Joe Hayward Marks 80th Birthday With 1,200-Mile Bike Trek in Southeast Asia

Joe Hayward’s idea of an 80th birthday present to himself is quite different from what most people his age would have in mind.

But then again, Hayward has never been a typical retiree.

On March 14, the day he marked eight decades on the planet, Hayward was more than 9,000 miles from home, on a bicycle, drenched to the skin after getting stuck in an afternoon downpour in a tiny Indonesian town, trying to find a place to lay his head for the evening. After a few conversations with strangers he came across, Hayward realized the nearest hotel was 10 miles away — in the opposite direction. So, he hopped back on his bike, retracing the last 10 miles he’d ridden that day, before settling in at a $14-dollar-per-night hotel where an employee sprayed his room with bug spray before handing him the keys.

“It was shelter, and it was a bed,” he said, matter-of-factly, during an interview last week.

This kind of experience was nothing new for Joe Hayward. Over the last decade-plus, he has made a habit of getting on his bike and going on an epic ride over the course of several weeks, both in the continental United States and abroad. He has ridden back and forth across the country more than once, and has now ridden his bike in a total of 82 countries — his lifelong goal, he said, is to hit 100.

Two years after completing a solo 1,000-mile bike ride from Hanoi to Saigon in Vietnam, Hayward was back at it again, riding his bike, once again solo, for more than 1,200 miles from Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, to Bali, Indonesia, from February 28 to March 28.

It would be natural to assume that Hayward is one of those people who adheres to a strict exercise regime, or religiously rides his bike for miles and miles, day in and day out, when he’s home.

Surprisingly, the opposite is true. While he is fit and energetic, Hayward’s approach to the bike and his trips is extremely laid back. He has said, for years, that he has almost no desire to get on the bike when he’s home. It sits in the garage for months, and when it comes out, it means it’ll be out for a long trip, far from home. He also doesn’t put a lot of advanced planning into his international adventures, in terms of mapping out his route and where he will stay. He simply gets on a plane, and figures it out along the way.

For Hayward, the joy and the appeal of these trips is in the slowly unfurling discoveries he makes every day. He generally plans the trips for March, both because it is his birthday month and because he’d prefer not to go away in the earlier part of the winter and miss the holiday season with his family.

Hayward has developed a special affinity for Southeast Asia; he enjoys the warm climate and also likes to avoid mountainous treks.

He admitted to “a bit of poor planning” for his most recent trip. March is the rainy season in Southeast Asia, so Hayward got wet a few times. He tried to finish his rides by 2 p.m. each day, which is when a big rainstorm would typically roll through. Of course, on days like his birthday, the unexpected extra 10 miles he had to tack on to find a hotel meant he didn’t always achieve that goal.

The hotel snafu wasn’t Hayward’s only memorable moment from the trip.

After enduring the long haul flight to Singapore, Hayward had planned to take a ferry to Jakarta to begin his journey. When he arrived at the terminal and was told that the ferry wasn’t operating that day, he asked if there were any other ferries to Indonesia.

“They said, ‘No, but there’s a ferry to Batam,’ so I said, ‘fine, I’ll take that ferry,’” he said.

What he didn’t realize, until he arrived, was that Batam is an island. To make matters worse, there were no ferries running from Batam to Jakarta, so he was forced to take a plane. Luckily, he said, the people at the airport were accommodating and helped him bring along his precious cargo.

“They just wrapped the bike in plastic and threw it on the plane,” he said.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Hayward saw parts of the country most tourists wouldn’t see, taking smaller back roads instead of highways. That’s his preferred mode of travel, he’s said in the past, because it allows him to truly absorb the culture and experience what life is really like for people who live in the countries he visits. His most recent trip coincided with Ramadan, and because Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, he heard the call to prayer from mosques many times daily.

He also took an elephant ride in Indonesia, and also visited Mount Bromo, an active volcano in eastern Java.

When Hayward recounts his adventures, he often starts out by describing a particularly compelling landmark or scenery, but before long, his story hones in on a human experience or interaction he had. He reflects and remarks on those moments in a way that makes it clear that what he cherishes during these trips isn’t what he sees but who he meets along the way.

“Bromo had this spectacular active volcano, with smoke billowing out,” he said. “We climbed to the top of the crater, and this local guy walked us up, and he had this small umbrella with him, and he shared it. He was such a nice guy. I tried to tip him, but he wouldn’t take any money.”

Hayward also visited a Hindu temple in the same area, pointing out that while Indonesia is a Muslim country, Bali is Hindu.

When it came to the rest of his route, Hayward simply went to areas that had been recommended to him. He visited Lombok, an island east of Bali with beautiful beaches, and also went to Gili Trawangan, another small island near Lombok.

Getting there was another adventure.

“This one was a challenge,” he said. “It was raining and the wind was gusting; there were 4-foot swells in the water, and it’s a boat with just me and the pilot on it. In the storm, we had to walk into the water to get into the boat. It was anchored onto the beach. Between the two of us, we were able to get the bike onto the boat.”

Hayward compared the tiny island to Key West, saying it was a destination for people who like to snorkel and scuba dive, and that there were many vacationers from Australia there. There were no cars on the island, only bikes or the odd horse and cart, he added.

Naturally, Hayward is already planning his next bike adventure. He’s interested in returning to Southeast Asia, and is eyeing the Philippines, but is also seriously considering a trip to Brazil. The South American option has appeal because he could knock an additional two other countries off his list — Argentina and Uruguay — if he maps out a route there, which would get him closer to his goal of 100.

The trips seem to be a calling he can’t and doesn’t want to ignore. Not because he enjoys the biking, but because the bike gives him access to fundamental truths of the human experience.

“It’s always fascinating to me, taking these roads that I take by necessity, that go through all of the villages,” he said. “I’m awed not by the poverty but by people living in simple homes; many of them don’t have plumbing, and they’re not any less happy than anyone else in the world. They live a life where we look at it and would say, ‘I could never live like that,’ but yes, you can.

“The point for me is that people’s happiness is not derived from wealth,” he continued. “They’re just as happy as people living in Manhattan. They just have a different point of view.”

He says this simple fact comes across most clearly whenever he rides past a school.

“I pass a lot of schools, and I’m always fascinated by the kids,” he said. “They’re not jaded or intimidated. They’re just such sparkling specks of joy. They run up to the gate and get excited and wave goodbye. That’s always a high point of the day.”