Our Motorbike Adventure - Part III

ELLIE - We spent the morning seeing the sights of Dien Bien. Ad loved visiting A1 Hill, climbing on the tanks and running around the reconstructed trenches! After a while it was time to be on our way again and so we set off on the most amazing, straight and perfectly smooth road I have ever seen. It wasn’t to last though and suddenly the tarmac just stopped and we were faced once again with a small dirt covered track! Not convinced we were on the right road we decided to stop at one of the first villages we came to (by village I mean collection of wooden houses) and check with the locals. It was hilarious – within seconds of stopping literally the whole village was crowding round our bikes trying to talk to us. The only English they knew was ‘what is your name’ and they were obsessed with trying to work out if any of them were taller than Ad – they weren’t of course but very funny to see each of the men come and stand up really straight next to him just to check! We were heading in the right direction and so off we went again.

Before we felt Hanoi my biggest worry about the journey was other road users. However, there was no need to worry as the mountain roads we were riding on really weren't busy at all - well, not with normal traffic. There was one form of road user that I hadn't even thought of though - animals! They were everywhere, dogs and pigs I could cope with but these water buffalo were seriously big creatures and pretty scary, especially when they stopped eating and just started at you as you rode past!

By mid afternoon we were thirsty and so stopped off for a drink in a little shop which was once again owned by a very friendly lady. Deciding this was a good chance for a toilet stop I managed to ask in my best Vietnamese and she pointed behind the shop where there were a collection of doors. Off I headed but after looking behind every conceivable door I just couldn’t find the toilet. I was forced to go back and ask (again in Vietnamese) to which the lady laughed, took me by the hand and lead me back to where I’d just been. Instead of pointing to the doors though she pointed down a rather steep muddy slope to where a curtain was rigged up in front of a pond. I scrambled down this hill to discover that the toilet was a random stone and once finished you were supposed to scoop water out of the pond to wash it away with! Very hygienic I’m sure!
ADAM – After the toilet stop we rode on through increasingly amazing scenery to the place that we thought we were going to stay, only to be confronted by a road sign telling us it was another 150km. Not understanding this we stopped at a hotel to ask advice and discovered that the names of 2 villages had been swapped and that we were in the correct place after all. I can’t believe that the government just changed the names like that.