I have boarded my flight from Bangkok to Hanoi and am now contemplating how to get myself into the very small space that is my budget airline seat. If I were wearing some sort of plastic suit, I could smear myself in grease and might be able to wedge myself in but there may still be problems with getting out. OK, I might be over-exagerrating a bit, but the seating space and particularly the leg room is not at all generous on Air Asia. I sit in very close quarters to a Canadian man. In the first few minutes of our conversation, he says that he’s living and working in Kazicstan. Kazikstan!! I can’t believe I am sitting next to someone who lives in Kazicstan! The first thing I say to this is of course “is it really like it appears in the movie Borat?” No he says, it’s actually a very nice place with steadily increasing property prices and an improving government. This gives way to at least twenty minutes of discussion around the merits of the movie Borat and the incredibly gross humor of the filmmaker, in particular the famous nude fight scene. I can highly recommend this movie, but I would not recommend watching it while you are eating.
I have managed to maintain a good level of movie viewing while I’m on the move. I can get decent pirate copies of movies on DVD and then watch them on the laptop when I have time. The frustrating part is that roughly every sixth DVD is a dud and the latest is Zoolander. I really wanted to watch it, but for some reason, it just does not want to work for me. I really want to find out what this blue steel business is all about.
It’s been around three and a half years since I visited Hanoi, capital of Vietnam and home to the body of the great Ho Chi Minh. After a lot of work in Lao an Cambodia, I now have two trips to run in the north west of Vietnam. The first is an open Charity Challenge with participants raising money for The MS Society, ICEE and Care Australia. Ten people, four hundred and something KMS, six days of cycling. Should be great fun!
The group is made up of a good spread of ages from 22 to 71 years old. One of the participants is Daniel Alvarez! Daniel is a good mate of mine who I met on a trip to China a few years ago. He has MS and for this reason cannot ride a bike, but he really participates in the personal side of the trip and is great moral support for all the riders. He is also fond of a drink or two.
Road to Heaven
“Today is a pleasant ride with some rough surface, but generally not too bad. There are some up-hills, but lots of down-hills as well.” It’s a really good thing that the people in this group are pretty tolerant and understanding. In hindsight, pleasant ride was possibly not so accurate. In further hindsight, some up-hills could be better described as thirty kilometers of severely damaged road, consisting mainly of powder dust, large craters, ditches and almost vertical climbing. Ironically, the Vietnamese name for this pass translates to “Road to heaven”.
The Product Evangelist and the Crazy Shit
The Vietnamese seem to be fond of trying to develop a significant stretch of mountain road all at once, where the most practical would be to do small sections at a time. As we reached around half way on this horrible mess of a road leading through remote villages without so much as a small shop in sight, we met the product evangelist.
The Product Evangelist was from Sydney. He was attempting to ride an ancient hired motorbike known as the Munsk through the Northwest. This did seem to us to be the slightly lazy option, considering he at least has a motor where we just have our legs. He had made life a lot harder for himself by forgetting to collect his passport from reception when he left his hotel that morning. He said that he had got around two thirds of the way to Diem Bien Phu when he had realized and was now on his way back. He also admitted that this had not been the first time. This seemed to us to be a bad case of vagueness. Something that many of us are well familiar with, but not quite to the extent of doing one thing multiple times, thereby making life considerably harder for oneself.
The product evangelist was kind enough to inform us that we had some “crazy Shit” up ahead and wished us luck. We gave him some lollies to help him get through the crazy shit and went our separate ways. He wasn’t lying. There was some Crazy Shit!! By the time we got to lunch, we were quite definitely on verge of collapse. Thankfully the ride after this was lovely and when we reached the small town of Tuan Chau were we were to pack up the bikes and get on the bus, everyone was well satisfied that it was worth doing the crazy shit to get to the nice stuff.
It is when we are sitting on the bus, getting through the last section of the road to Dien Bien Phu that we are stopped by a blasting site. Yes, they have decided to blast a section out of the side of the mountain, thereby blocking the road in two places. They are working to clear the rock with excavators, but this is a slow process. It also looks as though they have stuffed one of the blasts up and have damaged the road. In fact from were we Are standing, it looks as though the road may be impassable, but after an hour or so of work, they manage to successfully clear it and we are able to get through. A glance to the left side of the bus as we go through one of the sights was enough to scare the crap out of me though. We had literally half a meter separating us from a vertical drop of at least two hundred meters.
