That morning we awoke in Sapa, our hotel room overlooking a developed valley. Far below we could see the peasant life of the people there: roaming dogs, cooking the courtyards, bicycle deliveries. 

The question was: could the car make it as far as Hanoi? We had even considered going back by train and leaving East of Eden in Sapa to be dealt with at another time, but in the end we decided to give it a go.

For some strange and inexplicable reason, some grace from the Powers who knew I had to be at work tomorrow, East of Eden made it all the way back to Hanoi without a hitch. The road was bad. Not as bad as it had been in the mountains, but even a slightly imperfect road can turn a simple 350 kilometre drive into a 10 hour nightmare.

The route took us through the usual collection of tribal villages and wonderful vistas. There is much that can be said about Vietnam, and when you live anywhere long enough things loose their pristine charm; but one thing you must say is that Vietnam is a beautiful and breathtaking country.

At one point I just couldn’t drive anymore and asked Marco to take the wheel. Since it was his vacation I had done all the driving during the last five days, but now I was really tired. He drove beautifully, with gusto and feeling, and honking like a native.

Because they do love to honk, those natives! A car seeing a bicycle at 500 metres will start honking just to make sure that the bicycle rider doesn’t get any nasty suicidal ideas. It makes for a very noisy country.

We finally made it back to Hanoi and parked East of Eden at my school at around 10 PM. We were tired, dirty, hungry and our eyes were still full of the generosity of the land.

How many passengers did East of Eden have? If you count Marie-Do, Marco and me you get three.  But Marie-Do also has a little passenger, so that makes four and the East of Eden team will soon, B”H, have another permanent member.