After my 1st full day cycling in Vietnam I'd failed to learn my lesson and pressed on with some aggressive distances and even a 300 mile bus detour in the wrong direction back towards Hanoi in order to cross into Laos via a different border and pick up more scenic roads in Laos.
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| Rough roads along deep valleys |
My 2nd day on the "road" took me from Phong Tho to Muang Cha along steep canyons in true mountain country. Predictably the road turns from 3-lane highway to mud on the edge of town and heads immediately up the steep side of the valley. All along the river valley, dams are being constructed, the road has been diverted and is being largely under construction high up the canyon side. Heavy overnight rain has turned the mud trail into sloppy soup of every colour imaginable (orange, to red, brown and black) which later turns to slippy gloop as it slowly dries out. Bamboo pole roadblocks operate all along the road, allowing traffic to pass in half hour breaks between long construction shifts; I'm lucky to only be caught out behind one for 45 minutes in the searing sun. On reopening, heavy trucks and buses from both directions battle it out on the single muddy track right next to a steep drop off of several hundred feet to the river below. I later hear from a group of tourists that they had to get out of their bus and push all along these sections. For me, I ended up paddling the bike along with one foot whilst kicking down repeatedly with the other foot attached to the pedal – steering through the muddy mess of tyre tracks was a mess too as one mistake could have you sliding over into the mud. Somehow I survived but my lovely white socks, worn under my sandals to protect my feet, will never look the same again. It really took it out of you and unsurprisingly I didn't see any other cyclists on this section, only motorbike drivers who either shouted encouragement or looked at me strangely as if I was mad – one even went as far as imploring me to turn back!
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| Improvised roadblock held me up for 50 minutes for road construction on tough muddy roads |
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| A waterfall spilling out onto the road |
When away from the destruction caused by the dams, new roads and landslides the scenery was spectacular; full waterfalls cascaded down the steep canyon and occasionally spilled out onto the road, amazingly a few hermits had chiselled an existence out of the steep valley sides with an isolated hut amongst rice terraces.
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| Stuck in the middle of a waterfall on a rainy day in the mountains |
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| Lonely living Vietnamese style |
Riding through Muong Lay, the dam construction gave it the appearance of something from Apocalypse Now, the whole deep wide valley was trashed by earthworks and far below by the river bank, workmen were busy relocating a graveyard which would soon become the bottom of a lake. I managed to get a hearty lunch in with a bunch of guys who again were intrigued by my big legs and hairy arms, but were happy to share tea with me afterwards. Via sign language and several pronunciations of the next town I was able to find out that there was a guesthouse there so wasted little time in moving on. The road's a lot better but my body's broken as I slowly crawl up a 2,600ft pass in the stifling heat of the afternoon. Young kids encourage me as I pass and an old guy in threadbare military fatigues even insists on riding my bike himself, which he just about manages despite only just being able to get his leg over the top tube. I pass three mischievous teenagers wielding machetes, probably out collecting bamboo for dinner, and think how different my reaction would be if I saw the same scene back in Brixton. Over the pass it's all downhill into Muong Cha and I throw the bike into the switchback turns to avoid pedalling as much as possible.
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| Still smiling despite the terrain |
I manage to find a hose to wash down the bike, which was caked in mud and had started making some disturbing noises, then leave a layer of mud on the floor of the shower after cleaning myself. Out searching for dinner I get pulled into a bar service Bia Hoi (draft beer) by some guys from a football team who I presume are celebrating winning their Sunday match. With a little English I'm pulled into their beer rounds, which are drank almost ritually chinking glasses every time you want to take a sip. Again we go through the normal hair, height, body routine but this time also move onto weight, My assertion that I'm 100kg brings a congratulatory handshake from my neighbour – as if I'd fulfilled one of his life ambitions. Most of them were between 50 & 60kg so I'm sure they'll be living off the story for a while. Unfortunately, to sustain my excess mass I needed more than the tasty weisswurst type food (chilled & wrapped in leaves), served with garlic & chili salt, so had to make my excuses; They refused to let me pay anything and did not appear to pay themselves so I've no idea what situation I'd just walked in on. At their recommendation I had dinner in a massive hall I shared with a large party that were constantly toasting each other using tiny cups of green tea – wish I could speak the language to find out what the hell was going on.
