When you are due for a holiday

Pic 1) Ben, Hoai and I, enjoying a "good to be alive" drink. We got through the hardest trip we've run!
Pic 2) The truck after some "repairs" to make it "drive-able" (repairs included bending the cab back into shape a bit)




They say that cancerians are homely people. That they need to have a proper home and are proud of their home. Maybe in instinct this is true. I have always been very content when I am in my home. Things are different now though. My home is Bangkok, but in the seven months that I have called Bangkok home, I have spent a cumulative total of about two or three weeks there. In reality, my home is wherever I sleep on any given day. Some places are more home-like than others and some places see a lot more of me than others.

Coming off the overnight train from Lao Cai in the North West of Vietnam, I am glad to see Hanoi again. It’s my temporary home while I have been working in Vietnam this last month or so. The first thing to be done is to go and order a decent breakfast at the café that the local office is based in. Then it’s across the road to the small building that is the Prince Café Hotel. A modest room with a relaxed feel to it is very welcoming after having stayed in a wide variety of small town hotels for the last two weeks. It is now one day until I finish the trip that I am running and I can then safely say that I am on holidays. I don’t have to work again until June, so it’s time for some independent travel.

I am finishing up the worst trip that I have ever run. I had a bad feeling about this trip before I started, but I didn’t know how bad I would be feeling by the time it draws to a close. It comes immediately after having led the best group through the same itinerary, so the contrast is amazing.

It started with the airport collection. Ben, Hoai and myself were in good spirits after our last trip so the drive out to the airport was relaxed and warm. Then the group arrive. They are all from Sydney. Most of them go to the same gym and as a group, they are on the loud side. As soon as we board the bus, one of them plugs an Ipod into some portable speakers and provides everyone with some hip hop followed by Kaysan which I thought a strange choice given their current location. It becomes immediately evident that this is going to be harder work than we expected.

The first day and second are uneventful, but hard work all the same. We spend most of it riding through torrential rain. When we reach the third day of riding, things are thrown into chaos. The Phai Din Pass that was a pile of sand and dust just a couple of weeks earlier is now a pile of mud. The start of the hill is a recently graded and hard packed section. The soil is of high clay content and it makes riding through it a challenge. A truck comes past where we have stopped and it has it’s wheels spinning and the rear end sliding out. As we get further up the pass, the mud gets thicker and causes five bikes to almost simultaneously break. They can’t be repaired, so the participants in question have to get onto one of the support vehicles. Then we get to a serious bog section. The truck takes fifteen minutes to get through. Ben comes down from the top and says that there are at least three more bog spots ahead that we are unlikely to get the vehicles through in a hurry. We make the decision to abort the ride and head back to Son La in the vehicles. It had only been two hours since we passed the super slippery section, but by the time we got down there it was mayhem. What we had in front of us was some sort of Vietnamese stand-off. A red local bus, packed to the ceiling with passengers and their cargo had attempted to descend, but had started to lose control, so had simply stopped. Behind him, a dump truck had encountered similar problems and was stopped in a position that blocked the road. In total there were eight vehicles including ours lined up behind these two. Then in the opposing direction at the bottom of the slope was a line up of buses and trucks. There was a heated argument between the driver of the red bus and another bus wanting to come in the opposite direction. In order for the vehicles to try and go up, the ones coming down had to go through, but the ones going down wanted the up ones to turn around and get out of the way, as they feared that they would collide when they started sliding.

So Ben, Hoai and myself begin some diplomatic efforts. To start with, we try to tell the drivers wanting to go up that there is no point and that the road is impassable ahead. Then we explain to the driver of the red bus that if he gets all the passengers off the bus, he will be able to control his slide enough that he will avoid colliding with the up traffic (and may reduce the risk of injuring his passengers). Into this mess walk three local officers in their green uniforms. They have a small wheelbarrow full of dry soil and rocks. This is just laughable. We would need around a hundred of these barrows. It does however give us an idea. We start to throw all the ballast rocks from the side of the road onto the slope. This way the vehicles will have something to grip. Eventually there are enough rocks on the road for the red bus to attempt a descent. The passengers wouldn’t get off because they didn’t want to lose there seat, so a severely overloaded bus goes careering down the slope, while sliding very much in the direction of the drop off on the side of the road. It gets through OK though which encourages the other down vehicles to try. What followed can only be described as ice skating with trucks and buses. At one point, a six axel petrol tanker slides past us without any of it’s wheels turning. Scary stuff! Eventually our vehicles slide down the hill and take us back to Son La.

