The End!

I spent the last night of the journey in a dive of a hotel near the Cu Chi tunnel complex, 50 km north-west of Saigon. Sleep remained elusive, and I lay awake thinking about everything that had happened since I’d left Hanoi. The faces of all the people who’d helped me drifted through my consciousness. I thought of those days in Laos when I’d fought to get Panther through the mud, sand and mountains. And I shuddered at that dreadful time in the Cambodian jungle, when for a few hours I really thought I wasn’t going to make it out alive. But more than anything else, my mind dwelt on the war and how awful and pointless it had all been. Millions of men, women and children from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, America, Thailand, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand and the Philippines died*. Tens of thousands have died since from UXO and the after effects of Agent Orange. And for what? Next week I would be going home. 58,209 young Americans never got that luxury.

I self-medicated with an industrial dose of coffee in the morning, checked Panther’s oil, fuel, tyres, chain and brakes, loaded my panniers for the last time and cranked the kickstart. It was a public holiday and the road south towards Saigon was even more thronged with people and traffic than usual. Teenage girls cycled  in flowing white ao dai’s, mopeds laden with families, watermelons, pigs and mattresses streamed past. Old men tottered obliviously along the roadside. Carts pulled by gleaming, noble oxen trundled by. And through the middle of it all roared kamikaze buses and vast Kamaz trucks. All this on a narrow single track road. In a bid to survive the multi-directional vehicular onslaught I pootled along at a geriatric 30 km/h, swerving the lawless river of traffic that assaulted me from every direction.

The volume and insanity of the traffic was not helping my last day nerves. My shoulders were so tense they were wrapped around my ears, and I found myself becoming increasingly bellicose about the Vietnamese style of driving. I may have been used to it by now, but I was far from understanding the illogic of it. How on earth could people simply turn onto a busy road with neither a glance to the left or the right? How could people never, ever look in their mirrors and think it was fine to swerve all over the road whilst texting, smoking or holding their baby? Why did young girls cycle the wrong way down the road, in the middle of the counter-flood of traffic? People paid so little attention to other road users they might as well drive blindfolded. Their traffic-sense defied every iota of human survival instinct. Amidst loudly  - and entirely pointlessly – castigating people, I concluded that the whole of Vietnam must have had a collective traffic awareness lobotomy.

I stopped for my final lunch at a roadside stall about 20 km north of the city. A young woman in leopard print pyjamas fanned pork chops as a they sizzled over a barbecue. Next to her an old man read the newspaper, jars of tofu stacked up for sale on the table in front of him.  Having explained I was vegetarian, a meal of rice, eggs and greenery was placed in front of me, and the family sat down to inspect me as I ate. Via some successful sign language and my improved Vietnamese, we managed to have a passable conversation. The lady couldn’t believe I’d come so far on such an ancient moped, and she held my hand and laughed uproariously. She then ran across the road and came back holding a watermelon, which we all ate with gusto. As I left they all smiled, wished me luck and held my hand, prodding the armour of my Weise jacket in amazement. What a perfect final meal on the road.

The one major caveat was my navigation system. I had a 50 pence French tourist map of Vietnam I’d bought in Hanoi, a compass, and not a lot else. For the rest of my time in Vietnam I’d relied on the basic GPS system on my iPhone. But in the last two days, just when I needed it most, the 3G signal and mapping system on my phone had inconveniently gone kaput. I was just going to have to drive south, in the general direction of Saigon, and rely on vigorous pointing and sign language to get me to the Reunification Palace, my ultimate destination. It was through the gates of this palace that the North Vietnamese tanks had burst on April 30 1975, ‘liberating’ Saigon and ending 10 brutal years of war. There was nowhere else I could have considered finishing my journey.

My Vietnamese map

As we closed in on the city, the flow of traffic became a raging torrent. At a huge roundabout Panther and I got squeezed between a Kamaz lorry and a bus. A wall of metal closed in on us and for a split second I thought it was the end. I let out an involuntary scream and heard the lorry’s brakes whine to a stop inches from my back wheel. It was an unpleasantly close shave, and I pulled Panther on to the pavement, shaking. It really would be a bore to find ourselves under the wheels of a lorry so close to the end.

I followed the traffic south, half beset by nerves, half leaping with excitement. My mind sprinted forward to standing at the gates of the Reunification Palace, and I hauled it back, pinning it to the present. We weren’t finished yet.

