We were looking forward to exploring the Mekong Delta on our way to Cambodia, but for the second time in Vietnam, a bicycle breakdown rerouted our plan. Halfway through the second day after departing Ho Chi Minh City, I suddenly felt a telltale rhythmic bump in my rear tire. It was now my turn to deal with the same ordeal Matt had gone through a couple of months prior in the Yunnan. The cantilever brakes had worn distinctive grooves in my wheel rims over time, making the rear one thin enough crack. We knew our best bet was to return to HCMC where we had recently had our bikes maintained by Van, the owner of Saigon Bike Shop. 

Ironically, by turning back, we discovered what we had been seeking but failing to find: a backroad path through small farming and canal communities that make up the heart of delta life. Unfortunately, that path soon dumped us back on the same type of busy road we had been trying to get off of. Of course, the highway was the most direct route in to the city and we had little time to spare before our Vietnam visas expired. We decided the 50 or so miles we endured was the most unpleasant stretch of road we have ever ridden, made even more stressful by the gradual widening of the crack and bulging of the tire. Yes, we could have taken transport, but at the time it seemed a bearable distance to ride versus the inevitable hassle of putting bikes on a bus. 

Van built two new wheels for my bike no problem, and on the last possible day for us to leave the country without penalty, we cycled from HCMC to the border crossing at Moc Bai, thus completely rearranging our route through Cambodia as well. Originally, we had hoped to cross at the most southerly border checkpoint and travel along Cambodia's coast before exploring inland. Now we were headed to its capital city of Phnom Penh first, then turning south for the coast. We held a new appreciation for the simplicity of Cambodian visa procedures after dealing with the ridiculousness of visas in Vietnam. With indefinitely extendable visas issued on our arrival at the border, we crossed into only our seventh country in fifteen months of travel.

The following day we were taught an unforgettable lesson about Cambodian roads. In Vietnam, the traffic necessitated always taking the smallest road possible, which in Cambodia equates to the unpaved dirt tracks any time one leaves the main highway. It had rained quite hard the night before, so it was actually a mud track, but still rideable, at least initially. But in the rice fields beyond the village, the mud suddenly turned to thick sticky clay, rideable only for the short distance it took to completely fill up my fenders and jam up the wheels. Unable to move, I dismounted and tried to push my bike, but it wouldn't budge. I dug enough clay out of the fender to at least turn it around before it got stuck again. A bemused local woman working in a nearby rice field came over and told me in broken English that the way was no good and I had to turn around, which I had clearly already done. I agreed. She told me again. I agreed. She repeated herself, and I agreed again. This went on for a while. When the helpful woman finally felt she had informed me enough times not to keep going, she turned her attention to helping me dig out clay and push my bike a few feet at a time. Meanwhile, in keeping with the fact that I am always the tester of road conditions from my position in the front, Matt stood at a safe distance from the mud pit and watched the fun unfold.

You would think this defeat would be enough for us to return to the main road, but instead we took a different fork in the road that looked promisingly less muddy. It was all good until the track sloped downhill and simply disappeared underwater for as long as we could see. We resigned ourselves to following the highway in to Phnom Penh, thus learning that a main road in Cambodia is equivalent to a side road in Vietnam thanks to its much lower population density and less developed economy. Besides, the highway provided the entertainment of watching endless overloaded minivans and tuk tuks pass by, crowded to a degree we had not yet seen in Asia. The back hatches of the minivans were open, with luggage and bags extended beyond the bumper of the vehicle with ropes. People sat on the cargo with their feet dangling out the back, others sat among the things strapped to the roof. Apparently the road was exceptionally busy as people returned to Phnom Penh after spending a holiday with family in the countryside.

Vendors lined the road with snacks for the multitude of travelers. At one major intersection, we were beckoned to stop and buy crickets fried with chilies. I bought a portion as a courtesy for the photo opportunity, but of course we tried them as well. The flavor was generally undesirable, likely not from the cricket itself but from what I suspect was rancid oil it was cooked in. Conveniently, we amused the passengers hanging out the back of a van when we handed the baggie of crickets off to them with motions of distaste just as the vehicle slowly accelerated from the side of the road.

Before arriving in Cambodia, several people told us independently of each other that "Cambodia is chill." Arriving to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's "hectic" capital city, this certainly appeared to hold true. The pace of life, the traffic, the nature of the people were all quite mellow in comparison to HCMC. This chillness was most evident in visiting a few of the city's markets where we really had to work hard to get someone's attention while shopping around for a few items. Having recently taken care of a slew of travel errands in HCMC and no visa deadlines to constrain our itinerary, we had the leisure of exploring Phnom Penh more thoroughly than we normally do in large cities.

We made up for never visiting the Grand Palace in Bangkok by spending an afternoon at Cambodia's Royal Palace complex with temples of similar design, as are the other wats we have since seen in Phnom Penh and beyond. While the coronation hall and silver pagoda were memorably beautiful, we were most intrigued by an aged mural facing the courtyard and extending the length of all four barrier walls. Apparently it depicts the Indian epic of Ramayana with Cambodian adaptations.

Sadly, Cambodia's street food scene was also "chill", as in nearly nonexistent. After the vibrant selection in Vietnam that we ate almost exclusively from, we struggled to find equivalent restaurants that sufficiently filled the void. While the local markets had some food stalls in the spirit of street food, our biggest success was a place called MC Coffee that became our go-to breakfast. Iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk was served just as it was in Vietnam, but instead of fried egg banh mi sandwiches, we had the Khmer classic of strips of fried pork and omelette served over rice with a side of pickled veggies.

The night market was a fun scene even though the selection of food focused on skewers of over-processed meat that was deep-fried on demand. A square of inward facing food stands surrounded an area spread with woven mats and narrow walkways to access them. Large groups of friends and families sat in a circle on the mats, piles of shoes at the fringes. We did our part by sampling an Angry Birds mystery meat skewer and finally "getting around" to trying a duck fetus egg. Ok, I ate the boiled egg with a partially developed duck fetus inside while Matt documented. The flavor was fairly similar to a normal hard boiled egg, but obviously the variable consistency and textures were not. It's definitely one of those foods that looks way worse than it tastes though. And then there's the mental bias too.

