Charlie and Steve's Excellent Adventure

August 3, 2015

Gluttony Expedition – In Denial, Hanoi, Vietnam

You know that sensation when you know something’s a little wrong but you don’t want to admit it yet, don’t want to make it real by giving it a name? It’s the nagging sensation like a lover that has become a little distant or your own declining fitness; that concrete evidence staring you in the face can be so hard to see when it means swallowing a hard truth. And so we ignore, as the saying goes: denial is a strategy. It’s a strategy we mock for it’s stupidity but how many of us don’t use it, possibly regularly? And so we are in Hanoi after weeks of actively employing this very unstrategic strategy. Ever since crossing the DMZ from the south to the north of Vietnam we’ve noticed a change too big to face, the lover we knew was slipping away but for ignorance granting us a few more devoted weeks. Yes in the north, the; I can barely say it, it hurts too much. The food is not as good as in the south.

What relief, what hurtful emboldening freedom; it’s out there now, we’ve admitted it and there’s no turning back. Since leaving Hoi An the bulletproof random guesses at food that always astounded have changed tune. At first it was just an occasional dish in Hue that didn’t come with the basket of fresh herbs or the fish sauce was replaced by soy. The need for denial persisted when chilli went missing, we stopped seeing saw coriander and in Phong Nha disaster struck: we had a watery pho. Twice. The dish that built a nation is sacred yet after tasting it’s timid demise we still denied, all these incidents mingled with great ones surely can’t confirm anything we told ourselves. But facts are facts, the food in the south is better so by Viet standards this very good northern food just doesn’t cut it. Very good but not good enough, where does that leave us?

Street sellers in the Old Quarter, Hanoi, Vietnam.

The answer to that is the death nail and the salvation of northern food all in one; Hanoi. About four and a half weeks we’ve been riding and all the while getting closer to China, and Chinese food. As glorious as that is, Chinese food is the street fighter that rules his home block now fighting on a world stage, that is to say that perspective is a harsh mistress. After limping into Hanoi yesterday it’s off to taste the town and first stop is, you’ll never guess; go on have a guess. If you said coffee then go ingest some caffeine, you deserve it. Running the gauntlet that is negotiating Hanoi streets we gawk at street names and numbers before spotting the sign over a door that seems to indicate our place is ten metres to the right. We pause, unsure. A frail old man perched at the entrance like the spotter at a drug deal notices our hesitation and after summing us up nods towards the door that leads to nowhere but a tight lane.

Through the door we’re in; a dark corridor that seems neither outdoors nor indoors opens up to a small courtyard also with the same stuck in between half light of a hangover morning with just two tiny tables. Surely this is a mistake we think, before a young boy points up a staircase discretely tucked behind a wall. We had a tip off for this place from a local and upon cresting the stairs the world bursts to life in a room of bustling tables all here for the same purpose, we’re back in the Viet ideal of just doing one thing and doing it well. We order two egg coffees, one with rum and await the fruits of our adventure. We taste just the words in our mouth at first, egg coffee. What could this be?

Egg coffee with rum, Giang Cafe, Old Quarter, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Apparently a famous bartender in Hanoi channeled the very Viet ideal of not resting on assumption and decided that cappuccino foam had no flavour. Millions have tasted cappuccino but it’s up to Viet ingenuity to push the line a little further; what the hell is an egg coffee? The aftertaste of words still sticks to our mouths as the boy is back in a flash with the answer to our questions. Two soupy pots of dieting disaster topped with a kind of zabaglione arrive, the sweet Italian dessert of thickened egg yolk has a new incarnation as a replacement for the emptiness of cappuccino froth. Viet coffee is rich, sticky, sweet and potent at the best of times but adding the rich, sticky, sweet, potent decadence of beaten egg yolk on top is both an abomination and a decadence in one; basically the biblical version of gay sex. Don’t start me on the one with rum in it.

Not content with one coffee innovation it’s time for coconut coffee. The decadence of the eggs is replaced with the freshness of iced coconut milk yet the depth and body remains, the yin to the yang. Just when north Vietnam was posing as an insipid copycat version of its southern twin, Hanoi drops these babies on us. Maybe denial was a strategy after all. Noodles without the herbs, soup without the broth and barbecue without the char; the north had shown nothing of invention beyond what it borrowed from the south. Until now. There’s only one option, it’s time for another instalment of the glut-a-thon, following the very successful Dalat version. Cue cheering audience audio.

Vietnam’s rising middle class: Ngoc Son Temple, Hoan Kiem lake, Hanoi, Vietnam.

The scene is set, we stand like gunslingers at the beginning of a street swarming with chaotic traffic, haphazard lights and sleeping storefronts pushed to insignificance by a footpath that is all scooter parking and food stalls. It’s a reality TV show but more reality and less TV. The three rules: we can’t reject any food, we must try one of every new thing and if we don’t know what’s being sold it must be tried. The music sounds, the camera zooms in on our uncertain faces as we sit down to sticky rice, Chinese pork and sausage. We’ve been decrying the Chinese influence to Viet food thus far but with one booming dish Vietnam corrects any fear that the famed Viet ingenuity was in decline, it’s just been in very deniable hiding for a time.

They say pigs are very smart animals. This may be so, with all that intelligence their brains taste yummy in an omelette. Pigeons, they’re a pest, so we do our bit by removing one from the population. Not a lot of meat on the little buggers but that mouthful is rich and gamey. Seared beef on rice with fresh cucumber goes with sticky sweet pork as we dance to every corner of the taste palate. A bit of argy bargy with a pastry lady sees us get more than what we order and pay for less than what we get but somehow everyone wins. We waddle back to our room, faith restored but more importantly free from a burden that has been dogging us since the DMZ; sleep is so much deeper when there’s nothing to deny.

August 2, 2015

While you were working – Picking up a Smile, Hanoi, Vietnam

We’re like kids on Christmas morning or maybe Easter Sunday, there’s something exciting happening today and although there’s no mistaking it, it’s a little hard to believe it’s actually happening. Leaving Ho Chi Minh city there were a million reasons that we would not make it and on the cusp of our triumphant ride we wrestle with mixed feelings: we always thought we’d make it somehow but didn’t quite see how it was going to happen. Well today it is going to happen. Today is the shortest day of the entire ride so just like the yellow jersey of Le Tour de France, we don our well worn riding shirts for the final stage of Le Tour de Viet. It might not be the Champs Elysees but the old A1 highway runs a straight line from Tam Coc to Hanoi for our victory procession. I can almost see the marquees, the celebrities sipping champagne and the social climbers with their grotesque little dogs in Louis Vuitton handbags; today can only be glamorous.

