Having covered some considerable distance in two days prior we set out today knowing we were going to be going a bit slower due to the roads.

Today was a day of intensity. We had some amazing highs and some almost disastrous lows.

We left our loverly village (I will post a map of our travels at some stage) and proceeded through some very dubious roads towards the valley we knew was coming. We had of course like every other time a mingled conspiracy of a theory about what we were getting ourselves into but like usual we had no idea.

Our valley ride today consisted of the most remote looking villages we’ve yet seen. Again the view were spectacular and the road snaked its way through the valley to create a riding paradise.

I nearly hit a chicken that ran towards me and fell against my front wheel and then Blake nearly hit another 10 minutes later. The road was hard, loose and rubbish.

We finally made it to a proper town and broke our fast on sweet bread rolls with hand cut cooked wedges and a bowl of what I believe was an attempt at beef stew. Wasn’t too bad not sure what meat we had though, we enjoy the mystery meat dishes best.

Sidenote: yesterday we drove past a stand selling cooked puppy. There were whole boiled puppy heads with chopped up boiled puppy appendages and coke bottles of puppy blood – it was very hard to witness.

We left the town and about 5 minutes out had the most tragic and difficult experience yet, a do I, don’t I tell – tale. I feel it needs to be told to explain that it’s not just your own life you gamble with when you adventure abroad.

As I was coming around a corner (sweeping to my right) with the road separated from the mountains on my left by a small drainage gully, I saw dangerous mud on the inside and had to take the corner wide to avoid being scrambled across the road. As I reached the apex of the turn I was dead in like with an infinity 4wd roaring towards me. I pulled in hard right and they slammed on the breaks and locked up. They swerved away from me, lost control and swerved back the other way and hit the drain side on, nearly rolled and slammed heavily into the gutter two wheels in and two wheels out.

I ripped Henry to a stop and ran back to the jeep, there were four men inside (none wearing seat belts) they were all out by the time I reached them and they were a little battered but otherwise ok. The jeep on the other hand had lost a back bumper and was firmly wedged and bottomed across the drain gully.

The driver was angry, the passengers were ok. No one made any issue with us, they didn’t yell at us, or gesture at us and seemed to be ok, we are of the opinion that they realised they were going way too fast for such a corner. The situation was all about timing and I feel damn lucky that I am writing this, if it had been 2-3 seconds later, I may not have been, but if it had been 3-5 either way, the incident would never have occurred, and such is the horrific truth of the situation on Vietnamese roads. There have been countless time over the past month where timing is all that has made the difference, and when I figure out how to upload my videos you will understand and think we are mad!

We checked with men and they smiled at us and could tell we were panicked and worried, we wanted to stay to help, to do something, but we had no choice, we had to abandon them there and leg it quickly.

Both of us have bikes that we own, but we don’t have Vietnamese driving licences and we have expired visas, a potential run in with the police had to be avoided at all costs, being foreigners we would have most likely been is some serious serious shit. No one called the police that we know of, but they could have arrived and we’d have been involved.

We rode on for about 40 minutes through valleys and mountains but for me it was all sullied. I found it very hard to reconcile leaving the scene even though my own safety was at risk.

The road got hard and eventually we had to pull over for repairs. My luggage rack had ripped itself to pieces and nearly thrown my bag and poor Pigly to the ground. A mechanic fixed me up with some rio bars and we were off again. We pulled over into the next town for some cafe, I shall explain cafe.

Sidenote: Cafe is hot Vietnamese coffee usually (when the waiter understands what garbled nonsense is being spoken to him/her) poured through a dripolater into a cup of condensed milk. Once this is complete you mix the two together and then pour into another cup filled with ice. It is a sweet bitter taste explosion that revs you up with sugar and caffeine.

We sat in our cafe drinking a milkshake version cafe (it was amazing) with two little girls imitating us and giggling at us. Which cheered us up. We left the cafe two cafés later and head onto the Ho Chi Minh Highway. A fantastic bit of road that cuts through the inside of the country and is less busy for some bizarre reason. We roared along this road dodging in and out until I spied a steeple piercing out above the tree line on our right. A great gothic looking church spire that looked from a distance ancient. We turned around and left the highway for back alley track and darted through a little town on a tiny road until we reached the church in all it’s glory.

We got off and walked around and found some kids playing with a soccer ball, it was game on!

I gestured for the ball and they reluctantly kicked it to me and I kicked it back.

