Goooooooooood Morning Vietnam

All right it’s not original, and for those unlucky enough to see me at that time of the day they know I’m not a morning person, but it does set the scene. As some of you know I’m doing a motorbike trip in Vietnam and going onto Cambodia for a couple of days. I’ve survived the motorbike and now I’m in Siem Reap, the most important part of the trip. I won’t bore everyone with a blow by blow description but pick a few themes and expand on them.

The Cast and Crew Chose to travel by….

Motorcycle, of course.

We have 8 punters and a support crew of 3 in no particular order they are

Chris & Delwyn – Husband and wife from Queensland, Chris is the organiser of the trip and I am very grateful that I was able to tag along.

Your Truly – Moi

Stuart – A farmer from Queensland, loves bumpy roads, dirt and mud riding. Hates going on the bitumen, not so much of a problem here as there was not a lot of smooth bitumen.

Nick – A Pom now living in Queensland, another expert dirt, mud, bumpy road rider. Has the worlds largest repertoire of jokes with matching voices.

Ron – International man of mystery who bears a striking resemblance to a western version of Ho Chi Minh, also our most senior member on the trip, I don’t think I would like to race Ron on evenly matched bikes I suspect I would come a distant second.

Alex & Rob – Father and son from Canberra area, I met them in on a South America trip in 2004, Alex met Chris on a Morocco trip in 2010, Chris told Alex about the Vietnam trip, who told Rob and then Rob told me and here I am. It’s a very long sequence of events. Ok, Alex and Rob aren’t father and son but we look look up to Alex for his many years of wisdom and experience in many things, fire fighting, motorcycling and watch buying just to name a few. Again I’m most grateful to them for allowing me to tag along on this trip.

Hai – Our local Vietnamese tour guide, alleged to be 30 looks like he is 18 instigator of the phrase “Hey Baby”, a very funny man who worked very hard to make our trip a success. Keen Ray Ban aviator sunglass wearer.

Phu – Our sweep (tail end) rider and mechanic and Hai’s cousin. Given the way the bikes were treated possibly the man with the toughest job on the trip. Also a keen aviator sunglass wearer.

Quynh – Driver of the support van. Quynh (pronounced Qwon) is a quiet man who did his job, I gave him the nickname “Thing” (Addams Family) as most of the time during the day we only saw his left arm give us a languid wave out the side of the truck to let us know it was ok to pass him.

Loud pipes save lives

Or so the Harley riders boast,  and there may be some truth to this. We are either riding some 1980’ish vintage Ural 650’s or a Minsk 125 that has been given a Honda engine transplant (that’s cheating).

The bikes work well but they are well used, very very well used.

My steed is one of the Ural bikes. Following on the long tradition naming bikes I have called my bike “Puddles”. You can tell how long I’ve stopped by the size of oil patch I leave behind. On good days there will be an even larger pool of petrol if I forget to turn it off after we stop.

Considering that I’m leaking oil from the final drive, gearbox, kick starter (yes I have to kick start the bugger), multiple places around the engine and the front suspension a large part of the daily maintenance is topping up the oils. Puddles is not alone when it comes to flow through oil management.

The Urals are a basic, tough bike and they need to be with pounding they get on the roads and non roads we’ve taken them on. As I said earlier loud pipes save lives, for such a large engine the Urals have a silencer the size of a pencil so that when you open the throttle it does make a satisfying almost angry growling noise that warns people in the next province that you’re overtaking someone.

Out of all the Urals we had I think mine was the pick of the bunch. I had the only working speedometer (for the first 3 days but then it died) but I actually had a working brake light (on both brakes), the headlight worked (on most days), the indicators also worked (we never used them, but then again hardly anyone in the country did), the engine had the most grunt and I was usually able to change gears without dropping into a false neutral. I was usually able to kick start it fairly easily unless the power of Murphy’s law was invoked when it would be petulant. This usually happened when lots of locals were watching, or even more memorably when we had to stop to let a funeral pass us by as we went through a village, the bloody thing would not start, eventually I was able to escape but I don’t think the locals were impressed by the distraction.

“We go on funny road”

That was what Hai said to us on more than one occasion after a while we would ask “what do you mean by funny?” except for Stuart and Nick who knew it meant dirt and mud when they became as happy as the proverbial pig. Other people were not so enthused.

This photo of Rob moving at a glacial pace down hill is an example of a funny road. You can see the mud caked front tyre gave us no grip whatsoever. My journey down this hill was a bit faster as the bike had stalled so I had digital engine braking (i.e all or none) but we did make it down in one hot and sweaty piece.

What was embarrassing was one local dressed in a suit calmly put- putted up the hill without a speck of mud on him while we were muddy to the ankles and other places north. This was only a practice run for what lay ahead.

I’m sure Hai is part English. A few days later he said the road may be a bit muddy, this was a masterpiece of understatement. The pics below show what it was like.

It was hard work but Puddles chugged on through the sludge like a champion and sometimes I was actually in control of the bike. I know we provided an afternoons entertainment to a bunch of locals when we sloshed through their village.

We spent quite a bit of time away from the main highway travelling on minor roads that would link villages together often they would be little more than a badly paved goat track but sometimes we were surprised with something like this concrete path that ran though the hills, smooth, twisty with great scenery.

