Scootering it in Vietnam, more fun than it sounds

[The Bigfella]

I know I’ve got a couple of unfinished ride reports, eg , my favourite photos thread for the last 16 months on the road from Sydney to Chiang Mai (and my unfinished trip through Laos and Cambodia)… but I promised someone here I’d update my Vietnam road report. I published this originally as a Wordpress blog and slipped some bits into other forums, but with stacks of additional photos, I’ll bring it into this fine forum. I need a break from sorting through the 26,008 photos from my most recent ride. I'll make sure I add plenty of new stuff for folks who may have seen parts of it before.

Whilst I did this trip a couple of years ago, its still just as relevant now for anyone thinking of doing it by scooter. I spent part of June and all of July 2010 wandering around Vietnam on a 110cc Zinda that I bought in Ho Chi Minh City, took north as far as Nha Trang (via DaLat), trained it to Hanoi, then Lao Cai... then back on the bike to Sapa, around there, then up to the China border, down to the Laos border, then east to Cuc Phuong, Ninh Binh and back to Hanoi. Somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 kilometres on the bike (the odometer shit itself mid-trip, so I don’t really know).

The bike cost me US$400 in Saigon... and I was more than happy to give it away before flying out at the end of the month - to a guy who trains street kids to be mechanics. It’s since been used as an incentive for the best trainee of the year – he got to keep the Zinda.

It didn't all go smoothly.... here's a 2 million dong rebuild underway up near Sapa, after a crankshaft failure... that's $100...

… and my luggage system wasn’t exactly the best

I should point out that this was my return to biking, after decades of caging it.

I have to say, I'd have preferred a slightly larger bike... and that photo above shows one of the modifications I made... that cushion was a futile attempt to get my arse a bit higher so that the angle at my knees was a bit better. It hurt, riding so far with my knees up around my ears.

and the roads up near Muong Lay weren't that nice... but I have to say, they're heaps better than Laos in the wet season

... but it coped...

No hassles with the cops - the one who did point at me switched to the local I was overtaking when he saw I was a foreigner and pulled him over instead.

The bike, when I got it had a Vmax of about 80 kph with me (120kg... down to 110kg at the end of the trip) and 30kg split across two packs, including laptop and cameras - and after the rebuild, it gradually increased until I managed 115kmh at one stage - see photo below - which was scarier than any 235kmh+ run I've ever done on anything else.

All I can say is that the trip was an absolute hoot. I did the Saigon - Sapa bit in company with a friend who bought a similar bike for $350, which she ended up selling in Hanoi... although I'm not sure that she got a good price for it.

I had to rescue this young damsel in distress in the Cuc Phuong National Park. She and her friend had a flat tyre on their bike, so I gave her a lift about 15k to the park entrance to get help.

I made plenty of friends along the way

This included staying with some Red Dzao people who invited us to stay with them (I was travelling with a couple of Italians at the time)... and one of the absolute highlights of my trips to Asia - a ride down the Mekong from Chau Doc to Can Tho on a banana boat with a lovely Vietnamese family, who didn't speak a word of English - but more on that later.

 

[Lone Rider]

Blimey, remember this from another forum and have again a big smile on my face reading/re-reading this post.

 

[KTMphil]

Great ride Ian!

 

[The Bigfella]

That it was Phil. I'll get some more posts up, but now that my broken foot has mended enough for me to get out and about a bit... I'm trying to get the damn M5 sorted out. Poor thing needs a thrashing.

 

[k0diak]

That smile

 

[The Bigfella]

My favourite accomodation in Vietnam had to be the Hanoi Guesthouse.

I got on really well with the girls there (no, not that well) and even the night guy, who fell in love with my camera. I let him wander off with it a few times. The girls bought me a cake for my birthday

... speaking of which, Kylie took me to a rather famous restaurant for my birthday. KOTO. This restaurant trains street kids in all aspects of the restaurant trade. It probably wouldn't warrant the prices were it not for the good cause, however, the staff are brilliant and we thought we got value for money.

We were upstairs and when we went to leave, the staff told us that there were VIPs in the ground floor restaurant and "please don't stop and talk to them". It turned out to be the Vietnamese and New Zealand Prime Ministers. We were eyeballed by them... but they didn't talk to us, so we kept our end of the deal. We had the door opened for us by one of Vietnam's most senior policemen... and stepped out into a street that was wall to wall S Class Mercedes and cops. Buggers didn't give us a lift home though. There's certainly some money in that town.... at one stage I was riding in Hanoi traffic, inches away from the mudguard of a Maybach.

One thing I loved about having my own bike was the ability to do things like this....

That's the Long Bien Bridge - which I crossed 4 times, both ways - including twice at night - when the young lovers are out and partying on the bridge. They get horizontal out there at night, but there's no dancing. I've got more shots of it... and plenty of other places around Hanoi, which I love... but I'll go back to the beginning and take it from Siem Reap next.

 

[KTMphil]

You could have a "what happened next"? competition here

 

[The Bigfella]

That smile

They were lovely. One of the good things about riding with Kylie was that the women trusted us. As it was that day, we were on a back track to Sapa, having been out to the village with the cave (folks who've been to Sapa may know it.. 13 - 15k out of town). We were heading back up this really steep hill towards the main road and came across these Black Hmong ladies heading into town for the market. I had Elisa on the back of my "bike", the Italian girl we'd been travelling with (and her then ex, who is now her husband). I tool Elisa to the top of the hill and went back and offered these ladies a lift. They jumped on and the poor scooter got us to the top again. I took Elisa into town and went back to the ladies... trudging their way into town. I got back to them just on dusk and their eyes beamed when they saw me come back. When I dropped them at the market, the dear on the back grabbed her purse and said "I pay you". "No thanks dear, that's OK".

By the end of our week there, I had lady after lady coming up to me and saying "you remember me?" It was brilliant. I know heaps of tourists there who've been pissed off with the constant "you buy from meeeee?" refrains. We kept turning that around and it was great. "No, we buy FOR you"... and we'd buy them a drink. They loved it. That's how we ended up staying with the Red Dzao people.... here...

but I'll get to that. Here's another couple we picked up and gave a lift home

and some street kids we bought lunch for....

Little doubt that they were hungry. They ate more than I could have.

But enough of this... its back to the beginning. This trip was, I'm happy enough to admit, Top Gear inspired. Kylie, an ex-employee of mine from the days I used to manage an outsourcing business, had headed off to the UK about 4 years earlier and visited Cambodia and Southern Laos on the way. We'd kept in touch and she said she'd love to go back and to do the scooter thing as per Top Gear in Vietnam. She was coming home to Oz for a wedding, so we tee'd it up as part of her trip back to the UK after the wedding. To cut a long story short, when I finally left Oz to fly into Siem Reap, Cambodia in mid June.... Kylie had pulled out of the trip. Her flatmate, a 31 year old Aussie girl was dying from breast cancer back in Scotland and Kylie wanted to get back and see her. In the end, the friend had gone into renal failure and wasn't going to make it for Kylie's return... so she turned up in Cambodia a day late. It made for a pretty glum start to the trip, especially when we got news of the girl dying... but that's the way shit happens at times.

