The day started off positively, Ivan fired up first time and we set off into the town proper.

Kimbi transferred onto Frankie with Mitch and Ivan doubled up with me and two packs.

Blake was riding with a new friend this morning. Last night me and Mitch snuck off and brought a stuffed pig toy bear and cable tied it to the front of Blake’s bike. The amazing thing was that there was a stuffed bear stall open at midnight!!!!

We set off into the town to the market Center to try and find some parts for Ivan and tools for just in case scenarios.

Blake and Mitch went off to find the tools and were like kids in a candy store. They came back with a bag full of great little tools and nick nacks.
In the meantime I was trying to have some very helpful mechanics change the oil and fix the front suspension. We roared around the city Center stopping at every mechanic trying to find someone able to fix the unique front suspension on the Minsk.

Without any luck we started heading out of town and up into the central highlands towards Di Linh. We didn’t have far to go to get to Juliets guesthouse our stop for the night. But we severely overestimated the ability of Ivan.

Halfway up a steep mountain road his chain snapped bringing me to a sudden stop, I jumped off to inspect the damage and didn’t stand Ivan up and he fell over and broke his clutch – completely my fault – sorry Ivan.

Ivan managed to time the break perfectly. I was directly across the road from a roadside mechanic. After I rolled it across we set to work. Mitch dived into fixing the chain like a kid diving into a ball pit. I think he secretly enjoys having Ivan challenge his mechanical skills. A half dozen local mechanics swarmed around and started helping us to repair poor Ivan. They were amazing they all just dived in with Mitch and even though they didn’t speak a word of English we managed to mime what we needed and we all got stuck into fixing Ivan. We spent a good hour and a half working to restore the chain and clutch and then found the carburettor was playing up. We dissembled that and cleaned it out and. Ivan started responding and we were able to continue our short distance trip.

Di Linh is a very pretty place. Surrounded by mountains this quaint little village is exactly what we had been looking for and this place started to restore us as the dusty construction roads and cities had been wearing us down.