The glamour and fame lasts for all of about a minute, the old A1 isn’t quite the Champs Elysees as a bus just about sends us skittering off the road and a blaring horn nearly deafens both of us just as the heavens open sending a heavy downpour our way. On bikes that, like this whole trip, are ready to die and wobble with the handling of a 18th century donkey cart we dodge and weave our way up the highway shoulder in a scene that’s not quite the glittering parade of glamour I’d envisioned. Glamour and prestige aside we do feel enlivened and uplifted, today we might not be parading that famous Parisian street to the flashing bulbs of paparazzi but an achievement we have made none the less. Scenes of trials flash through our minds to recount the many times this trip could have ended: pushing Charlie’s bike by the exhaust to Buon Ma Thuot, Greg’s untimely death in Hue along with the countless times death was cheated; ours and our bikes. Yes we’re winners today and I can just about hear the crowd, we’ve even made it without a single accident which is possibly more the victory than making it at all.

Charlie and Steve on our ‘trusty’ steeds, Rob and Greg. Vietnam.

In place of the paparazzi and the peloton forming an escort of glory we are yet again surrounded by the very Viet phenomenon of putting the world on a scooter. First up it’s a guy carrying huge fruit bags sliced with holes. From these holes poke the heads of live ducks. A bag on each side and another between his legs, approximately 20 ducks are on this scooter that by our standards now doesn’t even look terribly loaded. There is also possibly the most delicious metaphor of the trip, in a land where scooters are heavy moving machines there’s a scooter strapped whole to another scooter. A scooter on a scooter; ample fodder for a philosophical mind.

Sadly the irony here can’t be enjoyed too much, survival on these roads is not an easy assumption. Horns blaze but all we hear is trumpets from the brass band, the shower that soaked us through has passed and Hanoi is in sight. There’s a time in each days ride where I think ‘were close enough now, if a bike breaks down we can push each other there’. This is that time. We stop under an overpass as I overshoot the line on the road much to the manic hand waving of a nearby man telling me to get back behind the line. Run people over, drive on the wrong side of the road and ignore red lights all you like just for heaven’s sake don’t pull up beyond the line. The absurdity causes a raucous laugh that I’m happy doesn’t go further than my helmet. Absurd road rules aside, we’ve made it and I can hear the paparazzi snapping like crazy and the supermodel is preparing to hand me the bouquet, Le Tour de Viet has a couple of new champions.

Hoan Kiem lake, Hanoi, Vietnam.

After all this time we’ve gotten pretty good at Vietnamese roads, manic as they are, but nothing quite makes you comfortable in the wild tangle of Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh city was crazy but hanoi has decided it doesn’t need it’s medication as we white knuckle it all the way to the old quarter and our hotel for the night. As celebratory as this moment is the supermodel needs to wait and hold that perfect smile because the tour isn’t quite finished, it’s off to the Aussie embassy for me to resolve my passport issue. My water damaged passport essentially has no photo anymore leaving me to fear for my entry into Japan forcing me to order a new one and hope like hell it arrives in time. So for now I have no passport and only an unqualified opinion that I should have a new one before we fly, this could get interesting.

So here we are, in Hanoi, the capital of this country that has taken us by storm after about four and a half weeks of churning up the Ho Chi Minh trail from the city that bares his name to the city that formed his legend. We dodge traffic more like a video game and in these tight streets the sound of Charlie screaming followed by a hard crunch and thud chills me to the bone, this is the sound that has never been far away but we have learned to live with. I screech to a halt barely ready to turn as the curses from Charlie behind me assure me before I’m able to face the fearful prospect on my own. In no time I’m rushing back as a few bystanders are on the scene picking up bikes and helping Charlie to his feet, or at least attempting to. This scene is all too common in Vietnam, they crash all the time and it’s not hard to see why. The flip-side is that with traffic so crazy no one gathers any real pace so rarely is any great harm done, as is the case right now, Charlie is up with the barest of scratches from a guy who simply swiped his front wheel with his rear wheel.

Street sellers , Old Town, Hanoi, Vietnam.

We’ve seen this scene and I’ve wondered how these people never seem to get angry when someone recklessly puts them in danger. But here the situation is, right before us and with no one around really seeing much reason for fuss now that Charlie is ok, the world resumes and we carry on. As usual Charlie rode most of today with the indicator on, Rob was winking at the boys as we’ve taken to calling it, but a front indicator is broken now, maybe there’s some warped sense of irony there. We’ve made it all this way and having already checked in I feel happy to declare that we made it all the way without an accident. In some ways it’s a blessed stroke of luck, it really did have to happen and in this moment I feel able to grasp a psychology that I thought would never be mine: there’s so much to feel happy about and from the pieces of this accident, we pick up a smile and carry on.

August 1, 2015

While you were working – A Brave New World, Tam Coc, Vietnam

Today there is no riding, there are no kilometres to count, no time to calculate, scooters to dodge or buses to run us off the road, today we’re staying put and indulging in being tourists for a bit. Tam Coc is only about 100km’s from Hanoi, a final skip to completion of this road trip that we can’t believe is nearly at an end. We might have otherwise dawdled a little more but with a damaged passport from the ride to Hoi An I need to get to the Australian embassy to get some sort of resolution for the upcoming next leg in Japan. The rush will commence tomorrow but for today we’re taking a moment to enjoy being trapped in a scene of perfection painted in a country so far from our own.

First stop, mechanic for an oil change and a little look at the weird sound so ominous from somewhere within Rob’s engine. Yesterday we rode our luck, literally, and made it to Tam Coc but something’s wrong, we just know it. We pull up to the mechanic and for the first time it’s a woman, in 23 visits to mechanics we’ve never seen a woman in this country that has such clearly defined roles, there’s women’s work and mens work it seems. Although on the surface it seems to be a benign definition it’s rules just like this that often signal power imbalances and social inequities. I can only hope that the gender split in Vietnam is as benign as it appears to a tourist. But it seems not everyone sticks to the rules, she goes about the dirty greasy work like every other mechanic has, quickly and with no fuss.

Mother and children on their way into Tam Coc, Vietnam.

