Saturday, April 13, 2013

Day 28: 2/6 Biking Through the Countryside

                Today Braden, Allie, Emily, and I planned to meet up with Wendy at the restaurant that we originally met her at (which worked out nicely since we were probably going to eat breakfast there again no matter what).  Braden wasn’t feeling well, so Emily, Allie, and I headed to breakfast to meet up with Rachel (who we invited to join us on the bike tour).  A little after we got our food, Braden joined us.  As we were eating, there was this little wedding party that appeared and then we saw the groom walking to the colorfully decorated car with his bride hoisted over his shoulder.  The wedding party set off confetti cannons as they said their goodbyes to the newlyweds.  As the car pulled away, we spotted Wendy across the street. 

                We went over to her where we got the bikes we were going to rent for the day.  I haven’t really ridden a bicycle in probably like seven years, so I was kind of nervous to try it again but it really is true what they say about never forgetting how to ride a bike.  We started riding and it wasn’t too bad, but then we got to the main street.  You know how I said that the streets and driving were crazy and scary?  Well it got even worse when you’re actually riding through it yourself.  There were so many cars and motorcycles and everything was just chaotic.  There were numerous times that I felt like I was going to crash into something or I didn’t feel comfortable enough on the bike that I stepped off and walked the bike.  I felt so bad for Braden, because if you take how I felt and multiplied it by 20 that’s probably how he was feeling because he had never learned how to ride a bike.  I can’t even imagine how scary it would be if that was your first experience riding a bike, which is probably part of the reason why he called it quits after trying to get through the town.

                The rest of us continued to follow Wendy as she went down what seemed to be very random streets and paths.  We eventually ended up going on a dirt/rock path that was very bumpy and kind of like mountain biking terrain (I don’t really know what mountain biking terrain is like, but I would imagine that this was pretty close or at least a beginner version of mountain biking).  The entire time we were biking I had no clue where we were going, but it was fun to just be in the outskirts of the town where I hardly saw other people.  We even randomly stopped and Wendy went and picked us some mandarin oranges from a tree of some farm (which were amazingly delicious).  We then continued our bike tour until we got to the “highway” (I only put them in quotes because it isn’t like the highways I think of back home where they are like 3 lanes across, rather it was like highway 93 in Colorado where it was one/sometimes two lanes). 

                We then rode up toward the Goldwater Cave which is this big cave (like three levels deep) that has hot springs and a mud bath thing inside.  The cave walls were lit up with all sorts of different colored lights which made it look pretty cool and would accentuate the formation of the stalagmites and stalactites.  There was also a name for practically every inch of the caves.  It was almost like someone was looking at the caves, like they would look at clouds, and just come up with a name for some weird, abstract formation that they would see.  Many of them were very obvious like one was called broccoli because it looked like broccoli (and was lit up green) and one was called the frog prince because it looked like a giant frog kind of puckering its lips. There were times when I would not understand where the name came from; it would be like me looking at the wall and saying to myself, “I don’t see the upside down unicorn on a pogo stick.”  There was one that was called the “Rebirth Hole” which you could crawl through.  Allie, Rachel, and I decided we wanted to crawl through it and found that it was a lot tighter than we were anticipating, but it was still pretty fun to climb around in the caves.  We then continued our tour through the caves and walked by the hot springs and mud bath but didn’t get in (now I kind of wish I had brought a bathing suit to try it out). 

                We got out to the bikes and started to ride again.  As soon as my butt hit the bicycle seat I could feel that my butt was starting to get tender from the seat, so I knew that the rest of the day had the potential to be really rough.  We headed down the highway a bit until we reached a little restaurant on the side of the road.  When we dismounted our bikes and went to go sit down we saw Moon Hill which is basically a rock formation where there is a half circle missing from the middle and it makes it look like a moon… fancy that! We ate lunch at the little restaurant and then Wendy asked if we wanted to visit her home.  I, being a kind of paranoid person, was just imagining some sort of story like Taken playing out where she takes us to her house and then these men jump out from behind the door and kidnap us.  I figured that wouldn’t happen but the imagination is a powerful thing. 

We biked to her house which was this cement building.  We walked in and the first thing I see is a chicken walking around.  For those of you who know me, you can just imagine how I reacted to that thing, but I made it safely into the house.  The first room was just an open space with a refrigerator, table, TV, pictures on the wall, and a beat up couch.  Wendy gave us some more mandarin oranges that she had picked from her backyard earlier, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that there were probably 40-50 oranges in the bag she handed us, so I felt no shame in eating multiple oranges.  As we were indulging in the sweet fruit, she pulled out this funkily-shaped thing.  It looked kind of like a giant pear but at the same time I have never seen any fruit like it before.  Apparently it’s called pomadoro fruit or something like that.  Wendy used this huge machete looking knife to cut through the extremely thick skin of the fruit, and then she took the skin and wore it around as a hat which looked goofy.  After some effort we finally got to the center where the good stuff was.  The fruit didn’t have too much taste to it, but the texture was weird because it had these thick stringy parts to it.  It was weird.  As we were eating the fruit the chicken decided to walk inside the house and I swear it was staring me down.  It walked around the outskirts of the group and I made sure to stay on the opposite side of the cluster of people to avoid the demon bird.  Right when I was near the door and the bird was on the other side of the room, Wendy then decided to try to shoo the bird outside the door… right toward me.  Needless to say I had a slight freak out moment when the bird flew in my direction.

We left Wendy’s house with full bellies and fresh legs.  We rode toward this place called Butterfly Caves which is notorious for a giant butterfly sculpture thing on the side of the cave.  We went through the caves until we got to this stretch that was lined with numerous bells of all different sizes.  As people walked through they would hit the bells with a mallet.  After the path of bells there was this suspended bridge that we had to cross.  On the other side there was a path of stairs we could take to get to a scenic spot.  At this point I was extremely hot and tired, but I slowly made it up all of the stairs to the top which provided a pretty awesome view of the surrounding area.  We took some pictures and then made our way down toward this performance area.  In this area some of the locals that were part of a minority Dong group would put on shows of their traditional dances and singing.  The outfits of the performers were very extravagant.  The women would have these huge crown-like head pieces and necklace things that would be completely silver, and the dresses that were worn were vibrantly colored.  There were many dancers and singers, but my favorite performance was this young man who walked out carrying a little branch with a few leaves on it.  He got to the center of the stage where he plucked a single leaf off the branch and strategically placed it in his hands.  He brought his hands to his mouth and started to play the leaf like an instrument matching the pitches of the background music and playing the melody with perfect precision.  It was quite impressive how he could hit all of the notes with a stinkin’ leaf.  At the very end we were allowed to get on the stage with all of the dancers and do a dance.  The dance reminded me of the Jewish dance where you hold hands with your neighbors and walk in a circle.  It was pretty fun.  After that we got back on our bikes to head back to town.

We got back to the hostel and met up with Braden to get some dinner.  We wandered around the town and chose a random restaurant to eat at.  I decided to try some sort of duck dish since I figured it would probably be decent, but when I got it every chunk of duck had more bones than meat.  It was very difficult to eat any of the dish, so I was slightly disappointed.  Braden said that I got “river shrimped,” so I guess we have a new term for getting gypped with food.

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