At a fork in the road I stopped to ask a woman directions, and was amazed to find she spoke excellent English. ‘You take the left fork and just go straight on for 9 km. Once you get to the New World hotel ask someone how to get to the Palace’. I thanked her and kicked Panther into life. Nothing. Her engine remained ominously silent. I’d run out of petrol.  What an idiot. Luckily, there was a petrol station less than 400 metres up the road and I wheeled Panther there against the  traffic, laughing at my ineptitude.

Now it was truly the final furlong and we inched towards the finish line, pulled along by ten lanes of traffic, part of Saigon’s never ending two-wheeled cavalcade. At a traffic lights near the centre I asked if anyone near me spoke English. ‘I do!’ replied a teenage boy, leaning over the handlebars of his moped a few rows away. ‘Brilliant. Do you know where the Reunification Palace is please?’ I asked. ‘Yes – I’m going that way, follow me.’ What a stroke of luck.

The lights turned green and a hundred tiny engines thrummed into life, leaping forward. The boy ducked and dived through the traffic and I weaved after him. Just when I thought I’d lost him, I’d see his brown helmet bobbing amongst the traffic.Then – there it was – the Reunification Palace. The boy pulled over and said goodbye and I thanked him, waving goodbye as he vanished into the mopeds. In front of me the gates of the Palace rose up, and buses spilled tour-groups onto the pavement. I rode Panther slowly forward towards the gates, savouring the last few seconds of our journey, until her front wheel bumped the metal. ‘We’ve made it Panther’ I said out loud, and lent over the handlebars. ‘We’ve bloody made it.’

I didn’t want to get off my beloved little C90 and just sat, staring at the Palace, smiling. After 6 weeks, 3000 km and one hell of an adventure, the Ho Chi Mission was finally over.

I am raising money for MAG (Mines Advisory Group), who do sterling work clearing UXO in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. To pop a bit of money in MAG’s coffers please click their logo below.

.*America lost 58,209 in the Vietnam War. Vietnam lost an estimated 3 million, 2 million of whom were civilians.  On top of this 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent Orange. South Korea (who fought with the USA and South Vietnam) lost 5,000 soldiers, with a further 11,000 wounded. Australia had 520 killed and 2,400 wounded. New Zealand had 37 killed and 187 wounded. These figures are from the War Remnants Museum in Saigon.

A book about this journey will be published by Summersdale in the Spring of 2014. Watch this blog for more details.

Old map of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia

With Cambodian New Year a week away, even finding a translator proved difficult. New Year (Chaul Chnam Thmey) is a huge three day celebration which spills out into the weeks before and after it, and already half the country had packed their bags and returned home to their families. Finally I did find someone, a 32 year old Khmer whom I shall call Mr D.  Mr D spoke good English with a cockney accent and had been a guide in the Ban Lung area for ten years.

Mr D turned up at my guesthouse at 8 am on Sunday morning on a hired 125-cc Honda Wave moped. He looked at my bike disdainfully and asked, ‘Where you get your bike from?’ Clearly unimpressed by my response he replied; ‘Your friend in Hanoi no good – why he not get you better bike?’ Biting my tongue I nodded towards his moped and asked if it was any good. ‘Better than yours’ he replied, lighting a cigarette, without a hint of humour in his voice. If he carried on like this, we were not going to enjoy a harmonious relationship.

Mr D knew nothing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, so before we set off I showed him my old Trail maps and explained what I was looking for. A main branch of the Trail in Cambodia had run west to east, from Stung Treng across to the Vietnamese border, cutting through Ratanakiri province. The map was thin on clues, but a place called Ba Kham, around 60 km to the east of Ban Lung, where we were now, seemed to be a prominent hub. Looking on Google Earth the night before, I’d found a village near the Vietnamese border with the same name. There was no mention of it on the internet, and I had no idea if we’d find anything at all there, but I wanted to go there and search for clues.

We rode due east out of Ban Lung on the new tarmac Highway 78.  Dark, uniform lines of  rubber trees marched towards the horizon in all directions. Not a trace of original jungle remained. Where the road turned north to Ba Kham we stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant where an old man was noisily sucking on some pork and rice. Mr D asked him if he knew anything about the Trail. He shook his head and spat some gristle on the floor, barely even bothering to look at us.

