Birthday Girl

Day 54: Hanoi (VN) – Ninh Binh (VN). Even when you're on a tight budget, you need to let your hair down out and give yourself a treat every now and then. And with Karen entering the last year of her thirties – what better excuse did we need? So today we forgot about trying to find a meal for under $5, we put on our glad rags on (jeans and trainers anyway) and went in search of the finest cuisine Hanoi could over. And thanks in part to the Lonely Planet (what else!) we found it, in the shape of the 'Wild Lotus' restaurant

And this wasn't just a good restaurant just by Hanoi standards, this was a fine restaurant even by west-end standards and with a comprehensive wine list including a 1995 Chateau Margeux Grand Cru at £1,000 a bottle (yes, that was British pounds and not Vietnamese dong!), this was the Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons of Vietnam. Indeed, such was the exclusivity of this lovely restaurant we were the only diners – but that didn't stop us enjoying our 10 course meal (washed down with bottles of beer because we couldn't afford any of the wine on the menu). The whole affair costing a cool million (this time however, I am talking Vietnamese dong rather than British pounds!)

Apart from the obvious quality of the food, the other noticeable difference between this and some of the other restaurants we had frequented in the Vietnamese capital was the apparent absence of rats. Vietnam as a whole has a big problem with rodent infestation which Khanh had detailed to us during our motorcycling tour. His view on the problem stemmed from the countries decision to round up all of the cats and sell them to China for food. Huffkin and Chudleigh – aren't you so pleased you live in your nice warm house in the UK and not in South East Asia?

Chicken Tonight

Day 53: Phu Yen (VN) – Hanoi (VN). Ahead of us; the evening sun was low in the sky sending long shadows along the dusty road following a hard but extremely exhilarating day in the saddle. We were less than 5 miles from base-camp and I was already dreaming of a cool beer to soothe my parched throat. Back in the UK, they say this is statistically the most likely time to have an accident; when you lower your guard after a days ride out. Motorcycling takes complete concentration and if you don't give it 100% you are in the lap of the gods. Today the Gods were not on my side. Today, I had my first motorcycling accident in over five years of riding. Today, in Vietnam.

Entering Mai Chau, a group of children came to the roadside to wave their hello's and I was only too happy to reciprocate. To my left a lone buffalo walked along the side of the road and ahead of me to my right, a couple of chickens scratched around in the dirt. Ordinarily, my focus would have been with the animals but that evening, to my detriment the children took the best share of my attention. As I drew along side the birds, something in their minuscule brains must have clicked, and they both decided that it would be a cracking idea to play 'chicken' with the bike. Despite my best avoidance techniques, I couldn't stop quickly enough and with an explosion of feathers I struck the first rooster . As the bike continued over the bird, it's animated 'cock-a-doodle-doing' was soon silenced.

Whilst this may have signalled a permanent end to the chicken's problems, it was only the start of mine. With the front wheel now in in the air and the bike unsteady from the action of my sudden breaking, I couldn't prevent it falling away to the right. Hitting the road we slid for about 20 meters of so leaving a path of broken glass and bits of dashboard to mark our progress. My helmet crashing into the hard road surface marked the victory of friction over momentum as a cloud of dust and feathers filled the still evening air.

Behind me, I could here the commotion as a dozen or so local women came running from their little bamboo houses to the scene of the accident. Still trapped under the bike, I was pretty sore from my encounter with the road, but I knew I was fundamentally OK so me-thinks I'd get a little sympathy and perhaps some TLC. So I lay there. ...And I lay there. ...And no one came!

Glancing over my shoulder, I caught sight of the women, crowded around the deceased bird fighting over ownership of the remains! Whilst this melee continued an old man came to my rescue and helped resurrect both me and the bike. By the time Karen and Khanh arrived at the scene, the women's dispute appeared to be over and an old lady disappeared in to her traditional village house clutching the lifeless chicken by it's legs.

“Look on the bright side”, Karen said trying to cheer me up, “At least you provided that family with a good meal tonight!”. Try as I may, I found it extremely difficult to share in their new found happiness!

Premature

Day 52: Pom Coong (VN) – Phu Yen (VN). “I may have peeked too soon!”, I exclaimed to Karen, anxiously”. Karen said nothing, but continued to stare at the ceiling of our bedroom of the little guest house in the small town Vietnamese mountain town of of Phu Yen. Of course I was referring to my travel writing.

