Tha Shiznit

Seeing that we were sleeping uncomfortably on floor mattresses and were tucked in under a mosquito net, we were not the least bothered when we were woken up to the sounds and smells of various domesticated animals... Well, not only our usual kind of domesticated animals like cats and dogs but also hens, pigs and water buffaloes.
Soon after we had taken our cold showers came the most disappointing meal yet. We were served a plate consisting of 10 slices of deep fried bananas to be shared amongst the four of us! We sat around waiting for the real breakfast to magically appear, but it just never came We were hungry before we even left the breakfast table.
Then came our boat trip around Ba Be Lake, we just cruised along which was nice but not so exciting. We did however stop at a little island for a short refreshing swim!

When we arrived back at the house, the family had prepared a delicious lunch which we devoured, but it still never left us feeling satiated. The big chief, happy with his new drinking partners, insisted on more rice wine which Hung had to deny on our behalf simply because there were many hours of driving to come. After soaking up some sun and eating lots of yummy food, we decided a little cat nap would be perfect. And perfect it was! We woke up feeling refreshed and ready for our next leg of the journey.

Seeing that we were only supposed to drive about 70 km in the afternoon, we were sure that we would arrive at a decent time at our last homestay. It may not come as a surprise to you when I tell you that this didn't happened. Instead, this is what happened:

The first 45 minutes of riding was really nice. The terrain was rolley and really scenic. In fact, I think we actually had a little bit of sun for the first time in 4 days. So far, so good.

After 45 min, we leave the main road and hit up a smaller dirt road, leading into the mountains. The road is muddy, but nothing we hadn't seen before. By now, we were all getting accustomed to the bike, mud and water... so we cruised through this part like it was our job. The next obstacle we reach is a river.. he he. yes, there's a river flowing accross the road, and we have to drive through it to continue. Haakon guns the Minsk and heads straight for the river. Helga is roaring and there's water everywhere!!!! But guess what, we make it. Yeah. We got wet of course, but Helga, Mahta and Haakon are safe and sound on the other side without even stopping. (Count of hands: How many people thought we'd fall in? We hate you all!!!)

Because the river was such a fun place, it may not surprise you that Haakon had to go back and do it again. Yes, that's right, he decided drive back accross the river, knowing perfectly well what happens when you try to go swimming with the motorcycle.(Count of hands: How many people think Haakon screwed up and dropped Helga in the river?) Bastards, you are all wrong. We made it! And it was brilliantly executed. LOADS of fun. Since we were all having fun, our trusted guide, Mr. Hung, decided to try something cool. Instead of driving accross the river, he wanted to drive along the river (in the river that is). He leaves the group, and drives slowly up the side of the river, before cutting out onto a small "island". His goal is to drive from the island, down the river and out where we are standing. The whole feat would have been really cool if it hadn't been for him fucking it up. He drives off the the island and into the river looking like he is already about to fall off. In fact, we could predict the outcome before it even happened. No surprise to us, but apparently a surprise to Hung, his front wheel hits a hole, he loses balance and falls off the bike. It was really funny to watch. Paul and I run out yelling "We'll save you Hung" as he tries to hold on to his bike, which is now starting to float down the river. HA HA. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. We eventually managed to get the bike out of its swimming position and onto the island, but it required alot of brute force. I guess you all know what happened next. Yeah, that's right. The bike would not start... We spent the better part of 2 hours waiting for Mr. Acrobat to fix his bike. (I think we were laughing for a good 45 min of it). The best part of it is that he didn't even manage to fix his bike. It really sucked! But everything is possible in Vietnam. Hung simply asked a local tribesman if he could swap Minsks temporarily. He even got the local guy to push his bike to the mechanic.

