We get up early to test our mettle. We have decided to take a short test drive on one of the ubiquitous mopeds. M takes the keys and I hang around hesitantly while he, equally hesitantly, takes the handle bars. The moped is a lot heavier than a push bike. M is much more used to a push bike. The man is not at all concerned about M's lack of motorbiking experience. He gives the briefest of demonstrations, waves us cheerily away, I get on and we set off.
The fact is, I am mortally afraid of motorcycles. I managed to conquer this for the motorcycle tour we took because the man was middle aged, experienced and all the Vietnamese, however chaotic their roads may look, are fantastic drivers with great reflexes who don't go very fast. Not that we are going to go fast. I think M is a little nervous on his own account, knows I am probably terrified, though I am covering it as best I can, and is finding the responsibility of driving with me on the back quite weighty. M, I know, will crawl along slowly for my sake and because then, if we fall off, we can't do much damage. In any case, the moped can't go much faster than about 35 kilometres an hour in a fair wind. And that's kilometers, not miles. We crawl along at about twenty. The roads here are very quiet.
But when I say I am mortally afraid, I mean I think I'm going to die. I think about how upset our parents would be, how we haven't even been away very long, how traumatised innocent Vietnamese children might be if they witnessed our deaths. It's ridiculous but I can't rationalise out of it because bikes are very exposed, accidents usually serious, and anyway, I'm sure I promised my mum I would never take up riding one. I am not sure this counts as taking it up, but still, it seems awful, to die with the memory of that promise, floating around in the ether.
I would like you to know that I appreciate this is an over reaction. Plenty of tourists hire bikes here. You see them motoring up and down the road all the time. That normalisation I was talking about yesterday? It should apply here. And it has applied, at least in so far as we have even agreed to a short spin (the plan is to ride to the red sand dunes, and, if we feel confident enough, on to the white ones). But I haven't normalised enough not to be sat, ram rod straight, teeth set, on the back of the crawling moped , clutching M's waist for, literally, dear life.
There is a fair amount of tension in M too, though I note a little sadly that it may come from his awareness of me. Sometimes, however careful we are not to shackle our partners, it happens naturally. I have done my best to keep my fearfulness doggedly smothered. But he's my husband. And he knows me. There's not much I can hide at the best of times, even from strangers. I am the archetypal open book.
We cruise. M says how nice it is to have the wind in our hair. I agree. But the thought keeps coming back to me, why exactly are we doing this? Both of us are nervous. I am petrified. I am going to enjoy the sand dunes only with the spectre of coming back again on the bike looming over me, and I will be enormously relieved when it's over. We have a whole year of travelling, but one day still matters. I don't want to wish any of it over and done with. Is it a matter of me getting a grip and getting over it? Or are we doing something purely because Brad would do it? Because other tourists are? Because we think we are cool?
M, I think, really wants to have a go on a bike. And perhaps that's why we are doing it. I want M to have this. And I think I thought I would be braver.
I grit my teeth and try to enjoy it.
We stop at an unexpected sight, a small fishing village. From our vantage point, up on the road, we can see hundreds of small wooden fishing boats along with the small round bath tub shaped boats that M tells me are 'coracles'. I watch men throwing nets over the side of the boat. I watch men tethering their wooden boats to their coracles on the beach, like anchors.
We each pose with the motorbike. Across the road a crowd of seated local men drink coffee on the pavement and survey us passively.
Standing there, at the fishing village, we face it. I don't really want to spend the rest of the day on a bike and M is finding the responsibility daunting and the bike hard to handle. We have experienced a journey in charge of a bike. We'll take it back now, and take a jeep tour to the sand dunes. We get, with some trepidation, back on the bike and head home.
We recover by going for breakfast in the restaurant next door to our hotel. It's still only nine o clock. We eat not very Vietnamese but still tasty burritos and omelette and drink hot sweet coffee. To further relax frayed nerves there happens to be a Yoga class going on. Everybody is very advanced and beautiful and it's being done to very relaxing music. We feel ourselves relax. Then we go back to our hotel and book an afternoon jeep tour which will take us to the red and white sand dunes and, as a bonus, to the Fairy Stream again.
Travelling in the jeep is much less stressful, and we still have the wind in our hair. On the way we see other tourists riding hired motorbikes along the same route we had been thinking of doing. I think it makes M feel better that at least one of them looks a little uncomfortable. It's a long ride and at the entrance to the sand dunes it's slippery and difficult, even for the jeep.
The white sand dunes are extensive and beautiful. The wind has rippled the sand to wavy patterns and as we walk our feet seek into the soft, warm sand. It's beautiful, but would be much more peaceful had it not also been covered in tyre tracks. You can hire a four wheeled vehicle at the entrance. People are zooming about on them, adding the roar of the motors to the quiet of the day. We head away from the majority of these. We walk. It feels nice. We run up the sand dunes. We strike poses and turn cartwheels. I do a handstand and attempt a back flip. (This fails). We run along the sand dunes. We run down them. I walk in M 's footprints. You can't do that on four wheels.
The people who have hired vehicles are zooming down in them and shrieking.
There is something about the white sand dunes which turns us all into children.
Finally, exuberant and panting, and just in time, we clamber back into the jeep with the rest of our tour party and head to the red sand dunes.
These, perhaps by virtue of being red, though they are more orange than the deep crimson of the fairy stream, strike rather more silence in us. As we climb up the wind howls and whips around us, peppering us with sharp pin pricks of sand. When I sit, to watch the sunset behind the blanket of cloud, I quickly resemble an orange sand statue. It is one of those places where the power of nature really displays itself. You realise you are small and weak against it. And somehow, this threat makes you value it more.
We head back, covered in sand. On the way we encounter three young lads with bare chests and identical black shorts. They look very fit and outdoorsy. Each of them carries some kind of sand surfing tray. They are talking animatedly and in their stride is absolute unimpeachable confidence. I think about Brad (see 'the joy of doing nothing').
"Look" says M in a low voice, "three Brads!"
I squeeze his hand. Great minds think alike.
The Brads probably rode a motorbike to get here. Not even a moped. If they didn't sand surf.
But I don't care. We used our feet to get to the fairy stream and had seen it before anyone else on our tour. We walked up the sand dunes. We were our own engine.
That's much cooler.
A couple of glasses of Dalat wine in the evening helps us believe it.
No comments:
Post a Comment