29th August

Breakfast was held in the back room of the Dreams Hotel, which turned out to be a fully functioning kitchen. I was served eggs and bacon. In a roll. With ketchup. Delicious, and set me up nicely for the day.

I started to strap my luggage to the back of the bike (no easy or quick feat), when one of the locals from Easy Riders (aha! A motorbike touring company) ran towards me rather alarmingly and started pointing to a patch of pavement directly below my bike. Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. It seems my bike had wet itself. Perhaps it was scared as to what was to come, who knows? Anyway, a few minutes of local chattering later by several guys who crowded around the bike diagnosing the problem eventually said "carburettor, petrol, electrics".

Wow. I wonder if the word for carburettor is the same in all languages?

Handily, the receptionist knew a local mechanic, so I trundled the bike after him down the street with a well aimed shout backwards to Tris to "watch my stuff", and I was taken down a back alley. To the mechanic's house. I waited outside for 10 minutes or so, making smalltalk with the receptionist. Topics included the weather (hot), England (not), and the remarkable fact that it is not uncommon for Vietnamese families to eat their pet dogs. In fact, if you know where to go you can get 1kg of dog meat for less than $3.

Wow.

It became apparent that the mechanic was more interested in having his breakfast than helping a tourist (smart man), so I was moved on to a 'proper' workshop just off the main street. Here a squatting man spent about an hour or so tinkering (that is absolutely the right word) with my engine, having first removed all the plastic cladding from the front. He somehow eventually found that the problem was with the fuel injection system, and gave me the faulty piece to inspect. It was absolutely tiny and absolutely replacable, which was nice. Cost me $3.50 for an hour's labour plus parts. Incredible.

Back to the hotel to load up my now fully functioning bike, I was greeted with smiles from a clearly amused bunch of Easy Riders. Upon closer inspection of my Honda bike, two things were pointed out to me. Firstly, all the badges that proudly displayed the word "Honda" were stickers. Secondly, the outer casing of the engine less proudly displayed something unpronouncable in Chinese. This all added up to the small fact that my Honda was more of a Nonda, a chinese knock-off quite reliably inferior in every way.

Damn.

So, we left Da Lat in it's relative cool climate and headed for the coast. Next stop, Nha Trang! We were in luck though, a new road had been made (well, it was almost finished) that acted as a 60km shortcut to our destination. Slightly late setting off, we headed out for the new road. 10 minutes later we were back in town.

Our map (if you could call it that), was quite clearly useless, so we asked and pointed and were gestured in the right direction by some friendly locals. On the right road, the mountains loomed up before us and the driving was amazing. Smooth roads, mountains in the middle distance and vast plains beyond that, the views were incredible. The land seemed alive with exotically green forests, sighing out mists that meandered down the slopes into the valleys below, building a white carpet for the sides of the hills to poke out from. I must have been passing through a field of tea leaves, or something similar, as the warm smell of breakfast wafted into my nose and made me think of home. The rock was newly blasted, the crash barriers were intact, and we were the only ones on the road.

We kept climbing and sinking, climbing and sinking, all the time moving nearer and nearer to a ludicrously enormous thundercloud. Then we moved into it, and got drenched. This was worse rain than in Ho Chi Minh City, this was driving through a thunderstorm. The lightning flashed, though not too often, and I instinctively started counting mississippis, 20 of them, before hearing the first thunder. Ok, I'm still a good 20km from the heart of the storm then, good. The next, a few minutes later, was only 11 mississippis away, and not long after that I had just internally mouthed the first mi... when the loudest most almighty implosion happened all around me. If I hadn't already been completely soaked I would have wet myself. Thunder is different in Vietnam.

The raindrops were huge, driving into them at speed was the equivalent of shooting little pellets of water at your fact at 60km/h. They stung, badly. The roads were mostly entirely devoid of traffic though, the gloriously meandering pathways up and down the mountain almost devoid of human contact. Being wet through is miserable, but there's a time when you can't get any wetter, and by that stage you stop being annoyed and just enjoy the ride. There was water everywhere, the brakes constantly on during the downhill sections, and the throttle fully twisted on the uphill ones. I had a wet, bearded, grinning smile on my face as I came over the top of another crest and looked out to the snakelike trail I had to follow below. One turn, two turns, three turns later and I had slowed right down for the next 180 degree left hand turn and...

Disaster.

I can't really remember what happened, other than the road swept down to the left, I had made a wide, slow turn and then felt my front wheel slip out from under me. I skidded across the wet road, fell onto my left hand side, and the bike stopped in the drainage ditch on the side of the road. I remember standing up, doing a quick full body check, and being entirely pumped with adrenaline and endorphins and god knows what else. Nothing broken. Check. Does anything hurt. No. Helmet. Intact. Bike. A bit damaged. No smell of petrol. Does it start. Yes. Phew. Where's Tris...