No visit to Cambodia is complete without recognizing the gruesome and still too recent history of the Khmer Rouge's rise to power and the consequences of it that Cambodia is still dealing with today. We began our education of this element of the country at the Tuol Sleng Museum, also known as the Genocide Museum, and previously known as Security Prison S-21 to the Khmer Rouge. It has been preserved as the largest of many detention and torture centers that had the agenda of extracting false confessions of anti-revolutionary activity from those accused by the Pol Pot regime. It is a particularly sobering experience to walk through the very rooms where prisoners were locked down to metal bed frames in isolation, or shackled by the ankles to each other along a common metal bar, all with original equipment on display. It was also strange and somewhat telling to reflect on how easily the format of a standard school was converted into a prison. Rows upon rows of concrete rooms only required the additions of metal bars in the windows and barbed wire enclosing the outdoor hallways to make the repurposing complete.

Once the accused was sufficiently tortured to confess to their made-up crime, they were transported to a place now known as The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek for mass execution by crude and brutal methods. We paid our respects to this site as a stop on our first day cycling south out of Phnom Penh. A measured but articulate audio tour effectively sets a quiet respectful tone as visitors take in the mounds, holes, bone shards, and even tatters of clothing that all serve testament to the thousands of innocent Khmer who were killed here, from infants to elderly. A plot to maintain absolute control through absolute fear devised by a deranged and paranoid man, but a cunning man who first came to power by appealing to the impoverished and disenfranchised. The ranks of the Khmer Rouge swelled when rural Cambodia was at its most vulnerable, having been devastated by years of "secret bombing" by the good ol' US of A. 

The influencing factors, the circumstances of instability, or any other context to set the terror of the Khmer Rouge in, does not make it seem any more intelligible. The best we can do is to honor the memory of the victims and respect the lessons of history with bringing the intention of peace into all aspects of our lives.

With the significance of these historical sites on our minds, we continued on and soon had no choice but to be absorbed in the joys of contemporary Cambodia again. We detoured a short distance to Tonle Bati, a scenic lake popular with Phnom Penh folks on the weekends. As such, stilted and thatched roofed wooden platforms extend along one side of the lake, each with an attendant who will bring you overpriced food from a nearby restaurant should you choose to relax the day away on their platform. Or, Matt and Casey style, you can rent the platform for $1 and make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while watching orange-robed monks cruise by in a motorboat. With the sun low in the sky, we thought about how this would make an ideal spot to spend the night. The platform owner declined to give us permission, but it seemed that she offered her home instead. We weren't quite sure, so she called over a younger lady with some basic English and she offered her home as well. We didn't know what to do then, since it seemed rude not to go with the first lady who offered, but the younger girl became more insistent we should go with her. 

We followed Dara back to her family's home and picked up her BFF Sokny, with more confident English, on the way. Their tall stilted house was quite new, but still very modest by Western standards, especially considering the lack of any substantial furniture and possessions inside. The heart of the home was actually underneath the house, where hammocks were strung up adjacent to large day bed bamboo platforms and an outdoor kitchen. We sat down there for a while to meet the rest of the family and a few curious neighbors, then the girls offered to take us to see Ta Prohm and Yeay Peau, both historical temples from the Angkorian era. Despite a soccer game wrapping up in the courtyard of the temple complex, the otherwise quiet and deserted grounds at dusk lent an eerie feel to exploring the site.

In keeping with all of our homestay experiences, it had to get confusing at some point. Sokny told us to order off the overpriced menu from the lake and she would bring us dinner from the restaurant. We weren't too keen on paying those prices, but she explained that we didn't have to pay, or could pay "as you wish." However, the family had not prepared enough food for us. Fair enough, we were very unexpected guests. Then Dara and she returned with the ingredients of what we ordered and cooked it for us, while we never saw the family eat. After a brief period of improvised socializing after dinner with the friendly family, Sokny politely informed us it was time for bed and they settled us in to the parents' bedroom, complete with a mosquito net and fan. We did need to deploy our camping air pads though as the woven mats provided weren't quite enough cushioning from the wooden floor.

Early to bed, early to rise holds true in Cambodia as well, so the family was already doing chores and yard work when we made an appearance at 6:00am the next morning. We were offered noodle soup and coffee, which we accepted, so the girls zoomed off to pick it up at the restaurant for us. Oh...Oh well. After we ate, we said our goodbyes and gave them enough money that would certainly cover whatever the ambiguous food expenses may have been. 

Overall, it was an enjoyable experience that gave us a bit of insight into a Khmer rice farming family's daily existence in a Cambodian village. At least on the surface, it's not so different from rural life in other Southeast Asian countries. Kind of like Southeast Asian beer, the nuances of flavor may vary slightly, but at the end of the night, it's all same same, and not so different. That said, we were pleasantly surprised by a relative multitude of decent stouts available in Cambodia in addition to the usual lagers. This is a trend that other countries would do well to adopt!

Still on our way to the coast, we next stopped at Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center where various animals, many of them endangered species, have been confiscated from poachers or abusive owners. While we rode around the extensive grounds on our fully loaded bikes, we saw many animals we could only dream of being lucky enough to see in the wild, such as sun bears, a leopard, and a new favorite species of monkey called a pileated gibbon. Better still, we saw some that we did not even know existed, like the binturong, which Matt described as "a rat of unusual size." After observing Khmer group after Khmer group obnoxiously harassing the animals in their enclosures to get them to do something "exciting", we realized the scope of the challenge that organizations such as Wildlife Alliance face in this country. If these were people coming to see animals, supposedly with an awareness of why the animals were there, and THIS was how they chose to treat them...More frustrating still was the lack of supervision to ensure a truly peaceful existence for the animals. Perhaps they could charge locals a bit more than 50 cents and hire some visitor supervisory staff or mandatory guides. After all, the well-behaved foreigners had to pay ten times the local rate.