In no time there’s what appears to be a husband and wife team looking into Rob, pulling off parts with lot of puzzling noises coming from Rob and the pair alike. Engine back on, start him up but the noise persists. More noises ensue. Again Rob is operated upon, and this time there’s no hoping or guessing, a few large chunks of something are pulled from the engine, torn and split into rubble. Seeing the broken fragments of engine parts on the floor it’s hard to imagine how Rob made it yesterday, it looks like we were just a loud crunch away from a catastrophic engine failure at any moment. It could have been bad, but it wasn’t, we leave thanking ourselves for our stroke of good luck near the end of this ride in which we’ve had plenty of the other kind of luck.

Coffee comes and goes so with good bikes, new oil, caffeine and food we’re off for a bit of sightseeing, a lazy boat trip should do the trick. The mountains here are similar to those in Phong Nha, solitary mounds of drastic shape emerge from an otherwise flat landscape in contrasting drama. We board our boat and in no time we’re being paddled into the silence of a cave and out the other side of one of the small aggressive mountains. This slow river winds through picturesque scenery dotted with lilies, lapping gently to the reeds and bamboo that grow densely up to the bank and all the while there’s silence broken only by the rhythmic shuffle and swoosh of oars cutting the water. Gone are the screaming engines, the relentless honking horns and ingrained need for concentration of yesterday, today we have nothing to think about beyond observing something beautiful.

Collecting eadible grasses to sell at the market, Tam Coc, Vietnam.

Our guy rests back causally smoking a cigarette while he expertly paddles the oars with his legs, a trained art that he makes look so simple. This novel way of paddling is one remarkable feat but it’s that he’s a man is the other, this job is nearly exclusively done by women in another show of that Viet gender separation. We’re having the status quo of weeks upturned for the second time today in what shouldn’t seem so surprising, but it does. Through caves and streams carved out through the dense flowering lilies we paddle in silence through scenery that is nothing short of artwork. Nursing fatigue and a bit of a cough this is the day we both needed.

This day is needed and so dramatic while being devoid of the drama we’ve become accustomed to. We take up two small plastic stools on the banks of a rice paddy field just out of town to sip a beer with these mountains and a setting sun as a backdrop that define a landscape of drama. We were going to ride into Tam Coc town for dinner but scenes like this aren’t left so easily, it looks like we’re eating in. They say things happen in threes, at this beer tent that is little more than a tarpaulin stretched over a roadside space we are cooked up rice and vegetables by a man; in Vietnam, men don’t cook. Or at least that’s what we’ve been told. There’s a number of gender specific roles in Vietnam but in this tiny town we’ve had some of them upturned by men paddling boats and cooking and women fixing bikes. Such simply notions for such a huge topic as gender inequality.

Heading for a ca phe, Tam Coc, Vietnam.

As we travel north there have been changes, the food is probably better in the south to be honest, but in the north the scenery has exploded and the ingrained gender division seems to be a little less ingrained. Be it imagining exploring these rugged mountains, staring at completing this road trip or breaking out of socially determined roles the sun sets over the mountains as a new place. It’s all Vietnam, it’s one country and we’re in one world; but heading into the north feels a little like a new Vietnam, a brave new world.

July 31, 2015

While you were working – Myth Busted, Tam Coc, Vietnam

Vietnam wakes up and bustles into another busy day, early as usual ferrying huge quantities of food on scooters and in baskets loaded on backs. Usually we’re sleeping through this ritual but today Rob and Greg are sounding out a morning cry as we speed through the dramatic mountain scape from Phong Nha northward to Tam Coc. In Saigon we had always noted the ride two days ago as the big one, the long leg we’d have to face. The days ride to Hoi An ended up to be even longer than that one and today they’re both to be dwarfed by the mission of this trip. 288 and 305km’s respectively seem piffling now as we launch into a 412km odyssey. On those other days we’d had either breakdowns or a late start to sabotage the manageable distance, or else we arrive early as we did into Phong Nha at 2:30pm. We’re getting to know what sort of progress we can make and as we speed past yet another early riser tending fields we’ve worked it out; we can make it but we need good roads, no breakdowns and an early start. At least we have one from three already in the bag.

An hour and a half done and the world is well and truly awake, small villages sticking to roadsides heave with an activity beyond their size as we pull up for a coffee break disguised as a bike rest. The few Viet words we know are in full swing and soon enough we’re on the routine small red plastic kids chairs and taking in the surrounds of a life so distant from ours. Hemmed in by a basic cinderblock wall and chicken wire I contemplate the less complicated and shorter cycle of life here. This rich syrup coffee is all I need to think about as we temporarily adopt this life of simplicity so free of large scale, long gestation goals and endless requirements that seem so disconnected from what we’re actually doing day to day. Right now, as it seems every day in rural Vietnam, there is no disconnect: you collect food to eat, wood to make fire and socialise because that’s what we need. No insurance renewals, spam folders to clear or music files to catalogue, all around me I see no rote actions done for some distant reason no one can readily identify, like this coffee life here is essential, functional and nourishing.

Leaving Phong Nha, Vietnam.

On days like this, wistful dreams don’t last and neither does the coffee even if it’s effects will keep me buzzing for a few hours to come; it’s back on the boys and tearing up the road with about 350km’s to go, still longer than any other day after the first coffee break. To the sustained note that Rob and Greg can hold seemingly indefinitely like seasoned operatic performers we chew up the road still on track, barely. On good roads like these we can cover about 50km’s each hour before we need a rest for the bikes that overheat too easily. At our second stop in Dong Loc we have still over 300km’s to go and the sun sits high in the sky. The breathtaking mountainous scenery is behind us now as 5pm is our best case scenario for arrival with no breakdowns, no getting lost, no bad roads and not to much bad weather.

We ride Rob and Greg as much as we ride the luck, they both hold their screaming note keeping us at a good pace on roads that are blessedly up to the task. We’re making good time with this trance of sore bum and static posture broken only by the beeping of horns. That is to say a trance lasts about one minute at best. With the road rules in Vietnam being haphazard at best there’s no reliance on anyone observing lanes, traffic lights or even you; mayhem just seems too inept a word. So what’s the tactic? Beep your horn constantly of course, it’s like a man running through a crowd to get to a hospital because his girlfriend has gone into labour; anything to clear a path through the crush. And so, hugging the rail, metres off the road surface trucks and busses creep up and hoot their supercharged, steroid abusing horns at us out of habit, horns loud enough to be fitted to an arctic tugboat. In Vietnam it’s just courtesy, like saying ‘I’m coming through and my girlfriend is in labour so be careful’. It’s just the culture, how things are done but a lifetime of car horns meaning an act of aggression or danger has us on edge every minute. Every; single; minute.