We knew we couldn't hire bikes in Siem Reap, and I'd been recommended a tuktuk driver by the name of Jeat. He met me at the airport with a sign that said Mr Lin... but luckily I had one that said Mr Jeat... so away we went

He's a good guy (I hope....) I've subsequently helped him buy a van and he's minding my KTM 525 for me too. There's no truth to the rumour that we went to any dodgy places

I have to say, having just been back there... he's a different man now. He was just about to get married then... and no, not to her - and he now has two lovely daughters. Fast work eh?

 

[The Bigfella]

.... and no Phil... nothing happened next. That was the thank you for the tip...

Back to Siem Reap. I'll keep it relatively short there. We got around by tuktuk

Did all the temples stuff on a three day pass. I did some more that I hadn't seen on this recent trip btw... and I reckon I'll do more again when I go back to get the KTM. One other trip is a must and that's out to the floating village(s)... I've done a different one each time... this trip it was out in the lake, recently it was the flooded forest area because it was wet season. The lake is brilliant.

This is the trip out, down a very low Tonle Sap River

Yep... a storm rolled in while we were there. I'll dig up the rest of that panorama later if I can... I shot heaps but never stitched it together.

We ended up having to stay out there for a while... which was fun.

The normal "pay me to hold my snake" mob and souvenir sellers were out there. Vietnamese people, who the Khmers looked down their nose at a bit.

Where it got fun was, while we were waiting for the storm to roll by, I bought Jeat, Kylie and our two boat guys (just the four of us on the boat) a couple of beers each. Cost me not much... but while we were drinking it, all the other boat guys and guides had their tongues hanging out... as envious as hell. I gave Jeat $20 and said "I bet you can get more beers than I can for this much money"... and sure enough, he got local prices - and some cooked prawns. I shouted all the guys. Their passengers looked down their noses at us... and we had a ball. When the prawns ran out, we went onto raw prawns and dipping sauce... a local delicacy.

The party was good.... and not one other westerner put his/her hand in their pocket. These guys had a ball and weren't shy in mentioning that they "love Aussies... Italians pft, Germans pft" and so on. Sorta made me cringe a bit... but hey, if there's anyone offended... don't be, just stick yer hand in yer pocket and I guarantee you'll have fun.

I've got a photo around somewhere of me driving the 45' rat-tailed boat back from the floating village. See what I mean?

Jeat took us out to his mate's place the next day... out of town a bit. Another young guy, just married (who has also produced two daughters in just over two years).

Jeat brought along a carton of beer (his shout), the guys got some ice for the bucket and a bag of fried crickets and we all had a deep and meaningful about life in Cambodia... none of which I'll air here. It ain't easy at times

Damn cricket wings...

I discovered something about packing lenses too. That's a $2,600 lens... luckily I only broke the filter

Love this place

Could post temple photos for hours, but I won't

Oh, OK... one last one from the temples... a Japanese bird.

 

[Just Bob]

Great stuff. Subscribed. I happened on KOTO in Hanoi by accident. Great concept.

 

[The Bigfella]

Ahh... I knew I had some more Tonle Sap photos lurking around somewhere. I know I said Vietnam... but hey, we started in Cambodia on this one, before buying the scooters in Ho Chi Minh City... so bear with me for a couple more posts, then its into the underboning bit again.

Here's me captaining the tourist boat

... and another of the boats with the hoard of descending merchants.

As we pulled out from the floating village - and I should point out, the skipper did that, not me - one of these little boats was still alongside trying to flog us stuff.... and the woman on it got flung into the lake. The look on her face was priceless. Our driver didn't care, didn't stop - but she was soon rescued. Its a tough life.

More of the floating houses

and scenes in the Tonle Sap River

I could spend quite some time on that lake without getting bored. Same with the temples

Local transport regulations tend to get ignored in Cambodia.... as in most of rural Asia

Speaking of transport... we'd wanted to go down through the Lake to Phnom Penh, but the water levels were too low, so it was onto a bus. I spent the whole trip wondering if the smashed windscreen would stay intact, or end up in my lap.

I had a lovely Khmer lady sitting beside me. Not a word of English, but at one stop she got off and got a bag of fried crickets which she insisted on sharing with me... wouldn't take any money for my share either.

Jeat had hooked us up with a mate in Phnom Penh. Mr Mao, a lovely chap who even slept outside our hotel in his tuktuk in case we needed him. We were paying him a daily rate... which was pretty good, and I don't think he could afford to risk losing us. Kylie ended up giving him some of her spare clothes for his wife.

Our hotel, down near the Mekong, was a tad gaudy

At least we were back near bikes again... Here's Mr Mao

I'm pretty sure he liked us. He paid a monk to bless us.

Kylie wasn't too keen to hang around in PP. We did the basics. The market

enjoyed some local delicacies

Special beer delivery

and we visited S21 and the Killing Fields

At the Killing Fields, there's signs asking you to not walk on the mass graves, but the reality is that the whole damn place is a mass grave. This is the walking path. Its got clothing and bones that continually come to the surface. To see thigh bones and the like is pretty damn depressing.

I had Mr Mao show me some of the less appealing aspects of life in PP one night. There were young kids selling themselves on the streets. I'm pleased to say I didn't see it when I was back in PP recently. I suspect its still there, but hopefully its been reined in.

To finish on a less sombre note. Here's how the crickets that everyone eats are collected. A plastic sheet with a light at the top, and a tub of water for the crickets to fall into for collection. Simple and effective.

... next up, some time on the Mekong and new friends

 

[The Bigfella]

We had some fun and games dealing with agents to try and get some time on the Mekong. When we told one agent we wanted to spend a couple of days on the river, getting into Vietnam, he made a phone call and said "$2,000... each". We didn't even say goodbye to him. In the end we just booked onto the slow tourist boat. That entailed a longer than expected minibus ride... which turned hectic after a flat tyre (and no jack to fix it... solved by flagging down someone else). Of course, that happened in the mud. You have to love the passing traffic...

We made it though... our boat

I just love the fuel ships on the river... they load 'em right up...

You'd reckon that if a seagull landed on the bow, she'd sink.

Yours truly, enjoying the passing scenery

Come lunch time, I spotted this lady grab a jar of Vegemite out of her bag.

... asked the obvious question, we ended up in a Rossi vs Stoner debate. Yeah, she's Italian, but had been to Oz.

I had lots of drama at the border. I handed my passport over to the fixer on the boat and he came back a while later and showed me the problem. I'd been using a Pacsafe neck pouch. Damn thing wasn't waterproof and my sweat had soaked the passport at some stage. The inks in my photo had run.. badly. Oops. I see the problem. The fixer somehow got me into Vietnam. I sure hope he didn't do anything illegal. I subsequently took the passport to the Oz embassy in Hanoi. They told me they could issue a new one, but that it'd be more trouble than it was worth.. as I'd have to get a new visa, etc. As long as I had enough other ID, they said I'd get into Oz OK. As it turned out, when I left from Hanoi, the immigration guy there cracked a shitty and went off to get his boss but couldn't find him, so let me go. The Oz immigration mob cracked a real shitty. I had to sit in the naughty chair and get roused on. It got escalated three levels up the chain of command but I eventually promised to immediately have it replaced and to always be good to my passport in future.... and I was released into Oz.

Back to Vietnam... Elisa and Michele turned out to be staying in the same floating hotel as us on the river at Chau Doc, just into Vietnam, and we caught up over a beer or several

Over breakfast, we were entertained by the women unloading bricks from a boat. Amazing.