After the wildlife sanctuary, we had intentions of checking out a historical hilltop temple, but with the late hour of the day, we decided to push on to the town of Takeo. We settled in to the nicest hotel room we have ever paid $6 for, and went out to some food carts along the riverside. We shared a spicy green mango salad and gave the skewer thing another chance, but the grilled chicken wings were as meatless as they looked, just skin and flimsy bones. As we were finishing up, a downpour came out of nowhere and we took shelter under the tarp of another vendor along with some sociable Khmer guys who invited us to join their slightly soaked dinner featuring more beer than food. We enjoyed toast after toast of watery beer on ice until the rain abated enough to make it back to our room.

​Once dried off, we took a several hour nap before awaking to an alarm at 2am. We had an important FaceTime meeting with a class of Coloradan high school seniors, but not just any high school seniors. Our sister-in-law, Lauren, teaches a leadership course and incorporated our journey into the preparatory curriculum for the students to design and actualize Capstone Projects. We were honored to have the Before It's Gone Journey be an example of "the ultimate Capstone Project" for the students, even if we don't always feel that way about it ourselves. The students had great questions that really made us reflect on our journey as well.

Leaving Hoi An, we stopped at My Son ruins, a small complex of temples dedicated to worshipping the Hindu god Shiva. The site is thought to be the longest continuously inhabited place in Indochina as an integral part of the Champa kingdom that ruled what is now Central Vietnam from the 3rd to 17th centuries. It was designated a UNESCO site in 1999, despite extensive damage caused by US bombing of the Viet Cong hiding out there during the war. We noticed bomb craters were almost as numerous as the crumbled buildings glowing warmly in the evening light.

We were determined to get back into the hills on the Ho Chi Minh Highway, so from My Son we turned inland on one of those “short cuts that’s really a long cut” roads that Matt always digs up on his various route finding apps. It may not have been such slow going if the dirt road had not turned to puddles and mud in a heavy rainstorm the night before. Matt really prefers that I ride ahead of him, so I was the one to discover a deceptively deep puddle with some loose rocks on the bottom, enough to send my top-heavy big-booty bike careening into the mud. Of course, I went down with it and Matt safely documented from afar. Ok, he did get one boot muddy too while helping to extract my bike and me from our predicament.

A few more days of hot, hilly riding (what’s new?), and meeting some real characters along the way, brought us to the likeable city of Kon Tum. We encountered genuinely friendly people and lots of good street food, the two most important aspects of our travel at this point. That evening the streets echoed with deep drum beats while groups of adolescent boys roamed the streets and took over intersections for lion dances and fire-blowing performances. While watching one troupe perform in the courtyard of a mansion in exchange for a generous donation from the occupants, we learned that this was only the lead up to the actual Mid-Autumn Festival the next day.

Not wanting to miss out on even better festivities, we decided to stay an extra day in Kon Tum. The following night was more of the same lion dances, but with the addition of teams of performers snaking long, flowing dragon puppets through the streets. That alone was quite a feat since so many people turned out to watch from the seat of their motorbike that the streets were packed and intersections were at a stand still, but this appeared to just be part of the tradition. The festival is largely a celebration of children, who are given gifts of lanterns and fun masks to wear. In Kon Tum, bands of teens had crafted their own large-scale lanterns, the ever-popular minions included, which they paraded above the crowds like a low-tech Macy’s day parade. We also bought some of the traditional moon cakes from temporary stalls that reminded us of fireworks stands for 4th of July. The dense moon cakes were filled with a sweet paste and a hardened egg yolk in each half when split in half.

We continued south, overnighting in another fun city called Buon Ma Thuot, and passing by scenic Lak Lake, then arriving late in the day at the junction for Hwy 722, an alternative route to Dalat. The first ten miles of our ride the next morning took us on a gentle climb through coffeeland and poor communities, but the road was in solid shape even with a fun rope-pulled boat ferry crossing on a small river. Then it abruptly turned to dirt as it steeply ascended a hill that formed one side of the broad valley. The road soon narrowed to a deeply rutted footpath, which in and of itself would have been rideable except that it was made of a treacherous layer of extremely slippery compacted clay. We barely maintained enough traction to push forward and even then the wheels slipped out from underneath our bikes a few times.

How could this be the correct road? Our route apps insisted that it was, so I googled “Road 722 in Vietnam” to see if we could get more information on what lay ahead, optimistic that this was just a temporary inconvenience. Sure enough, a blog entry popped up written by some motorbikers who had similar ambitions as us, but sought out this road from the Dalat end. It took them seven hours to go 15 kilometers, mostly pushing their bikes through really rough conditions. And they were going downhill.

We had provisions to camp, which would be a given if we continued on. But after only covering one and a half miles in two hours and not really having any fun, we realized the scope of the adventure. It would be a real feat of endurance with some moments of misery to make it the 40ish miles with 5,000 feet of elevation gain to Dalat. Or we could turn around and take the regular road to Dalat, thus having more time to see more of Vietnam. As though it was sent to put an end to our indecision, it started to rain and the leeches came out. So... We reached the same town where we had started that morning in the pouring rain. We were muddy, soaked, and disheartened from not being hardcore, but still happy to be off that hellish trail marked as a highway on multiple maps.

Highway 725 proved to be a real road, even recently expanded and improved, so the 4,000-foot climb up to Dalat went quite smoothly. While the cool mountain climate requiring long-sleeves (or a winter jacket if you are Vietnamese) was indeed a nice relief from the heat, we were not particularly drawn to the city itself. The real charm of the area is in the outlying attractions, such as waterfalls, which we were not exactly motivated to ride to on the one rainy day we had for exploring. But since we had worked so hard to get up there, we had to at least see something exciting. This took the form of “The Crazy House”, a fanciful creation of a radical architect who seemingly sculpted buildings out of cement rather than constructed them. Dalat’s famed kitsch is popular with Chinese tourists, whom we followed on vine-shaped staircases that traversed steep rooftops while basking in the irony of a “natural theme to inspire people to be closer with nature” made entirely out of shoddily-painted concrete.