Rain on large water lillies, near Phong Nha, Vietnam.

Blessed lunch goes down a treat on the half way mark, we’re hanging in there for pace as none of the all too possible curses have struck yet. We have plenty of options to stop short so it’s not a ticking time bomb but Tam Coc is the target. On this trip fat ladies don’t sing, the handsome boys do and they’re at it again with barely a break, on the road to serenade us through this monotony of disrupted meditation. Another coffee stop and another on the road experience, we finish our coffees and upon leaving we’re not allowed to pay, we’re even given some fruit to take. We push the point a little but it’s no show of polite protocol, he’s really not taking the money. We still aren’t sure of the reason we get the royal treatment but it’s a blessed change from the friendly yet insistent push to get more money out of us. Greg and Rob are singing again but this time it’s not just the coffee keeping us up, chance meetings like this just don’t happen in a tour group.

It had to happen, the perfect run couldn’t continue; the rain comes down. In a few minutes we’re saturated so there’s no point stopping, the boys keep the screaming note going, the perfect day begins to wobble but we lose little time on these good roads that still allow a steady pace. It’s challenging riding, the rain pours down, the roads are puddled and rutted and our glasses smear up in an instant as droning meditation becomes a distant hope with the orchestra of horns only gaining in fervour. And it had to happen, my front wheel goes wobbly and I pull over to inspect my flat tyre in the middle of a busy town as Charlie disappears into the swarming crowd. He has nearly all the money, my passport, my iPad and I’m stuck on the side of the road in the rain pushing Greg who’s done so well so far but for now sings no tune following a good samaritan helping me for no other reason but to help.

Steve and I looking for a place to eat, enroute to Ninh Binh, Vietnam.

Of course there’s a mechanic nearby but he’s off the main road, I have only one dollar as I open my wallet to show him and plead for a repair. He takes but 70c and commences work leaving me to race out to the street to find Charlie who is hopefully doing laps. We’re only about 40km from Tam Coc, this tiny last hurdle coming just near the finishing line as the days light begins to fade. Back to check the bike, back to check for Charlie but no sign yet. I cycle through my options but there’s only one: just wait. This day has gone so well and we’re not giving up, Charlie circles back and we’re saved. I give the mechanic the extra 30c in sheer gratitude, it’s all I have and he is genuinely pleased with gratitude carrying more value than currency.

The rain pours down as we plod to Tam Coc, this mammoth day couldn’t go without a little drama but to say we got away with a bare minimum is an understatement. The horns scare the crap out of us incessantly but we carry on, we’re going to make it even if Rob has had a threatening noise for the last hour or so. A slow sleepy road ferries us the last few kilometres on a day of singing bikes that have contradicted every curse we’ve thrown at them so far, Greg and Rob have been immense. Another dispelled myth is the nature of the Vietnamese, known to rip off travellers. On a day we most needed it we’ve been given directions with a smile, guidance for no return, repairs for less money than needed and free gifts for simply being us. Yes Vietnam can fleece you of money if you’re not careful but it can also give back so much more if you let the myths be just that, myths and gain a devalued sense of currency, the cash kind at lest.

July 30, 2015

While you were working – Two Worlds Collide, Phong Nha, Vietnam

After our visit to paradise yesterday it’s off to the caves again, in this area that houses the worlds biggest caves it’s the thing to do. Today there’s no punishing steps to climb or heat to battle, in their place we slip smoothly along a river to the cave mouth surrounded by the giant bulges of rock that stand in mobs all around us. Our timber boat battered and rustic from years of making this trip travels surprisingly smoothly past people plucking weed from the river bed with what look like giant chopsticks, heaving large mounds into their narrow boats to overflow the sides and kiss the waters surface. The world carries on as we carry on, tourist adventure coexists with everyday rural life in this part of Vietnam too picturesque to not be enjoyed by all.

Rounding a bend in the river we stare in the face of a rock wall, vertical and severe even with the gentle hue of faint blue lending it a passivity its immensity contradicts. Our river that supports a world around it is no trickle in the mud and yet it channels directly to this sheer rock wall, and through it. Edging closer the engine is cut and we’re cast into silence, our smooth slip on the water just got smoother. The stone cliff persists, it’s not a trick, our river continues it’s slow meander into a gaping maw at the base of a stone wall that isn’t as foreboding after all. The lady guiding us today makes her way to the front of the boat and with a single oar lashed to the boat sways in rhythmic time to paddle us in silence into the darkness before us.

Heading to Phong Nha cave, Phong Nha, Vietnam.

Piercing the cave mouth the still waters become somehow more still and the air seems frozen in it’s place, this is a world defined by stillness. Scattered lights sympathetically illuminate the space we are in and the roof of our boat is lifted away by our guides leaving our view no longer confined and our imaginations no longer so necessary. We’ve timed our run well, the mass crowds are at lunch and for this journey into the river beneath the mountain leaving us to enjoy this stillness to ourselves. Grand formations abound, a melting world trapped in rock surrounds us as eleven people in a boat make no noise beyond the occasional shutter click of a camera or audible exhale when the wondrous view becomes too much to contain.

On our return the first of the afternoon wave of tourists ventures in as we’re off the boat to walk a part of the way out of this space. In the American war in Vietnam this cave network was used by the local forces as a refuge and place for medical support, a sort of field hospital. Strolling the huge caverns it’s possible to imagine wounded soldiers being rushed in, busy nurses and doctors tending the sick and a heady aroma of pho being cooked up to turn the harvested river weed outside into nourishment for the fighters. A war effort drenched in hardship and toil set on a stage of mystique and wonder.

Boat passing through a long exposure photo, Phong Nha cave, Phong Nha, Vietnam.

Making our way to the boat we glance back at the immense space that exists within this mountain we see; how much is rock and how much is air and stillness? All around us are similar mountains that we rode through for hours and will again tomorrow, how much of those are rock and how much of the space we assume is solid is nothing of the sort, just stillness and quiet. We’ve walked immense caverns, arenas that carve out not just mountains but ranges yet we’ve seen but a scratch upon a spot in terms of this regions grandeur. Hang Son Doong cave is the big bopper here, the largest cave in the world. With a principal cavern of 5km long, 150m wide and over 250m high it accommodates just 84 visitors a year, it’s the inverse everest that reaches no skies upward, it creates it’s own going downward. Such a sobering thought, an entire city block of Manhattan midtown could be uprooted and plonked into Hang Son Doong; this includes the skyscrapers.

