January 2, 2017
Blue-eyed brother: Dai Ninh to Luong Son
WE were invited to lunch today. It happened by chance. A 15km climb of alternating rises and flats led to a long, long tumble to a lake. In it, apparently unconnected to the shore, a man sat fishing under a blue umbrella.
The first building on the left was one of those wooden shacks that double as a café and house. Town houses are as likely as anywhere to be of brick and cement; in the countryside, houses are often wood.
"Xin chao", a family called as we squealed to a halt, fingers aching from repeated braking.
We were enjoying cold drinks when a hollow-cheeked man arrived on a moped. He came straight to my side, put a hand on my shoulder and beamed a fetching smile.
"Vietnam..." - something or other, he said. I mimicked his words, guessing correctly that he'd said it was beautiful. He corrected me and I tried again. The sounds aren't difficult and the words are short, often single syllables, but the tone and pitch are crucial. There are a lot of sliding dipthongs.
We'd tried, the other night, to say the four words that mean "happy new year". The first two rise, the third is quieter and deeper, and the last is flat. Get them wrong and they make no sense.
Anyway, having established that Vietnam was indeed beautiful, he signed numbers in the air.
"How old are you?"
I said before that ages fascinate Vietnamese people. They establish where everyone fits in society. That would be simple were it not that there are, as a result, an unreasonable number of ways to say "you". You use one to parents, another with friends, something else for your boss. There is one version when talking to a younger brother and another for an older brother.
Slightly older acquaintances are addressed, with their permission, as "uncle" and that's how I was addressed at the hostel in Da Lat. It's friendly respect. Yet, despite all that, the word for "sir" and "madam" are the same, which explains why Steph has so often been addressed as "sir".
What confuses is that we are on bicycles. Only the poor and the old ride one. Yet we are westerners and westerners have loads of money and a good place in society, but still we persist in cycling. It is more than many a Vietnamese mind can handle, as has often showed at (for Vietnam) expensive hotels that have a doorman. It's important neither to lose face nor cause it in others and so we get a hesitant "How can I help you?".
Well, to get back to the story, I used a finger to trace "69" on the table and he used his to write that he too was 69. Delighted by this, he grinned and slapped me on the shoulder as a brother.
"He my father", said the woman in the group. She was round-faced, short, friendly and wearing a black T-shirt lettered "Boy, London".
The old man had had a hard life. That showed. He'd worked in the fields, pulling and digging, and he'd lived through a long war which had ended by invasion from the north.
And yet he smiled. He had found a brother, one with blue eyes.
These encounters are the joy of cycle-touring.
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We had another later in the day when we met a boy who said "Of course" when we asked if he planned to go to university but "No idea" when we wondered what he'd do there.
He had a young, round face and the earnest manner and pudding-basin haircut that would have earned him a kicking in rougher schools. He sat with us in his mother's café, looking at a pocket computer, now and then practising his English on us.
"How long do you study at French universities? Are some courses longer than others?"
Intelligent questions but not bubbling with laughter. I thought he was 10. He turned out to be 16.
"It's very good, what you are doing", he eventually pronounced with earnestly. "Older people in Vietnam, they don't do anything like that. It is very green. Very good for the environment."
And so we rolled on along the broad valley, banana trees here, coffee there, sometimes a few hectares of miscellaneous bushes and trees left undisturbed.
It has been a beautiful day with barely any traffic. And with, for the most part, the friendly helping hand of a following wind.
Today's ride: 71 km (44 miles)
Total: 1,429 km (887 miles)
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