I know…. Lets change the name of all the towns
Lai Chau (Old Lai Chau) to Phong To… or is it Tun Dien? We Are supposed to be riding to Phong To. The map that we have shows a town 96KMS away called Phong To and this is where we are going. The hotel that we are leaving and the hotel that we are heading to are owned by the same people and when we ask how far they think it is, they tell us that it is only 75KM away. This is quite strange, although it is not the first time that the locals have made outrageous claims as to the distance between towns. We simply put it down to them not knowing how far between their own hotels.
It is not until I reach the 75KM mark of the ride, that the penny drops. The local government has decided that they now want to call this town Phong To. They have changed the name of Phong to Tun Dien. This means that we still have to ride the same distance as we planned (96Km), but then we have to find accommodation for thirteen people at short notice. All turns out OK, but seriously… who changes the name of towns and then gives the same name to another town?
Sapa – End of the line
I have managed to maintain a good level of movie viewing while I’m on the move. I can get decent pirate copies of movies on DVD and then watch them on the laptop when I have time. The frustrating part is that roughly every sixth DVD is a dud and the latest is Zoolander. I really wanted to watch it, but for some reason, it just does not want to work for me. I really want to find out what this blue steel business is all about.
It’s been around three and a half years since I visited Hanoi, capital of Vietnam and home to the body of the great Ho Chi Minh. After a lot of work in Lao an Cambodia, I now have two trips to run in the north west of Vietnam. The first is an open Charity Challenge with participants raising money for The MS Society, ICEE and Care Australia. Ten people, four hundred and something KMS, six days of cycling. Should be great fun!
The group is made up of a good spread of ages from 22 to 71 years old. One of the participants is Daniel Alvarez! Daniel is a good mate of mine who I met on a trip to China a few years ago. He has MS and for this reason cannot ride a bike, but he really participates in the personal side of the trip and is great moral support for all the riders. He is also fond of a drink or two.
Road to Heaven
“Today is a pleasant ride with some rough surface, but generally not too bad. There are some up-hills, but lots of down-hills as well.” It’s a really good thing that the people in this group are pretty tolerant and understanding. In hindsight, pleasant ride was possibly not so accurate. In further hindsight, some up-hills could be better described as thirty kilometers of severely damaged road, consisting mainly of powder dust, large craters, ditches and almost vertical climbing. Ironically, the Vietnamese name for this pass translates to “Road to heaven”.
The Product Evangelist and the Crazy Shit
The Vietnamese seem to be fond of trying to develop a significant stretch of mountain road all at once, where the most practical would be to do small sections at a time. As we reached around half way on this horrible mess of a road leading through remote villages without so much as a small shop in sight, we met the product evangelist.
The Product Evangelist was from Sydney. He was attempting to ride an ancient hired motorbike known as the Munsk through the Northwest. This did seem to us to be the slightly lazy option, considering he at least has a motor where we just have our legs. He had made life a lot harder for himself by forgetting to collect his passport from reception when he left his hotel that morning. He said that he had got around two thirds of the way to Diem Bien Phu when he had realized and was now on his way back. He also admitted that this had not been the first time. This seemed to us to be a bad case of vagueness. Something that many of us are well familiar with, but not quite to the extent of doing one thing multiple times, thereby making life considerably harder for oneself.
The product evangelist was kind enough to inform us that we had some “crazy Shit” up ahead and wished us luck. We gave him some lollies to help him get through the crazy shit and went our separate ways. He wasn’t lying. There was some Crazy Shit!! By the time we got to lunch, we were quite definitely on verge of collapse. Thankfully the ride after this was lovely and when we reached the small town of Tuan Chau were we were to pack up the bikes and get on the bus, everyone was well satisfied that it was worth doing the crazy shit to get to the nice stuff.
It is when we are sitting on the bus, getting through the last section of the road to Dien Bien Phu that we are stopped by a blasting site. Yes, they have decided to blast a section out of the side of the mountain, thereby blocking the road in two places. They are working to clear the rock with excavators, but this is a slow process. It also looks as though they have stuffed one of the blasts up and have damaged the road. In fact from were we Are standing, it looks as though the road may be impassable, but after an hour or so of work, they manage to successfully clear it and we are able to get through. A glance to the left side of the bus as we go through one of the sights was enough to scare the crap out of me though. We had literally half a meter separating us from a vertical drop of at least two hundred meters.