A few km after we’d turned north I squealed Panther to a halt. Bomb craters! The field to the right of the dirt road was pock-marked with those familiar holes. I felt like a hound who’d suddenly picked up the scent of their prey, nose to the ground, tail wagging. ‘Look, bomb craters!’ I said excitedly to Mr D, ‘That’s a sure fire sign we’re on the Trail.’ Amongst the craters was a ramshackle wooden house, and two teenage boys sawing at an old truck engine. ‘Let’s go and ask those people if they know anything’. Reluctantly, Mr D approached the boys, asking them about the craters. They didn’t know anything but their father, who was currently relieving himself in the bushes, might do. We waited for ten minutes in the hot sun, watching the boys as they sawed, until a small man appeared from behind some cashew trees in a pair of grimy underpants. His black hair was matted with dust and dirt, and his hands covered in engine oil. Mr D asked him about the craters. ‘Yes, they are from American bombs’ he said. He went on to tell us that the road we were on was indeed the Trail, but as he was very young at the time, he didn’t remember anything. ‘We did find the crashed remains of a US helicopter over there’ he pointed to beyond the cashew trees, ‘about ten years ago, but we sold everything. There’s nothing left now’. I pressed him for details as much as I could, but nothing was forthcoming. It seemed amazing that these people lived among at least ten large bomb craters but knew so little about how and why they were there.

Continuing north, we stopped for lunch in a scrappy town where we ate fly-blown rice and fish soup for lunch. The family who owned the restaurant were watching a dubbed Thai film at full volume. Above the din of the television, Mr D proceeded to tell me how awful and depressing his life was. His father had died of illness seven years previously, and two of his siblings had also died. He never saw his mother or remaining brother. He spat the words out with bitterness and anger. ‘My family were too poor to send me to school, so I was only educated for three years. I wish I hadn’t been born to such a poor family’. It wasn’t the most joyous of luncheons.

More bomb craters signalled our arrival in Ba Kham, a rubbish-strewn village of about thirty stilted wooden huts on the banks of the beautiful Tonle San river. It seemed the whole village were washing and playing in the shallows. A thin, grey-haired, one-eyed man walked up the steep bank to greet us and the three of us squatted in the shade of a tree as Mr D explained what we were looking for. As we talked, a gaggle of curious children gathered round to listen. ‘Oh, I don’t know’ said the old man, ‘I’m only 56, I’m not old enough to remember all that. And I didn’t live in this village then, I lived on the other side of the village in the jungle’. He pointed north, over the wide, rushing waters of the river into Virachey National Park. It seemed odd he didn’t remember anything – in 1970, at the height of the US bombing of the region, he would have been 13. Surely he’d remember such a momentous incident in local history? I asked him if he remembered the bombs and planes. ‘Ooooh yes’ he whistled and shook his head ‘I remember the planes. All the villagers fled into the jungle’. He then looked suspiciously at me and said ‘Why are you asking all these questions? It’s making me nervous. Why don’t you ask that old man down there, he might know more’. He waved a gnarled hand towards the river, where a skeletal figure was slowly washing his pots and pans, and with that he got up and walked away. I wondered if his dislike of being asked questions was anything to do with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge.

The gold-toothed Jarai

As we waited under the tree for the skeletal figure to finish his washing, another man came and talked to us, asking what we wanted. He was the village chief, and told us this was a Jarai village. The Jarai are a minority people who mainly live in the mountainous areas of Vietnam, with only small numbers of them living in this far north eastern corner of Cambodia.  The chief, a very small, very dark skinned man, didn’t know how old he was, but thought he was about 54. ‘No, I don’t remember anything about the war or the bombs’, he told me, somewhat unbelievably   As he left Mr D turned to me ‘These people are so stupid, they’re like children. They’re so ignorant, they don’t know anything. Their Khmer language is terrible, I’d get more sense out of a four year old Khmer child’. I was shocked by his racist outburst, but it was something I would hear from him again and again over the next few days.