We actually much preferred the 100 Roofs Café, a lesser-known alternative with the same core concept as the Crazy House. We stumbled upon it by chance and almost passed it by since the tiny storefront did not reveal the vast multi-floor maze of dark rooms and narrow passageways inside. It would have been perfect for Halloween. We got an intimate tour from the daughter of the visionary architect, who is--not too surprisingly--friends with the creator of the Crazy House.

In the afternoon, we took shelter from the rain in Dalat’s extensive market, sampling strawberries and wine, local products that thrive in the otherwise pine-forested hilly terrain. A nice stop at Pongour Falls on the way out of town the next day rounded out our Dalat experience.

Next we were aiming for the one and only Ho Chi Minh City, more commonly called Saigon by the people who live there, albeit with a little bit of trepidation. We were able to take back roads for most of the way, rapidly descending into the heat once again.  Our route protected us from the worst of the traffic, but gazing across hazy valleys indicated we had not escaped HCMC’s notorious air pollution blowing inland. Out came the pollution masks for the first time since… I don’t know when.

Having arrived to Saigon first through an industrial zone and shipping port, we were pleasantly surprised with the feel of the city once we got into the heart of it. Referred to by numbered districts a la Hunger Games, we headed straight for District One and found an alley-based neighborhood with quieter guesthouses than the nearby backpacker district of Pham Ngu Lao, lazily known as PNL. The volume of traffic was certainly intense, but having already been subjected to two months of Vietnamese-style driving, it was not nearly as intimidating as we had been led to believe it would be. The one issue we really had was motorbikes honking us, as pedestrians, when they opted for the sidewalk over the road. Really? Where would they prefer us to walk, in the middle of the road?

After a few days of taking in Saigon, we concluded that it was like a Vietnamese version of New York City: real, gritty, edgy, bustling, essential to find your niche, but also possible to find anything you desire, such as… craft beer! Hands down the best craft beer we have sampled on this journey, we could have visited Pasteur Street Brewing Company every night if the ol’ travel budget allowed. It came as no surprise once we learned the brewmaster was previously brewing at Upslope in Boulder, Colorado. I was smitten with a passionfruit wheat and Matt loved the perfectly hoppy IPA.

Besides the best beer, we also found the best bike mechanic of our journey thus far. Van claims that the well-stocked, fairly-priced Saigon Bike Shop is only his hobby; his bread and butter comes from customizable bike tours of the Mekong Delta and beyond. We spent a day pampering the bikes with everything they needed except a good cleaning, then turned our attention towards various errands that I will spare you the details of in the city where you can find anything you desire. Including fresh-baked cream puffs and McDonald’s soft serve. Not that we would know from firsthand experience or anything…

One important errand worth noting was meeting up with Tieme, an ex-pat who cycled his way to Saigon from the Netherlands and had some amazing stories to tell over dinner one night. He also happened to hold the key to our future of travel: a non-expired ATM card. We had contacted him through the Warm Showers network to see if he could receive it for us. Little did we know that would involve tracking it down at an obscure post office location to be picked up in person. Dinner was the least we owed him for this essential favor!

All of our errands left us little time for sightseeing in Saigon, but we did make it to the hard-hitting exhibits of the War Remnants Museum one afternoon. In addition to an explicit overview of the American-Vietnam War, it also had an important display of the ongoing effects of Agent Orange exposure in Vietnamese society, and a moving collection of photographs taken by photojournalists from all sides who perished in the conflict.

We took comfort from this gravity with some seriously amazing street food, perhaps the best we have encountered in Vietnam, if not this trip, and that is saying a lot considering the time we spent in Thailand. It took a while for me to come around to Vietnamese food, but when I did, it was wholeheartedly. Bun thit nuong was a personal favorite of ours, made up of grilled pork over cold vermicelli rice noodles, garnished with cucumber, a selection of herbs, and mildly spicy fish sauce. Yes, folks, my husband loves things covered in fish sauce these days. Proof that travel is life-changing!

We could have spent another week in Saigon, ideally not running errands, but our visas were rapidly approaching an expiration date and we still had the whole Mekong Delta to see.

Every program I have led for No Barriers Youth has been energy-intensive, but I was a wreck this time when I returned to Hanoi. It was a successful trip and the students and teachers from the Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles were lovely. The problem was that I got distractingly ill midway through the experience, which really affected my stamina and job performance. The symptoms were suspiciously similar to the illness Matt had suffered through nearly two weeks prior in Kunming, which seems like too long of an interval for me to have caught it from him, but who knows.
 
It took a few days for me to recover to a mostly functioning state of existence, but even longer to receive an extension of my Vietnam visa. The Vietnamese consulate in Kunming would not issue a 90-day multi-entry visa, which I needed for my No Barriers commitment in China. I had to settle for a 30-day multi-entry visa while Matt got a 90-day single-entry one. Oh, the bureaucracy! We would later learn that this was only the beginning of my Vietnam visa ordeal.
 
In the meanwhile, we stayed with Tim and Carlina, great Warm Showers hosts who had kept my bicycle and gear while I was away. They had a lovely apartment near Tay Ho and they generously cooked up yummy pasta dinners for us and showed us the best places to eat in their neighborhood. Despite being in good company, we were getting anxious to leave Hanoi and see more of Vietnam. 
 
