Odyssey 2000 Vietnam Tour Includes Long Train Rides What’S Left Of Odyssey 2000 Makes Its Way Through Exotic Asian Locales

After blowing a budget of nearly $9 million, the Seattle-based organizers have dissolved the Odyssey 2000 round-the-world bicycle tour.

Only two months remained in the yearlong journey when Tom Kneeland and Associates assembled the group in China and broke the not-so-unexpected news to the 200 or so riders still involved with the trip.

But the journey continues for many of the riders, including Dave and Pam Zack of Spokane.

The Zacks are pressing on with their own itinerary since the tour folded in China.

Here’s the latest missive from Dave Zack as he describes the last days of the group tour in Vietnam, and perhaps his last visit for a while to a Third World country.

* Nov. 11, Phuket, Thailand: “Hell-Oh, HELL-Oh, HELL-OH! WHAT’S your NAME?

“Such is the battle cry of every man, woman and child in Vietnam. It’s not so much that they really want to know your name, but they have just used all the English they know.

“Should you answer such inquiries, you are met with a Mona Lisa smile and vacant eyes.

“Vietnam is a country I haven’t seen since 1967 and I have to admit I wasn’t looking forward to seeing it again. Things have changed a great deal since the `American War,’ yet, they haven’t changed at all.

“Our crossing from Nanning, China, to Highway 1 and onward into Hanoi was an ordeal. China apparently had a border war with Vietnam after we left in 1975 and the frontier between China and Vietnam, while not exactly an armed camp, does not allow transportation between countries.

“There are no trains, planes, or automobiles running back and forth between the borders. So you drive up to the border, get out, grab all your luggage, weave your way through, around, and over a small but determined horde of similar-minded Asian folk and cross through a border station with armed guards at the portal named “Friendship Gate.”

“After standing in a seemingly endless line, you finally come to a humorless customs official/border guard/bureaucrat who spends a great deal of time looking at your visa, entry data card, exit information card, passport and passport photo.

“The latter is a bit disconcerting since we all look alike to them.”

The members of the Odyssey 2000 group still involved in the trip then board a bus for a bone-shaking, stomach-churning trip to Hanoi.

“This is a city we bombed into dust,” Zack says, conflicted with his memories. “You can still see some pretty grim reminders, but for the most part you see an Asian city that bustles with happy confusion, never-ending honking, streets filled with people, hawkers, motorbikes, cabs, filth, bicycles, poverty, fruit stands, open air restaurants, smoke, and a thousand voices.

“Hell-oh. HELL-oh. HELL-OH! WHAT’S YOUR NAME!

“Just try answering that six or seven thousand times a day and see if you don’t begin to look the other way.

“It doesn’t seem to make much difference, they seem happy enough just to ask you.

“The roads are too torn up for us to cycle so we leave Hanoi by train. You simply haven’t lived until you’ve traveled by Third World Train Inc., huddled into wooden benches.

“The cars have grimy tile floors with a variety of vermin, and screened windows for safety-it seems rock throwing at trains is some sort of national sport. A squat toilet empties straight through to the tracks.”

Zack says the prepared food is “truly disgusting for both nose, eye and mouth, cigarette smoke from the other end of the car never seems to go away no matter how many windows are open, and the stench makes for vivid memories.”

The Zacks roll into Hue, check into a moldy-smelling hotel and congratulate themselves for being great and flexible travelers. Then they learn they would have yet another all-night train trip from Hue to Nha Trang.

“This is too much of a good thing!” Dave Zack says.

They endure yet another sleepless night and clicker-clacked into Nha Trang, where, at last, they could resume bicycling.

“We cycle to Da Lat, spend a day in this Vietnamese mountain resort city and spend nearly an entire day gripping brakes and careening around potholes as we scream down off the mountains and back to the coast for a cycle-slog into Phan Thiet and Saigon.

“Flat, coastal riding would be fun except for the ever crowded Highway 1 and the heat. It’s Panama hot. We are having a terrible time keeping enough liquids down and our skin feels like sandpaper at the end of the day from the salt leaking out of us.

“To make the adventure more exiting, we run a gauntlet of crops drying on the road, crowds of children yelling at us, some waving, some looking like they are going to jump at you, people on motorbikes pacing alongside and sometimes reaching over to touch your arm or other body parts, water buffalo, bikes, walkers and honkers.

“Honkers are everything that has a horn. Motorbikes, motorcycles, cars, trucks and buses, all honk at everything. I haven’t a clue what they are doing, but my nerves are raw and I fear I could really do some damage if I could just get my hands on one of those air-horned air-heads.

“In Saigon, we get a pretty good hotel with air conditioning. The new name for Saigon is Ho Chi Minh City. History is written by the victors.

“The city may have a new name but it’s the same old poverty, misery and squalor that was here in 1967. The main difference is that now they try to kill you with motor scooters.

“The local economy seems to be driven by a thriving black market. Some real beauty remains. Public buildings built by the French from the mid-1800s through the 1950s give a taste of what colonialism might have been like.

“You get the other side of the picture at the Vietnam War Museum where a display depicts doomed Vietnamese being led to the guillotine. The museum also has a graphic display of how the American fighting machine killed some 3 million Vietnamese.

“These are figures I never thought about during my last visit and they are sobering. Leaving comes as a relief. Vietnam is pretty enough, but there’s just too much personal history here that I’d sooner leave behind.

“Boarding the plane for Phuket, Thailand, I feel like I’m escaping and indeed I am. This will probably be the last communist country I’ll visit. It will be the last Third World country on the tour, and it’s the last air flight with the whole Odyssey 2000 group.

“We are back in the developing world as we enter the Phuket airport. The first thing I see is a Baskin-Robins 31 Flavors. Oh, joy!

“This last leg takes us through Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore and we are beginning to say goodbye to one another.

“Some riders have already gone home from Saigon, more will leave from Phuket. We will see attrition all along the way to the grand good-bye in Singapore, where most of the riders scatter to the winds.

“Some for home, others for New Zealand, a few to Tibet, Bali, the Philippines, back to Australia, and other ports of call wherever the riding sounds interesting and for as long as the money holds out.

“My guess is about 50 will pony up the additional bucks (in addition to the $36,000 they paid at the beginning of the tour) to finish Odyssey. But that is just not an option for us.”

The Zacks are heading for Singapore and plan to end their odyssey by pedaling in New Zealand.

Dave Zack says they hope to enjoy shorter cycling days, better weather, and more days off depending on what concert schedules and theater performances they find.

“We have heard of something called the Agridome that specializes in sheep dog performances,” he writes. “Now you’re talkin’!”