27th August

Ready to go! Approximate distance to Hanoi - 1800km, or 6 and a half thumbs on the map. Approximate distance to Da Lat, our destination - 200km, or a whole thumb. We had breakfast (another hollow roll - how do they do it?), and we started packing the bikes. In front of a lot of people (local and not). "Do you ride in England a lot" came a strangely phrased question from a remarkably interested German tourist. "No" was my determined and slightly nervous reply, which seemed to do little to deter him. He watched as we packed the bikes, helped enormously by The Uncle (I'm going to miss him) and the stares of the locals. A lot of chatter was going on around me, all in Vietnamese, and I'm sure most of it was detrimental, or possibly prayer for our safe trip. Thanks. After some deliberation as to whether to head left or right, we chose correctly, and honked and throttled our way through the streets laden down with well-strapped luggage.

It was hot. Extremely hot. I remembered reading that on long drives you should really wear long sleeves and trousers, but with the wind rushing over you as you accelerate northwards you don't really think about this for too long. This is a mistake. However, it is a mistake it takes quite a long time to realise - as we found out. We were stuck in slow moving traffic in the middle of the city for half an hour, taking ages to get out of the city centre. It was disparaging to say the least. With the sun beating down on my exposed limbs, I started to worry that at this rate Da Lat would be unattainable in a day, and the magnificent parting words from our hosts at the hotel indicated strongly that if we were not in Da Lat by nightfall we would be murdered for our bikes. I kid you not.

Murdered.

With this in mind, and with our disconcertingly pathetic pace across the country, it was with some relief that we hit the outskirts of the city. In fact, we were so far outside the main city that we no longer had a good scaled map. The houses and shops slowly turned into vegetation and shacks, and before long we faced our first proper junction. Left, or right? We chose wrong, of course, and in the preceding few minutes, Tris managed to not only drop the map, but drive convincingly over it just to make sure. I waited at the next stop and we had a bit of a falling out over what had just occurred, but took comfort in our previous decision to "double-up" on maps, so simply got the other one out. We made sure we wouldn't drop this one...

Vietnam, on a map, is a country of vast empty spaces joined by veins of roads and nodes of towns and cities. In reality, we rode past mostly inhabited areas on our march northwards, and there seemed to be villages or towns (and petrol stations!) every few kilometers, which is very different to the impression you get from the map. Eventually, we got to the main highway, the "1". However, we first had to figure out how to join it. There was a complicated, spaghetti-junction type road system on the outskirts of town, and we successfully managed to go down the only exit from the mess that ended in a road that wasn't yet built. Some swearing and re-tracing later, we managed to get on the right road - along with a lot of massive trucks.

By this stage I could feel the tops of my thighs burning away nicely in the intense heat, not helped at all by the fact that I was driving side-by-side with huge vehicles that belched out hot smoke and dusty particles right into my face and exposed skin. The amount of fumes and hot gases I breathed in must have exceeded my health and safety allowance for the year by a good few hundred percent. I shared the road with these honking, dangerous vehicles for kilometers upon kilometers, until suddenly the road became a dirt track, with alternating bits of gravel and bits of slippery mud.

Wow. I have to say, when the going gets tough, the tough... get sunburned. Moving over gravel and dirt is an odd sensation. The back wheel tends to slip from under you from time to time, as if a rhinocerous has charged full-pelt sidways into your back wheel, and the only thing you can do to keep you from falling over (laden down with lots of extra weight, all over the back wheel), is to move faster... which is impossible when you're stuck moving at the same speed as the thousands of bikes and trucks all around you. It required immense, draining, concentration, and by the time the road had 'appeared' again I was exhausted, hot, and extremely sunburned.