Once we had picked up my passport from the visa agency, we hit the road heading west into the hills. We hadn't cycled any significant distance consistently since Matt's rim cracked in Nujiang Valley six weeks before, so it was no wonder that it felt like we were starting the cycle tour from scratch yet again. I had lost my usual heat tolerance after spending too much time in air conditioning and my mental and physical energy levels were still in a delicate state of flux. Combining that with steep shadeless hills on the way to one of the hottest regions of Vietnam at the hottest time of the year made for a couple of rough days of slow progress getting to Mai Chau for me. In contrast, Matt was unusually positive and upbeat, grateful for the return of even my cranky companionship after I had abandoned him for eleven days.
 
By the time we were coasting down the other side of the final hill before Mai Chau, my mood had improved enough to sufficiently appreciate the verdant beauty of the valley from a scenic overlook along the road. Though it was far from wild, the attraction lay in the bright green rice paddies spanning the perfectly flat valley floor interspersed with clusters of villages. Homestays are the mainstay of Mai Chau's tourism and we chose one overlooking what else but rice paddies at the edge of Ban Poom village. Having heard that Mai Chau is "really touristy", we were expecting something a bit more obnoxious, but what we found was laid back, peaceful village bliss. Perhaps it's different on the weekends.
 
As we slowly rode through the neighboring village of Ban Lac, we were invited to join a group of men for a cup of coffee. They were so thrilled that we accepted that the oldest one, wearing a white wifebeater, kissed both of us on the cheeks and insisted on paying. Now that is what I call a good caffeine buzz! After coffee, we explored the network of little roads and trails leading off through the rice fields to other White Thai villages. Venturing further up a side valley, we stumbled upon a large brick production site where laborers threw bricks from a wheelbarrow onto a conveyor belt headed in to a tremendous barn-like shelter. 
 
Later, we met up with a spirited traveler named Donna over beers with the intent of watching a sunset that never materialized. She is an English woman with a passion for cultural costumes expressed through her wittily-titled blog Haute Culture Fashion. Our homestay host cooked up, or more accurately, fried up a dinner of spring rolls, ground pork wrapped in betel leaves, chicken legs, and even a few caterpillars if we dared. We did. Matt thought his tasted like a French fry, but I got a distinctive rancid rubber flavor.
 
We could have easily relaxed at Mai Chau for a few days, but having just gotten on the road again, we thought it better to keep moving. And since I was truly feeling better, there was really no excuse. We said goodbye to the stilted house we had called home for a night and headed south in to Pu Luong Nature Reserve. It was brutally hot, made worse by the fact that each incline consistently blocked the gentle breeze that we could occasionally feel at the top of each rise. It was a clear choice between going as slowly as possible with lots of breaks in the shade or dealing with the risks of heat exhaustion. We tried to keep the sweat out of our eyes long enough to appreciate the beauty of the undeveloped valley we were riding through, but in the heat of the day it was honestly pretty hard to care.
 
As dusk was settling in, we began scoping camp spots and asking villagers along the ridge line road for leads on a place to sleep. We were consistently directed to a rough dirt road plunging to the valley bottom, so we decided to go for it, really really hoping that it would work out. The loose gravel turned to a narrow paved footpath, or what we assumed would only be a footpath. After letting some young drunk guys pass by on their motorbikes, we dismounted and walked our bikes down the steep curving path, not trusting our cantilever brakes to sufficiently control our speed. The path dropped us in to Kho Muong village on the valley floor. We were quickly directed to a homestay, but we were quickly turned off by the quantity of empty beer cans surrounding the host and his insistence that we sit down and begin drinking immediately. 
 
Knowing that homestays have been set up throughout Pu Luong as a community-based eco-tourism initiative, we set off in search of a better option and couldn't have ended up with a nicer family, finding them completely by chance. Similar to the previous night in Mai Chau, they set up a mattress on the floor encased in a mosquito net in the middle of a huge room clearly intended for groups. The paneless windows in the stilted house overlooked a pond with fireflies twinkling above it. We joined the family in the kitchen, which soon filled with about twenty neighbors, most of them women. The reason for the gathering was unclear, as was whether it was a special or regular occurrence. Shots of ruou (Vietnamese rice wine) were poured, but the mood was neither particularly festive nor somber. We later learned from the teen daughter and her translation app that her mother was suffering from fibroids and local Muong custom dictates that people should visit often to keep the ill company and bring good luck to their recovery. 
 
Having arrived at dark the day before, it was no question that we would stay another day to explore the secluded area. We walked through the village and out to a limestone cave with large pillars inside seemingly formed by rockfall from the cave’s ceiling. Locally known as the Bat Cave, we saw more cave crickets than bats, as well as a memorable cave cricket predator that like a centipede with extremely long legs.

For the rest of the day, we relaxed in the shade under our host family’s house, sharing a pot of coffee with the father Nom, and chatting with him in the limited way we could carry on conversation. It also happened to be my 34th birthday, so I was happy add this place to the diverse list of global locations where I have turned a year older.
We had been dreading our departure from Kho Muong village since first walking our bikes down the crazy path. We had assumed we would be pushing them up as well, but did not expect that both of us would have to push one bike together! We would push one bike for a section and park it, then walk back down for the second bike, leapfrogging our way out of the valley bottom like this for over an hour. When we returned to the gravel road, we rode down and out of Pu Luong Nature Reserve, passing some more picturesque villages and greenery-scenery on the way.

Our route for the next five days took us through “everyday rural Vietnam” filled with flat agricultural valleys, climbing forested hills in between them, and small towns where we would find a random guesthouse to spend the night. We succumbed to what I call with disdain “alarm clock cycle touring,” where a rude noise awakes one from blissful slumber as though pedal pushing were a job with a strict work schedule. We learned from the Vietnamese who voluntarily rise before the first light of day that the benefit of a few hours of cooler morning temperatures was worth it. What we didn’t succeed in adopting was the long afternoon nap that gives the Latin American siesta a run for its money. Businesses shut, nary a person on the street, everyone dead to the world in hammocks or wooden platform day beds, mid-day cycling felt like riding through a hellishly hot ghost town.

