Comment: I wrote this as a part of another letter over a year after completing the tour and returning to Reno. I have made it a separate letter to maintain date continuity and to support links to the photos that I took while in Viet Nam.
CYCLING TOURISTS KILLED IN VIETNAM
HANOI, Vietnam 2002
Two American tourists have been killed while bicycling this month in Vietnam, where traffic accidents are up sharply in recent years, officials said Tuesday.
Jean Woodhead Yokes, 65, was hit by a truck on Jan 19 while on a bicycling tour with 12 other women, and an American man died after a motorbike hit the tandem bicycle he was riding with his wife on Jan 16.
The man's name was not released. His wife was also injured when their bicycle was hit head-on by a motorbike on a road from Dalat to the coastal town of Phan Rang, police in central Ninh Thuan province said.
Yokes was killed while riding from Danang to the ancient town of Hoi An on a tour organized by Trails of Indochina, a tour company official said.
Witnesses said it appeared Yokes fell off her bike and was hit by the truck, which dragged her more than 100 feet, said Danang City spokesman LeThi Thu Hanh.
Yokes was cremated, and the other women on the tour spread her ashes in Vietnam in accordance with her will, the tour company official said.
Authorities did not give her hometown. More than 10,000 people were killed last year in traffic accidents in Vietnam, a record number. Officials blame poor observance of laws and the sharp increase in the number of motorbikes.
The U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City said there are plans to revise the State Department travel advisory to warn visitors about traffic problems in Vietnam.
This might have been me last year! I was very lucky, and everyone in our group was lucky, to not get seriously hurt. A woman on our tour ran over a student on that same section from Danang to Hoi An. She went down and could just as easily been run over. Our tour leader was hit head-on by a motorcycle in the town of Phan Rang, which broke off the bikes fork. Both of those accidents caused only minor injuries. My last day of riding was on that section from Phan Rang to Dalat. To avoid becoming "bug juice" I ran into a ditch after being forced off the road by a bus over-passing a truck. This was not the first time on the trip but it was the closest and brought back memories of my 1990 crash while on the Cross Country tour. At the water stop I got off the bike and told the staff to "box it" and I did a bus tour for the remaining 2 1/2 days. I had already spent about half of my trip in the bus because of an attack of diarrhea the night that we left Hanoi. This kept me off the bike, or feeling bad when I did manage to ride, for about 10 days. At tours end Ray Cunningham and I hired a tour van with guide and, with his wife Kathleen accompanying us, went to visit our old billets and work sites in Saigon (Ho Chi Ming City).
Overall it was not a good trip for me but I have no regrets about going back. It was good to see what the country looks like, (I never saw anything but Saigon, mostly Cholon section, when I was stationed there). It was also good to talk to some of the Vietnamese people and find out that what we tried to do was in fact the right thing to do. I met with no animosity because of our previous enemy status and the people are very friendly, more so in Southern Vietnam than North.
Comment: The following text was added even later to support the linked photos. I shamlessly used Ray Cunningham's excellent journal to "refresh" my memory regarding dates and places. I strongly recommend that you spend some time at his site if you want a well written description of the tour.