So often our imagination is a hemispherical ideal, the ground is just the ground leaving us to push our thoughts into only the spaces that exist above terra firma. In Phong Nha our worlds are uniquely cut in two, vision and reality exists alone above ground while imagination forages and expands within the spaces we now know are below it, a blank impenetrable ground no longer. The world so much more alive than the blank rock ball we usually perceive now ferries us past rice paddies that divide our reality from our imagination, and on to food. We bash through dirt roads not entirely sure where we’re going but we’re looking for a restaurant we know is out here, Jamie and Ari are our guides but no one really seems to know where we’re going, it’s a wild goose chase looking for a chicken.

Plucking the recently slaughted chicken for our late lunch, Moi Moi restaurant, near Phong Nha, Vietnam.

Destination aside, this is the exact type of off piste jaunt that this road trip is about. We receive warm smiles, waves and even the occasional giggle for the tourists bashing their way down roads that see little beyond local traffic. But we persist and before long we’re at Moi Moi restaurant somewhere in rural Vietnam, we could be hours from town and centuries from urbanisation but what we aren’t far from is a pure taste of Vietnam. In fact pure Vietnam is walking past us blissfully unaware that in an hour it’s going to be our late lunch. Food doesn’t get fresher, our chicken is slaughtered before us and plucked with precision before kissing the grill as we sit down to a beer and peanut dumplings. Some dramas in finding the place aside, this is already worth the trip.

All four of us are starving and a whole chicken and some slow cooked pork in bamboo disappears along with the bowl of rice into the cavities of our bellies like the spaces inside the ground beneath us. On the slow journey back we cross the threshold from rutted rural road underneath the modern tarmac equivalent before swinging up onto not just a new road but a new era. From rural life we venture back to town, the past slips into the present, tourism shakes hands with everyday life and all the while our world remains sliced in two, above ground vision opposing underground imagination. In Phong Nha, like so few places in the world opposing ideals, places, thoughts and concepts exist adjacent and so succinctly separate; Phong Nha on many counts truly is not just where one world splits in two but where two worlds collide.

July 29, 2015

While you were working – Paradise Lost, Phong Nha, Vietnam

I never thought that standing at the pearly gates would be such a sweaty ordeal; in fact I was pretty sure I was heading straight to the more fun side of the afterlife, being an abomination and all. But to my surprise more than anyone else’s here I am and Charlie’s here too. This all makes no sense at all; unless the bible makes no sense and the people that wrote it make even less sense than those interpreting it who seem positively eloquent compared to the dunces paying money to buy it all without even trying to make sense of it. Come to think of it, all this lack of sense tends to make a lot of sense if you chase the tail all the way around to the nose. There I go making no sense again, until you make sense of it of course.

But I digress, where were we? Standing at the pearly gates, the entrance to paradise ready to pass the vaunted threshold and see what all the bigots have been crowing about for centuries. At this stage we have a confession to make, we had envisioned; well, we’d envisioned gates. And we though they would be, sort of, pearl coloured or some shad of off white at the very least, maybe even shabby-chic. But no, you schlep up a hill and all the glory and might of paradise lies behind a hole in the mountain; a tight, stingy little cleft that we have to duck notably to get into. On the other side there’s no oceans of fluffy white clouds with angels playing harps, just darkness for now as we walk downwards; those hallucinating nutters have this all so backwards.

Long staircase into and out of Paradise cave, Phoung Nha, Vietnam.

Despite all the topsy turvy misinterpretations of the mental illness crowd sans medication, there’s one thing they got quite right: Paradise is paradise. Through the tight cleft in the mountainside the world is the world again but not as we know it. There is no darkness, only light to emblazon a stone sky dripping liquid rock upon a world frozen in a moment. Fingers of sky reach to earth and beyond where sky is rock and earth reaches back in a symbiotic reality like the waking instant that slips from your grip before you can make it solid, a dream that for a second was born. We’ve entered the realm of the largest caves in the world, in the Annamite mountains of Vietnam and for all you cynics and disbelievers, paradise is not lost.

Of course this cave we’re in is called Paradise Cave and we’re set for a casual little peep in for a kilometre no less but it’s the first glance from the top of this winding timber staircase that demands pause. This feels like no cave but a stadium, an open air stadium such is the immensity of the space we are so discordantly thrust into after the tight squeeze just a metre or so behind us. The world glitters below us with all the glamour and immensity we’d have expected from paradise while the sky of solid rock soars so high above, large enough to plot constellations in.

15m melting candle formation, Paradise cave, Phong Nha, Vietnam.

All at once the world flows and drips like candle wax sitting frozen in a moment that time forgot about. Apparently stalactites grow a about 1cm per 100 years, an interesting little tid-bit. So when the dude we now call Jesus was kicking around duping people with sleight of hand tricks this work of art before us about 15m tall like a candle that melted into a four sided waterfall was already 13m high. And so our adventure goes, paradise resides not above us in the clouds but in the bowels of this earth on which we tread. Formations somewhat similar to ones we have seen before surround us, the stone world melting in slow motion, but the scale is disorienting, confusing. Oversized pieces of art clutter this gallery displaying the same exhibition for more than 15,000 years, maybe more, of curated elegance.

Eventually our walk comes to an end, paradise is plunged to darkness once more, and so we return through the parade of glamour we still can’t place into ordered thoughts. This cave really isn’t a cave, it’s another world, a universe all of its own, a paradise. There’s a stillness to the air in here and a coolness that belies the heat outside making it feel like we could be breathing the same air as when that 15m candle was a mere stub on the floor. Nearing the entrance to paradise again we know it’s time to leave but we pause for one last breath of pure air and a glimpse at perfection beyond human creation.

Vietnamese boy herding water buffalo at the end of the day, Phoung Nha, Vietnam.

The crowds have gone to lunch and this world for a moment is ours. If we were spiritual people in the deluded sense, this place would be the stuff of sermons, proof that glory exists beyond us. Instead we’re content to realise there’s glory beyond us with no need for a sermon, the sky above us twinkles and captivates like a clear moonless night while the wonders of the world shimmer at us in hues of imaginations gamut, most of all a pearly white not wasted on gates after all. With child-like wonder we spin a circle and take in the kaleidoscope of what paradise looks like, all the shapes and spaces collide for one blessed instant where reality exceeds imagination rather than being the other way around. It’s called Paradise Cave and as we return to the world of heat and reality so limited, I wonder if anyone really thought how aptly it is named; the biblical paradise that is. We caught a glimpse of a whole kilometre into paradise, I wonder what the other 32km’s of this wonder are like.