Kylie commandeered the local transport

Sunrise on the river was fabulous

We moved to a cheaper hotel together the next day and tried to organise more time on the river. It wasn't easy.

The best we were doing was being offered a ride in these rat-tails down to Can Tho for $90. No thanks.

It turned out Michele was feeling off-colour, with a 39C temp, so he stayed in bed while the rest of us tried to find a better boat. Later on, instead of coming exploring with us, Elisa stayed in town with him and finally found someone who organised a boat for us. A guy who was a part-time travel agent went to the market and organised with a woman who had a boatload of bananas to take us down the river. It was all dependent on whether she sold the bananas, but we got lucky.

Kylie and I had "signed up" for a short trip up to the top of the local mountain - 6km away to be followed by a visit to the local forest sanctuary - supposedly excellent bird photography. Short trip - didn't even bother with the kidney belt (that was a HUGE mistake).

We left at 1 pm and got back at 7:30pm - in the dark with no headlight to speak of and it was a spine jarring marathon. About 90 minutes was spent at locations - rest of the time, I was on the back of either a 100cc scooter, or the brother's 110cc scooter. I had a backpack on as well with cameras, lens and water. By the time we got to the last stop… I couldn't get off the bike - the leg angle of the seating was acute, so my legs locked - and every bump, the suspension bottomed - and the shock went straight up my spine.

Well worth doing though

One of the places we went was Tuc Duc Hill. Two Million Dollar Hill... a mid-60's Vietnam War site, over near the gulf at the Cambodian border.

The hill is a massive collection of boulders and you can climb deep down into it, as we did. The North Vietnamese used it as a headquarters and the Americans spent $2 million trying to bomb them out of it... without much success apparently. Its now a local tourist destination and the source of much laughter whenever they discuss it. Worth visiting.

By the end of the trip, my arms were nearly dropping off from trying to lift myself off the seat at every bump…. I have video of us somewhere nearly taking out a dog - and some of me karate chopping the rider on both arms - we were travelling about 6m (20') behind a truck and the rider was perving at some cute chick beside the road - and the truck stopped. I chopped both his upper arms and screamed at him - we missed the truck by about 300mm - and if I hadn't alerted him - I wouldn't be writing this.... we'd have been under the truck at 50kph.

Other stops were a couple of pagodas - including the Lady Temple and a village where the Khmer Rouge massacred a Vietnamese village in the temple in 1978 - still plenty of evidence - including all the skulls in another display case and signs of damage from grenades in the temple. I thought we'd seen the last of this sort of thing when we left Phnom Penh....

We stopped at Mr Kamikazee's grandparent's place for a rest too - and met his young kids - Grandad still had one very obvious tooth - but that was about it.... a soup-eater for sure.

We ended up going out to dinner that night with an extra... a lady from the Czech Republic who's into bikes too. Its a pity, but Eva and the other woman she was travelling with were headed the opposite direction.

Had to love the wiring in our bathroom at the new place.

... but we were having fun

Found an interesting looking relic too

A trip to the post office ... and yet another request for a photo. I think the record was 12 in one day... and that's them asking me to have their photo taken.

I was getting to like the local coffee too....

 

[KTMphil]

What a great read, thanks Ian.

 

[2wheels]

I'll drink to that!
Thanks BigFella.

 

[The Bigfella]

Fortunately, I can't find the photo from that nightmare pillion trip with the guides where I made him stop because the pain was too much. I think we did such stops three times on the return to Chau Doc - and one of the guys was giving me back massages beside the road. I called a halt to it when his hands wandered too low. I think he was genuinely trying to fix my back... but I wasn't going to find out. I did see the cheapest massages ever being advertised on signs in front of houses in the middle of nowhere. I think the cheapest I saw was US$1.75 for a one hour massage.

Two last bits of water to cover though, before we buy our bikes. Our banana boat was waiting for us.... so off we went.

This is it. I've got no details on how old it is.... but let's just say it isn't new.

On board, we found mum, her pregnant 20 year old daughter, two more daughters 10 and 12 and a couple of guys, one son and the pregnant girl's husband. They didn't have a single word of English among them, we didn't have a single word of Vietnamese at that stage either.

They settled us down on some bamboo mats and we were off, heading 60 miles down the Mekong to Can Tho...

We eventually got some interaction happening

Kylie was a whizz with the kids

I was fascinated with the river. So much traffic, something always happening. Here's an interesting shot of two identical dredging boats. One either empty or only partly loaded and the closest one fully loaded... decks awash

Back to our boat though. I didn't even try and squeeze into the wheelhouse.

I did have to, at one stage, squeeze into the head. Its behind that narrow door with the washing up dish on it. I wanted a leak and would have hung it out over the side, so to speak, except Mama sent the 12 year old out back with me to make sure I didn't fall overboard. Hmmm. Into the head... and it was all I could do to get the door shut. I was bent over, wedged in and unable to move, it was so small in there. Absolutely zero chance if I'd needed to snap a log. Anyhow, somehow I managed to drain the spuds... couldn't see what I was doing, but I knew there was a hole in the deck there somewhere... and all the time, I was popping nails out of the tin covering the rest of the head. Very squeezy.

Plenty of brickworks beside the river... fired the traditional way... raw bricks stacked with coal bricquettes and the whole lot fired.

Fascinating river traffic

We were sorry to say goodbye at the end of the day. With a bit more experience of travelling in Asia now, I'd have stayed on board all the way to their place and then found my way to Saigon another way.

We found a couple of rooms in Can Tho and booked a river tour for the next day. Dinner was at a large restaurant and both Kylie and I had mullet. I ate one piece, decided it was vile and said as much. "Mine's lovely" I tried a bit of hers, and she was right. The rest of mine was great too, but the damage was done. Dunno what was wrong but I had a few off days after that... sore kidneys, etc. Obviously a bit of rotten fish there somewhere.

 

[The Bigfella]

A couple more photos from the trip down the Mekong. They overload the boats as much as anywhere in Asia overloads a truck

So... in Can Tho, we've booked into a full day baa baa tourism stint. A day in the backwaters of the Mekong estuary. Just what I needed with that dead mullet trying to kill me. Our day was spent in and out of this boat.

Nice guy as a guide

Its a popular activity and there were others we kept bumping into

Its always interesting, to me at least, travelling around on the water.

We went to the water market which was well worth seeing

We got some refreshments on the water

One nice excursion was to a place making rice noodles.

... and that was our quick look at the estuary. It was off to the bus stop to get to Saigon.

We struck our first ripoff straight away in Saigon.. a taxi driver who took a big circle route, and he didn't like me commenting on it... and then, when I handed him a (IIRC) 100,000 note, he switched it with a smaller 10,000 note when I looked away. That got a bit ugly, but he scored a few more dollars out of it. I got caught the same way a few weeks later. So, with taxi drivers and the like, its now a matter of the two-handed presentation and continuous eye contact.

We did some more baa baa stuff, including a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels

]

You've got to like this one...

