Nambusters - our tour of Northwest Vietnam - Picture heavy

[VTRDark]

Somebody relieving themselves into a paddy field

Lovin the whole Top Gear thing buying each other silly gifts.

(:-})

[lumpyv]

wow what a trip , well done you lucky gits .



love these type of shots being in telecoms myself. must be a bit tricky to sort out?

[firestorm996]

love these type of shots being in telecoms myself. must be a bit tricky to sort out?

I don't think they sort it if something goes wrong, they just run a new line. I have another photo somewhere of a junction box halfway along the gap between posts (I'm sure there's a term for that) where they had run out of cable and needed to join it. The junction box was just hanging off the whole lot halfway along.

Another amusing thing we saw one morning was the bin lorry trying to navigate its way through the tiny Hanoi backstreets. The power and phone cables dangle across the road as well as along its length, and the truck is too tall and hits the power lines. So they employ a bloke to ride on top of the cab and lift the power cables as the truck drives under it

Del is an electrical engineer type, he was well impressed

[lumpyv]

not recovering old line plant is how it becomes a mess. .

[sirch345]

WOW what an amazing trip

Thanks for posting up all the photo's Neil plus the video's, and for the write up, fantastic

Chris.

[firestorm996]

No probs, more to follow, it just takes a while to get all the photos sorted mainly...

[seb421]

Fooking wow! what an adventure would love to do this someday

[firestorm996]

Day 5 - Lai Chau to SaPa

Last night we'd stayed at the nicest hotel on the tour so far, the Lan Anh in Lai Chau. It's situated halfway up one side of a valley, up a ridiculously steep driveway that seems to go on forever, and overlooks a modern bridge spanning a wide river.



It also had a rather nice pool with a great view.



Once we'd loaded up, we rode across the bridge in the photos and started to track the river across the other side. Almost immediately the road finished and we were then starting out over what would be 80km of dirt and off-road of varying difficulty. It was raining on and off, and that meant frequent landslides









These videos show what the riding was like on the easier sections.

http://youtu.be/Exdo6k6Wov4

http://youtu.be/mYGeRXgV5Z0

http://youtu.be/zI5DhXTgUqc

http://youtu.be/GAGhLywExtI

http://youtu.be/54BHwuKk5hU

At times it descended into a real quagmire, with the rain making slick orange mud that made for heavy going. A few times we encountered trucks wedged against each other in opposite directions, with the drivers and a crowd that had appeared from nowhere figuring out how to get them unstuck. We were able to nip through on the bikes after a few minutes and get back underway.



After 80-odd km of this we started to encounter occasional patches of tarmac which became more frequent.









Eventually we were back on tarmac proper, and started winding our way through the countryside then up towards Sapa.

The tarmac gave me chance to try and shoot a video demonstrating what I call the Minsk Wobble. Basically if you let go of the bars at around 30mph the bars would go into quite a severe and amusing headshake. Strangely, despite this, it actually settled into turns and flicked from side to side very nicely.

http://youtu.be/a0n45Mb-DCs



All the off road had played havoc with my Minsk fuel tank which was only ever attached at the back anyway, so when we stopped for lunch we effected a repair using some pushbike inner tube.








After lunch, we continued through roads that cut through mountain ranges for a good 50km. Eventually we started gaining altitude again and soon we were back in remote mountain areas. We were heading to Sapa, which is a town located 5000ft up a mountain and is often in or above the cloud line. Along the way we passed through many villages with colourful locals who were very curious and very friendly. Every time we stopped, kids would appear from somewhere and want to check out us and the bikes.















http://youtu.be/SL4XWXgBws0

If you go to Vietnam, at some point you'll hurtle round a corner or a treacherous mountain pass and find one or two of these standing in the middle of the road eyeballing you.









We stopped for photos a few times on the way up to Sapa, this really was epic scenery everywhere you looked.

















After this last stop we had to get moving because we were at perhaps 4000ft with another 20 minutes climb to Sapa, but it was rapidly disappearing in cloud cover. After a couple of miles we entered the clouds and visibility dropped to 20ft, and along with it the temperature. A quick 5 minute stop at the waterfall pictured was all that we could afford, because by this point we were losing light, visibility and in need of a beer.

[seb421]

Simply amazing, keep them coming bud

[Shauned71]

Enjoyable read and cracking photos, looks like you had quite an adventure. Would love to do something similar one day.

[playerone]

your in for a nasty shock if you go looking for the weasel coffee across here

Absolutely stunning scenery, looks like a trip of a lifetime

[firestorm996]

Day 6 - SaPa to Thac Ba.

I was not feeling great this day, a dodgy tummy mainly that was probably due to poor hygiene in some of the places we were eating during the day. We'd had a nice meal in SaPa though in the evening but I retired early.

While I was in the room last night I got a knock on the door, I opened it and there's this tiny little plastic chair sitting there in the doorway. Phil and Del are hiding around the corner chuckling to themselves so this can mean only one thing - they've bought me a present!!