Our favored antidote to the heat was frequent stops at the ubiquitous nuoc mia stands, always with a shady seating area. Stalks of sugar cane were pressed on demand through motorized rollers, then the light green juice was poured over ice in a hefty glass mug. A pinch of salt and a squeeze of lime made the surprisingly not-too-sweet beverage perfectly refreshing and energizing. As a member of the grass family, sugarcane has a high concentration of vitamins, minerals, and polyphenols, so we had no qualms about drinking a couple of glasses per day.

An ongoing fascination with water buffalos broke up the monotony of rice, rice, and more rice fields lining the road. And then there was the joyful distraction of the “hello zone”, stretching at least a quarter of a mile from either side of the road. Oftentimes, we could hear a faint hello, but not even be able to locate the source. Almost everyone greeted us, young and old, and usually repetitively. One hello would not suffice. The standard was “Hellowhat’syourname?” to which we learned responding with our name didn’t seem to matter and asking “What’s your name?” didn’t seem to register. We were always amused to get an “I love you” and even more entertained by the random “F--- you” too, always yelled by teen boys, not too surprisingly.

The few times we stopped when people greeted us, it really caught them off guard. They didn’t know what to do. However, one time we circled back to a group of women sitting on the side of the road in the shade of a karst outcrop. For some reason, I was inspired to take their photo if they agreed to it. Before I could even get that far, we were instructed to park our bikes and take a rest with them. They poured tea and pushed pomelo, mango, and starfruit on us. Many smiles were exchanged. Then one woman phoned her daughter with excellent English to come from the village nearby. We chatted with her for quite a while and learned that the women were sitting there to watch over their cattle grazing in the field on the other side of the road. As if on cue, her mother got up and ran off toward the cows, having heard the rumor that one of hers was giving birth. The spontaneous roadside fruit party was one of those simple moments that served as an invaluable reminder of why we travel by bicycle, and it came at a time when we were (re)questioning whether the self-imposed difficulty was really worth it.

We arrived to Phong Nha-Khe Bang National Park at the tail end of a downpour we had been cycling in for eight miles. As soon as we dried off in a hotel room, the sun came out so we got oriented to the area while walking around Phong Nha town. Phong Nha has grown in popularity as a tourism destination in the last few years. While the main attraction is an elaborate limestone cave system boasting the largest (known) caves in the world, visitors are also attracted to the rural countryside surrounding the park. We were no different and explored both aspects.
The following day we toured Phong Nha cave, taking a motorboat from the town upstream to the mouth of the river cave. The driver cut the engine and a team of two pulled oars at the front and back of the sizeable boat into the cave. We traveled about a kilometer inside, but the cave extends much further than that. The key formations were lit up and made for an intriguing sight. Some flat areas just inside the broad entrance of the cave served as shelter and a makeshift hospital during the American-Vietnam War. We also climbed up to Tien Son, a dry cave with a meandering boardwalk through the tremendous, but delicate, formations. The unusually large caves and advanced stalactites and stalagmites have been forming for 400 million years in the oldest karst mountains in Asia, so it’s no surprise the park has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before leaving Phong Nha, we whiled away an afternoon at the perfectly peaceful Wild Boar Eco Farm. The farm is self-sustaining with its namesake product, in addition to peanuts and small plots of other crops. However, the young owner Cuong saw the potential for an eco-tourism venture, perhaps inspired by a now overly-popular neighbor known as The Pub with Cold Beer. The premise of both places is to provide a spot for backpackers to day-drink in the countryside with the added excitement of butchering a local chicken for a tasty lunch. After passing by the Pub, we were so glad that we continued up the rough dirt track to seek out the immensely more charming Wild Boar Eco-Farm, tucked away on a property with an amazing view overlooking a lazy river.

Hammocks with beers were immediately in order, but soon we were hungry. We ordered chicken, priced by the kilo. Cuong drove off on his motorbike and was gone for a long time. Just as we were joking that he would return with a cooked chicken from the Pub with Cold Beer, he came back with a live one-kilo chicken tucked under his arm. We met the poor gal briefly, then watched Cuong through the entire preparation process including slitting the throat and collecting the blood, defeathering in hot water, cutting and splaying out the body for charcoal grilling. Meanwhile, his wife cooked up morning glory with garlic and a peanut dipping sauce with nuts from their farm. It was a genuine farm-to-table experience, slow food that actually lived up the concept’s hype, and was absolutely delicious to the last bite.
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I rounded out the afternoon with an innertube float in the river just as a light rain shower began, then we got to talking with Cuong about his business. Understandably, he wants to grow his limited customer base, expand his menu, and build a guesthouse. We tried to emphasize that his place’s current appeal is in its simplicity and the value of its authenticity. Even with significant language barriers, we got the sense that Cuong’s genuineness will prevail over profit. We trust that he will not intentionally try to make it into something that it’s not meant to be. But places don’t always change on purpose, sometimes they just “get discovered,” a character-shifting force beyond any individual’s control. And if that happens, at least we can remember it as it was before it was gone. Despite the temptation to ask Cuong if we could camp out at his farm for a week, we readied ourselves to keep moving on from Phong Nha.

As envious as we were of Will's determination to explore his way out of the Nujiang Valley without backtracking, it turned out to be quite fortuitous that we stuck to the conventional out-and-back route. While cycling down the valley the day after we returned from Dulong, Matt suddenly felt a rhythmic bump in his back wheel. Pulling over to inspect it revealed a definitive crack in the rim that caused a concerning bulge the tire. It seemed that we had jinxed ourselves by discussing the likelihood of this happening with Will just a week prior. These were the original wheels from buying the bike four years ago and the brake pads had worn distinctive grooves in the rims over 10,000 miles of riding. 