Well, after about two hours (4 o'clock), we eventually got going again. Hung had acquired a shitty old Minsk, but at least we were moving. I guess it would have been really nice to be able to tell you that after this mishap, eveything went as planned, but unfortunately, this didn't happen. The next thing that occurred was Paul and Clare losing their tailpipe. The exhaust simply fell off the engine and was dragging on the ground. SHIT!! We stopped of course, and Hung pulled his tool kit out yet again. We managed to temporarily fix it, but not for long. 10 min later, the damn thing fell off again, and proved nearly impossible to fix. We eventually had to force it to stay put, but the bike now had a huge cap where the tailpipe was supposed to go. For those of you who don't know, driving without a tailpipe is hell. The bike went from being loud to sounding like a 747 ready for take off. IT WAS SOOO LOUD!!! Even the local people were all plugging their ears as we drove by.. Absolutely hilarious.

We had now covered about 35 km, and it was about to get dark when it started raining. It wasn't much at the beginning, but we could tell that there was a big storm coming. After a quick group meeting, we decide to cancel our original plan, and drive back to the closest village(about 5 min). We found a hotel just as the storm hit. It was raining soo hard that the streets began to flood. 30 minutes after we had arrived, the street was filled with water. I tried to walk through it, and it reached up to my knees... WOW, I've never seen anything like it. Mopeds were stuck in the water, and people were trying to move their cars.

There's not much to tell about the evening. We had our usual crappy dinner with surreal beers before we went to bed.

After another nutritious bowl of noodle soup, we left the homestay early in the morning. The plan of the day was to travel 150 km to a remote natural park and lake.

The first 60 km went by really quickly. The roads were good and the view even better. We were basically riding on small asphalt roads the whole time, but we were still in the middle of the mountains.

At about 11 o'clock, we stopped to rest our sore asses as well as try some local soy milk. A group of 6 or 7 young girls and boys had made an impro soy-milk stand and were selling soy milk to each other. They were super excited to see us whities, and even more excited when we started taking pictures of them. Whenever we showed them the picture, they were all giggling and couldn't believe that this little black box could actually reproduce what they were looking at. The wonders of technology, eh?

Anyways, we now had a choice as to which route to take. 1: We could be really boring and go with the easy conventional route, or 2: We could take the rocky trail with a better view. We opted for option # 2, and off we went.

The first thing we see after leaving the main road is something that could barely be called a path. There were rocks absolutely everywhere and an a steep incline leading off into nowhere. Needless to say, Haakon was excited. The next few hours were spent manouvering through these incredibly challenging riding conditions. Helga was struggeling and we had to keep her in first gear for most of the way, but it was all worth it. By the time we came to the top, we left the road and went to a small field with a view of the valley below. The only other living creatures were water buffalos and a few cows!!! Another incredible memory.

We left the cow-littered field after 45 minutes of much needed rest just to find out that the sky was about to break open and we would get super soaked. The next 2 hours was undertaken in pouring rain but it was still a lot of fun.

We made it to our final destination, a Vietnamese stilt house just by the edge of a gorgeous lake. In fact, the owner was the village chief!!! Just as the previous nights, the evening was filled with good food, rice wine and beers.

When we woke up next morning, we were excited to find out that today was going to be a relaxing day, and infact we were going to stay at the same place tonight as well. Thus, we spent a long time getting ready and eating the now customary breakfast - Pho = noodle soup. No, it did not fill us up.

Todays journey was to consist of a slow ride of about 40km to the Chinese border. We humped along a nice asphalt road (but no cars) and slowly made our way to the border area.

We had heard that there was supposed to be a nice waterfall, but nothing had prepared us for what we saw. IT WAS GORGEOUS!!! The river (which is the Vietnam/China boundary) flowed into 3 seperate and huge falls, with green jungle growing on all sides. It was incredible. Also, we jumped on some sort of bamboo raft and was taken across the river right by the bottom of the falls, into China. It was awesome.. Due to the current being really strong, we couldn't really go swimming, but Paul and I managed to hold on to the raft and go for a quick dip anyways. I can now proudly say that I have pissed in China.

