Biking with a Dozen

Remind me again why I thought it was a good idea to bring 12 kids on a five hour bicycle tour.  I must have temporarily lost my mind when I sent that email that said, "This sounds great!  Our kids will love it!"

Honestly, the kids did love it.  And I loved it too...just not so much for the biking.  Our class began with the 3 mile ride to the Ancient City to meet our French friends.  En route we had only one small accident - leaving my little friend Fynn on the pavement to be picked up by a few tourists he had avoided on his way to the ground.  Fortunately Fynn is made of rubber and we carried on.  We met our French friends and one of their fathers, Pascal, who owns a bicycle tour company in Hoi An.  He is the one who generously agreed to this little excursion.  I am guessing Heaven and Earth Bicycle Tours will not be offering a regualr kid-friendly tour after this afternoon's adventure.

  

We hopped a private boat for a 45 minute ride up the river.  The kids enjoyed the wind and each other's company for the ride, and I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes view of the Hoi An fishing industry with all of the ro cho (special fishing nets) extended over the water (check this link for details on the process http://vietnam.vnanet.vn/VNP/en-US/18/1370/Default.aspx).

Ro Cho

Less than a minute after successfully disembarking from the boat, Theo took evasive measures to prevent a collision with a school mate and pitched himself and his bicycle into a gutter full of cow dung.  Not a good start.  Coated in black muddy goo, Theo was an excellent sport (as were the three Vietnamese women at the first house we stopped at).  These ladies hosed him off, laundered his shorts, soaked his shoes, scrubbed him down, washed his bike and found him a spare pair of shorts.  With a clean Theo, we were ready to hear about the sleeping mat weaving specialty of this particular village.

Theo gets hosed down.

We met the family (Pascal's in-laws) and watched the grandmother feed brightly colored reeds into the weaving loom of her "underling" (the younger women are considered less qualified to choose patterns and colors and therefore just operate the loom).  Pascal entertained us with a story from last year's flood season.  He showed us the water line on the house which was above our heads.  He showed us the rickety crawl space above the ceiling slats, and he said when the flood waters come, the family prioritizes their possessions and moves them to higher ground before the water arrives.  First up the ladder was the television.  Second was grandma.  We all had a good laugh (but given what I have seen, I think he was speaking the truth).

Weaving sleeping mats

Pattern Queen (and second up the ladder)

We headed out on skinny paths through the villages and shrimp farms.  We saw reeds growing on the sides of the path waiting to be gathered for the mats, and we saw brightly dyed reeds lying out to dry. 


Drying Reeds

Next up was a floating bridge.  Pascal's word of warning, "Do not ride in the middle because there are nails sticking up."  Umm...ok...this is a floating, rickety bridge, and many of these kids can't hold a straight line on a fat, smoothly paved road.  This was a disaster waiting to happen.  Couple the bobbing motion of the bridge with a few passing motor bikes for added bounce, and I had visions of children floating downstream.  Renaud (another parent) assured me the water was flowing upstream, and I had nothing to worry about.  Any child who fell over the side would be carried back to Hoi An and not out to sea.  Comforting.

Negotiating the floating bridge

Somehow we made it across the bridge without any casualties and carried on to our first water break (the whining had begun, and we had biked a total of about 400 meters since we left grandma's house).  Next up was the boat basket weaving village.  We biked a few hundred more meters and got off again to learn about how the Vietnamese fishing boat baskets are made by weaving reeds together, filling the cracks with cow dung and sealing them with pitch. Fishermen on both the river and the ocean use the baskets.  We learned that the Vietnamese basket boats first were invented when the French levied a tax on Vietnamese boats.  In response to the tax, fishermen wove baskets (not boats) for transport.  The kids all had a chance to try rowing a basket and came to appreciate the skill involved in piloting a circular reed craft.

The base of a fishing basket

Is that really cow dung?

Piloting the cow-dung sealed craft...mmmmm

Our next stop was an ice making "factory" where a salt water refrigeration system was employed to crank out enormous hunks of "local ice" which is then sawed up into chunks and sold off the back of a cart.  This would be the ice you do not want to have in your drink - just ice for keeping things cold.  From there we bought "egg cakes" to keep the whining at bay.  We were going on three hours (having covered less than a mile on the bikes and having weathered about five mechanical breakdowns - chains falling off, wobbly wheels, dragging kickstands - and one more minor accident).  Having prematurely celebrated our success at crossing the floating bridge without losing anyone or puncturing a tire, one of our bikers found himself riding on a rim, and our next stop was the tire repair spot where we waited for the tube to be patched.

Hand-carved mother-of-pearl

The finished product

Next up was the carpentry shop where we watched artists inlay mother-of-pearl into mahogany furniture.  Then we continued to the edge of the water where we saw fishing boats in various stages of completion before getting back onto a boat ourselves to be ferried back to Hoi An.  It was getting dark.  The kids were hungry and tired, but they all had enough energy to sing at the top of their lungs as we crossed the water.  John and I escorted our eight back to school from the Ancient City with only one final collision along the way.

Hand-made fishing boat

Heading Home

Adding it up:

12 kids + 2 ferry rides + 1 swim in cow poo + 4 water bottles + 5 bike malfunctions + 3 collisions + 1 flat tire + 30 egg cakes + 0 broken bones + 0 lost children + 6 tired adults + lots of smiling faces at the end of the day = success