Sidenote: To understand the reluctance, young kids in remote areas find westerners frightening, I don’t know why, but Blake and I have gigantic beards with Mohawks which I don’t suspect helps the situation. Adults will carry crying screaming children up to us so they are exposed but this process is quite dramatic and confronting as most times this happened the child will scream and scream and cry. Older children will still run away and find it scary to come close. The two girls I mentioned before were extremely brave but a barrier had to be broached before they would even come near us. There were other kids standing around watching these two girls and looking horrified that they were so close to us.

Back to the church.

The kids at first wouldn’t come near us. And some even ran away. We managed to get a kick to kick going before I setup a set of goals and assumed the goalie position. It took a lot of gesturing to make them understand the were kicking for goal and even more in patience for them to act on it. Once they felt comfortable we had a game and some fun going. At first only two kids would kick for goal and I would try to keep the bal out of the goals. As this went on a crowd quickly formed on both sides and continued to grow as we played. We soon had a whole village out watching and spectating. Some of the kids got braver and soon we had more goal kickers. But there were plenty of kids who just would have a bar of us and it took alot of pleading and gesturing to get more kids involved. Parents and adults watched and laughed and cheered from the sidelines and we played in the church courtyard. The kids got braver.

A couple of older kids had a few kicks before a seasoned veteran adult tried to show me his skill at kicking for goal. After a dozen attempts I swapped with him and after my few kicks we decided to call it and move on. Before we did I grabbed the iPad and played some of our videos of us at the beach in the ocean and riding and the kids nearly tore each other apart to get near us and lean on us to see the videos, clearly not so afraid anymore.

We left this tiny community as the sun went down behind the church to a thunder of goodbyes and waves as the kids and adults said goodbye, one elderly gentlemen came up to us and shook our hands before trundling off somewhere. Certainly a better end to the day.

We have made it to wherever we are and again tomorrow we set out for this fabled border crossing. Blake reckons we are still 250ks away and might make it there tomorrow evening if were lucky.

So I sit here writing this post on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere miles from help in the dark listening to irreplaceable Etta James sing; “At last”. I am surrounded by fireflies which I’ve never seen before, but they are literally simple blasts of small light all around me it’s like the jungle surrounding me is playfully dancing, though I don’t at all feel at ease or safe. There are at least (and I would be seriously upset if this wasn’t the case) gaps in the clouds above me allowing brief glimmers of starlight to pass down. All I need now is the rain.

Fuck I hate insects!!

We started out from our village stay in Sa Pa later than hoped. I had already toppled myself and nearly ridden off a cliff in a spectacular slide through a waterfall/road 10 minutes into the day. I will point out that the road was definitely more waterfall than road.

Few scratches and some broken pride (I had yet to fall whilst riding once, so far) and I was back on the road. It’s was raining and the going was slow. We made it to the town of Sa Pa at about 10am.

After we said our goodbyes to our loverly hosts and Leanne. Me and Blake set off in an attempt to cover the 270km from Sa Pa to Dien Bien Phu and our crossing into Laos.

In the slide Henry had lost half his clutch lever and his kick start finally gave out. Meaning we could only electric start him or we would have to roll start him. The battery which is just useless will only start Henry if he is hot and ready. Which is not often.

The road out of Sa Pa was simply stunning. We climbed up and around Vietnam’s highest peak along the border with China and the road was amazing and the view, the view!! The view, a simply overwhelming combination of deep deep valleys folding around the most spectacular mountains and peaks piercing right up past the cloud line and fog, obscuring the start of many many large and flowing waterfalls cutting their way through the mountains. It was what I picture when I think of mountain monasteries or Shang gri la. The road wound itself somehow through it all up above the cloud line into the thick fog and then down again allowing us to see the valleys below. It felt like the road broke the sky and we were riding on the edge of forever.

Sidenote: It is now raining and this current experience is made much more miserable.

We traversed this amazing road through countless valleys and scenes. Scenes I never imagined. We pushed hard desperate to reach Dien before nightfall.

We came to a crossroad. A direct Vietnamese highway (doesn’t exist) or a road through a nature reserve.

Sidenote: Fuck this place. Honestly. Rain is getting heavier and ,my tree on the edge of a ravine is less than ideal or dry. And did I mention I fucking can’t stand insects?