Well I say it's a tiny chair, but in Vietnam and probably most of Asia this is a standard sized chair. If you get a coffee and sit outside on the pavement, or have a beer outside in the evening, chances are you'll be sitting on one of these 12" high little plastic stools or chairs.

In the morning we went shopping in Sapa (for 30 minutes) which is a popular spot for trekking types. You can't move for folk clad in berghaus this and north face that. Oh, and mountain women selling bracelets by the roadside. SaPa itself is a fascinating place, a village at 5000ft and in the cloud cover. The first photo below was taken from my balcony in the morning, that's not fog it's cloud. Sapa was great for wandering around and doing a bit of gift shopping. Managed to get a hand woven substantial embroidered 'throw' for the bed (should keep the missus happy) for about £6, while Del was on a mission to buy some pants.





We had a lot of distance to cover this day, so photo stops were kept to a minimum to keep Pinky happy. The first 20-30km may as well have been with the engine switched off because it was just downhill switchbacks descending from SaPa, a really enjoyable way to wake up. There are many instant descents if you mess a turn up - you really don't want brake failure down this road which is good for us, because the Minsks don't really have brakes to fail in the first place. I remember on one right-hander, hugging the armco (taking the vietnam line which allows for oncoming trucks overtaking in your lane around a blind bend) which was right at the tarmac's edge, whereupon there was a sheer drop of a few thousand feet. Because of the bike's lean, I was practically vertically over the armco. Then when the armco stopped all of a sudden I found myself staring directly down that drop - exhilarating and scary at the same time! When we were almost down at ground level again we stopped for photos briefly, again with all the landscape being sculpted into paddy fields which is incredible.













Throughout the trip we expected to see other Minsks, I thought there would be loads but we didn't see any, so ours always draw a crowd. Sometimes when you're cruising on the main roads you will get the locals riding alongside you pointing at the bike and giving you the thumbs up. They generally ride step-thru mopeds and honda cubs so a proper bike with gears seems to be something of a novelty. Plus they obviously don't see many westerners here, as we are greeted with curiosity and friendliness wherever we go. Sometimes you'll ride through a village and not see anyone but you can hear them shouting hello, or running out of their houses to catch a glimpse and wave at you. Del looks like a stormtrooper with his white body armour and that probably has something to do with it, plus he's about 2 foot taller than the locals and is generally stood up on the foot pegs to get better shots with his GoPro.

Towards lunchtime we stop off at the border with China. They won't let us in unfortunately but it's worth a stop off to see China from a distance. Perhaps on the next trip we will go over the border for a day to experience China.









We have lunch in a town that actually has a main Honda dealership. They only sell scooters and step-thrus. The rest of the afternoon is spent doing the slog on the highway. It's a horrible place, there are suicidal trucks that pull out into oncoming traffic and expect everyone to emergency stop onto dirt at the side of the highway. There's dust from the trucks, smoke from people burning forestry or rubbish by the roadside, and overall it's not a nice place to be. I won't sugar coat it. If we go back and do a similar loop we will work out how to avoid this stretch of the journey. The one good part is that whenever there's some traffic lights (rare) we get to beat Pinky up at the lights, which the locals seem to find very funny and I think Pinky appreciates it too.

Late afternoon we then move onto minor roads into the hills near Thac Ba lake to find our stop off for the night. The locals at the sides of the road are all waving and shouting hello pretty continually as we pass through each village. I've never encountered anything like it anywhere else, such friendly people. You'll be riding along not aware of anyone at the roadside and you get a chorus of 'Hello!' from a group of kids hiding somewhere. Once we're off the main highway into the smaller roads the scenery takes a turn for the better once more. We're riding on dirt roads between paddy fields and mountains, with Vietnamese in the traditional pointy hats working the fields.















We pass through lots of these villages where everyone is hard at work doing something or other. The Vietnamese seem like very hard working people. Eventually we get to our overnight stay which is at a local families' stilt house. They cook for you, in this case probably the best meal we've had over here, and then insist on doing rice wine (or "happy water") shots with you. We had a great laugh with them, especially the owner who toasts every round by shaking your hand and saying "howmedoo" which is actually Dzao for "thank you very much".





Stay away from this stuff, it'll strip engine cases to bare metal if you're not careful...



After a bit too much rice wine and beer we called it a night ready for another long slog the day after. We covered 260km this day.

[VTRDark]

The Vietnamese paddy fields are a work of art. Great photo's you have there. So when is one of you going to buy some livestock to throw over one of the bikes

(:-})

[firestorm996]

Good point Carl, we definitely felt like the odd ones out for not having at least one cow slung over the rear seat.

[firestorm996]

Day 7 - Thac Ba Lake to Hanoi

At least that was the plan. But it sorta went tits up halfway through as you will see...

Woke up after quite a good nights sleep considering we were in a stilt house, and even more so when you factor in the strong winds and thunderstorm that had passed overhead in the middle of the night. The food last night was great and our hosts were a riot. I believe the main man was called 'Boy' and we held him 100% responsible for us doing so many rice wine shots. After I declared 'no more' I probably still had another 5 or 10 and this was proper harsh stuff. Despite that, I felt pretty good in the morning which was more than I can say for Del and Phil, who both had a fair bit more than me. We had a nice basic breakfast of bread and coffee. While we were coming around Del noticed this rather large moth perched on a post drying itself out. From wingtip to wingtip it was about 12", absolutely huge.