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| Dien Bien Phu |
2 days' hard riding meant I was only about 3 hours from Dien Bien Phu. On a good road with only one decent pass to negotiate I was done just after 10am, fortunate really as by that point it was over 30 degrees and feeling bloody hot. Despite it being a large city, the road in was very rural and I shared it with kids riding water buffalo and old cruiser bikes as I approach the city. Dien Bien Phu is the scene of a major military victory over the French that essentially won freedom from colonialism for North Vietnam. Until 10 years ago it was a rural backwater then suddenly the government decided to make it a huge industrial and commercial city and hub for the area. Relics of the war remain with burnt out tanks, reconstructed bunkers and extensive museums displaying, amongst other things, a bike adapted with bamboo supports to carry over 300kg of ordinance at a time – I wouldn't like to have cycled that up the hills around here! Despite all the effort, the city still looks pretty dull and tourists largely pass it by (I had a 200 seat movie theatre to myself at the museum) A load of tourists, including Ferg a guy I'd met in Hanoi, piled into my hotel at 6pm, having taken the bus from Sapa. It had taken them 11.5 hours and essentially been the journey from hell which made me pretty chuffed to have done it by bike in just over 2 days or 17h20 actual ride time.
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| French trenches at Dien Bien Phu |
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| A horse of a bike that carried 300+kg in the war against the French |
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| Stopping for mangoes on the bus to Moc Chau |
Predictably I left the other tourists waiting for the bus to Tay Trang & Laos the next morning – somehow I'd not yet had enough of cycling in Vietnam and decided to take the bus 300km east to Moc Chau and cross the border further south. Although the bus did feel like cheating, it was the most scared I'd been on the roads as the minibus driver insisted on taking the racing line through each of the hairpin bends and several times we only narrowly missed some big coaches coming the other way. I skipped some long but spectacular passes on what was now a relatively smooth main road. As the only westerner on the bus I was beckoned to eat lunch with the 2 drivers. As we shared no language I hadn't a clue what was going on but happily shared a beer, Vietnamese feast (spring rolls, pork, beef, morning glory, rice…) and tea. Again I didn't pay a thing, maybe they'd already had enough from my $12.50 fare. Strangely I felt a lot more relaxed after sharing a beer with the driver, though his driving style didn't change at all.
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| The Moc Chau Plateau wasn't exactly flat |
I got dropped off in Moc Chau, in the middle of a 4,000ft high "plateau" which has become the milk production centre of South East Asia. Unfortunately nobody told the Vietnamese that plateaus are supposed to be flat and I spent the next 20 miles climbing from valley to valley over terrain that could have passed for the Swiss alps. After that the road plummeted down past spectacular views to the low rice plains around Mai Chau – an area with many traditional stilt house villages that have turned to guesthouse tourism to supplement their subsistence rice farming.
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| Rice paddies surrounding Mai Chau |
Arriving in Mai Chau I turn onto a single lane track towards the villages and bump into a ragtag group who were out cycling around the paddy fields. Sydney & Arron, from Canada, had just finished a mud wrestle in a sodden rice paddy and were covered in mud of every colour. The rest of the multinational group were hanging around laughing at the spectacle and seemed like a fun group to hang out with so I negotiated to join their party at a home stay up the road. We shared a couple of beers and even a bottle of Dalat wine over a huge dinner then were later joined by Geert, a Dutch Australian who'd spent the last 3 months cycling through South East Asia and in the process broken a couple of wheel, a full bike and shed 25kgs in the process! Geert had some great stories and is still continuing his cycling through first Europe and then America so we were able to exchange some travel tips. Critically he had a map of Laos & Thailand which allowed me to note down some towns and distances that would be critical to my route planning over the coming days. In the morning I had to wake up the chef at 6:30 to get breakfast – poached eggs in instant noodle soup (excellent), and the only other person about was Geert, ready to finish his last 100km into Hanoi, we wished each other good luck and set off in opposite directions.
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| Rough uphill roads |
Ahead of me lay a long day of somewhere between 60 and 90 miles to get to the Laos border (impossible to tell from various contradicting maps and blogs). A lot of it appeared to be along a river so I hoped that the grades wouldn't be too severe. I was relying on my original map as this region lay just off the corner off my North West Vietnam map. All I had to do was follow the river south to Bo Thuac and then turn right – or so it seemed. The first few miles took me slightly downhill to the river which I happily found flowing downstream with me. Through a couple of villages I hit a big, definitive looking road sign directing Bo Thuac off to the left and some other town I didn't recognise off to the right. Following my map I blindly turned left but immediately felt uncomfortable as the road reered up hill and turned away from the river. I even stopped to ask a local workman who confirmed that Bo Thuac was indeed straight up the hill.