Would've been interesting if he was a better shot

... and we got our bikes. We mentioned at the guest house that we needed to find a bike shop. One of the staff said he'd bring bikes in for us to look at, from his brother. We'd have liked bigger bikes, but they seem hard to find in Saigon. We ended up with two "China Honda" 110cc scooters. Here's the surveillance video shot of me taking Kylie's bike for a test ride. Hers cost US$350 and mine US$400. Complete with registration papers (but not in our name).

Kylie had never ridden a motorbike before. Ever. When we set off, to catch up with a friend of mine in Vung Tau, we hired a guy to ride her scooter to the outskirts of Saigon, with her on the back. He had a mate to take him back... and when we got to the back road we wanted.... she hopped on and rode. The traffic was horrendous and she scared the shit out of me once when she gassed it straight at the side of a bus... but we got there.

 

[The Bigfella]

The back road to Vung Tau was really quite chopped up, but we made it before dark.

We were going up there to catch up with Luc, who is building a 72' timber schooner for a client. Here's Luc when we dined with him in Saigon

and a friend of his, who sold us some books.

Its a tough life. She's been doing that for many years to support her kids... and sports a huge bruise on her hip from the weight of the books.

I liked Vung Tau. Lovely beach

Here's the schooner

Our plan after catching up with Luc, who'd come over from Saigon via the hydrofoil, was to follow the coast north and avoid the busy Highway 1 as much as possible. We wanted to see DaLat too. The plan was to rail the bikes (and us) north from Nha Trang to Hue.

 

[retroman]

Hey there BigFella,
.... reading this with great interest...,
... waiting for its continuation...

 

[6gear]

Hey Big Fella,

Every day of riding there is a special adventure. While viewing your photos and reading the stories I feel the excitment.
Friendly people from one end to the other, diverse topography and entertaining climate for sure. And the trails are something to keep a sharp eye on.
I'm working on a formal story of my travels across Vietnam on a Harley Davidson: 41,000 miles in 30 months.
You can check out my new site www.harleytracks.com
Ride Safe & Enjoy the Spirit

 

[The Bigfella]

That's a lot of miles in Vietnam. I'll take a look at the site in a minute... after this update.

One more shot of the beach at Vung Tau.

Here's Kylie's bike. Another China Honda. It wasn't quite as nice as mine, so was $50 less.

Mine was less than a year old (apparently).... a Zinda. One problem with mine was that the front brake never worked. I had it in to bike shops three or four times, trying to get it fixed. New shoes, etc. At one stage it was so bad I couldn't get it to lock up on sand on a concrete footpath. I got more braking effect by rolling off the throttle than I did by pulling the front brake lever to the bar.

Yep, that's my bike parked in the monsoon rain while I hide and drink tea with the locals. That's on the coast road north from Vung Tau.

We ended up in some small town that night and ended up having a quiet drink at this pub. A woman came over and asked us where we were from. It turned out she and her hubby and kids lived in Australia, not far from where I grew up and they had a couple of nail salons. They were home visiting family, who ran the pub, and would we like to join them

Kylie's a vegetarian, but when offered a baby egg, I swallowed deep and dug in. They are delicious... but it pays not to look. Its a half (or more) developed egg that's boiled and served in the shell. Delicious.

We spotted this fella in a temple heading up the hill to DaLat.

The road up to DaLat from Thap Cham was horrible. Over 6 hours to do 107km.

Heaps of construction work and chopped up sections. When we got to DaLat, we went from hotel to hotel trying for a room with no luck. It turned out it was a holiday weekend and DaLat is a popular destination. At about the 15th hotel we finally asked them if they knew where we could get a room. They made a couple of calls and got us set. Horrible room that it was... with a toilet, western style at least, that you had to sit sideways on to use because the front of it almost touched the wall. Amazing. The hotel was crowded and all the rooms had multiple times as many people in them as beds and lots of screaming kids.

It showed on our faces at dinner that night... and we lashed out and spent $6 or so for a bottle of the local red. We wished we hadn't

After dinner, I needed a massage and convinced Kylie to come for one too. It looked good, in a multi-storey building and up we went into the lift and into separate rooms. I got onto the massage table and the woman walked in, slapped me on the bum and said "Boom boom"? Oops. I'd taken Kyles to a knock shop. Neither of us got a particularly good massage and it took me about 3 days before I could bring myself to tell Kylie why. She'd complained to me about the lousy massage and the woman asking for a big tip. We ended up laughing about it.... but I could've used a decent massage after that horrible ride up the mountain.

This is the cops confiscating bikes at DaLat. It pays to wear your helmet

The market was nice to walk through

This road wasn't on my map. Downloading the GPS, I found the road from DaLat to Nha Trang on the computer map.... and it was brilliant. Little traffic, great scenery and great road in the main. The road went up higher than DaLat then dropped through some fabulous sweepers down onto the coastal plain.

Kylie had her one and only prang on that section... on some roadworks down on the coastal flats. It was muddy clay and she went over the handlebars at low speed. I was right behind her and got it on the helmet camera. We both ended up a bit muddy.

I lost my backpack, trying to avoid the deepest mud. One thing I couldn't find was decent straps to secure the luggage. Locals tended to use long strips of rubber cut out of old inner tubes, but I never managed to find any. I guess they cut their own

Ahhh... my rear wheel bearing. Luckily, there was a "Honda" shop across the road from where it finally carked it. I think it cost me $5 to get this and the rubber shock setup in the hub replaced.

The bike was a bit quicker after that got replaced.

We'd been put onto a really good coastal road that wasn't on the map by my friend Luc. He'd pencilled it in for us and told us we'd go 10km at a time without seeing another human. He was right, and that's something that's damn hard to do in Vietnam. No escaping the rubbish though

There were some nice fishing boats on the coast though in the small towns

We'd come into that fishing port on the back road north of Mui Ne and when we stopped to get a drink, the locals said "you must be lost".

Speaking of Mui Ne

Plenty of these sort of signs around

 

[burnjr]

nice ride reprot brother tq for sharing

 

[The Bigfella]

Thanks. Its my pleasure.

Here's another photo from the southern parts. There's some huge fishing fleets near Mui Ne. While I was up north, later on, a typhoon came through and a LOT of fishermen were missing. Over 250 were reported missing and I never heard whether they were found or not

After our excursion into the hills to DaLat and that delightful run down the new road, we headed north as far as Nha Trang. From there, the plan was to transport the scooters on the train with us to Hue.

That didn't go quite to plan. We booked and paid for the tickets and got ourselves a room so we could relax ahead of the 11pm or so departure for the planned 15 or so hour train trip.... which IIRC took 17 hours in the end.

When we went over to check the bikes in, we were told we could pick them up in a week's time. Oops. Kylie did a bit of jumping up and down but nothing was changing the fact that the bikes weren't coming with us. In the end we changed the bike arrangements and sent them straight on to Hanoi and we went to Hue without the bikes.

Hue is lovely. Here's the citadel

Plenty of evidence of war damage, some from the Japanese in WW2, some from later conflicts, in the palace opposite, like these bullet holes

and these

but its a lovely place

In the absence of my bike, I hired a motorcycle guide for the day and had a look at a few temples, tombs and palaces

It was quite good having a guide around a city like Hue, with so much history. This is at the Thien Mu Pagoda, aka the Heavenly Lady Pagoda

That bell dates from 1710 and weighs over 3 tonnes. The tortoise and inscribed stele are from 1715.

