a cheap hotel across the street. It was nothing special, but it had a nice view, which I forgot to take a picture of. Heejay has been working at the aforementioned hotel so she can stay there for free. She doesn't make much money, but is enjoying living in Danang and learning to swim in the hotel pool.
We had a good (platonic) time together. We went to the Lotte cinema, and I finally got to see the new Avengers movie. Props to Heejay for sitting (and sometimes sleeping) through it. We ate Korean food and drank beer. It was kind of like being in Korea again. The next day we went shopping. I bought some shorts and a new phone. Later we went for a motorcycle ride to a surprisingly nice temple. Amazingly the bike made it up the hill. Later we ate Korean food in a nice restaurant.
I've been trying to be as frugal as possible up until now, but my last payment from my last year's teaching contract finally came in, and I was able to pay off my student loan at last. Not for the first time this trip, I was glad to have my computer with me. I may be poor, but at least I can say now, for the first time in nine years, that I'm completely debt free. It's a good feeling.
Heejay and I spent the evening swimming in the pool at her hotel and drinking beer on the beach. It was fun and for the first time in days, I wasn't feeling stressed out or anxious. I had some things to worry about, not the least of which was whether to try and get a few dollars for my motorcycle in Hoi An, and take a bus to Hanoi, fly out of the country from Da Nang, or throw caution to the wind and see how far I could take my motorcycle before the engine failed.
We were going to meet for lunch the next day, but I decided to try my luck on the motorcycle. I wanted to try and catch up to my travel companions Simon, and Oyvind. The engine was in a sorry state--it burned a bottle of oil every hundred kilometers. Somehow I made the two hundred kilometer journey without ceasing the motor. I would have liked to stop in Hue, the old imperial capital, but I had to content myself to ride through.
I had split up with my travel companions in Hoi An, a hub for backpackers especially those doing the pan Vietnam motorcycle journey. We had spent a couple of nights there, drinking and socializing and doing the backpacker thing. It was about that time began to feel depressed. I was going to get repairs on my bike there, but didn't want to spend another day, so I took off to Danang in the morning.
The journey up until that point had been, aside from the numerous mechanical issues involving all of our bikes, extremely pleasant. We had been taking the Ho Chi Mihn Trail, for the most part, which snakes it's way through the mountains. We stopped in cities and national parks, and a small burg with nothing to do, where we got some beers and watched Apocalypse Now in our hotel room. I wonder if it's still true that "Charlie don't surf."
We drove though hundreds of kilometers of stunning vistas. We played drinking games at a lively hostel in Da Lat, and the next day had a creepy massages in a basement. We stumbled into a Vietnamese wedding by accident, and were kicked out after Simon and Oyvind failed to deliver on their rendition of "Hotel California". We met some Germans on the road and enjoyed what might be the best coffee in the world in Pleiko. And other adventures.
As for me in particular, I got a small taste of the insight I was looking for when I decided to embark on this journey, in the most unlikely of places. My bike's engine ceased up somewhere along the road before Pleiko. We had to wait for a long time at a gas station to find a truck that was willing to take me and my bike to the city. Sitting in the cab of that truck between two Vietnamese delivery men, I had my moment of zen. It's always the same insight I don't know what I'm always expecting.
Anyway, it came and went and now I'm wondering if I should continue this journey beyond Vietnam, or go back to work and make some cheddar. I'm still not crazy about teaching ESL, but now that I'm in the black I can think about investing in an apartment or saving to do a master's degree. The question has been weighing heavy on my mind.
So, I've been sending out resumes, but I'm still not entirely sure I want to go back to work yet. I've been traveling for nearly two months now, but I've not done what I set out to do. I haven't gained any lasting insight, and my two avenues for doing so seem problematic.
I could go to Burma and stay in a monastery for a while, but it's getting to be ridiculously hot--like too hot to concentrate. Alternatively, I could go to Nepal, but I'm not sure that it's a great idea right now with the dust just settling from the earthquake.
So, I'm just taking it one step at a time. First thing is first--make it to Hanoi.
Wish me luck.