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| A wrong turn took me up this muddy goat track |
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| Taking a rest on the way up to a pointless 2,000ft pass |
I continued climbing for another 3-4 miles before I stopped to check the map again – I was certain the road I wanted followed the river bank rather than climbing up into the hills. Of course, then I realised I was on a completely different road, a cut through to a join the road to the border ~10 miles to the east of the junction I was aiming for. Although it clearly went over a pass, my map didn't tell me how high and the road also passed through a nature reserve so I decided to press on rather than admit defeat and turn back. As the road climbed the valley it turned from tarmac to gravel to stones and eventually slippery mud tracks. At one point a landslide made it impassable for anything other than nimble motorbikes. Each little hamlet I passed looked amazed to see me but encouraged me on – They didn't even have electricity, I'm sure they never had white men visit up here and then a crazy one turns up on a push bike! Near the top I took a break and refilled my water bottles from a pure mountain stream. An old couple pushed a clumsy wheelbarrow up the track past me acting as if I were merely part of the normal scenery.
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| With no mains electricity, all power came from the plentiful water |
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| Ducks block the way on my "shortcut" |
Back on the bike, after negotiating a roadblock of ducks happily swimming in deep puddles, I scrambled up the last few km to the top; and then started the jittery journey down. The mud was mostly clay and clogged the tread on my tyres making it impossible to control the steering; you simply had to pick your motorbike tracks and hope for the best. Even using my feet to balance I inevitable got it wrong once and was sent flying over the handlebars as they jackknifed in the wrong track. Fortunately I came out of it with only grazed elbows and knees that, seeping blood, added to the spectacle as I passed through rural villages. Once again, my bike came off better and I simply hooked my panniers back on and continued downhill. Once I'd found my way back onto the main road and along to the junction for the border, I was knackered and I'd spent an extra 2-3 hours climbing a needless 2,000ft and adding 15-20 miles to my day's ride.
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| I bumped into four Thai cyclists in the town that was supposed to be called Bo Thuac |
At the junction (incidentally not Bo Thuac – the road sign was right), I found 4 Thai bike riders clothed head to toe and seemingly unaffected by the heat on a scorching day where I was riding with as few clothes as possible to try to keep cool. Comedy sign language helped me understand that they'd cycled up from their home town in Thailand through Cambodia, Laos & Thailand. We share lunch at a little roadside stall but even if we shared a language it would have probably been a quite one, we were all hot and knackered and I struggled to force down a noodle soup and a little rice.
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| Sharing the road with rocks and rice drying in the afternoon sun |
I set off in the wrong direction but soon realise my mistake and pick up the road out towards the border with 55miles still to go at 2pm. Normally this wouldn't be that hard, but with the heat & humidity at close to sea level plus incessant climbs on a road that's never flat it'll be a tough afternoon. This really is backwater Vietnam, there are no real guesthouses and each village seems to run its own collective business by hand. These varied from the normal rice cultivation (ploughing, digging, planting, cutting, drying, carrying and sieving), harvesting edible bamboo from the forest, cutting bamboo for construction (chopping, carrying, and splitting into inch with strips for collection by trucks), shepherding water buffalo, cows and goats. The Vietnamese worked all day from dawn till dusk and it was awesome to ride through their normal life past old women smiling with black beetle nut stained teeth, kids riding buffalo, showers under diverted mountain streams, chickens, dogs and piglets. Surviving on Tang powder and the occasional Pepsi I needed all the encouragement I got from kids high fiving me on the side of the road, although when a huge water buffalo squared up to me in the middle of the road I thought maybe it's not going to be my day (I also thought that red was maybe not the best choice of colour!)
As dark started closing in, I was still over 10 miles from the border and had one final climb to scale on the narrowing road. I pressed on, eyes straining, into the dark, the road occasionally illuminated by fireflies. I could just about make out the curves until momentarily blinding by a moto coming the other way. With a few km to go I pulled over and fixed my lights, immediately attracting the attention of a thousand biting insects. As I approached town my silhouette set all the dogs off barking like crazy, fortunately none decided to chase me as I had nothing left to flee. Collapsing into the first hotel I found I had to take the only room available, a huge room with a small bed in the corner, windows covered in newspaper and cockroaches occasionally scuttling across the floor. Dinner of pork fat (disgusting), rice and soggy greens, supplemented with a 3 egg omelet just about gets some fuel back in me, but I collapse into bed completely broken.
Vietnam has been tougher than anything I've done before but the climbs were generally rewarded with stunning views. Some stats for Vietnam:
- Total Distance 334 miles
- Days: 3 full days, 3 part days
- Total ride time: 32 hours 50 minutes
- Average Speed: 10.8mph
- Total climbing: 25,250 (4,000ft short of Everest)
- Longest Day (Distance): 100.1 miles to Na Maew (Laos border)
- Longest Day (time): 10 hours 37 minutes riding
- Top Speed: 39.1mph
- Top Average Speed (in a day): 13.6mph to Mai Chau
- Slowest Average Speed (in a day): 9.3mph to Na Maew
- Most climbing in a day: 7,851ft to Na Maew
- Route: Sapa – Phong Tho – Muang Cha – Dien Bien Phu – BUS Moc Chau – Mai Chau – Na Maew
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