As opposed to the previous day, the day progressed without any funny, stupid or weird incidents, which was a pleasant surprise. We arrived back at the homestay before dark and had a traditional Vietnamese dinner (with rice wine of course) before calling it an early night.

We awoke on the second day ready to leave for a day of fun driving at 8:30! Hung, as promised, had woken up early and arranged breakfast for us... super! well, it just so happens that the Vietnamese don't see the importance of a hearty breakfast and so we were provided with a bowl of rice noodle soup (known as Pho) with bits of pork. Should've seen the disappointed look on Haakon's face! We just decided to buy some extra snacks to hold us over till lunch, but boy were we in for a surprise. You see, these little windy dirt roads of Vietnam were not in great condition after the night-long rainfall. We were soon to face landslides, mud roads and numerous Minsk breakdowns.

After about half an hour of riding on compact gravel we left the "main road" and headed to smaller trails. In other words, we had entered the no-car territory. The first 100m gave an indication of how the day was to progress... half a meter of mud and water, and H&M crammed on a Minsk made for some spectacular riding (in Haakon's opinion anyways). How can we put this? We were ENTIRELY COVERED with mud, and that was just the beginning! For the next two hours we continued our mud riding further and further away from civilization.

At about 11, we came across the most challenging bit yet. A 30m long and 75cm deep puddle of muddy water had decided to place itself in the middle of our path, hehe FUN! Seeing that there was no way back, Haakon the great decided to force Helga into submission and power her across the "pond". Guess what, we made it through! Haakon had now become a master at mud-biking! Needless to say, he had to have another go! Without Mahta on the back, it was a piece of cake to maneuver and H&H (Helga and Haakon) flew back and forth across the "pond" two times.

After our half hour play time, we decided to continue on as our bellies were crying out for some real food and water. And that's when it all went down... 5m further, we come across a narrow path (10cm wide) with big puddles on both sides. Having conquered the previous obstacles with supreme elegance, Haakon felt confident that this 3 metre long path would pose no problems at all. Damn, was he ever wrong. With minimal speed, we left the "safety" of solid mud and rolled onto the narrow path. So far so good. That's when it all happens. Helga's rear wheel lost traction and the whole machinery lost speed. Now, what happens if you're on a bike with no speed??? It starts tipping!!! Yes, that's right, the bike starts tipping.. No problem right? Haakon has long legs, he can just push off from the bottom of the puddle as he has done so many times earlier that day... WRONG. See, the puddle was deceptively deep, and Haakon's leg just dissapeared down into the muddy water. And this is what happens next:

Mahta: Are we falling?
Haakon: FUUUUCCCKKK!!!!
Helga: WRRROOOOMMMMM
Mahta: OH SHIT!
Helga: Actually, by this time there is no more Helga, she is dead quiet!

So what happened. Well, the bike, Mahta and Haakon all fell over into the puddle and got almost completely submerged in water. He he .. But don't worry guys, we saved the camera and the scene looked really cool!! Yeah.

As described before, the Minsk aka Helga, is a solid and higly unreliable motorbike, which we were just about to realize. After our little swim, the damn girl decides to seize up and not start at all.. I mean, THERE WASN'T EVEN A CHANCE IN HELL to get her firing. SHIT!!!

The next 1 hour, was spent trying to fix the poor girl. Hung practically tore the bike apart and tried every possible trick at his disposal to fix it. The Minsk is probably the simplest motorbike ever built and should in theory be really easy to fix. but i guess dropping them in water is not that common. After an hour, the bike finally started working, and it looked as if lunch would be coming up very soon.

