When in Vietnam...

"Canada people like exercise!"  It was the only conclusion our Vietnamese boat driver could come to.  After taking us for a "not-quite-sunset-yet" cruise to a pagoda, he asked us our plans for the following day.  We told him that we planned on renting bicycles and going to the beach (about 15km away).  Not motorbikes, but bicycles.  What you have to understand is that motorbikes are the vehicle of choice in Vietnam.  Tom and I estimate that they outnumber other vehicles by about 10:1.  Our bike ride to the beach was... let's just say indirect (we took my dad's kind of shortcut)... and very very hot and humid.  By the time we arrived, you'd think I'd already jumped into the water. I really shouldn't complain when I get to spend a day sitting on a beach on the ocean though.  We learned our lesson for the next beach trip.

Yesterday Tom and I rented a motorbike to take to Marble Mountains and to the beach.  The Marble Mountains were just that... 5 mountains made of marble.  What made them interesting were the many cave temples and Buddha statues within the mountains.  The fact the the mountains are entirely marble was also cool of course, especially after a year of sandstone.

For the afternoon we wanted to go to the beach "as the Vietnamese".  This means:
#1:  Going by motorbike
#2:  Going around sunset

Seriously, despite having oceanfront beaches all the way down the coast, most Vietnamese don't go to the beach in the daytime.  It's just too hot.  Plus they're not exactly into tanning the way North Americans are.  In fact, when we look for sunblock in pharmacies around here, it is often next to the "skin whitening cream".  So we headed to the beach on our motorbike around 4pm.  It was a little busy, but not nuts... at 4pm.  Tom much enjoyed his $0.75 beer. 

There was a steady stream of arrivals, 2, 3, or 4 on each motorcycle.  By 5pm the water and beach were packed with happy-go-lucky Vietnamese friends and family having a great time.  Tom thought it must be like Spring Break at Daytona Beach, with more children and less wet white t-shirt contests.  When we left around 6pm, as Canadians who don't make a habit of sitting on a sunless beach, the motorbikes were still flooding in.  While we were a bit curious about how late the party would continue, I wanted to try out the motorbike in daylight, and we both wanted to get out for some street food on kindergarten-sized chairs.  Seriously, they lost a furniture lottery in this country or something. 

I tried out the bike on the most deserted road we could find, and let made Tom takeover before getting to my first intersection.

I'm pretty sure I went from 0-50 kph in about 2 minutes.  It felt fast to me!  Tom got to (aka:  I made him) do all the city driving, and did an awesome job of it.  We won't be getting motorbikes in Canada though.  We'll stick to the bikes that give us excercise.  But we're in Vietnam... so we did as the Vietnamese.