Eventually skeletor finished his washing and crept up the river bank, squatting down beside us. He studied me with rheumy eyes and smiled, revealing a mouth crammed with gold, bejewelled teeth.  A surprising display of wealth in such poor surrounds. Again he gave us the same answer ‘Oh, I don’t know, I can’t remember, it was far too long ago. Anyway, I was living in the jungle on the other side of the river then’. And with that he closed the book of his mind, unfolded his emaciated legs and wandered off.  For whatever reason, the people here either really didn’t remember anything (unlikely) or were unwilling to unlock their memories. It could have arisen from a a suspicion of outsiders, or  been related to what happened during the Khmer Rouge. It could also have been something to do with the fact some Jarai (in Vietnam anyway) allied with the Americans in the war against the Vietnamese. Whatever the reasons, aside from confirming that Ba Kham was bombed, we weren’t going to extract any more Trail stories from here. We waved to the children and rode away.

I’d heard rumours that parts of the Trail wound their way through Virachey National Park, on the other side of the river. The Viet Cong had allegedly had a training camp here and the jungle had once been riddled with a spiders web of Trails leading to the Vietnamese border. ‘I know someone in a village not far over the river into the park’ said Mr D, ‘let’s go there and see if they know anything.’ We crossed the river and rode north into the park, following a dirt road through recently deforested jungle. Although Virachey is one of Cambodia’s last bits of virgin rainforest, there are – very sadly – large amounts of illegal logging going on here. An all too familiar story here in South East Asia.

As the sun dipped low in the sky, we arrived at the village, Ket; a dusty, rubbish-infested dive of a place. Everything was coated in a film of red dust, and the children’s faces were red with dirt. Never have I seen anywhere with so much rubbish. The single road through the middle was piled with plastic bags, bottles, tins and rotting vegetable matter. I watched as a boy downed a sugar cane juice and threw the plastic cup into the festering gutter. Mangy dogs and fat pigs mingled with the children. Mr D went off to find his friend, only to return saying he was no longer living here, but he’d found a family who had said we could put our hammocks up behind their house. Since this turned out to be amongst piles of rubbish and next to a generator, it wasn’t the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had.

The main street of Ket

I was shaken out of my hammock at 6 am the next morning by  Mr D. ‘It’s raining, get up!’ I scrambled out, bleary eyed, and yanked my hammock down, rushing under some tarpaulin. Within two minutes the skies unleashed the most incredible deluge, and we sat and watched the red earth turn to slime, and rivers of water engulf the road. Once it had subsided, we went in search of the village chief. Like Ba Kham, this was a Jarai village, but  in the last ten years it had been taken over by an influx of lowland Khmers who’d moved here to work in the rubber plantations. The Jarai had been pushed to the margins, to a settlement behind the mephitic main strip.

We found the village chief sitting in a large wooden house in the centre of the village. He introduced himself as Jamien and said he’d be happy to talk to us, and yes, he knew lots about the Trail. He was a small, light-skinned man who looked far younger than his 70 years, despite an emergent goitre on his neck. ‘The Trail went right through this village’ he said, pointing towards the main road. ‘The Vietnamese used to walk through here carrying guns and ammunition. Later on they brought trucks, with rice, medicine, clothes, ammunition and guns’. I asked him what the villagers thought of the intrusion of war into their lives, and what their relationship was to the Vietnamese. His answers were confusing. On the one hand he said that the villagers, including him, had helped the Vietnamese build the Trail and wanted to help them in their war against the American enemy. Yet on the other hand he said the Vietnamese soldiers had sometimes stolen food from their fields and raped the Jarai women. It didn’t make sense and I wondered how much was being lost in translation. At times Jamien would talk animatedly, and I would ask Mr D what he was saying. ‘Oh, he’s just saying more information, nothing important’, he’d reply, yawning.

Jamien the Jarai chief

We talked to Jamien for over an hour and he told us about life during the bombing, and how the villagers would flee into the jungle, or hide in holes.  When they were working in the fields during the day the Jarai would cover their backs with foliage to try and camouflage themselves from the probing eyes of  American planes. At one point he pulled up his trouser leg and showed us  deep scarring on his knee, from where he’d been hit in the leg by shrapnel.

Before we left, I asked Jamien what he thought of all the logging and deforestation here. His face changed and he hung his head sadly. ‘I’m very angry about our rainforest being cut down, now our ancestors have gone. We tried to protest against it happening but we were powerless, no one would listen. Now it’s gone for ever.’ His sadness was tangible, and I left feeling unbearably sad about the fate of the Jarai.

