Robert Pirsig, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway they all talked about it. And here I was, living it. Finally faced with the adventure I was both craving, insatiably, but also fearing. We, Greg and myself, were equipped with one map, one backpack, one compass, and one motorbike. Aside from a change of underwear, and a spare t-shirt we kept it light.
“I need to do this”. I believed the conviction in Greg’s voice when he told me this. I believe that he did need to do this. In many ways, I did as well. I had been waiting and waiting for that moment, that moment for something to move me to my core. As of July 7th we had been traveling for one month. We had seen amazing things, and certainly had some moving experiences. I suppose at this point I was still waiting, though, for that moment. I wanted something that would help me to understand myself. Something to make me think “man, I can’t believe this is happening to me.” The last time I felt that way was seeing Paul McCartney at Bonnaroo in 2013. I wanted that feeling. I wanted my traveling to be meaningful, purposeful. I was learning so much about the world around me, when would I begin to learn about myself?
I woke up on the morning of July 9th (my dad’s birthday) at 6:15am. The Shrine/An Argument by Fleet Foxes still playing in my head. Well, the first 50 seconds, which in my mind have always been perfection but never resonated with me as they had began to in the 18 hours since being on the road. Greg was still sleeping. Less than 24 hours prior we embarked on a journey. We rented a motorbike and began to drive from My Tho, Vietnam to.. unknown. Riding a motorbike in Vietnam, even though I am not driving, scares me. We have been in our fair share of bike accidents, and now here we are in a country with some of the wildest driving my eyes have ever seen we decide to ride again. I can feel myself getting better and my nerves easing up. It’s best that Greg is in control, and I am not.
We drove to My Tho side of Cai Be before taking a ferry to get to Vinh Long. What a journey! The lush forests, the people, the culture, the everything. At that moment, I felt “this is the most important thing I am doing.” The trees, the different kinds of birds, the fresh air, the actual smell of nature, I was in my element and nothing could make me unhappy. We drove along singing Born to Wild by Steppenwolf, and felt it all.
Relying on a map, and compass we got from a Kinder Egg wasn’t the most reliable. We ended up in a backwoods area, seemingly off the map. This would be the first of many times this would happen. There were narrow, barely there roads that our bike could hardly handle with streams on either side full of brown Mekong water. This was like nothing we had ever seen before. There were moments where we were genuinely nervous we would never get out of the green maze. And moments we didn’t think our bike would survive. With the help of strangers, and charades we were able to make it out and onward to Cai Be.
The journey around the Mekong Delta lasted 3 days. Parts were exhausting, and exhilarating. Others were a different kind of draining, and dull. Greg had his phone stolen, there were times where we thought we might die in the Vietnam traffic. We left the Mekong not by bike but by crowded bus. I sat squished against a man’s leg and a window trying to fall asleep while dreaming of our next adventure.
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