We chose the highway. First mistake. The highway like everything in Vietnam wasn’t quite right. For about 30k’s it was a simple track of mud and despair and I took us 1.5 hours to drive through countless puddles and deep dirty dark mud. The only one of us enjoying this was piggly. Who is just a filthy filthy mess. Trying to hold the bike together and not lose the revs and not fall over is a seriously draining task. The bike slips and slides and the mud splutters all over you and it just continues you can feel safe. The road is about 2-3 meters ride and snakes about 3 stories high along a cliff face that drops into the raging torrent below. At all times your simply hanging on, trying not to be bested by the grasping mud. Keenly aware that too much power or weight to one side could be disastrous. It’s worse when you pass any car or larger vehicle as they don’t stop they plough right past and if you don’t get out of the way or if you slipped in front of them it would be lights out. Tough tough riding.

The road snaked its way through the mountains along a vast river. There were villages and rice crop on the other side which looked spectacular.

Our bike were clogged we were filthy we trudged and trudged and trudged. We finally made it through Vietnam’s worst and most dangerous construction project and were able to make some ground, but we were loosing daylight fast. We broke our fast on my bowl of yesterday’s rice and a fried egg and mounted up for the next section.

My neck was aching and my hands were blue and bruised. We’d been riding for roughly 5 hours. We were determined to make it.

We set off and the road was good. Again we snaked along the river and we crashed through some serious distance in 20 minutes before as inevitably again the road turned to shit. We mashed and ploughed our way through and the night started closing in.

We reached a town and the question of packing it in and staying was raised we decided to chance it and ride on. Up up up we roared the road held out and again we rode through mountain and valley. Although there are many instances of mountain and valley each section is different and unique whether it be the foliage or the river or the villages.

I was leading and we had covered some serious ground. But about 16 Kms from the next town disaster struck.

Blake travelled behind me and all of a sudden he wasn’t there any more. I waited, nothing, so around I turn around and head back.

I find Blake on the side of the road holding his chain. It is now almost completely dark. We effect a rudimentary ghetto rig of the chain using wire which brakes 5 meters later. We are nowhere with no way of fixing this problem and no way of getting the bike anywhere to be fixed. It was looking dire.

We flag over a friendly Vietnamese man who managed with some miming to understand that we needed his help. We decided Blake would take Henry and follow the man to a “mechanic” to see if he could get the chain fixed. Off they went. Leaving me alone With Frankie.

So here I am alone in the dark dark, small light flashing all around me, the rain has come and its wet, I’m tiered and miserable and filthy and sore.
It’s been about 30 minutes and I can here the familiar hum of what sounds like a b52 roaring overhead, Henry is coming!

Blake managed to find a mechanic who gave him a split link and removed the damaged section of chain. We sat there in the dark and rain and put the chain back on, then fixed the split link, then tried adjusting the chain tension and at last we were ready to try and make the 16kms to the next town.

We set off our lights are almost useless, the road surface couldn’t be seen we had to guess. It was slow going. The chain was holding. I was leading. Through the dark and the rain Vietnam tested our resolve and patience like nothing else. We even hit another construction section where we thought we had found a truck pile up which we needed to navigate in the thick wet slosh, it was so bad here that Henry’s front tyre jammed and I struggled to keep him and I upright until he lost power and died. We cleared the mud and pushed him back into life through the mud and somehow pressed on.

Somewhere in the middle of it all. We managed to nearly get bitten by a snake. As I was ploughing along a snake tried to cross the road I never saw it, Blake did and I roared past it it struck out at me and landed flat in front of Blake who ploughed straight over it! Legs up fearing his wheels were about the throw a snake on him but he was lucky!

But the markers were winding down the distance, 8 to 6 to 5 to 3 and we were there we made it. Somehow we had made it – 13 hours after setting off as it was now 11:30. We got to a shitty guesthouse which promptly shut and closed once we were inside and we went to bed and passed out on a dinner or ritz crackers and exhaustion.

What a day!

Part two!

I know that my blogs are some what of a schizophrenic nature, never conforming to chronology or logical order. I will get back to the adventures in Sa Pa when I have a moment, however, we are still on the way to Laos via Dien and the story needs to be told.

After our previous day we got up early and decided repairs were needed for both bikes. The plan was to ride to Dien Bien Phu and effect repairs there before making for the border. We left our shitty guesthouse and rode 20 meters to the petrol station where Blake’s bike immediately lost all it’s oil all over the road.