That's when the second problem starts. See, earlier (before H&M) tipped their bike, Paul had dropped his bike (Fantasia) in 20 cm of mud and had problems with the throttle. What this meant was that we had to stop (150 metres after the first stop) to fix his bike. Obviously, we had to turn the engine off.. BAD IDEA. See, fixing Paul's and Hung's bike was a piece of cake but getting Helga started after she cooled down took about 90 minutes. While the boys tried to apply their mechanics skills, Clare and Mahta spent the hot afternoon sleeping by the side of the trail. By the time we left, we had spent a total of 2.5 hours trying to mend Fantasia, Helga and Don't Kiss Me (Hung's bike). This sounds really boring, but remember that we were in the middle of nowhere in Vietnam. It was by no means boring. First of all the sceneray was gorgeous, secondly the weather was nice and hot, and thirdly, we were never really worried about having to spend the night. In other words, it was actually quite fun.

So, as mentioned earlier, we finally got back on the bikes and started driving. So far so good... But wait.. We just had two strikes, and we all know that three is the lucky number.. So what happens?? 50 metres down the road we find out that a roadslide has completely washed away the road!!! HA HA... But no threat, we slide down the side of the road down to the local river and start using that as a road. Kinda cool to be driving in a river (it wasn't filled with water though).

After our three strikes, we were obviously starving (it was 4 o'clock by now) and we had absolutely no clean water left, so we decided to drive hard to get to civilization. The next two hours were spent driving in even more mud, enjoying the scenary (mostly Mahta of course) and learning the ways to control a big ass motorbike in mud. I had the time of my life. The riding was challenging but really fun.

By 6.30, we have finally made it out of the super muddy parts and onto more gravel like tarmac, which was good, but another challenge came our wayt. See, by this time it was starting to get dark. YEAH. In the middle of nowhere, with no streetlights on a Minsk.. he he. Fun. Right after 6.30 PM we came to a halt by a HUGE river (which was flowing beyond its borders due to rainy season) with a non-existent bridge. No threat, the Vietnamese people are never far away. The local people had invented some sort of bamboo raft with lines crossing the river, and with the help of 5 Vietnamese people per raft, we drove the bikes on the tiny bamboo raft and muscled them over the fast flowing river. One of the most exciting moments on the whole trip!!!

Once safe and sound on the other side, another incident came our way. The banks on the other side were really steep and thanks to the fact that it had been raining for 2 hours (and still raining) the gravel was slippery and not well compacted. What this means for people sitting on a shitty motorbike is that we had to give lots of throttle. Guess what guys?? We gave too much throttle. The front wheel left the ground, the bike started tipping backwards and Mahta makes some unrecognizable sounds. It must have looked soooo funny. Anyways, we fall backwards with the bike about to come down on top of us, but fortunately we manage to throw the bike sideways and to the ground. The bike was fine, Haakon was laughing, but Mahta, poor girl, had landed on a sharp rock and bruised her butt. It was funny though. She was laughing and and au-au-ing at the same time. What a scene.

After the spectacle we created, we eventually made it, without any incidents, the last 20km to the small village where we were to spend the night. This was really cool. Instead of staying in a hotel, we spent the night with a local family, sleeping in their house. They were all really nice people, and the evening was spent eating, drinking beer and of course sampling the local rice wine.

By the time we went to bed we were super tired, and Mahta's ass was hurting.....

Apologies for the long entry to come...
So, we had heard about motorbike tours around Vietnam, and by sheer luck we noticed something very interesting on our way back from the bank. There was a motorbike tour leaving in 2 days headed for a 6 day trip around Northeastern Vietnam. We got all the tour info and decided to sleep on it for the final decision... We walked in the next morning confident on booking our tour for the following day, only to find that the tour had already left, in fact we watched the tour drive out of the shop!!! SHIIITTT. After a quick talk to the brilliant guys at Voyage Vietnam, we decided that there would be no problem, we would just have to speed things up a bit, and leave within an hour to catch up with them! So, within this hour we had to a) check out of our hotel, b) go to the bank and withdraw money 6 times due to the max limit, c) provide Haakon with his first encounter with the front seat of a motorbike, d) prepare Mahta for sitting on the back of a bike for the 6 days to come. What a scramble.. We were running all over the place just trying to get all the stuff together, but in the end we managed pretty well. After a total of 90 minutes, we were ready to go on a 6 day long motorcycle ride in the Vietnamese mountains. What a thrill!!!