We formulate a plan for an alternative route. It will cut Dien Bien Phu and see us traveling one day ahead of schedule. It involves trying to cut through roads where even the locals can’t tell us what the conditions are like. For all we know they could be tiny cart tracks, but we have to at least try. There must be something there if it was worth someone putting it on the map. So the following morning we set off on the support vehicles to try and get through. All is going well, the roads turn out to be in far better shape than our originally intended route. Then we come to a mudslide. This perfect road just disappears under a massive load of mud. Plan B foiled!

Plan C. Drive through another alternative route to our intended final destination in Sapa, then ride in reverse some of the original route. After thirteen hours driving we reach the cold, wet and foggy Sapa. We then battle through two days of riding in the rain to get to Old Lai Chau. On the third day, we plan to drive back to Sapa to conclude the trip and catch the overnight train back to Hanoi.

The drive back to Sapa is where my trip takes a very unexpected turn for the worse. I set off on the truck with Liem the driver. I prefer to travel in the truck because I get bus sick sitting in the back of a mini-van, and Liem is a nice fella who I figure deserves some company. He speaks no English, but we have fun anyway, just using miming and pointing to communicate. We leave a bit earlier to get to Sapa before the group. That way I can do the check in ahead of them and their luggage will be unloaded and waiting for them.

We’ve been descending a mountain pass for a few kilometers when we round a bend and face an on-coming six axel truck. On our side of the road there is a parked dump truck, so Liem needs to hit the brakes and bring us to a stop behind the dump truck. He brakes, shifts down a gear and brakes again. Only the second time, the overheated brakes fail and we go slamming into the back of the parked truck. My reflexes are quick enough to at least turn my legs to the side a little, so the impact is not front-on to my knees. All the same, the cabin gets crushed onto my legs and pins them into the seat and the foot-well. The excruciating pain of the twisted metal of the truck cabin against my legs is causing me to make some fairly unpleasant noises. I look next to me to see that Liem’s side has not suffered the same impact and he is able to get out of the truck. Some farmers run over with crowbars and start trying to pry the cabin off me. I realize my phone has coverage and I call Ben in the hope that he can call some sort of emergency services from Sapa. At this point, it seems as though the farmers efforts are not working and I might be trapped in this wreck for a while yet. The circulation to my legs is cut by the pressure and I start to panic, thinking about what possible long term damage may have occurred. As I am asking Ben to call Sapa, the farmers find the right spot of leverage and the pressure comes off my legs. Liem pulls me out and I fall in a heap in the small stream running along the road. The accompanying scream lands in Ben’s ear and I drop the phone. In hindsight, this must have caused him some distress. By the time I gather my composure enough to call him, the phone reception is not working.

At this moment Mr Tony Zen and his wife come past in a 4WD with their driver and guide. Mr and Mrs Zen have a first aid kit and they help me to get cleaned up. They then kindly give me a lift to Sapa. At a guess I thought that my knee may need stitches, but the legendary doctor from our group, later says they are not necessary. So today somebody was looking out for me upstairs! I have walked out of this with some lacerations, bruising and emotional shock. When I think about alternative scenarios, all stack up quite badly. Had the brakes failed coming into a hair-pin bend, Liem and I would not be here. If we had been traveling ten kilometers faster, I am sure that I would have been in that truck for a lot longer and would have two broken legs. If the parked truck had been bigger the impact would have been at head height and that would be game over. I am incredibly lucky and this is why I am writing this in my blog. I know it may alarm some people, but it is a large event and for that reason I need to air it to you all.

I’m sure you can see why I am happy to be finishing this trip. I am in need of time off and the mess that was this trip is a sign that I need a break. So it’s a damn good thing that
I have one!

PS: Despite my negative comments on the group, it should be noted that it did actually contain some really lovely people (it just also contained some others). Two of the most pleasant people were Norbert, a Real estate agent from Northern Sydney and the Doc (a lovely Vietnamese Australian lady who has a heart of pure gold:)