I rode through the street as Blakey pushed Frankey along as mechanic after mechanic simply waved him on. We did however meet a loverly man with a tiny little shop who beckoned us in and immediately offered us a breakfast of bong and tea to which we gestured, no – fix the bike! He then lit up himself and then once suitably smoked got up and proceeded to wash Frankie with a hose. In disbelief we sat and watched hoping this was simply so he could better ascertain the issue at hand. But no. We finally got him to understand oil and he ran off down the street to a mechanic got some oil and came back. After filling the oil up Blake gave Frankie a kick and she immediately dropped her guts all over the ground. There was a very serious issue afoot. Our “mechanic” and I use the term very loosely, then proceeded to drag us back down the road to all the mechanics we’d already been to only to be rejected a second time.

We ditched this fool and found another mechanic where some western win riders were performing daily maintenance.

We opened up the side casing on Frankie to find that the previous nights chain snap, had seen the chain fire into the side of the engine casing and smash through creating quite a hole in which all the oil was pouring out of.

This presented quite a dilemma. As I’m sure you all know, and if you don’t Blake will revel in condescendingly explaining to you, that the engine housing is made from aluminium which makes the welding more difficult as it has to be some sort of “special” weld.

Our mechanic hoped on his bike and proceeded to take the housing to Dien Bien Phu to find a welder. This left us eating pho and wondering if we’d ever make it anywhere.

After pho we decided it would be a good time for us to return to the bikes and perform maintenance ourselves. This was pretty lacklustre and half assed. We then learned from our mechanics loverly wife that he would not be returning for another 3 hours. This revelation struck us hard. So we waited.

At 3:00pm a truck pulled up full of supplies and three gents got out and started working on our bikes. From what we could understand, in these small towns there are these trucks full of parts and mechanics that drive around topping up the supplies of all the mechanics and performing high level works.

Frankie and Henry both got new chains and Henry had a new battery and air filter. And there we were, bikes all fixed up and ready yet still waiting for the side cover, not knowing if he would return successfully, we waited.

5 hours later our mechanic returns and shows us the weld, Blake’s approval was given and the part remounted. We were finally ready to head off it was now about 6:30pm.

As we went to set off the thunder rolled in and the heavens opened and we were instantly saturated as the rain pelted down on us.

We took off determined to get somewhere. About 10 minutes out of town we hit a corner and I lost Henry in the slippery wet and we went sliding across the ground together around the corner, if a vehicle had been coming the other way I’d have been killed. Henry lost his right side indicator and was less than impressed with me. We got him going again and after 5 more minutes decided it was too dangerous and slowly crept back towards out shitty guesthouse for another night.

The next morning we woke and we set out for Dien. The going was slow, after my fall the previous night my confidence was shattered. While riding I had a complete mental breakdown and forgot how to ride and had to go in first gear for a bit until I got past it.

We travelled through fairly good roads and yet more stunning scenery to Dien where we stopped for lunch.

After lunch we headed for the border crossing and Laos. This border crossing road was simply spectacular. We climbed up and up into the mountains the road and the views were stunning as we road through steamy jungle passes.

We eventually rounded a corner and in typical Vietnamese style there stood a giant concrete building, we’d made it to the border crossing.

We were to be bitterly disappointed as we learned that the province of Dien had a special decree against bikes crossing the border. It didn’t matter who we tried to bribe or how we tried to play it, we were not getting across that border with those bikes.

We were determined to cross with the bikes so I had a phone call with the head of immigration in Dien who advised that if we headed back south to North Central Vietnam, there’s a border crossing that would have a 90% chance of allowing us to cross with the bikes.

Our visas were done, Blake’s expired the day previous and this was my last day. The voice on the phone advised that we would simply pay our fine when we reached the next point. The fine is apparently $5 per day over the visa.

So we headed back to Dien. Dejected and sad we toured Dien and visited the war sites. Dien Bien Phu is the site of the historical victory of the Viet Minh against the French in the 1950’s and effectively began the process that would lead to the Vietnam war and Vietnam today.

It was a brutal scene to see what the French forced themselves into. Clearly outplayed by the Vietnamese.

We stayed the night in Dien, we found a supermarket that sold cheap Chinese Lego so we played with that and the next day we head out of Dien and started our epic 662km journey back down through the mountains to Central Vietnam.

We have now ridden about 420 of those 660 odd Kms and we have seen some simply breathtaking countryside. Traversed some fantastically amazing roads and witnessed some terrifically terrible weather. And yet we still proceed on to the border. We have enjoyed riding with some locals who wanted to pair up with us, the best pho ever! Some loverly BBQ duck and rice with some gentlemen who demanded with join them in shots of their home made vodka – pretty much just siphoned petrol, piggly has had a wash as is no longer a filthy pig and we are ready to head off once more unto the breach.