My pace up Highway 1 has been laughable.
Biking has become easier, though not as easy as I hoped. On my very first day of cycling, the 80km between Phnom Penh and Takeo, the chafing was unbearable. To distract myself from the pain, I composed doggerel in my head. The only verse I came up with was this:
‘Saddlesore’ is a misnomer
I was it weren’t so but alas!
The saddle, you see, is the seat of my bike
The part that is sore is my ass
Kipling’s legacy is safe, but the point here is that I hurt. Badly. The second day out, the rawness subsided, and instead the muscles in my lower back tied themselves in knots. I got off my bike every 10km to let them unwind.
These days, the pains are still there, but they’re manageable. My average speed has crept up, in spite of the hills and the headwinds. The distance weighs on my joints, but I now take 25km bites out of the roadway, rather than 10.
Strangely, I’m eating less, as though my body is becoming more efficient. Instead of eating eight meals a day, I munch constantly on the sesame brittle and candied plums in my handlebar bag. At a few bucks per kilo, candied plums are an extravagance, but I love them.
Highway 1 traces the coastline, linking Saigon with Hanoi. At times it climbs the bank of mountains that crowd in from the west. Other times, it cuts through the rice paddies hemmed in by the sea to the east. The mountain ranges spill into the sea, forming a set of dramatic islands that mirror their landlocked cousins.
The traffic is moderate, much better than the Mekong Delta, but no mental trick I’ve devised enables me to accept the blaring of truck and bus horns with equanimity. Even when I know they’re coming, I can’t brace for the shockwaves that visibly rip the air. Sometimes, when the honks are particularly prolonged and gratuitous and aimed just at me, I resort to flipping the drivers off. They don’t know what the gesture means, and it makes me feel better.
Even in this well-traveled part of Vietnam, I am a curiosity. If I sit cross-legged by the side of the road, reading a book, children will squat on their haunches and study me silently until I get up to leave. People wave me into their houses to share their shade. I decline the offers of cigarettes, but accept the tea and shots of ginseng whiskey. At one fruit shake stand, a girl asked me my nationality, and as she stood up to go, she handed me a small bill. More lucky money, and Tet ended days ago.
At noontime, school lets out, loosing hundreds of blue-and-white uniformed children onto the highway. Schoolgirls in long silk ao dai dresses float past.
Since my accident, I’ve tried to curtail conversations with passing motorists. Scooters like to pull up and chat. As drivers wobble alongside, matching my bike’s pace, they inevitably drift toward my front wheel. I doubt they’ll actually hit me, but they do box me in, forcing me toward potholes, food vendors, and stalled trucks. So now I give them a smile and a hello and wave them on. If, as they sometimes do, they try to grab my arm, I get off my bike and wait for them to pass.
As I mentioned, my pace is laughable. I’m averaging about 60km a day. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps the wind and hills are taking a bigger toll than I realize. Perhaps the train tracks that parallel the road are sapping my motivation.
At some point, very soon, I will board that train and head north, to Hanoi.