The plan for today was to just slog it back to Hanoi. We were on backroads and dirt roads for a while before joining the main highway from yesterday which meant more trucks and dust and fumes. Fortunately it wasn't as bad as before and we were able to crack on and get some kilometres under our belt.







Quick drinks-stop...



We were doing well and had covered about 130km, just riding through a slow-ish section of main road running through a town when Phil's Minsk suddenly lost what power it had and started making more noises than usual. Pinky scored a length of that plasticky stuff they use to bind pallets of bricks with, then rigged a tow rope from. It was a bit of a clenched for Phil though, since the towrope was only about 8ft long and he had to brake for both bikes. Plus, if you leave a 8ft gap between two bikes in Vietnam, someone will probably try and ride through it. Pinky located a mechanic in the village who removed the valve cover and removed a snapped pushrod. He didn't have a spare but at least we now knew what the problem was.





Phil assesses the Minsk main dealer;



Phil assessing the pretty girl;





Pinky towed Phil to the next town about 5km away and got another mechanic to look at it to see if he had a spare. Unfortunately there were no spares to be found, so he made a call back to Flamingo. It was agreed that one of the mechanics would ride out the 80km from Hanoi with another bike and some spare parts.

We had some lunch, not great food this time so we just ate the minimum, then we pitched up further up the road where there was yet another mechanic who'd agreed to let the Flamingo mechanic use his tools and workshop (i.e. the pavement). We were quickly made welcome by an old couple who run an electrical repair shop next door to the mechanic shop. Without asking, the kind lady brought out chairs for us, let us use their facilities and were very nice to us, asking nothing in return. In their little shop, which was also their home, he would strip and repair stators and motors from everyday electrical goods, and she would wind copper wire around them to refurb them.



We tried to relax by the roadside because we knew we were looking at 2-3 hours before we could set off for Hanoi. This gave us plenty of time to watch the comedy goings on that are constant on Vietnam roads. In no particular order, here are some of the ones I can recall seeing carried on scooters;
- An office desk and swivel chair
- Passenger dragging a 5 metre plank behind the scooter, saw the same thing the other day with half a tree being dragged behind
- Two fridges on the same scooter
- Scooters 5-up, too many times to mention
- Girls on bicycles, one sits on the luggage rack and one on the seat, both pedal the bike with one's feet on top of the others







Look closely...
















One thing we see a lot here is when someone has a baby or toddler on their lap and the kid just holds on to the bars as they ride. The kids seem to love it, although it is a bit odd seeing a toddler staring at you as they ride towards you on a scooter the first few times. Think what you like about safety, everyone here takes responsibility for their own safety, if they mess it up they lose out and there are often no hospitals for several hundred km.

Eventually around 4pm the mechanic arrived from Hanoi with a spare bike, a Yamaha YBR125, and we got on the road. Phil rode the YBR and we left the mechanic to work on the Minsk. We later heard he fixed it and rode it back to Hanoi that evening.

The ride back to Hanoi was crazy, we caught rush hour because of the bike breakdown. This means more oncoming trucks, coaches, 4x4's, people riding the wrong way up the hard shoulder and so on. As we got towards Hanoi it got denser and denser. The last 20km were the hardest, my blood sugar dropped due to lack of food, and I started getting frustrated. I'd been at the back trying to catch the same gaps as the others and not managing it most of the time. I'm sorry to say eventually I chucked my toys out of the pram after a coach barged into my panniers, shoving me into the next lane on a busy Hanoi main carriageway. We stopped for a few minutes while I cooled off then got going at a sedate pace. Eventually we made it back to flamingo tired and in need of food and a beer.

The main route for us in and out of Hanoi is across this bridge which seems to have been designed as a pedestrian walkway, it runs parallel to a train bridge. It gets pretty manic on that bridge, it's barely wider than a car and is always flooded with scooter traffic but moves fast.



At Flamingo we scoped out some Honda's sitting there looking at us invitingly. I used to have an XR650R so the prospect of ditching the Minsk before it ditched me, and taking an XR250 for the next part of the trip instead, was quite appealing. After checking how much extra it would work out at per day I decided to do that. Del followed suit with a CRF250, and Phil had got quite attached to the YBR125 that the mechanic brought so he decided to go with that instead.

We breathed a big sigh of relief at having got back to Hanoi safe and sound. Tomorrow we would set off on the second part of our trip, a 3-day loop to Cat Ba Island and Ha Long bay.

So this was the first part of the trip over with. Our route covered over 1300km and is approximately detailed below. In reality the route was a lot more varied than shown here, since we avoided the main routes shown in favour of quieter roads and mountain passes.

Hanoi - Mai Chau - Bac Yen - Son La - Dien Bien Phu - Sa Pa - Thac Ba - Hanoi