Got My Moto Workin’

The only way to travel in many situations in this part of the world is on a moto (lightweight motorcycle). In Mui Ne, the driver was late in picking me up (5:30 instead of 5 a.m., to watch sunrise over sand dune) and he drove fast. We’d come up to a bunch of cows crossing the road and he’d just lean on his horn and keep up the speed. Lucky no cow or calf took a hop to the right or we’d have been creamed. He was passing with aplomb and I must say a high degree of skill, but for the first 15 minutes I kept wondering how much skin I’d lose hitting the ground at 40 mph. Finally I gave up fretting and just started looking at the scenery. Today I took a ferry from Phu Quoc Island to the mainland of Viet Nam and got a really great driver — safe and skillful — to take me the 115 miles or so to Chou Doc. (I forget if I already wrote something earlier about the moto situation — you know how memory goes in later years.) Speaking of which, see the next blog entry (“Us Old Guys”).