On the upside, we didn't mind having a good excuse to skip over two days of backtracking to Liuku and readied our bikes and bags to hitch a ride in a truck. Despite being conveniently located next to a routine traffic police checkpoint with the vehicles already stopped, all we got were rejections. I looked up the world's for "broken", "help", and "hitchhike" in our Mandarin phrase book and approached the policeman on duty for assistance. He caught on, except for the hitchhike part, and directed a shared minivan taxi to pick us up. Lashing the bikes to the roof on top of each other was not as damaging as we had imagined, nor was the "efficient" (translation: scary crazy) journey back to Liuku as expensive as we had dreaded. We were also surprised to recognize one of the passengers as a Dulong woman we had partied with in Bapo!

In Liuku, we begrudgingly reunited with the rest of our belongings, but still refused to get rid of any of them. It seems that our obsessions with self-sufficiency, worst-case scenario preparedness, frugality, and not planning the future combine forces to make us overly attached to the ridiculous contents of our panniers. Examples range from scuba dive masks that were once useful in Thailand to thick gloves we bought for trekking in Nepal, but maybe we will go back to the ocean, or maybe we will find winter somewhere again, so...let's just repack them!

From Liuku, we took an all-day bus ride to Kunming, "city of eternal spring", so the saying goes regarding its perfect climate. The first order of business was beginning the frustratingly bureaucratic process of getting ridiculously expensive visas for Vietnam. We will spare you the details, but basically it involved getting three different answers from three different staff each time we asked the same question. The second order of business was heading to Pegasus Cycling, a recommended bike shop with a charismatic owner, Hui Li, who passionate about cycle touring. Also a popular Warm Showers host, we admired Hui's photo display of bicycle travelers who've spent the night in his shop over the last few years. 

After two new wheels were built for Matt's bike, we joined Hui on a weekend ride with his cycling club. Sometimes we feel a little self-conscious about how we dress as cycletourers since we sport more "formal" gear than most. However, with the Chinese cyclists gathering in front of Pegasus that Saturday morning, we fit right in with our helmets, gloves, spandex shorts, and cycle jerseys. In fact, we were the ones that looked laid back in comparison to their full body spandex and sun-shielding face masks. Somehow we navigated through Kunming's traffic and out into the 'burbs under development as a loose peloton of about twenty. The 50-mile ride was not always the most scenic or enjoyable with a decent amount of truck traffic, but the destination of Fuxian Lake was unquestionably a worthwhile reward. 

As a popular weekend getaway for Kunmingers, the lake is lined with beachside restaurants. We took over one of them and spent the afternoon swimming in the refreshing clear water and continuing to socialize with the welcoming and friendly cycle club members. Dinner was a feast of family style dishes interrupted by many toasts of a strong corn-based liquor from a flask so big it required two hands to pour. As hungry cyclists, we did a better than average job of finishing the copious quantities of food typical of Chinese dining. That night we created a tightly-packed tent city amongst parked vehicles in a field next to the restaurant. Our extra-large Hilleberg tent drew a lot of attention and many folks came over just to poke their head inside.

The next day was just like the first day, but in reverse. After munching some watermelon and saying our goodbyes back at Pegasus Cycles, we celebrated our third wedding anniversary a few days after the fact with a splurge for dinner and craft beer at Brooklyn Pizzeria. It was impressively authentic and definitely the best pizza we have had in Asia. Our wedding anniversary also coincided with exactly one year of travel on the Before It's Gone Journey, so it was only appropriate that the bicycle connectivity continued when a young man named Tavish spotted our bikes parked outside of the restaurant and tracked us down. He is the proud owner of a Surly Long Haul Trucker as well, which he has already ridden from Kunming to Lhasa with more trips in the works.

While we waited for our Vietnam visas to be ready, we succumbed to more of the pricey temptations of Kunming's Western food scene. We had eaten local Chinese food continuously for more than a month, so we savored every bite of variety. Our go-to place was Salvador's, where we were in awe of avocados on the menu for the first time on our journey. Sliced avocado on burgers and guacamole with burritos were in order. Their homemade bagels became another staple in our temporarily exotic diet. Another great spot was O'Reilly's Irish Pub, serving Guiness but also specializing in Belgian beers. We got chatting with the owner Tim, who pulled a few Vedett drafts for us on the house when we discovered our mutual Marin County history.

We delayed our departure from Kunming as long as possible when Matt came down with a nasty little flu. Fortunately, he was on the mend by the time we took a bus to the Hekou-Lao Cai border crossing with Vietnam. Figuring out the logistics for stamping out of China was a bit of a process, but eventually we walked our bikes across a pedestrian and motorbike bridge and entered a new country, only the sixth one in just over a year travel. That night we took a somewhat decrepit overnight train to Hanoi, getting a few hours of poor sleep by contorting ourselves into creative positions in our shabby seats.

Making our way over to the Old Quarter early in the morning was a calm, peaceful introduction to Hanoi, but trying to check in to a hotel was a bit of a rude awakening. The Old Quarter is quite crowded and cramped; space is at a premium with tiny hotel lobbies and even smaller rooms stacked up in narrow building on the floors above. While everyone was quite polite about it, they were also quite firm that our bicycles would have to stay outside on a crowded sidewalk during the day, only to be brought in when the hotel locked its doors at night. We did not have a kickstand with which we could wedge them between all the mopeds cluttering the sidewalk, and we didn't trust that hired security guards would be quite vigilant enough to deter "interest" in our unique bikes.

After a multi-hour search, we negotiated a solution with our otherwise top choice of lodging called the Hanoi Blue Sky Hotel 2. We wheeled our bikes into an elevator and locked them to the balcony of the dorm room on the sixth floor, not exactly easily accessible, but sufficiently secure. We very rarely take naps, but they were in order that afternoon since we had a social evening ahead of us. First, we met up with a cycle touring couple whom we had connected with through Twitter. Claire and Andre, traveling as Punctures and Panniers, were taking the train to Lao Cai that evening, but we managed to fit in a lively exchange of our experiences over our first mugs of bia hoi, Hanoi's famous fresh beer. 