I know…. Lets change the name of all the towns
Lai Chau (Old Lai Chau) to Phong To… or is it Tun Dien? We Are supposed to be riding to Phong To. The map that we have shows a town 96KMS away called Phong To and this is where we are going. The hotel that we are leaving and the hotel that we are heading to are owned by the same people and when we ask how far they think it is, they tell us that it is only 75KM away. This is quite strange, although it is not the first time that the locals have made outrageous claims as to the distance between towns. We simply put it down to them not knowing how far between their own hotels.
It is not until I reach the 75KM mark of the ride, that the penny drops. The local government has decided that they now want to call this town Phong To. They have changed the name of Phong to Tun Dien. This means that we still have to ride the same distance as we planned (96Km), but then we have to find accommodation for thirteen people at short notice. All turns out OK, but seriously… who changes the name of towns and then gives the same name to another town?
Sapa – End of the line
Our last day of riding into Sapa involves climbing around 1300 meters in altitude over the space of 30 Kilometers. With legs still burning from the previous days tough 900 meters over 15KM, the ride to Sapa is sapping my energy. The road surface is decent though, and Ben is chasing with better energy reserves after sitting up the back the day before. We are obviously not in a race, but I am admittedly quite competitive with my cycling, so I take his quickened pace to mean a challenge. It is pretty neck and neck though, which is to be expected given we both do this for a job.
We get to the top of the hill and as we cross the provincial border, the road turns to crazy shit. I sit at the beck with the constant fear of someone coming off on one of the messy corners and hurting themselves. As I come around a bend I see a line of vehicles stopped with a bunch of cyclists at the front and a bike upside down. This is momentarily my worst nightmare and a large lump forms in my throat as the heart starts racing. It is a false alarm though. The traffic is stopped because surprise surprise, they have decided to BLAST A SECTION OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN!!!! GRRRR!!! The bike is upside down because Ben is trying to fix it. We are exhausted, sweaty, dusty smelly and all round over it. We just want to get to our hotel and these people have decided to block the road again! When we finally get moving, it is only for about a kilometer, until we come to a power line that has come down and is lying on the road. The trucks are just driving over it and nobody seems fed. Ben lays a whole heap of big rocks on the road to warn the traffic, but all the same, I think they will keep driving over it and will probably take a day or so to get around to repairing it. A rough roll into Sapa completes the ride and it is time to celebrate.
Daniel kicks off the celebrations with a signature dance move called the “Dan Shuffle” The celebrations ago on until about three in the morning with Daniel myself and Dimity being the last to bed. The next morning, Daniel goes for breakfast in the hotel, where the waiter says… “excuse me sir, Do you dance like this?” He does a lovely demonstration of the Dan shuffle and by this we know that Daniel’s move is now legend in the town and he is a celebrity in Sapa!
We get to the top of the hill and as we cross the provincial border, the road turns to crazy shit. I sit at the beck with the constant fear of someone coming off on one of the messy corners and hurting themselves. As I come around a bend I see a line of vehicles stopped with a bunch of cyclists at the front and a bike upside down. This is momentarily my worst nightmare and a large lump forms in my throat as the heart starts racing. It is a false alarm though. The traffic is stopped because surprise surprise, they have decided to BLAST A SECTION OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN!!!! GRRRR!!! The bike is upside down because Ben is trying to fix it. We are exhausted, sweaty, dusty smelly and all round over it. We just want to get to our hotel and these people have decided to block the road again! When we finally get moving, it is only for about a kilometer, until we come to a power line that has come down and is lying on the road. The trucks are just driving over it and nobody seems fed. Ben lays a whole heap of big rocks on the road to warn the traffic, but all the same, I think they will keep driving over it and will probably take a day or so to get around to repairing it. A rough roll into Sapa completes the ride and it is time to celebrate.
Daniel kicks off the celebrations with a signature dance move called the “Dan Shuffle” The celebrations ago on until about three in the morning with Daniel myself and Dimity being the last to bed. The next morning, Daniel goes for breakfast in the hotel, where the waiter says… “excuse me sir, Do you dance like this?” He does a lovely demonstration of the Dan shuffle and by this we know that Daniel’s move is now legend in the town and he is a celebrity in Sapa!