 I don’t care about his skills is he lucky?

This is a paraphrase of a line is supposed to have been said by Napoleon when he was promoting a senior officer. The same sentiments apply to driving around here you need that bit of luck to get you through the day. As you can imagine in the major cities it looks to be utter chaos with bikes and cars ricocheting around the roads like mad pool game. Crossing the road in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh requires timing and absolute faith to keep moving at a constant pace no matter what suddenly appears from nowhere. Its like being an obstacle in the middle of a salmon run, everything flows around you.

Out in the countryside it’s a different matter, the cars virtually disappear and they are replaced by the motorcycles natural enemy, the truck and the even more deadly long distance bus. The bus drivers are psychopaths bent on mass suicide for their passengers or mass murder for anyone else on the road.

It’s been said that the time it take to descend from civilisation to anarchy is around 24 hours, about the time it takes to get hungry. It took us about 5 days before we started riding like a local, i.e doing passing manoeuvres that a week earlier you wouldn’t consider in a pink fit back in Oz but for some reason it becomes natural and seems to work. Except for one incident that we shall never mention ever again.

The beds need burning

Accommodation has varied from small hotels, very posh hotels down to a couple of home stays. Now if you want to make money in Vietnam you could start a mattress import business. Firm doesn’t begin to describe how hard the mattress’s were. Some of the beds you would have trouble driving a nail into the mattress.

To be honest once we got to where we were staying at night we didn’t do a lot apart from have a drink (or two’ish), shower, dinner, possibly another beer (or two’ish) and then collapse into bed early. As the Beloved would say “we painted the town beige”

How do you make chopsticks?

The humble bamboo chopstick, cheap and disposable but where do they come from? Ok the answer won’t win you a Nobel prize but when we stopped at a roadside factory we found out it was either back breaking or extremely dangerous work. You either carried huge pieces of bamboo up hill to the factory or worked with open saws or reciprocating machines that chopped the bamboo into individual sticks. The rate at which they worked I was surprised that I didn’t see any people minus a few fingers. You OH&S people out there would have kittens at the lack of even the most basic safety guards or equipment.

The Royal Wave

I think I understand why Queen Liz and Phil the Greek give such a languid wave to the crowds as they pass by in whatever means of transport they may be forced to use on there overseas jaunts, it gets tiring. I often wonder if Liz thinks “oh no not another bloody bunch of school kids”. If fact I have half a theory that the boffins at MI6 have actually invented a mechanical arm that can be installed in whatever vehicle and at the secret press of a button up it comes and instant royal wave!

Now a group of foreigners on big motorbikes travelling through small villages tend to get noticed and most of the kids will wave at you as do some of the adults. It’s all very friendly but can be distracting when you are riding along. Another half theory of mine is that the kids know that and position themselves in the hope that you might not see the giant pothole in the road, or the dog, or the buffalo or even better the psychopath driving the bus. Seeing a foreigner go charging off road would be talked about for weeks. Ok I know they don’t but sometimes I wonder……

 Don’t mention the war?

The end of the Vietnam War (as we call it) is nearly 40 years ago, there appears to be no animosity to westerners, in fact we felt welcome where ever we went. Speaking with people they believe that there is little point in living in the past, they are much keener to make their lives better through commerce, that said there is no doubt the effect from the war has rippled down through the generations and they are very patriotic people. One of the most obvious signs being the number of Vietnamese flags you see as we rode through the villages. Also there are museums and memorials dedicated to groups of people who were killed. We visited a number of these on the trip.

We are the bold Gendarmes

Traffic cops are the same in all third world countries, their job is to do bugger all except when they see the opportunity for extracting a bribe for some imagined traffic infraction, usually from a local but a foreigner is a potential gold mine and Vietnam is no exception.

Hai warned us that they were likely to try it on and it would up to us to argue our way out of it or pay up. To ride a bike in Vietnam you should have a Vietnamese drivers licence, a foreign licence is not valid so technically we were all riding illegally and the cops know this however you throw the dice and hope it doesn’t come up snake eyes. I lost.

Sure enough travelling down a busy main road I got pulled over by some 18 going on 12 year old looking copper who was very apologetic but he spoke no English which was fine with me as I spoke no Vietnamese but I am fluent in verbal diarrhoea so I kept on talking until he gave up and waved me on. Stuart was picked up the next day as soon as they saw he was a foreigner they gave up and waved him on. Such is life on the road.

Bits and Pieces

A few random pictures from along the road

Angkor Wat

Just before we found out that Carolyn was ill we were planning our own bike trip through Vietnam and then onto Cambodia so the Beloved could visit Angkor Wat and surrounding temples but this was not to be. The best I can do was to bring some of her ashes instead, so for the last couple of weeks she’s been behind me while we rode through Vietnam uncomplaining as always, although I could imagined I could hear the occasional “ouch that hurt” as we hit a particularly deep but unseen pothole.

I’ve spent the last couple days at Angkor Wat and I understand why the Beloved wanted to visit here, she would have enjoyed the history, the stories behind the carvings and the detail of how they were created. I left her ashes under the trees just outside Banyon Temple, she has a good view of the temple and they are planning reconstruction work over the next few years so I know they will be properly supervised.

That’s all for now I hope you enjoyed the trip.

Ian & the Beloved