With that Mr D and I got on our bikes and rode south out of Virachey. Next on the agenda was Lumphat.

I am raising money for MAG (Mines Advisory Group). To donate please click on their logo below. Thank you!

For some reason, ever since I first heard utterance of the name Dak Cheung, I’ve envisioned is as a magical mountain kingdom, perched high on mist-wreathed peaks. The sort of place medieval travellers eulogised about. The fact it had been described to me in less flattering terms did nothing to quell my fantasy: it was somewhere I had to go.

Despite a hard 1400m climb to from Sekong to Dak Cheung, it was more than worth the effort. I spent two fabulous days poddling about the area and hanging out with a bonkers, brilliant Kiwi UXO clearance team. It was without doubt my favourite part of Laos – the only place I’ve been which hasn’t been logged to oblivion. How glorious it was to stand at the side of cool mountain roads and drink in an endless vista of jungle-clad mountains, and ride Panther across gin-clear mountain streams. Since the area is loaded with gold, rivers (hydropower) and valuable hardwood, no doubt it’s next in line. I highly recommend you go, before it’s too late.

I said a sad goodbye to the Kiwis yesterday morning and set off for Attapeu – 84 km south. Or so I thought. Mick, one of the Kiwis, had warned me about the bad road down. ‘Even our driver, in our 4 x 4, is nervous about it. Alot of it is deep sand and big rocks, so be careful.’ Surely nothing could be worse than the road to La Hap?

The Kiwis.. Somsack, Tim, Mick and John.

An hour out of Dak Cheung I stopped beside a roadside offering to the spirits. Incense, water bottles, bananas and cigarettes had been placed on a small wooden platform, the earth around its base strewn with further offerings. A narrow river gurgled in a ravine below. It was either a grave or simply somewhere  people asked the spirits for safety whilst travelling on the mountain roads. I took a few photos then kicked Panther into action and stamped her into first gear. But rather than clicking smoothly into first, the gear lever slipped uselessly through the gears. Not good. I switched her off and dug out the toolkit and my trusty Haynes Manual, thumbing through the index to find the correct page for ‘Gear Mechanism’. Flicking to the page, I was confronted with a terrifying looking exploded diagram of the inner workings of the C90 gear system. Oh no, this really was beyond me. Since the geary bits are inside the enginey bits, it meant taking apart the whole engine to see what the problem was. Nothing about the prospect appealed to me.

As I was uselessly thumbing my spanner set and peering at the diagrams, several trucks went past, the drivers and passengers all hanging out the windows shouting ‘Pai Sai?’ (where are you going?) at me.  ’Attapeu!’ I shouted back, hopefully. All of them laughed, and without taking their foot off the gas, burned past me, engulfing me in a storm of dust. So much for chivalry in Laos.

Temporarily defeated, I sat down in the dust and wondered what to do. I knew that Mick was due to head down the mountain sometime that day, but relying on him felt defeatist. I’d have to try harder. This was the whole point of doing the trip alone, to work things out for myself. I studied the problem again, and my incompetent engineering neurons began to suspect the problem was alot simpler, and to do with the gear lever itself, rather than the actual gear changing mechanism. Just then, a cloud of dust signalled Mick’s arrival, and he got out the car laughing. ‘Oh dear, what’s happened this time?’ Mick, who’s a bit of an all-round engineering and gadgetry genius, diagnosed the problem in an instant. I was right, it was simply a matter of a bolt on the gear lever having shawn off. We stole a bolt from the number plate and within five minutes the problem was fixed.

Whilst we were doing this, Mick’s Lao driver, Lum, was busy giving an offering of incense and a delicately unwrapped chocolate bar to the spirits, muttering to himself as he did so. ‘It’s the spirits!’ I said to Mick. ‘I stopped to take photos, but didn’t offer them anything in return. That’ll teach me to take and not to give anything back’. I quickly peeled a banana and added it to the spirit’s collection, apologising for being so rude and asking for protection on the road ahead. Trips like this tend to make you extremely superstitious.

The red laterite road wound down through Talieng villages, coffee plantations, forest and patches of recently burnt trees. This time of year, just before the rains, is when many of Laos’ ethnic minorities slash and burn areas of the jungle in order to clear it for planting crops. The sight of blackened tree stumps smouldering in bomb craters is weirdly reminiscent of what it must have looked like 40 years ago. The odd Vietnamese moped passed me, otherwise traffic was limited to women and children wandering along the road, bongs and wicker baskets in hand.