Charlie blew another rubber on Rob on the way out but we’re still beaming from our acceptance into paradise not lost after all. After a quick repair we snake the winding road through the aggressive shapes of these mountains that house paradise in a world that now seems to carry a trace of that pearly glimmer snatched from where angels dare to tread. A small boy herds his buffalo down a road, such fragility dances on the backs of immensity, a scene in a setting in a place to make the millions of years wait seem all worth it. Today we went to paradise and decided to stay, the other options just couldn’t stack up to what we’ve got right here. For now.

July 28, 2015

While you were working – A Crowd of Giants, Phong Nha, Vietnam

5:30am and the alarm goes signalling a commencement to what we’ve taken to calling ‘the big day’, stocking up on bun mi’s (Vietnamese baguettes) and a cake in the bustling early hours of the morning. We wave to Ari and Jamie sitting at the cafe for Ari’s much needed morning coffee before it’s out of town and into the mountains each holding onto hope that the boys behave today, they have to behave today. With the small town of Khe Sanh dissipating into jungle long before we’ve stopped yawning, we’re into the wilderness that is going to be our home for the next eight or nine hours. Or at least we hope it’s just eight or nine hours, time will tell.

In less than an hour we’re immersed in dense cloud as Rob and Greg struggle up a relentless road that reaches ever further into the mist. It’s now that we thank the mechanics in Hue who gave Greg his transplant and in doing so removed his bad attitude; the new and improved, back from the dead Greg Frankenstein lacks his charm and handsome looks but on this day I really need to just get there. I can do without a little charm. We’re still on the Truong Son trail and as we twist and turn to acrobatically negotiate the precipitous peaks and plunging mountainsides the engineering masterpiece that this trail is becomes apparent. In wartime no less, a population with farming tools, baskets and carts built the precursor to this road in terrain that would be near impossible to even walk through. For now all we have to do is pierce the dense cloud that sticks to us like marshmallow; and that’s on this cleanly made road with no jungle to battle.

Ascending into the clouds, Ho Chi Minh trail, Vietnam.

Venturing north the dominant feature we see is a forest of green so rampant and wild it clambers to steep hillsides with barely a tree visible. We can see the spikes in the canopy made by tall trees but vines clamber over and between the treetops like a blanket thrown over a dinner table leaving only the hint of shapes under its covering. Steepness doesn’t discriminate either, this forest smothers every steep slope the mountains throw at it. The forest is victorious except for the scarred hillsides raped bare from unsympathetic logging, standing nude and defaced like victims of some grave abuse. As with much of the world, timber as a resource is won on corruption and underhanded deals leaving hillsides like this plundered with no regard for any sort of sustainability. Loss of habitats, erosion, soil degradation are to follow; it’s not just that they look sad, these hills are likely to be damaged for far longer than it would take for that voracious jungle to regrow, if it regrows.

Gladly the bare bums of hillsides destroyed don’t last, plunging us again into a world of green walls that blank out all view of a sky only overhead, not in front. Intermittently rock faces peek out of the jungle, the geology is slowly changing into the famed limestone with vertical faces too steep for even this jungle to cling to. And so the steep mountains get steeper and the plunging valleys level off into flat pans of small scale agriculture leaving what looks like just the tips of mountains breaching a green ocean. Villages nestle into nooks between jutting rises of mountains that stand alone like figures in the mist, a crowd of giants gathering to welcome us in. Or to warn us. Warning or welcome, vistas reveal themselves as we peek between the assembling figures only to view more and more of the gathering crowd all with bare rock faces to critique these two invaders.

Taking in a postcard scene, Ho Chi Minh trail, Vietnam.

Villages persist to toil this breathtaking land in idyllic locations, shunning the convenient complications of urban life. Sweeping a long gentle curve on a low bridge a children’s fairytale is played out for us. Lush flat fields of rice paddies beam at us as a few rustic village houses assemble on the banks of a winding river and all the while the gathering giants muster together as a protective entourage for the lucky few to live life in a postcard. This day is a long one and we have a long way to travel but this scene is one we must stop for, postcards are so rarely so large. So easy is it to imagine young boys and girls scaling these rearing giants to summit their own Everest’s and proclaim themselves kings or queens of the world while mums and dads work on their farms and keep a home for their families. It feels like a dream oasis tempting any viewer to get off their bike, wander into it and never return to a world of complicated convenience.

But we don’t abandon our lives for a dream, as idyllic as it is, we push on to Phong Nha on bikes not only behaving but charging ahead better than they ever have on this whole journey. Deeper and deeper into limestone mountains the flat pans of valley floor extend to leave the giants to array themselves more sparsely, more imposing in their singularity. Across a bridge, the town of Phong Nha Ke Bang sticks into a flat pan pressing itself out into all available space against the limestone mountains that jut up so haphazardly. After a long days ride, seeing this town in such a picturesque setting sends waves of relief and joy washing over us, it even has a hollywood style ‘Phong Nha Ke Bang’ sign emblazoning a peak in grand white capital letters. This is not be a place where stars of the big screen reside, it is the big screen, the biggest screen and I want some popcorn just to sit and look.

Relief on the road, Annamite mountains, Ho Chi Minh trail, Vietnam.

From Saigon to Hanoi on the Truong Son trail was this trip, it sounded like a great idea. With this day always in mind as the pinnacle we sit down to a celebratory beer with more than just a little feeling of completion, as if we’d achieved what we came here to achieve. In truth there’s a few days ride to go but for now there’s a little sliver of accomplishment in these beers before us. Tomorrow there’s the biggest caves in the world to visit, the big ticket reason for coming to Phong Nha, but for now a world wonder just doesn’t scratch our consciousness, we’ve made it to the giants of Phong Nha and with it a sense of victory, come what may.

