I don’t want to leave Hoi An.
Behind me lies my 200-year-old guest house, a latticework of shadows and black lacquered wood. My hotel is beautiful, although I feel like an awkward intruder when I enter its hush. The elderly women that own the house sit motionless in heavy furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Huge porcelain vases perch on top of narrow pedestals, waiting for a fatal kiss from the handlebar of my bicycle.
Ahead of me lies the Hai Van pass. The elevation graph in my cycling guide looks like this: sea level, sea level, sea level, onrushing monolith of rock charging vertically from the water to take a massive bite out of the sky, sea level, sea level. I must climb that monolith to reach Lang Co.
Behind me lie narrow streets fronted by collonaded buildings hung with Chinese lanterns. Storefronts spill forth herbal medicines; bins of coffee and tea; framed lacquerware in red, black, and gold; blue-green crockery coated with intricately cracked glazes.
Ahead of me, Hai Van lurches another few feet skyward, propelled by some malevolent tectonic force. Across the land, Vietnamese mothers extort obedience from their children with terrifying tales of the Hai Van pass. At least, I assume they do this, based on the excellent job the marketwomen have done terrifying me. They mime the sheer cliff faces, then point to my skinny legs, then shake their heads. One woman even feels my ass and finds it wanting.
Behind me lies a restaurant which, if relocated to San Francisco, would be intriguingly lit with expensive wall sconces, cost at least $50 for two, and be impossible to get into before 10 on the weekends. Instead, it’s decorated with pin-up calendars and serves 15-cent beers to wash down the freshly prepared seafood and heavenly raviolis.
Ahead of me, tunnel workers burrow into the black heart of Hai Van, picking and scraping, drawing ever nearer to an ancient and unspeakable ev—
Perhaps I better get going then.