At Chavane, an old French airstrip on a hilltop plateau, I turned south on the old road to Attapeu, riding through heavily scented pine forests and across parched grass clearings. I rode carefully, looking hard where I steered Panther’s wheels.  Since Chavane was an important hub on the Trail, and a target during Operation Tailwind,  the whole area was carpet bombed and is still loaded with UXO. The track narrowed through the forest, and I rode through a beautiful tunnel of pines, past a couple who were roasting skewered rats over a small fire on the track. ‘Pai Sai?’ they asked, waving a scorched rodent at me. ‘Attapeu!’ I replied, before riding off. I’d liked to have stayed and chatted to them a bit, but their fire made me nervous. Fires are one of the most common ways people die of UXO here – the heat igniting explosive that has been lying under the earth for 40 years. Round the corner, the whole forest was burning on either side of the track, filling the air with fragrant pine smoke. With flames licking the edge of the path, I pulled  the throttle, again slightly fearful of sudden explosions.

Ten minutes later I got it wrong coming down a steep, rocky hill and Panther and I went sideways, falling ingloriously into the dirt. Both the falls I’ve had have been irritatingly avoidable, and I stood up, wincing in pain and cursing my idiocy. Somehow I’d slashed my left shin, and a two inch cut was oozing blood through my jeans. I’d also ripped both my panniers. I led Panther down the hill, hopping and swearing – I couldn’t afford to make such silly mistakes, next time it might be more than a cut. There’s really no point feeling sorry for yourself when your on your own, so I pulled myself together, got back in the saddle and rode on, trying to ignore my throbbing leg. The only thing for it was to laugh; first a breakdown, now a fall, this was turning out to be rather an eventful day.

The road plunged up and down forested hills, an orange streak through the green. Soon I was riding through a wide, majestic avenue of tall trees, my path marked by red and yellow UXO markers. Further on, the road narrowed into a single track through the jungle, and I ran into a UXO clearance team. Vast reserves of bauxite have been found in this region, and the whole are is being cleared of UXO by an international mining conglomerate. ‘Pai sai poo-so?‘ (where are you going girl?) they asked. ‘Attapeu!’ I replied. One of them spoke a little English. ‘Attapeu!’ he said, raising his eyebrows ‘Oh – it’s 90 km from here. And the road is very bad, you might have to sleep in the jungle tonight. And be careful -we’ve been clearing the road ahead and it’s full of holes where we’ve dug up stuff’. To verify I asked if this was part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. ‘Yes’ he nodded ‘lots of UXO, stay on the track’.  I bumped on slowly through the trees, winding between freshly dug holes and jagged rocks, the path getting narrower all the time. At this pace I was definitely not going to get anywhere near Attapeu. I only had 1/2 a litre of water left, an old bit of bread and half a tank of petrol. And to compound it, the sky was darkening with massed ranks of thunderclouds.

I rounded a corner and there in front of me was a wide, dirt road, with people walking along it, bent against violent dust eddies. It was so surprising after the darkness and isolation of the jungle. I hit the dirt and urged Panther on, nearly jumping out of my skin at a deafening thunderclap – so loud I thought a truck had crashed behind me.  A thunderstorm – just what I needed. A few km later I came to a collection of shacks, one of which sold water. Well, at least now I wasn’t going to die of thirst, and I drank a litre on the spot, watched by 20 women and young children. ‘Where’s the nearest hotel?’ I asked, using the wonders of  Google Translate. ‘Muong Sanxai’ the shop owner replied. Muong Sanxai was about 30 km away from here – I had a chance of making it before dark.

As the road starting to really drop towards Attapeu, I passed the rusting hulk of a tank by the side of the road. The surface here was awful – deep sand, steep hills and loose rocks. Neither Panther’s tyres nor her brakes are remotely equipped for such terrain, and for an hour I battled to stop her from bolting down hill. Not only are the brakes on a C90 woefully poor, but mine have taken such a battering recently they’re barely functional, and emitting the most hideous squeals. A hamster strapped on to the wheel with paperclips would be a more effective braking solution. It was a wholly unrelaxing way to descend what was otherwise a delightful mountain road.