Another relic at that pagoda that I was interested in was the car in which the monk Thich Quang Duc rode from his temple to Saigon on June 11, 1963.

He stepped out of the car in an intersection, sat down in the lotus position, and burned himself to death in protest against the regime's violations of religious freedom.

I can recall seeing that on TV although I was pretty young at the time (8).

More photos from the day trip around Hue. I seem to recall we took in the tombs of Tu Duc and Khai Dinh.

 

[The Bigfella]

One thing I should add about that train journey.... later on in the trip, when we did the same thing with the scooters from Hanoi to Lao Cai, the drop-off point to get to Sapa, we had the Vietnamese staff at our guest house organise it. Smooth as silk. There was a helper at each end to make sure it all worked and it didn't cost us any more than if we'd done it ourselves (I think). Its definitely better to have locals do the bookings.

Another thing about that train journey.... we arrived back at the station in time for the departure... showed our tickets to one of the station staff and boarded the train she pointed us to. We had sleepers booked but we couldn't find them. The train took off and we located a guard and showed her our tickets. She hit the emergency brake, opened the door and told us to get out.... and we trudged about 500 metres back to the station. We were on the Saigon train, headed south, not the one going north. Even when you ask, things sometimes go wrong.... but we made it just in time. I couldn't sleep. My "bed" on the sleeper was too short, by damn near a foot. I can sleep with my feet hanging a foot off the end of a bed... but apparently not if they are touching anything. I ended up snoozing in a plastic chair in the aisle of the train. Bastard of a trip.

I've buggered up the sequence a bit here though. Before we left Nha Trang, we went for a ride, looking for the salt works. We didn't have much luck with asking locals and we spent hours riding around looking. Turned out that they aren't anywhere near Nha Trang. Oh well, the exploring was good. We wandered through local fishing villages

I was particularly interested in the bamboo boats they use... some of which are quite large

I had another rip-off event while I was in Hue. A rickshaw driver did the old money swap routine. I cracked a shitty and he drew a pair of scissors on me. I considered planting a size 12 boot in his chest... but he'd have screamed and called 50 mates... so I did another $5 and put it down to experience.

A few more shots from around town

This is another one from the Imperial Palace.... more bullet holes

Kylie and I did a nice evening cruise around the Perfume River, right on dusk. Its brilliant... well worth doing

There's lots of little aluminium boats on the river. Reminiscent of the "bomb boats" in Laos and presumably also built from war scrap

I took a bus from Hue to Hoi An. Kylie rode down on a pushbike over two days.

I hired a scooter to look around Hoi An. Cheap as chips and worth doing. I was in the middle of nowhere, in the outlying villages and I came across a girl fight. The cops were there, but these two women were into it. The cops seemed too scared to get in between them. Quite entertaining.

I met up with a few interesting characters in Hoi An, which is quite the tourist town

The restaurant owner was quite a sport

Speaking of sports, I do seem to recall some skinnydipping in here after far too many beers

Me, somewhere near Hoi An.... pretty sure it was Marble Mountain. Here's a tip... take twice as much water up there as you think you'll need. I ended up buying some off the ladies at the top for about three times the price I could have got it at the bottom.... but didn't complain. Fancy lugging stuff up those stairs every day. Ughh

Some random young lady posing for photos on Marble Mountain.

I finally spotted a boat with sails, at Hoi An. I couldn't believe the total reliance on diesels over there.

While I was looking at it, I was approached by Mr T, who is Da Nang Easyriders. Nice guy. Don't think he's a Harley man... the bike he showed me around on the next day was a 125cc. Looking at his website now, I see he does longer tours. I'd have no hesitation contacting him if I was in the market for that sort of trip

Vietnam Easy Riders, Danang, Hoi An, Motor bike & Motor Cycle Tours

Quite a pretty place around there

One last thing I did in Da Nang was check out the Cham Museum. Quite interesting.... there seemed to be a theme

With a bit of variety

I flew out of Da Nang and into Hanoi. I ended up at a delightful guesthouse, but more on that later. There's still plenty of evidence of past use at the airport

Retrieving the bikes at Hanoi Railway Station was fun... There they are... in there, somewhere.

 

[The Bigfella]

I tried to get a couple of videos in that last post, but failed. I'll try again some time later and see if I can get them working. Pretty sure its all down to operator error.

Meanwhile... I should have posted this shot.

Kylie and I, while out looking for the salt flats, saw a guy ride into an industrial area and we followed him. It turned out to be a naval base and the sentry box wasn't manned. We ended up out on the jetty talking to some trainee officers and having a good look around. When I showed this photo to a guide later in the trip he was really concerned that I'd get locked up for being a spy if I showed it to anyone.

So... don't show it to anyone please. OK?

 

[Just Bob]

I was 13 when I saw the immolation photo in the newspaper. It had a profound lasting impact on me. I visited that temple in Hue a dozen or so years back and happened upon the car by chance. I have only been moved more by visiting Gandhi's home in Bombay.

Stunning photos BigDude. Thanks.

 

[retroman]

Kylie and I, while out looking for the salt flats, saw a guy ride into an industrial area and we followed him. It turned out to be a naval base and the sentry box wasn't manned. We ended up out on the jetty talking to some trainee officers and having a good look around. When I showed this photo to a guide later in the trip he was really concerned that I'd get locked up for being a spy if I showed it to anyone.

So... don't show it to anyone please. OK?[/QUOTE]



BigFella is back with more post .. Wuuuhuuuu....

 

[The Bigfella]

I have to say, I love Hanoi. The Old Quarter in particular. I didn't have any accomodation organised, but I'd picked up a $15 Nokia phone while in Saigon and a call to the Hanoi Guesthouse had me a room. I've posted a couple of photos at the start of this thread from there... but first let me put in some details from earlier in the trip I've found just in the last day or two.

In Saigon, we stayed at the Madame Cuc Hotel. www.madamecuchotels.com Not bad, cheap and friendly staff. Some damn nice food just down the road too

In Hanoi, the Hanoi Guesthouse is at 14 Bat Su Street in the Old Quarter. info@hanoiguesthouse.com One thing to be aware of with them, is that they have more than one place. I was lucky and got a room in the place at 14 Bat Su Street when I arrived. When I got back from a trip somewhere else, they had booked me in, but when I arrived they hit me with the "someone not check out... we put you in better room elsewhere at same price" line.... and to be fair, it was a much better room - in a much bigger 3+ star hotel. What I like about the guesthouse though is the nice atmosphere in the foyer and the interaction with the staff. Someone to talk to, things happening. I'm not a great fan of sterile hotel foyers. I managed to get back into the guesthouse and made sure they knew that's all I was interested when I came back for my final days in Hanoi too.

The Old Quarter is full of sights we just don't see in the west

My scooter was never interfered with, probably because the whole city is full of organised parking. It was ticket parking from the guard in a side street near the guesthouse

Very civilised, eh?

Speaking of civilised, we took in the Temple of Literature, site of the University, which goes back to the year 1010. This little varmint wasn't too impressed with his parents insisting on being photographed with the big foreign monster.... and we had our photos taken like that at least a dozen times that day

Some more from there

and one of the temples

A fellow Aussie, working in Hanoi at the time, took me out to see some sights. The cemetery.... quite amazing

I ran into this mob in a restaurant one night and enjoyed their company. They were marketing staff from IIRC, Unilever... in town for work

I know I mentioned the Long Bien Bridge in one of my first posts on this ride report. It truly is a jewel. It was designed by Eiffel (of Tower fame) and was bombed many times during the American War of Aggression (now commonly the American War)

I did it four times. Twice during daylight, twice at night.... once at 2am. Well worth it.