Whilst there were many advantages to keeping a daily log of our travels, 'real-time' writing didn't really give us the time to reflect on the overall experience of our adventure. And therein lay my current dilemma: We had enthused about Russia, we had warmed to Mongolia, we had been captivated by China – but then we had arrived in Vietnam – and this place absolutely knocked our socks off!

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that we thought any less of our fabulous experiences in the previous countries, and we wouldn't have changed anything about our itinerary. It was just that by the time we arrived in Vietnam, I had already exhausted all of the superlatives available in my relatively limited vocabulary and so I had nothing else to give. I had no way to describe Vietnam. You'll all just have to come here and take a look for yourselves.

The motorcycles were adding further to our enjoyment of this beutiful country and the mountain scenery that lay before us - in my opinion, the most involving form of mechanised transport available. For on a motorcycle you don't just pass through the countryside, you are part of it. All five senses are acutely tuned to your environment, allowing you to experience so much more than travelling by car or bus. And the further we got into the mountains, the more like celebrities we felt as whole communities came out to wish us well, each village dressed according to their ethic origin. “We have 58 hill tribes in these mountains”, Khanh said with a great deal of pride. He went on to enquire “How many tribes do you have in England?”. “Err...Just the one, really”, Karen replied with a smile.

Long Way Round

Day 51: Hanoi (VN) – Pom Coong (VN). Drawing closer to the truck, I became smothered in clouds of dust and diesel as it struggled to make head way against the steep incline. The road bent to the left giving a perfect view of what lay ahead. I stabbed the gear lever with my left foot, the bike responding immediately, propelling me past the first truck and then a second. In front of me Karen disappeared from view as the mountain pass snaked sharply to the right. I gave a little push on the inside bar and the bike instantly banked to the right, narrowing the radius of the turn. As the sun emerged from the other side of the mountain, the apex of the bend came clearly into view, allowing me to give it a little more gas - instantly, the bike stood up and I had Karen in my sights once again. We were riding motor cycles through the mountainous jungle region of North Vietnam and we were having an absolute hoot (you all knew we would didn't you?)

Having left Hanoi shortly after rush hour, Khanh our Vietnamese guide for the next three days, quickly got us on the the quiet back roads to the North of the capital city. Riding through sleepy villages, rice paddies and untouched rain forest, the bikes provided the best possible perspective to view this stunning landscape. Far from the beaten track we seemed to be the star attraction in every village we entered: Children waving hysterically, adults smiling their friendly hellos and other bikers nodding appreciatively.

With all this attention, it was easy for Karen and I to become complacent, but these roads needed absolute concentration. In addition to the usual biking dangers , poor road surfaces and roaming livestock at every turn gave these road an extra challenge. Indeed, such were the conditions, that after 6 hours solid riding we had covered just a little over 100 miles, a distance that would have taken about an hour on our bikes back in the UK (Sorry, officer I meant 2 hours!)

Eventually though, after perhaps the most memorable day of our trip so far, we arrived at the little village of Pom Coong, where our guide had arranged for Karen and I to be the guests of the Chung family, simple farmers belonging to the Muong hill tribe. Their traditional wooden stilt house overlooking the rice fields provided the perfect place for us to catch our breath, try some delicious home cooked Vietnamese food and drink a glass or two of rice wine whist we listened to the hypnotic sound of the jungle as day gradually gave way to night.

Bananas

Day 50: Halong Bay (VN) – Hanoi (VN). “Maybe we can enter Thailand at Poipet, then go from into Laos and then re enter at the border crossing near Vientianne” I said, spreading some more strawberry jam on to my slice of toast.

The sailing junk continued on its course through the bay while Karen and I tucked into to a hearty breakfast. We listened intently to our French shipmates, Stephanie and Fred recounting their travelling tales from 8 months on the road taking in South America, New Zealand, China and now, Indo-China.

Since leaving England back in January, the Thai government in it's wisdom had decided to change it's immigration rules for European nationals which was now affecting all of our travel plans, hence the hot topic of our early morning conversation.

