Southampton Resident Joe Hayward Completes a 'Cycle of Kindness' Through Vietnam

Joe Hayward’s relationship with his bike can best be described as feast or famine.

The 78-year-old Southampton resident freely admits that the bike spends most of its time in the basement — he does not ride it around his neighborhood, or go out for a long spin on the weekends; he does not use it for exercise.

But every once in awhile, he gets the urge to go on a real adventure, and when that happens, the bike is his constant companion.

Hayward’s most recent bout of wanderlust took him to southeast Asia. This past March, he rode his bike from Hanoi, Vietnam, south to Saigon, a 1,000-mile journey along Highway AH1.

It was not the first time Hayward made such a long distance trek on his bike.

What he describes as “a periodic itch for a long distance ride” has long been a feature of his personality, one that has been particularly prominent in the latter years of his life.

When he was 60, Hayward, a retired school principal, completed a 3,700-mile cross country ride from Anacortes Island in Washington State to his home in Southampton. A decade later, he did another cross country trek, from St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California. On that trip, he was joined by his youngest son, Christopher, toward the tail end. They rode together from Phoenix to San Diego.

Over the next few years, Hayward decided to complete the loop, with his oldest son, Michael, joining him for a ride from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Tijuana, Mexico, and then he once again rode solo, from Key West, Florida, to Southampton.

Hayward’s last ride before his Vietnam adventure was a trek up the east coast of Australia, from Melbourne to Cairns.

Hayward’s decision to head to Vietnam was primarily borne out of his desire to escape New York during the winter. He said he wanted “a little adventure and challenge,” and added that, “motivated by a little curiosity and accompanied by a lot of ignorance,” he bought his ticket to Hanoi.

Vietnam was a natural choice for Hayward’s next adventure. In many ways, he is wanderlust personified, having visited more than 75 countries over the course of his life. He’s been to the geographic region plenty of times, but had never visited the country.

“I like southeast Asia,” he said. “I’ve been to Thailand, Laos, Myanmar. I love the people, the countryside and the weather.”

Hayward’s urge to see the world has less to do with a desire to visit must-see destinations, and is centered more around his seemingly endless curiosity to discover “what the world is all about,” he said. Decades earlier, Hayward took a trip around the world, but chose mostly developing countries.

“The criteria was to go to places I wouldn’t necessarily go to on a vacation,” he said. “Nepal, Afghanistan, Egypt — places off the beaten path.”

While in Vietnam, Hayward stayed essentially on one path, riding Highway AH1 the entire way. It was mostly flat, with one “intimidating mountain,” he said, but he was accompanied by a friendly tailwind from the north that he said, “made me feel more capable than I am.”

While there were tourists to be found in the seaside resorts and inside the cities, Hayward said that along the highway, he did not come across any other foreigners during his three-week journey. He was a subject of fascination, but said he was blown away by the kindness and generosity showered upon him by the locals he encountered, and the human connections that were forged despite the language barrier.

“On the route I took, the people were unadulterated,” he said. “They don’t ever meet tourists. I was an oddity. An American riding along a country road in Vietnam is something they don’t see.”

Despite that, he said people were constantly offering him encouragement and support, either passing him water or giving him fruit during his ride, shouting out the few words in English they may have known, often just a simple “hello!”

Hayward was the recipient of several acts of kindness during his time there, from the waitress in the restaurant where he’d recently finished eating one night offering to give him a ride on her motorbike back to his hotel so he wouldn’t be stuck walking in the rain, to the teachers at a local school inviting him in for tea after he’d stopped to take a break near the school.

A savior named Quan came to Hayward’s rescue when he was struggling mightily to ascend the steep mountain switchback roads on the most arduous portion of the journey. Exhausted on the side of the road and unable to continue just 1 mile into a 6-mile climb to the top, Hayward was stuck until Quan hitched Hayward’s bike to his motorbike and towed him to the summit.

Hayward was continually floored by not only the kindness of the Vietnamese people, but their willingness to invite them into their homes for a meal, or invite him to sit at their table at a restaurant. He was even invited to two weddings.

Hayward met many other people along the way that he won’t soon forget — a man in a repair shop who fixed his flat tire and refused to take any payment; several military veterans who had fought in the Vietnam War. On the advice of a travel advisor who worked in the hotel where Hayward stayed in Saigon, he decided to forgo his original plan to bike the final 100 miles to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and instead took a ferry.

His final stop was a visit to several temples in the ancient city of Angkor Wat, where he reflected on what he experienced during his journey, which he detailed in a diary-style recollection he put together titled “A Cycle of Kindness.”

In visiting Angkor Wat, a city filled with 1,000-year-old temples built by a powerful king, Hayward said he compared those sights to “the living temple of kindness that filled the lands of Cambodia and Vietnam.”

“What is kindness?” he reflected in his writing. “The kindness I experienced was wanting to help others, especially those in need, and doing it with graciousness, without hesitation, with a smile, and expecting nothing in return.”

It’s an experience he said which has inspired him to try to do the same.

The bike is back in Hayward’s basement now, and will likely stay there for the next two years, but not forever — he’s already eyeing a trip to mark his 80th birthday.

“I’m always curious about what’s around the next bend,” Hayward said. “That’s what gets me going each day.”