Its a mish mash of building styles now. It would be bombed and repaired as rapidly as possible, because the war materials coming into Haiphong Harbour came down the railway line and over the Red River here, thence onto the Ho Chi Minh Highway (more on it later) and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia... and into South Vietnam. I was lucky enough to be going over it at the same time as a train. The pylons on the left are due to flood damage, I believe, rather than bombings

At night, the bridge is a meeting place for young lovers. They spread mats and get horizontal together.... but I didn't see any funny business. All very proper.

You can take in the view of local fishermen from the bridge. They have this entertaining style of rowing with their feet

There's normally a couple of merchants set up out there too

Back in the Old Quarter, the streets are set up with areas of specialisation. One street will be jewelers, another will be bamboo merchants... and so on.

I loved this... painting dried bamboo green

Local tough guy. His Harley seems a tad small though

The lake (Hoan Kiem) is well worth a visit and is nice to walk around

Another lake, not far from the centre, but a bit hard to find is B52 lake. The wreckage is from a B52 shot down in IIRC, 1971.

I was the only tourist there at the time.

Plenty of tourists here, of course. The war museum

This is reputedly the engine from the F-111 that was shot down with a single AK47 bullet. I had a look around the area where it was shot down, towards the end of my trip.

I seem to be looking a bit pensive here. My mate had taken me to one of the restaurants to sample the fish sauce. The waiter was impressed when I even tried the shrimp sauce. Both made in barrels - dump the shrimps in, come back a year later and bottle the sauce. Tends to be a bit smelly, but tastes good.

... and along the lines of the trade streets, there's chicken street... where all the restaurants specialise in... chicken

At Rick's suggestion, I visited the tool market. Parked the bike and at the end of my visit, spent 90 minutes trying to find it. Its a big market. I wish we had one like it at home

IMG]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff112/igatenby/Vietnam%20and%20Cambodia/DSC_0080-1.jpg[/IMG]

More later.... my computer's not liking all these photos

 

[Just Bob]

"More later.... my computer's not liking all these photos"

My computer is loving them. Thanks.

 

[The Bigfella]

Let's see how I get on continuing this with a new browser. Can't say I'm impressed with what Photobucket have done... it makes this process harder.

So... Hanoi. Another think my friend had recommended was to take in the raising of the flag at Ho's Mausoleum. This meant getting up at 6am. The first day, I ended up lost and among a whole heap of folk doing their exercises in a park, which was interesting in its own right. I was operating with a pretty crappy tourist map, but once I'd located the Mausoleum, it was easy the next day. I took in the ceremony a couple of times after that.

The area in front of the Mausoleum has heaps of locals doing their exercises... up to an imaginary boundary... marked by guards. At the anointed hour, out comes the troop with the flag and there's a fairly stiff ceremony to raise the flag. All the people stand to attention and its quite a moving ceremony. I was the only westerner there... which is amazing if one thinks of London and the ceremonies there that tourists flock to.

We'd learnt our lesson about train tickets down south and we had the guesthouse staff organise our tickets up to Lao Cai, the nearest railhead to SaPa. We were escorted to the station, assisted in draining the petrol and getting the bikes loaded (no crates for this trip) and getting our tickets and us onto the train.... and I don't think it cost us any more than if we'd done it ourself. We were also met at the other end and helped with unloading.

Its another overnight trip, about 9 hours IIRC and we shared a sleeper with an American couple. They were on their honeymoon and I think I might have saved his life. He was shoveling Imodium in on the basis that if one is good, lots must be very good. My doctor had read the riot act to me on Imodium before departure... one and only one Imodium per diarrhea episode... that's per episode, not per "movement". He said that too much runs the risk of exploding your stomach... and there's no coming back from that in the middle of nowhere. I've been very thankful for whoever invented that miracle cure... and I've listened to the Doc. If anyone has heard different, I'd like to know.

So we arrived in Lao Cai, had a bit of a look around and then headed up into the mountains and SaPa.

We stayed at the strangely named Green Guesthouse which is blue and a couple of other places for the week we were there.

SaPa is geared to tourism and it shows, but its possible to have a good time. You will be harangued with "buy from meeee..." and "you buy from her, now you buy from meeee..." and all sorts of variants of that. You run the risk of being hit up to buy if you take a photo of the local ladies. That gets some people down. A lot, in fact. I was lucky to be travelling with a lady with a fabulous attitude. Kylie often turned those sort of things back on the locals and it would lead to entirely different experiences.

An example. Michele and Elisa had turned up (more on that later) and hired a scooter. We were doing a ride down the walking trail into the Muong Hoa valley and after the descent to the river we stopped for a coffee and up came the ethnic minority ladies.... "you buy from meee...". I countered with "No, I buy FOR you".... and they all stop and look. "I buy you a beer"... "OK". So, we sat down and I called a stop to the buying at 9. "No more... that's it".... otherwise I'd have been inundated... but we sat down and most of the ladies went for softdrinks and we had a friendly chat... no selling pressure. A walking group came past and they were being harangued and didn't look like they were enjoying it. We were having a great time.


Eventually, the young Red Dzao lady (20 years old) sitting next to me asked me if I'd like to buy the fabulous bit of embroidery she was working on.

It was incredibly fine stitching and I said I would like to, but it isn't finished... did she have any that was finished. "Yes at home" ... "How far?" "Five minutes".... so off we went

45 minutes and one suspension bridge later, we got to her house... and I bought some stuff off her.

The house is in here... quite well built, but the floor is concreted to the lay of the hillside

She invited us to lunch

This isn't our lunch, but its the kitchen... the green stuff is being cooked up as pig food

and this is the bamboo-fired still, cooking up the local brew. Bloody strong stuff.

I know I posted this photo earlier, but its relevant here. That's our friend's 5 yo daughter, out the back. There's a shed to the right where this kids grandma runs a herbs business and also does hot tea baths. She invited us to stay. We couldn't stay that night, as Kylie had to get back and catch the train back to Hanoi to sell her bike and get back to Scotland... but we came back the next day. Here's Eliza modelling the herbal tea baths

There's a lot of people living there - four generations of the one family. Grandpa looked a bit crook, rattly in the lungs. He had a medal and certificate from Uncle Ho that was given to him in memory of a friend killed in the war

More from here later, including a discussion on why there's a very high suicide rate among the young women

 

[KTMphil]

B52 wreckage behind your house, how cool is that? Great photo's, i'll show them to Don.

 

[The Bigfella]

Let's kick off today with another bathtub shot. This is our hostess's two year old son, in for his tub

There is a photo of me in one of those tubs, but you won't be seeing it. "In" sorta doesn't describe it. They weren't quite big enough for me to fold myself up in.... Our main bath was the river... and we all wandered down there with the locals and our shampoo... but more on that later.

I mentioned the high suicide rate. We sat around talking about life and we had another young (19 yo) Red Dzao woman join us and there was a 15 year old girl there too.