Our conversation was briefly interrupted when a disgruntled customer began flinging the hefty beer glasses across the restaurant, shrapnel landing all around us. There is an influential phenomenon in Asia known as "face". People will go to great lengths to avoid conflict in order to "save face", but when the line has been crossed and someone has "lost face", then watch out. A whole series of passive-aggressive behaviors may ensue, or some overtly dramatic actions that ultimately result in a further loss of face, such as the event we witnessed. Despite the apparent risks, we chose a different bia hoi joint across the street later that evening to catch up with Kerri, our friend from NatureBridge and our reason for traveling to Hanoi. She had just arrived from Laos for our meet up as well.

The next four days was a thorough exploration of Hanoi with Kerri. On our first day, we didn't stray far from the Old Quarter with so much to take in just within its compact boundaries. As with anyone who arrives in Hanoi as their introduction to Vietnam, we were fascinated with simple scenes of daily life on the streets. Women wearing pajamas and conical hats selling fruit from their bikes, mobile restaurants in baskets hung from yokes balanced across a shoulder blade, barber shops on the sidewalk, offerings to ancestors left in the most unlikely of places, but casually sidestepped with respect. 

Of course, food and drink provided a focal point to our otherwise aimless wandering. First off, we were surprised to find a newly opened nitrogen-based ice cream parlor in the spirit of our beloved Smitten in San Francisco, so that was our mid-morning treat. After that, Vietnamese coffee stole the show at the trendy Cong Cafe where we discovered that yogurt, coconut milk, and even whipped egg are all delicious mixers with potent shots of brew, though not in the same serving, of course.

We strolled around the tranquil Hoan Kiem lake before grabbing a seat on the balcony of Legend Beer specifically to watch the fascinating flow of traffic through one of Hanoi's busiest intersections. It was an absolute free-for-all of primarily motorbikes, but also taxis, busses, cyclos, bicycles, pedestrians, and occasionally a personal car. Somehow it all worked with no collisions or fatalities witnessed within the life span of our pints. 

Next up was another quintessential Hanoi experience: a water puppet show. Not quite sure of what to expect, I was instantly enamored with the antics of wooden puppets splashing about in a pool of water while the puppeteers stood behind a screen and use controls submersed in the water. A series of vignettes set to traditional music depicted everyday rural life with rice planting, riding water buffaloes, and fishing. More fanciful numbers included fireworks spewing sparks from dragons' mouths and phoenixes hatching from eggs.

We ventured further afield the next morning with Kerri on a rented bicycle. We rode across the historical Long Bien Bridge, a local symbol of resistance in the American War, as it is called in Vietnam. The decrepit bridge has a lot of character and provided nice views of the Red River as well. We continued the bike tour around Truc Bach Lake and West Lake, of course fortifying ourselves with food and beverage every couple of miles. We enjoyed snacks and apple-included rice wine at Mau Dich 37, which Lonely Planet perfectly describes as "a unique exercise in nostalgia" since it is "styled after a government-run food shop from the impoverished period after 1976." To counteract the effects of the rice wine, it became imperative to transition a coffee shop if the ride was going to continue. Kerri doesn't normally drink coffee, but she handled a caffeine buzz quite well, even after multiple samples of potent shots of filtered coffee over sweetened condensed milk, the Vietnamese way. It tasted like drinking a chocolate-covered espresso bean! We were instantly hooked and she came pretty close too.

We filled the remaining days with Kerri by visiting some of Hanoi's more formal attractions, such as Bach Ma Temple and the Temple of Literature. All of these demonstrated a strong Chinese presence in Vietnam's history, frequently cited as "a thousand years of Chinese occupation." We also took a cruise by Uncle Ho's resting place, but we had arrived too late in the morning to be admitted into the austere looking mausoleum, an excellent example of Soviet-style architecture.

About the time we were actually able to effectively navigate the Old Quarter, it was time for Kerri to leave for Shanghai. The four days we spent together were a wonderful chance to catch up with her, feel a closer connection to home, and get a thorough introduction to a fascinating city at the same time.

​We stayed in Hanoi for another week, but our focus was "getting stuff done" rather than having fun. I would be soon be leading a No Barriers Youth trip in Beijing and Shanghai, a repeat of the program that determined the start point of Before It's Gone Journey a year prior. Preparation for this included the multi-step process of applying for a new Chinese visa, background reading, a thorough briefing from No Barriers staff on Skype, and storing my bicycle and gear with a Warm Showers host. Meanwhile, Matt was preoccupied with figuring out how he would fill his time in Vietnam while I was gone. Working on the blog, creating videos, fixing up the bikes, and regular life errands filled in the remaining gaps of time. Eating meals became the only time we were actually present in the moment and appreciated the fact that we were in Hanoi. We chowed on all sorts of cheap noodles and frequented many banh mi carts in search of the best. Weeks such as this one used to make us feel guilty that we weren't making the most of every opportunity to travel, but we have come to accept that they are a necessity when your daily life is on the road.

Heading in to the Dulong Valley in the rain, we anticipated the occasional rockfall. What we weren't expecting to encounter was snake-fall! The sizable reptile lost its grip on the slippery face of the road cut and hit the edge of the road just as my wheels passed by. I screeched to a stop--not that I was going that fast up the endless hill--but only managed to get a blurry snapshot before it regained its composure and retreated into a crevice in the rock wall.
 
We had departed Bingzoulao in the upper Nujiang Valley that morning, our efforts to get going earlier than usual thwarted by the temptation of an unexpected street market and saying goodbye to our cycling companion Will over a dumpling breakfast. It was afternoon by the time we made the turnoff and began a gradual 25-mile long climb on an amazingly smooth, newly-paved, but traffic-free road. We weren't even sure if the Dulong Valley was open to foreigners, having heard accounts of restricted access within the last few years. At the only checkpoint we encountered, we ducked under a barricade and waved to the teenage police that we spotted through the open doorway of an adjacent building. They didn't bother to get up from the couches they were lounging on, so we figured we were in the clear.