By five o’clock, we were still 15 km from Muong Sanxai, and my hands, arms and shoulders were aching from the strain. At several points I let out yelps of frustration, as another steep, sandy hill appeared around a corner. Then, yet again, I dropped her, precious petrol pouring out on to the sand as I did so. For the first time on the trip, I totally lost my temper, screeching furiously into the empty air. I’m ashamed to say I also lost control of my right foot, which gave Panther’s seat a vicious kick, hurting my foot much more than it hurt her. I apologised, dragged her 90 kg weight upright out of the sand and stamped on the kickstart. Nothing. That awful silence. Not even a pop this time. After more than ten tries it was clear there was no convincing her. Panther was going nowhere.

As it was getting dark and there was no traffic on this road, I was going to have  to drag her off the road and find somewhere to sling my hammock. But after a quick scout around, I couldn’t find any suitable trees, and I also didn’t feel safe sleeping so close to a road. I walked back to Panther determinedly. ‘Right girl, you’re GOING to start this time, OK’ I said  out loud. I gave the kickstart an extra hard kick and she choked into life. Oh the relief! Right, that was it, we were damn well going to get to that town tonight, even if it wasn’t until 9 pm.

More rocks, more sand, more hills. I was so determined not to fall off and to get there I screamed at myself every time I faltered or felt like I might go down again. I wasn’t going to fall off for a third time today. By six o’clock, the sun had set and increasingly frequent thunder was giving way to giant sploshes of rain. Soon I was riding through the full force of a tropical thunderstorm, the sky rent with violent crashes of thunder and terrifyingly close  fingers of lightening. As the rain hammered me, I wondered if pink mopeds were attractive to lightening.

Finally, oh finally…. lights… and I rode into what must be Muong Sanxai. The joy of seeing those lights, of knowing I had made it. To the right of the road I spied something flashing neon, and wheeled Panther down a muddy track towards them. As I got closer I saw it was a karaoke bar, and I literally rode straight into the bar, stopping next to a table of surprised men mid-belter  ’Yeeeeeeaaaah!’ I cried, taking off my helmet and unpeeling my sodden self from the saddle. ‘Is this a hotel?’ I asked a teenage boy, in my best Laotian. He shook his head, pointing to a building 20 metres away. He showed me to my room, past all the hookers putting on their make-up for the night, not quite knowing how much to charge the first non pay-per-hour guest they’d had for a while. Never have I been so happy to get to such a grotty ‘hotel’ for the night.

(Apologies for the lack of photos – internet issues here in Attapeu. Please see www.facebook.com/AntsBK for an album of recent pictures.)

]]> http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/down-from-dak-cheung/feed/ 1 http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/an-engine-rebuild-in-kaleum/ http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/an-engine-rebuild-in-kaleum/#comments Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:03:16 +0000 Ants http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/?p=512 Continue reading →]]> Kaleum, Sekong Province, Laos

Last night’s hotel in Kaleum definitely wins the Gold Medal for the worst hotel of the ride so far. I parked the Panther outside yesterday afternoon and was handed the key to Room 1 by a rather rotund transvestite, who indicated I hand over 60,000 kip (£5) for the pleasure. As I lugged my panniers to my room I noticed a festering damp patch in the concrete hallway. That’s the remains of the last guest, I thought darkly. My room wasn’t any better. The only definable features were a stained bed, spiders webs and the rotting corpse of a gecko.

The loo and shower block were in the middle of a fetid rubbish dump, where stray dogs and a pig foraged for scraps.  A single cold tap dripped into a malarial basin of stagnant brown water. It was so grim I almost opted to stay covered in sweat and grime for the night, but the desire for a semblance of cleanliness overcame me, and I picked my way across the rubbish and doused myself in cool water. If you ever find yourself in Kaleum, I recommend you bring a large bottle of whisky and drink most of it before you check in.

I loaded up the Panther this morning while the transvestite delicately laid strips of raw water buffalo meat on a satellite dish to dry, waving merrily at me as he/she did so. Then, bumping up the track,  two policeman appeared on a moped. They were both very young, and very thin, barely eligible for facial hair. They looked so out of place in their pressed green uniforms and shiny shoes it was as if they had stolen them from their fathers and were playing at being policeman for the day. ‘Sabadii’ they said, and the less pubescent of the two got out an official looking briefcase. ‘Where are you from? Where are you going? Why are you here? Passport please’. I handed over my passport, and they both peered at it, flicking through the pages, looking  at all my visas and stamps. I had visions of being bustled off and questioned in Kaleum police station. There are a lot of controversial things going on in this area, which the government are not keen on people knowing about………..But having filled in some paperwork they said thank you and rode off.