We sat around "talking" ... via the phrasebook... about life there. The girls get married off at 14 or 15 to a husband who is arranged by the parents. The 15 year old "likes" a young lad, but she'd just been told she was to marry some 27 year old guy. She wasn't happy.... and therein lies the source of the suicides there... mostly among young women. There's a slight pressure relief, I believe, with a "Lovers Market" once a month where apparently the rules of marriage are relaxed and they can meet with their lovers. I didn't witness it and I'm not sure I got the whole story right... would be interested to know more if anyone knows.

My guess was that one of the marriages we came in contact with wasn't working too well... the hubby was off working elsewhere, but the wife had knuckled down and life went on (not our hostess, btw, as her hubby was there at the family residence).

But enough of that... back to some photos. The family were quite proud of their buffalo. IIRC it'd cost them about $250

At bath time, we took the buffalo and our shampoo down to the river

It seemed that we were the attraction for a while. I'd kept my jocks on whilst in the river and had hung my gear on some bushes. When we got out, I'd intended to slip the wet jocks off and dive into my shorts to avoid the long and uncomfortable drying process. I snuck a look over my shoulder and that was the end of that.... about a dozen kids were all lined up on the river bank behind me, staring at the foreigner getting dressed. Damn.

This kid came past with his herd just as I finished dressing. He had his "pet" bird firmly in his grasp.

Another one of the extended family had come to visit

She invited us further up the valley, to visit her mother.... so off we went

It turned into quite a trip. Big drop-offs at the edge of the track and down to the river and along the other side

It was pretty obvious that there was construction work going on and soon enough.... another bloody dam

I took this shot later in the day, but its of the area we had to pass through to get to our destination. They were blasting and bulldozering up on the ridge above us

Going through here, our guide got off, ran ahead and told us when to stop and go to avoid the boulders tumbling down the hill. Good fun.

She made us park the scooters and walk the last hour or so, which was a bit of a pity, as we'd have made it OK. She didn't want the responsibility of us falling off, which is funny given what ended up happening.

We eventually got to Mum's house, had lunch and wandered further up into the hills via the paddy fields to this lovely waterfall

Speaking of lunch.... We were sitting in the living room and our new hostess asked if we'd like duck or chicken for lunch. Eliza is a vegetarian, but Michele and I said "chicken please". 20 seconds later, and just through the bamboo wall, we hear "buck, buck, squark.... thud"... as the axe fell. I guess you had to be there, but to see the look on a vegetarian's face at a moment like that is priceless. 15 minutes later, we had our chicken.

The girls spent a bit of time dressing Eliza up in traditional costume which was a bit of fun, but then we headed back to the other place. We were about 100 metres shy of making the main road, coming up out of the valley when my Zinda went bang. Poor little thing. We pushed it up the road and my Red Dzao hostess pointed the other direction to the nearest bike shop... a couple of kilometers away. We were pushing and coasting down the hills when my dear hostess decided, for some silly reason, that my bike would probably go further if she wasn't on it. She literally stepped off at about 20 kph. Boof.... down in a ball of dust, rolling down the road. I was mortified but incredibly relieved to see she wasn't hurt. Can't say I've ever had another pillion do that before... or since.

Anyhow, we got to the bike shop and the teardown started

It was 2 hours from start to finish. The crankshaft had stripped a gear, so they threw another on in, along with a new barrel and piston. I think a secondhand head went on, but couldn't be sure. One thing I am sure of, is that they did as much as they thought they could to relieve the foreigner of cash. It was only $100 though and I didn't begrudge them that. The bike sure as hell went better after that. When we'd first left Saigon, IIRC the Vmax was in the mid 80's. After this rebuild, I got it up to 115 a couple of times.... which would have to rate as by far the scariest Vmax runs I've ever done.

I noticed during the rebuild that the lads had drained the oil into a pretty crappy plastic bowl.... and it went back into the bike at the end. I got that changed as soon as I got back into SaPa.

More on SaPa and environs in the next post....

Phil.... I've got heaps more photos of that B52 lake in Hanoi, btw. There's a memorial there too. Its over near my scooter

 

[The Bigfella]

There's plenty more to do and see around SaPa. Let's see if I can cover it all off in one post.

Talking to some local kids

Local traffic

There's the Silver waterfall, about 12km out of town towards the north.

I bought this hat off these kids. The young girl spotted us and came running down the stairs at a great rate of knots, baby brother on her back.

Its a common sight around here

Word of warning... that dye is not colourfast...

The Hmong ladies are big on that indigo stuff though

Check out the dye stains on this lady's hands. Yep, working the fields, very steep slope, baby on her back

... and a bit further out on the same road as the Silver Waterfall, quite high up if I recall correctly, is the Golden Stream Love Waterfall. I kid you not.

The track in wasn't that good in places and it rained on us

We stopped there for some food after walking through the bamboo forest to the waterfall.

Back in town, some local sights

A few more excursions. We gave these ladies a lift home... they were walking about 15 km to their village

This was one of the trails we did. Not quite sure, but it may have been the one that led us to the Red Dzao people's home

We met this pair of urchins in the street. They asked us for money, but as usual, we didn't give them any but offered to feed them instead. They were reluctant at first, then agreed.
"Talking" to them, we discovered they had no parents. Or, that's what they said. I reckon they might be right.... they were starving. They put away more food than I could have eaten

I was far from happy when I found a tiger's claws for sale in the market. I came back the next day and someone had bought one claw, this being cut down to two

Some local quisine

This young lass, a 16 year old, was our waitress at a restaurant that did the cooking at your table. Talking to her, when she finished late at night, she had an 11 km walk home

A local Hmong elder... taking in the view

We did another run out to a village we'd taken a couple of women home to and had a better look around.

This kid was out near there

We took in the cave which entailed paying a local guy a dollar to turn the lights on. A couple of the older ladies were there to assist, and as I was coming down with some sort of lurgy, I was happy to hand over my day pack and let them help

They hit us up after we got out of the cave, so we bought some stuff off them. In fact, I spent all my spare cash that I had with me. Then we got hit up by this other lady... the old "you buy from them, why you not buy from meeeee" routine. She wouldn't let up, so I showed her the empty wallet and got the same line. I hit her straight back with the Amex... "you take Amex?".... the look on her face was priceless... so I snapped this. Sorry... had to mess with the Amex, as you could zoom in on the card numbers

.....and after that we asked around and found a back track back to SaPa.

It was fantastic

Most of the locals were really happy to see us... but a few were a bit standoffish. Not this guy

Some little fluffies along the way

I'm not sure what was going on here, but that small pig on the track had both back legs broken. It was near a house, so we didn't interfere

We found a quite large medicinal herbs patch, but again, didn't interfere

We did have a good look though

Lovely area

As we were getting back towards town, there was a steep dirt hill to climb and then several km of bitumen. We came across a couple of ladies heading towards town. I had Eliza on the back of my scooter. I took her to the top of the hill then went back and gave the ladies a lift up the long hill.

After we got to town, I went back and got them. Their eyes lit up as I approached and they were beaming. When I dropped them in town, at the market, the old duck grabbed her purse and said "I pay you".... "No thanks luv, its OK"

That pretty much wraps up SaPa. Kylie had headed back to Scotland. Michele and Eliza headed off on a bus to Laos, so I decided to head north to the China border the next day.