July 27, 2015

While you were working – The Trail, Khe Sanh, Vietnam

The time has arrived, we’re fronting up to the mechanics dressed in black like a couple of grieving widows. As we approach there’s no solemn face with a serious brow, no empathetic tilt of the head to assure us that they did everything they could. Instead there’s Greg, or a bike that looks like Greg sitting in the morning light like a scraped and scrubbed corpse in an open casket. The boys here have performed some voodoo or some such dark art mechanical witchery and yet the husk of my former Greg stands immobile, inanimate. I swear for a second I can sense dense thunder clouds rolling in and a sharp peal of lightning as the ignition is pressed and Greg Frankenstein lurches to a steady idle; a maniac inside my head screams the iconic words: He’s alive!

There’s a black engine shell rather than a silver one, it seems Greg was indeed dead, a new motor is mounted to the body of my former Greg in the transplant of the century. After resigning to bid my farewells yesterday it’s off again on this machine that I’m reluctant to call Greg but so far am unsure of another name; is he more Greg or more Frankenstein? He’s running superbly so I’m leaning towards being more Frankenstein but let’s not judge, for now we’re elated to be hitting the road again. Ho Chi Minh trail here we come.

Steve riding Greg Frankenstein, enroute to Khe Sanh, Vietnam.

Deemed by the US army as one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century, the Ho Chi Minh trail is a system of roads that acted as logistical pathways for the Vietcong in the American war. The trail runs largely through and into neighbouring Laos and although it’s a network rather than a straight line a spine exists along the mountain range that runs along the west of this long skinny country. The Viet name for the trail is the Truong Son trail, named after the Annamite range but it’s known outside Vietnam more as the US dubbed, Ho Chi Minh trail. For Australians there’s a famous equivalent in Papua New Guinea, the Kokoda track. For us, Kokoda is a source of national pride, a pilgrimage and a myth all in one; I can only imagine that the Truong Son trail is of similar mystique to many Vietnamese.

Yesterday before the original Greg died we never made it quite to the trail but today we ride the footsteps of heroes to Khe Sanh, similarly a focal point for the American war in Vietnam. So close to the coast these wild mountains rear up and crowd overhead, as we swing around sweeping turns catching vista upon vista at each outward reach of the road before plunging into a green wilderness in the clefts of the mountain slope. The most rustic villages of our entire time here line the road and along with the villages are children baring huge smiles and waving like the families of game show contestants desperate to be seen on TV. I guess seeing tourists on these roads might be a novelty but we can’t get past how cute these kids are; cute in a classic sense definitely, but more so the uncontainable sense of innocent joy at something so simple as waving at a bike is infectious and disarming.

US Huey (Iroquis) in the museum where the Combat Base was in Khe Sanh, Bietnam.

Due to the unknown of Greg Frankenstein we’re leapfrogging Jamie and Ari as we more or less ride in convoy but separate; no one else deserves Greg’s rubbish today, we’re on our own if Frankenstein blows a neck bolt. Bridge after bridge spans the mountain clefts too sharp to veer into as turn after turn thrusts us out over a river running wild as only alpine rivers do; but alpine it is not. Yet again in these mountains I am forced to readjust my ideal of mountains, the altitude is not as high as some and in the tropics any hint of snow-line, glacial carving and turquoise snowmelt is a thing of myth. But mountains they are unmistakably, any real measure of mountains exists here except for the easy markers my eye searches for. Just like Greg Frankenstein, they’re mountains as I know them but something’s a little different, something’s been changed over or added in making them a strange new beast all together.

The debate rages, we arrive at Khe Sanh without a single complaint, I don’t think this is Greg at all. As well as being a stopover one night for us, Khe Sanh is a famous battle of the American war. Held by US troops the Vietcong bombarded the hilltop rise that now houses a war machinery museum; well kept machines sit in-situ frozen in time as a relic of a time when the Truong Son trail was earning that mantle as a great engineering feat. Under siege, the US airforce dropped 100,000 tons of explosives, the equivalent of the Hiroshima atomic bomb which equated to 5000 tons for each and every one Viet soldier. Along with its allies, the US threw the proverbial kitchen sink at the Vietcong sparing no degree of their power or wealth. The US and its allies lost.

Enroute to Khe Sanh from Hué, Vietnam.

In this site of western might, Vietnamese fortitude and a science fiction bike back from the dead we’re shrouded in misty clouds and despite all of these huge contemplative notions, thoughts rarely get past Phong Nha and the ride tomorrow. With bottles filled up with extra petrol and food for the day we’re launching away from the safety net of Vietnamese mechanics to do it ourselves. The mountains are bigger, the views grander and on the very seldom travelled part of the Truong Son trail it’ll be us and the boys up at 5am to attack the mountains. I should be riding Greg through the highlight of the entire trip but the Frankenstein version has avoided the attitude flaws of the old version; even still, part of me wants the old Greg back. Maybe the old Greg can come back in two days time.

July 25, 2015

While you were working – R.I.P. Hue, Vietnam

After two sessions at the mechanic in Hue we’re finally off and running, pushing forward towards the Ho Chi Minh trail and onward to Phong Nha. The leg of riding through the Phong Nha national park is not only one of the longest days on this road trip its also meant to be one of the most spectacular making for high hopes and eager anticipation. Throw into the mix it’s the least inhabited road in Vietnam this next two days is a kind of launch into the wilderness and away from any sort of support network. With this thought in mind we take stock of the boys, Rob and Greg are behaving; for now.

What a difference a few corners makes. I’m pushing Greg to the top of a rise so we can get a smooth start with the tow rope, back to Hue. It’s the same old issue he’s had from Ho Chi Minh city, basically a bad attitude. Cursing the big sook all the way it’s time to face facts, venturing into an unknown seems too big a risk with this temperamental princess, it’s probably time we put him on a train and do to him what parents do to children they don’t want to see anymore; Greg’s off to bike boarding school. We have an option to send the boys back to the place we bought them and increasingly this option is switching from a comfort to a near certainty. I manage to start him intermittently but running only occurs at full revs, so in low gear Greg screams like a granny on the freeway stuck in first with the handbrake on all the way to the bike shop.

A hopeless cause, attempting to revive Greg, Hue, Vietnam.

After some putrid oil smell and a clinking stall it’s game over, I walk Greg the last few hundred metres at the end of my tether; I wonder what the guys at the shop are thinking? In a moment the small room of grease, bike parts and busy guys squatting on the ground in sandals erupts into a hive of activity like an emergency room in a busy hospital when the ambulance arrives with a crisis. I feel like the loved one to first arrive, the action is frenetic for this small space that is only really a few metres square and choked with a long list of other emergencies needing attention. Standing on the gutter I have little to contribute other than scuff my foot over the concrete and consider how slippery it is from this little shop too busy to be penned within its boundaries. Grease coats everything I can see and dissipates in the black of the road surface leaving me metaphorically on the other side of the glass doors with nothing to do but wait.