In a seemingly money motivated move aimed at hitting backpacking travellers, whilst protecting the higher spending tourists, visa durations had been halved for those crossing a land border rather than flying in to the country. In addition, the rules around multiple entries had been revised, which from what we understood, was causing no end of confusion and injustice at the various border control points. On top of all that, the UK and French Foreign Offices were also warning their citizens not to use the land borders at Chong Jom or Choam Sa-Ngam due to the levels of tensions between the Thai and Cambodian military. “Take no notice of that”, Fred said. “It's just governments being over protective”. Maybe he was right, I thought.

Now I'm no politician and I don't claim to know anything about macro economics, but it seems to me that when close on ten per cent of a countries gross domestic product is generated from tourism and with the world in financial meltdown, the last thing you would want to do as a government would be to drive away dollars, euros and pounds. But that was precisely what this new directive was going to do.

Clearly, this was going to affect our plans, but we didn't know how. And right now, the truth of it was we didn't really care. We were in Vietnam, and Thailand was weeks away yet. “Pass the sun tan lotion, can you Karen!”

PS If you happen to be a Thai border control guard reading this, we'd like you to know how much Karen and I are looking forward to meeting you and visiting your wonderful country. I do hope you didn't mind our little joke about your government – I'm sure they know what they're doing really!. You do have a sense of humour, right!?

By the Seaside

Day 49: Hanoi (VN) – Halong Bay (VN). “It's a turtle. No, no, wait. That's the bear. Or maybe it's the lion!?”, I suggested to Karen, clearly bemused by the gigantic stalagmite formations in Sung Sot Cave that were supposed to resemble the form of magical animals.

After two and a half days at the mercy of Hanoi's acrid pollution we were in need of some fresh air and with the Gulf of Tonkin a (relatively) short bus ride away, Karen and I decided the best way to clear our nasal passages would be to take a trip to the seaside.

7 weeks had passed since we last saw the sea and that was on the opening day of our voyage whilst crossing the North Seas from Harwich. But gazing out over Halong Bay from the decks of our Vietnamese Sailing Junk, the panorama felt like a million miles away from the Suffolk coast rather than the eleven thousand or so that we had actually travelled to be there. Around 3,000 incredible islands rose from the emerald waters – a priceless collection of unfinished sculptures hewn from the hand of mother nature. Untouched white sandy beaches awaited discovery by anyone who cared to explore them and a flotilla of small fishing junks completed this idyllic scene.

And here we were aboard this beautiful hand crafted wooden boat - our home for the next two days, sailing across the Unesco rated World Heritage Site: Taking in the scenery, exploring the caves and getting our hair wet. With the sun setting behind the gigantic limestone monoliths, we tucked into a seafood buffet, shared a drink or two with our fellow travellers and listened to the sound of the waves lapping against the shore. Does it get any better than this?

Day 49: Total Mileage to Date: 11,567: Number of Time Zones: 10; Number of Countries Visited: 9; Number of Transport Modes Used: 26, Maximum Temperature Encountered: +22C, Minimum Temperature Encountered: -32C.

Weasel Words

Day 48: Hanoi (VN). Steam filled the air as the early morning sun burned away the overnight rains. Through the mist, a well ordered crowd of several thousand people filed by to pay their respects to their cultural and spiritual leader. We had witnessed a similar thing in Red Square for Lenin, in Tiananmen for Mao. Now we were in Vietnam, it was the turn of Ho Chi Minh.

The Vietnamese are a fascinating and intriguing people, having earned their stripes in successive skirmishes with the world's mightiest powers during most of the second half of the 20th Century: First it was the French, then the Japanese, then the French again, then civil war, then the might of Uncle Sam, then civil war again, then Cambodia and then China...

But as Karen and I watched over a large party of school children at the Ho Chi Minh Memorial Complex, all we could see was an incredibly friendly and upbeat nation that wanted to move on from the past. It appears that all Vietnam's new generation want is a place to succeed. A place to have fun.

Taking time out to soak up the atmosphere we stopped by a café in the Old Quarter and at the recommendation of our hosts ordered a cup of 'Weasel coffee'. The beverage finished we enquired as to the origin of the unusual name (always a dangerous thing to do after you've drunk something!) Our waiter was only too pleased to tell us that this was a special blend of coffee where the beans are selected and fed to a certain species of weasel, which in turn passes the beans through in its excrement which are then ground – hence the unique flavour! “Oh, well. Look on the bright side”, I said to Karen, “At least we haven't got the job of collecting the beans from the weasel!!”