 

[Just Bob]

Really enjoying this.

 

[The Bigfella]

Sapa in the wet is interesting, but can be a bit cold




I took this photo the first time I went up to the top of the pass that leads into the next region, north of Sapa. The pass is a tad over 2,000 metres altitude, with Vietnam's highest mountain, Fanispan, at 3,143 metres off to the left.



Here's the view from the pass the day I set off north (and north west... to the China Border)



A typhoon had rolled in further south, but the rain was pouring down. I had a series of front end slides before giving myself a severe mental tongue lashing and slowing down. It wasn't nice riding conditions.








Lunch was a welcome break, in a small restaurant





I remember thinking, as I threw my scraps on the floor, that I was going to find it hard to break myself of that habit by the time I got home to Sydney. I sure didn't want to relapse in a business lunch and just throw a fish head on the floor, like I did in this restaurant, a week or so later...



There were some strange sights heading north. This weird memorial was in a city that was being built



8 lane road in parts, big banks and other office buildings and bugger-all people. Reminded me of the stories of Chinese ghost cities.

I stopped for a roadside coffee and got caught up with these lads... who insisted on ringing some woman they knew who could speak some English. I called an end to it after about 20 minutes and got back on the road.



Just on the matter of someone speaking English. My hotelier for the last couple of nights in Sapa had given me his number and said to call him any time if I got into trouble. He would speak to any locals for me and interpret. I never needed to, but it was a damn good idea and I've tried to make sure I had a similar setup in place since then.

The roads were quite damaged from the rain





and I was still getting wet from time to time



I was following a very swollen river and took a sidetrip across this bridge for a bit of a look



I got the message that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go too far up this track



Late in the afternoon, I encountered road construction. Not good on a scoot, with all the rain around



The last 25 km was done in the dark... on crap like this.



That's actually the next morning, heading out of town... but on the way in was no different, and I was sliding around like crazy. I ended up blind following a local who passed me.... on the assumption that he knew the way... because I couldn't see anything with the Zinda's "headlight".

When I finally got into the room at the only hotel in town, the guy who'd shown me to the room couldn't get the light switch to work. He disappeared and came back with a torch. He showed me how to turn the light on.... push one of these orange wires into the socket.... Hmm.... try that with a bellyful of piss...



I've got some more shots of this town... but I'll have to dig them out later.

 

[KTMphil]

How many km's of that mud was there Ian?

 

[2wheels]

Excellent!

 

[The Bigfella]

How many km's of that mud was there Ian?

Only about 25 km or so into the town, then about 20 km or so out in the morning... not all that thick. The trip in was a nightmare... in the dark. I'm trying to find my photos of the town... and its name. I recall it as Muong Lay, or something like that.... but I've seen different names too... I think they "moved" the name or something weird.

More from the next day - this first one in the town




Then back into more roadworks. They were building huge bridges across the valleys here too... several around the town










It did get better though



I had a couple of funny incidents up there. First one, in a village, I was overtaking some poor local guy on his scooter, around a bend. There was a cop standing beside the road, as they do.... he pointed at me, realised I was a foreigner and simply switched his point to the poor guy I was passing. Scot free for me... and he'd have been "fined" for something.

Not long after that, I ran out of petrol... out of town. I flagged down a guy and explained the problem using sign language. He shook his head, pointed at his watch... and I waved some cash.. not a huge amount. The guy grabbed it and headed back into town and arrived back with a big softdrink bottle of fuel. I tried to give him a few bucks more, but he wouldn't take it.

....... and I still can't find the photos of the town. I know they are on this 'puter, so I'll see if I can find the source photos and upload them. Later though... I've got to go meet some key people

 

[2wheels]

I've got to go meet some key people

Golden Circle pine-apple for dessert, I imagine.

 

[bsacbob]

Some bloody crackin pictures there Ian, especially like the little and large show pic (remind me never to stand next to you again). Just goes to show you don't need some huge adventure bike to get amongst some interesting people.

 

[The Bigfella]

Yeah Bob, I had a ball on the Vietnam trip... but that damn scooter caused me some pain. My legs were bent at too acute an angle and they just didn't like it. That was my excuse for regular massages....

OK, I've found and uploaded some more images from up in the Muong Lay area, near the China border. This was the hotel carpark, the next morning. Note there's a couple of very high bridge pylons being constructed in the background. That'd be an elevated highway going well above the town, across that valley by now.



Heading out of town, there was a huge camp, presumably for all the road workers



Some of the raging rivers





This is one from that bridge in a recent post - the one with the buffalo on it



Not sure if they ran short on roofing nails here... or whether it was extra typhoon insurance



Not 100% sure, but I'd say this is a mining operation. I am 100% sure it'd make the OH&S inspectors freak, back home



I had a pretty good ride around to Dien Bien Phu the next day. It wasn't too far and I did a side trip off to look at a man-made reservoir - which wasn't too exciting, but it was a nice ride






As usual, I had a visit or two to a bike shop



Some problems never did get sorted. Despite new brake shoes (supposedly, but I wasn't there... so can't confirm they went in) and numerous other attempts... I never did get the front brake drum working. I got more deceleration by rolling off the throttle than I did by grabbing a handful of front brake. I could pull it on full on concrete covered with loose dry sand... and it wouldn't lock the wheel.

Plenty of interesting small towns up that way.









Nice scenery out of town too







At one stage, up in the hills, I had a young kid point a pistol at me as I rode past. I don't know if it was a toy or not... but it looked real enough for me to keep the throttle pinned. Plenty of the usual sort of traffic on the roads



I don't do many menu photos, but I liked this one, where I grabbed a late lunch after checking in.





Speaking of checking in. I had my first experience of a hotel aimed at the Vietnamese business traveller. It was the first hotel I came across, in town... and I was waved in by a guy. Checked in, climbed the damn stairs to the as-usual, third floor room. I'd just thown my backpacks on the bed and was getting organised... and the door opened and a woman walked in. "Must be the owner's wife, come to see I'm OK"... umm, nope. She sat down on the bed. Can't have this sort of thing happening eh? Anyhow, I went downstairs and there were half a dozen ladies in the foyer. Hadn't been there when I checked in.

Say Cheese



I mentioned my late lunch. While I was eating, I sent a text message to Eliza and Michele, who'd headed to Dien Bien Phu by bus the same day I'd headed north. They should have been in Laos by now, but I thought I'd check. Got one straight back "Oh Ian HELP, we are stuck at the border with no money. Can you bring money?" I grabbed another couple of million Dong and headed the 37 1/2 km out to the border post. The dopey Italians had checked out of Vietnam, then discovered they didn't have enough cash for their Laos visas. This is them... from an earlier time down south... the two on the left



I almost got wiped out by two local lads on a scooter on the way to the border. A very close call as they just flew out of a side street onto the main road. I went past them sideways, with the back brake locked.... the air full of F words and worse. Seems they knew some too.

Michele was allowed back into Vietnam to grab the cash. I'd have been fine standing them a loan, but he'd organised a cheque from an American lady... drawn on a US bank in Washington... to cover the $100 (I should have just framed that one... cost me a fair chunk just to cash it back in Oz). I thought he was going to kiss me. I think they'd spent the night in no-man's-land.

Heading back into town, after delivering the moolah, I came across this. It wasn't there on the way out....