The road was long and hot and hot and long. We eventually arrived at the intersection to highway "20", and took an opportunity to rest. One bottle of Lipton Iced Tea and a packet of Boiled Lobster flavour crisps later (and then, "Same, Same", the same again), we felt ready to head east to Da Lat. With a small shudder (difficult in the heat), I realised I had forgot to put suncream on in the excitement of leaving, so chose this opportunity to apply. It hurt. A lot. I felt the muscles in my thighs tense, incredibly painfully, so I unpacked until I found the 'legs' to my shorts and zipped them on. It hurt more. Still, we had over 200km to go before we hit Da Lat, and time was running out. It had taken a painful 4 hours to get out of Ho Chi Minh City, and we had done barely 60km, although we kept telling ourselves this was the hardest part of the journey. It wouldn't be the last time we said this...

Highway 20 was different. Much more rural and green, the rich, red soil had been dug up and exposed in places and gave a real feel of vibrancy to the landscape. The colours were vivid. This was the first time I felt like I was in proper Vietnam, not just in the bustle, tourism, and mock-westernism of the big city. The journey down the highway was a chance to see how my bike performed, so I gave it some throttle. In fourth gear. I got to a stretch of straight road, one that I was fairly sure was devoid of some of the larger potholes, and, as they say, let it rip. I sailed past 60km/h, the needle on my speedometer looking fairly happy and static, so I decided to venture further. The road was still flat, there was no oncoming traffic, and all it needed was one more twist of my right hand... so I tried it.

72. 72km/h. Feels incredibly quick, I can tell you. I was doing some quick ETA calculations in my head as I registered this when I noticed that I was smiling rather broadly, and the calculated thought crossed my mind that we would be there by 4pm. Delightful! Of course, that was at an average speed of 70, which would mean maintaining this level of glee for the next 3 hours. Almost as soon as I thought this, I saw some potholes ahead and had to slow right down. And so it became a sort of theme. Big buses and trucks honked their way past, potholes loomed out of the distance, and the road sometimes just.... stopped being tarmacked. It was glorious though. The freedom of riding, being in control, at speed, of your journey, and looking out around you at the simply beautiful countryside was breathtaking. A choking, fume-inhaling sort of breathtaking, sure, but absolutely incredible. You really don't get these sorts of views in England...

The road took us higher and higher in altitude as we headed towards the mountains of Da Lat. Soon I saw various locals stop by the side of the road to don their bike-ponchos so I did the same. We climbed higher and higher, more slowly and more slowly, and eventually hit the mountain roads... which is where the average speed really dropped. We also hit the cloud layer, and as we descended higher and higher, the rain became more and more intense and the road became more and more potholed. The massive construction work being done to the roads seemed to be at a standstill, and the lorries that carried the all important equipment skywards seemed barely capable of climbing the steep roads, moving forwards at a pace not registrable on a speedometer. Of course, bikes and trucks were coming in the opposite direction as well, much more quickly, and it was exceptionally demanding to keep upright in the lashing rain, avoid the potholes, and keep enough revs on in gear so as not to stall the bike. The wonderfully rich red colour of the soil washed away from the mountainside and across the roads, which had the double effect of hiding the potholes from view (exasperatingly dangerous), and making it look like the roads were bleeding (an apt analogy for how I was feeling at the time)!

I was blinking so rapidly to try and keep the water out of my eyes, having long since discarded my steamed up and useless sunglasses, noting with facetious amusement at the lack of crash barriers on the sheer-drop side of the road. This was not fun. This was dangerous. The rain up in the mountains was cold, and my waterproofing was completely useless. My boots were filled with water and every drop of rain that splattered onto my sunburned thighs stung like having a thick needle piercing the skin. I was shivering, I couldn't see, the fact that the roads were barely 2 bus-widths wide didn't seem to deter the downhill buses from overtaking each other - insanity - and I had unsuccessfully managed to avoid three major potholes. I was terrified that I was going to get a puncture, and I have no idea how hard it would have been to fix in that environment. Thankfully, I didn't.

However, I dull-ly pressed on, and eventually came out of the mountainous roads back onto a highway. In short time we passed through a small town and I noticed with amazement that on one side of an intersection the roads were slick with rain water, and the other was completely dry. Driving through into the dry was bliss, but we both took a few minutes to calm down before driving on. The worst part of the mountainous episode was that our average speed was right down, and we had no chance of making it to Da Lat before nightfall...