A few minutes later Tris swept (slowly) down the same stretch of road and helped me get the bike out of the ditch. By this point the effect of most of the more hardcore hormones in my system had worn off and I could think properly. My jacket (new). Torn. Dammit, that was waterproof. Well, not really. Waterproof trousers. Torn as well. Double dammit, they were my only waterproof pair. Undertrousers. Intact, good. Undershirt sleeve. Torn.

Uh oh.

I took my jacket off and had a look at my left elbow. There was no bleeding, but I had grazed a bit of skin and there were small bits of my jacket in the wound. Tris manned up and got the emergency medikit out, antisepticked the crap out of it, and bandaged me up. I felt really queasy for a minute or two, then stood up. Remarkably, I felt ok. "I think a doctor should look at that". "No argument there".

Handily, I had fallen only 20ft or so from a signpost that read "Nha Trang 56km". So - 56km to go then... I took note of where the odometer would have to be when we got there.

The left hand front panel of the bike came off, so I abandoned it by the side of the road. The electrics and lights all worked, the gears still changed up and down and most importantly, the brakes were still fine.

The rest of the journey to Nha Trang was awful. Not because I was worried about my arm (which I was - the humidity has a nasty way of infecting wounds quickly out here apparently), but more the fact that this new road through the mountains had been carved through some pretty poverty-strucken places. We passed shanty towns of corrugated iron huts and children playing with mud. Quite a few rusting motorbikes, hardly any buses, and lots of cow-driven wooden carts. Stereotypical conical hats everywhere. And lots of staring.

Most of the rest of the journey was spent in silence, and before long we arrived on the outskirts of the town. Hmm, can't be there yet we've still got... (quick mental calculation) 56km to go.

Oh. My odometer's broken too then...

Nha Trang loomed ahead, as we crossed roundabouts the streets got wider and wider and we started asking people for directions to the Golden Hotel. Without realising it, we turned down a street and saw the South China Sea! My spirits were lifted, we turned down the coastal road, and saw a breathtakingly beautiful view of the shore, it's accompanying islands, and swarms of blue junk boats skimming the surface. But they would have to wait. We found the hotel, I showered quickly, and then presented my wound to reception.

That seemed to do the trick. I was quickly given a map to the local clinic, and was seen to immediately. A nurse in an adorable pink outfit and a facemask to match sat me down on an operating table and proceeded to pour antiseptic onto the graze. I got my first real look at it. It was wide rather than deep, and infection had already started near the top.

Great.

She iodined it to within an inch of my life - tip number 5, iodine stings like a bitch - and dressed it sort of nicely. The nurse said to see the doctor in the morning as no-one was around then, and immediately made me felt better. It wasn't serious, it could wait.

Now armed (pun intended) with the knowledge that my injury was minor, I realised I was starving hungry, so we headed for a quite exotically delicious indian meal, complete with the biggest naan bread selection I've ever seen. I chose the nutty, fruity one, which arrived, quite literally, on a silver platter - the naan supporting the weight of hundreds of pieces of diced fruit and liberal smatterings of nuts. Delicious! Sated, but sore from riding, we wondered if it would be possible to get a massage. Realising that there are massages, and then there are massages, I wanted to be absolutely sure we got the former.

We asked the receptionist at the hotel to book something tasteful. $8 for a full body massage (er, hang on, full body?) was apparently what we were afer. A bit apprehensive, we found the place (not seedy, phew), attached to a hotel. There were steam rooms and saunas and hot and cold pools, and lots of people everywhere, which looked legitimate, and then a rather sinister looking row of rooms off to the right. We were awarded one room each, took one shrug at each other, and entered.

Well, it certainly was relaxing. I think there must be a rule as to how much a masseur is allowed to weigh, because she spent a good 5 minutes walking strategically on my back as I felt bones crack and, after the initial shock, a wonderful lack of tension. It all seemed, well... professional. I got hot rocks placed at whatever chakra points on my back were necessary, and a head massage, at which point I was so relaxed I almost dozed off...

Only to be awoken to a strange 4-syllable utterance from the masseur. I had no idea what that meant. She smiled awkwardly and tried again. No, nothing. Again, and I still couldn't understand. There was an odd pause. I didn't like the sound of this... Exasperated, she slapped me on my, ahem, manly bits, and the full force of the shock forced my mind into enigma-style decode mode.

I got it. "Pee pee massage?"

Oh no. Oh crap. No, non, niet, nien, no, no I said looking alarmed. No, I said as politely as possible, the second biggest dose of adrenaline coursing through me that day.

She smiled, laughed a little, and that, apparently was that. I would highly recommend the first 55 minutes to anyone, it was wonderful. The last five, however, are enough to shock you back from relaxed to tense in about the time it takes to slap someone's.....