Before we get started on telling you about the trip itself, let me give you an intro into the bike we were to use. The bike is called a Minsk, and is an old Russian motorbike. It is a 125 CC, meaning it has no more power that a regular moped, but obviously has more torque. The max speed of the bike is about 60 km/h, it weighs a whole bunch, and comes without any gauges (ie speedometer, fuel gauge etc). Having said that, the bike is unreal. It is called the mule of the mountains and has such a simple design that a monkey with a hammer and a stone could fix it. Well, not really, but pretty much any Vietnamese male over the age of 30 will know a Minsk inside and out. Our Minsk was nice and blue, and she quickly acquired the beautiful name of Helga. We also had full protective clothing, meaning motorbike jackets, pants, gloves, helmets etc. Ok, back to the trip.

Off we went, but first we had to get ourselves through bustling Hanoi traffic which can be challenging enough when you're crossing a street on foot. Haakon, the experienced biker that he was, popped a wheelie just as we were pulling onto the highway but managed to pull himself together and we successfully drove hard to catch up with the others. Driving at our max-out speed of 60 Km/hr , the wind and bike vibration forcing our face to move in ways we didn't know were possible, rice fields and mountains began to appear in the horizon. The sun was bright and hot while the wind was cooling our faces. What a feeling... We were finally getting a taste of the real Vietnam.

We drove hard for about 3 hours before finally stopping for some drinks at a local roadside cafe. By this time we were told that we actually passed the group and decided that we should just wait for the others to catch up. It was a good chance to rest from the whirling world on a motorbike. Soon enough, our new guide, Hung, appeared with an English couple - Paul and Clare - and we were finally introduced to the people which we were to spend some incredible days with.

After a quick lunch, we carried on at a pace that almost seemed boring compared to what we had been doing earlier till we reached an old "communist" hotel which was to be our home for the night. The hotel looked like it had been built in the mid 60's, with huge rooms of shitty quality. Oh well, I guess it was worth it for the scenary. The town we were in (and the hotel) was set right in between 5 or six large tree-covered mountains. Absolutely stunning!!!

After parking our motorbikes, our guide went out to find us some dinner while we refreshed ourselves in the communist hotel. 20 minutes later, we were all ready to go for, what we thought would be, a nice filling dinner. First the good parts: it was Paul's 27th birthday that same night, and we were all in a great mood to celebrate! Ie, the drinking was good. We got our hands on some Portugese wine which Hung believed was potentially made in China and quickly polished it off. The next thing on the menu was some local rice wine (moonshine) and finally, after 2 long hours of bad wine we got some cold beers. MMMmmmm, so far so good right?
Now, for the bad parts:. We can't say much nice things about the meal but we'll try to paint a picture for you anyways. First of all, they had freshly killed a chicken for us which was really nice, but they have the tendency of just hacking it up in chunks with the bone which is not so nice. Inaddition, the chicken is was boiled and not fried, which made for really grosse meat. For the rest of the dishes, Hung had decided everything and that may have included a plate of boiled cabbage, the water from the boiled cabbage (which was to be eaten as soup), rice, vegetables and some other stuff. All in all, the meal was highly unsattisfying and did not fill us up at all. We also asked if it was possible to get beef,, but received a negative response, as the town was too small to eat a whole cow before it went bad. HA HA... what a disappointment.

After the scrumptious meal, we took some beer back to our room to continue the celebration and eventually fell asleep around midnight, stoked about another day of motorbiking.

P.S, you can go here: http://www.minskclubvietnam.com/thebike.html if you wanna look at the bikes we were using