Reentry

It’s been a week since I returned from cycling in Vietnam and Laos – and I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on the trip. I also rode about 60 miles this weekend here in suburban Boston.  A few thoughts about contrasts. .

1. Roosters:  The first day I wasn’t awakened by roosters was on the airplane across the Pacific.  There were roosters in the posh neighborhoods of Hanoi – and roosters near the state-owned resorts in northwestern Vietnam.   I’d probably put water buffalo in this category too.   I was riding through Concord, Acton and Carlisle yesterday and today – and there were plenty of horse farms –but I miss the water buffalo
2. Cars:  There are too many of them in suburban Boston.   I miss the Lao roads with just motorscooters, water buffalo, and occasional trucks.
3. Bikes: In Vietnam and Laos, we rode Trek mountain bikes that weigh almost 14 kg (30 lbs) and have tires fit for monster trucks. At home, I ride a Lemond Zurich carbon road bike – that weighs about 19 lbs.  The carbon road bike just breezes up hills compared to those mountain bikes – but boy was I happy to have the monster truck tires on the Hmong village trails in Vietnam and pretty much all the Lao roads.  
4. Roads: The roads in the Boston suburbs got a real boost from the America’s Recovery, Reinvestment and Repaving Act.   I rode on exceptionally smooth surfaces this weekend – a far cry from the interrupted pavement and rutted cowpaths in Laos.
5. Birds: We have so  many of them in Massachusetts – and there were so few nondomestic birds that we saw during the bike ride
6. Water: I can’t tell you what a relief it is to be able rinse my toothbrush and my mouth with tap water.   Clean water is such a necessity – but so unavailable to the majority of the world’s population
7. Smoking: There was much less of this in northwestern Vietnam and Laos than I expected in developing countries.   I’m not sure why that is – but the restaurants and hotels were pretty much smoke-free even if they had ashtrays.  Of course, in Laos, the air was thick with smoke from agricultural burning.   One of my bike riding friends was in Luang Prabang in December and told me the skies were clear and the air was clean then.
8. More water:  Laos’ last rain was in October, 2009.   Riding today in eastern Massachusetts, every river has overflowed its banks, and there are still scattered road closures due to flooding.  It’s easy to understand why people in a flood plain like the idea of building a dam!
9. Connectivity: I didn’t have access to work email for an entire two weeks.  Now I’m back and connected.   In Laos, I had plenty of time – but the uploads were so slow that I often couldn’t put photos in the blog.   Back in the US, the upload speed is much faster – but who has the time?  I’m still working on posting my shutterfly URLs – perhaps over the next week.  
10. Food:  I love sticky rice – and miss it already. My experience with sticky rice here is that Chinese restaurants often have it with dim sum – but it usually has pork.  I’m happy I’ve found what looks like a good recipe  – I’ll report back about how it works. First, I have to find some glutinous rice.  
11. Vietnam and Laos are enormously different.  In Vietnam, there is a huge rush – everyone honks their horn pretty much nonstop.  In Laos, the road from Dien Bien Phu to Luang Prabang closes for 4 hours twice a day so they can rebuild it.   By the way, today’s New York Times Book Review has an essay about how difficult it is to find Vietnamese who read Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War-themed short stories “The Things They Carried.”  The book review also has favorable reviews of two new books about the Vietnam War.