The realisation of what’s going on is a little hard to accept, we’ve had such a great affair and with Charlie and Rob going so well I’m not looking forward to being a third wheel in the relationship. The thought of bringing another partner into this social dynamic gives me chills also leaving me no option that seems in any way palatable. I should be telling them to stop, that he’s had a good life, that it’s over and he’s in a happy place now. But I don’t, I’m just too shocked; or is it just pissed off? We’ve come so far have Greg and I, we knew it wasn’t meant to last, we knew it might not even last till Hanoi but star crossed lovers rarely think clearly of a future with no future. This is all just too hard to bare, we need coffee.

A trip to the coast to forget about Greg, near Hué, Vietnam

Over a coffee Charlie consoles me with soft words of comfort and support but I barely hear them; I feel like a child being taken out for ice cream while the vet puts my puppy to sleep. I think of the guys at the shop, boys some of them toiling away in their home away from home. I think of the sad face I’m destined to see, the one shoved to the front to deliver the bad news who has worked too hard to deserve the solemn duty. I’m all but resigned, I think I really could do with ice cream on this sad day. We’ve booked into the hotel again and there’s nothing to do but to plan for how we’re going to get back on the road again for the next part of the trip that just doesn’t seem to want to begin. That can all wait though, for now it’s dealing with grief and loss; I can’t believe it, I can’t even say the words aloud, today there’s no more words. Tomorrow 10:30am is the time, we’ll be back in the grease stained waiting room ready for the sad face to walk through the doors with the bad news. Tune in and show your support for what we already know; Greg’s dead.

July 25, 2015

While you were working – Not in this Lifetime, Hue, Vietnam.

With all the architectural and design brilliance clearly on display all around us it continues to baffle me why old cultures made stairs so bloody steep. Surrounded by immense stone carvings, monoliths that reach to the sky and balustrades more akin to artwork in rock it seems that no one along the way thought to mention that the stairs are a nightmare to climb. It’s possible that the steepness is a test of perseverance but really it seems so much more likely that it’s just function over form, the search for height combined with conservation of space perhaps? Whatever the reason it’s these stairs we climb, stone carved dragons for handrails, too big to wrap our arms around flank the stairs to precede elaborate sweeping gabled roofs towering so high above us. In it’s day, this place would be a fearsome sight to a believer, a subject of those that live under those gabled roofs. For now this intimidating ascendance seems reason enough to overlook a design flaw even if nowadays the immensity and power of this place has faded along with jewels embedded in the eyes of the dragons.

Statue of Khai Dinh on his throne, Khai Dinh tomb, Hué, Vietnam.

Faded but not forgotten, the tomb of Khai Dinh is a place of subservient reverence no more, at least not to the extent it was intended to be. Now tourists domestic and foreign alike climb these intimidating steps with excitement in their hearts in place of solemn reverence to arrive at the first courtyard and the stone regiment standing guard. Life sized stone soldiers rank up alongside horses and elephants in perfect rows, any visitor arriving here must dare the no mans land of armed guards to ascend yet another steep incline to a place a little closer to the sky. What seemed as a design faux pas emerges from the fog with crystal clarity; I have no historical text to grant me certainty but my eyes confirm enough for me; these steps are penance for those who wish to also be a little closer to the sky in the tomb of a man that was a little closer to a god.

Past a world of towering steps, soaring obelisks, sneering beasts and watchful guards snatched in an eternal moment we ascend. Leaving behind earthly stone for heavenly art a grand doorway into a suitably solid building shows us not so much a room or chambers but a tile mosaic blending European and Asiatic style greedily smothering every available space of wall and ceiling. In truth it’s a little like a royal wonderland, someone was stuck on the idea of making intimidating grandeur and didn’t know when to moderate the concept; so they didn’t. It’s gaudy and overdone but it achieves the desired result; design taste aside there’s no mistaking that we’re in a powerful place to revere a powerful man and we are anything but powerful, just lucky to be a little closer to the sky for a time.

Steve waiting as I photograph Minh Mang’s burial grounds, near Hué, Vietnam.

Today we’re seeing dead people, we’re off to another tomb which essentially means an intimidating arrangement of structures to inspire reverence and awe. On much larger grounds the tomb of Minh Mang is more show garden or expensive golf course than the single mindedly intimidation of Khai Dinh. Through pagodas all lined into a straight walk of grandeur we similarly pay our penance but this time it’s beauty and grace in place of stern foreboding. Where Khai Dinh has a life sized bronze statue cast in France atop his burial tomb Minh Mang’s promenade ends only in a wall three metres high and about 100m in a perfect circle atop a gentle rise. He’s buried in a small underground palace behind those walls entered only by a subterranean passageway that has now been sealed. I wonder if the representations of these respective tombs reflect the lives of the men inside?

There’s only so many dead people we can see in one day, it’s back to Hue we go, or attempt to go. I’m not a violent man, I’m really not I promise. But every person has a breaking point and Greg is pretty close to guaranteeing me a successful defence of temporary insanity for the violence that’s about to happen. It’s back to the mechanic once again. Every second mechanic in Vietnam has had a go at this big sulking cow and no one has been able to make him moo, or has he just got that many issues to deal with? One problem gets solved, I’m not willing to say we’re in the clear anymore and with a whole lot less petrol channeling through the carburettor we’re purring again. But for how long?

Boats heading south along the Perfume river, near Hué, Vietnam.

After a day of dead people and a bike that’s intent on joining them in a sleep that doesn’t finish we’re at a cafe in Hue ready to venture officially into ‘the north’ tomorrow. Something’s not right here though, there’s proper chairs in place of the kids sized red plastic ones we’ve come to love as we get another Viet culture lesson. Right in front of us a shiny new car bumps a scooter parked a little too close to the kerb making it topple over, scraping a new scar in the otherwise pristine paintwork of the car. The scooters owner is on hand and the car driver gets out for the confrontation; the confrontation that isn’t. I’m blown away and awe struck, this accident that has damaged property and scratched a new car seems to be some sort of joke, it’s funny. Entirely unconcerned about any damage or costs they have a short friendly chat and leave on a laugh in place of my expected accusation and outrage. I’d love to say I have that arrangement of priorities but yet again on this trip I am left to imagine a state I’m unlikely to realise, in this lifetime anyway.