The Panther just about started, coughing into life at the fifth kick. Her engine had been sounding increasingly awful since the bashing she got on the road to La Hap two days ago, and I had a nasty inkling she was in need of major surgery. I’d given her the basic once over yesterday – oil change, new spark plug, tyres pumped, brakes tightened, air-filter changed – but I feared her problem was way beyond the realms of my infant mechanical know-how.

After breakfast – pho and egg whipped up by a one-eyed cook – the Panther entirely refused to start. Numerous attempts at her kickstart produced no more than a loud pop, then ominous silence. I’d done the impossible, I’d killed my C90 – I couldn’t believe it.  I dialled Cuong’s number, and asked his expert advice. ‘It sounds like the cam chain. You’ll never find a decent mechanic in Kaleum, get the bike on a truck to Sekong – and find a Vietnamese mechanic there’. Digby called back a few minutes later, ‘Look, if the worst comes to the worst we can always send you a new engine. There are worse places to be holed up for a few days than Sekong’. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I wasn’t worried though, in a weird masochistic sort of way I felt quite excited. Seemingly disastrous situations like this often lead to memorable incidents – an adventure isn’t really an adventure unless things go wrong after all. Whatever became of us, no doubt it would be interesting.

Just as I was pondering our future, watched by the one-eyed cook and the transvestite from the hotel, a man walked up to me and said in faltering English. ‘You need mechanic? I’m Vietnam. There’s good Vietnam mechanic just up the road.’ What incredible luck. I wheeled Panther 100 metres up the road to a tin and wood shack, where a sinewy, tattooed young man was crouching down, taking apart an engine.  With a bit of sign language we established what the problem was, and he set to work on Panther. Cuong was right, the cam chain was broken, as was the cam sprocket. No wonder the poor bike had been sounding like a tractor since La Hap.

Things weren’t looking good at this stage…

By this point it was 9 am, and next door to the mechanic’s hut a major party was going on. 15 men and women sat around a wooden table, the floor around them piled with discarded bottles of Beer Lao. Loud Lao pop crackled out of blown speakers, and several of the women danced, while others sat and smoked large bamboo bongs. Not your usual Monday morning scene.

I stood and watched the mechanic work, his long thin legs folded under him as he peered at the engine. At the back of the hut, his young wife chopped up a hunk of fish on a grimy chopping board. A woman wandered by with a bamboo bong, handing it to me as she passed. I took a deep inhalation then handed it back  and she walked on, as if handing her bong to a ‘farang’ was entirely normal procedure. Intermittently, I was joined by other spectators, with nothing better to do on a Monday morning than watch a pink moped being fixed. One of the temporary observers was a Vietnamese engineer who spoke basic English. ‘Are you here on a picnic?’ he asked, ‘you know, tourism’. Well, I guess you could call it that…

By 11 am  the mechanic was putting the engine back together. He tried the kickstart. Nothing. Not a whisper. Damn it. He unscrewed the other side of the engine, taking off the cylinder head and removing the piston and piston valves. It seemed the broken cam chain had, in technical terms, really screwed up the whole engine. I resigned myself to not going anywhere today and wandered off to get some cool drinks for the mechanics.  The party in the hut next door let out a holler as I walked past, excitedly waving me in. By now the pile of empty Beer Lao bottles was a foot deep in places, and the two dancing women were barely able to stand. They grabbed me, cross-eyed with inebriation, and thrust a warm glass of beer into my hand. Well, just one, I thought, and drunk some – to cheers from the assembled revellers. One of the women, the drunkest one, started grabbing me rather too enthusiastically, gyrating against me, wooping. More cheers. What the hell was it with this town? First a transvestite, now drunken female advances. I drank the beer and retreated to the sanity of the mechanics.

Bamboo bongs galore in Kaleum

Oddly, every time I wandered off from the mechanics, the younger of the policeman appeared out of nowhere, smiling innocently. I had a feeling he’d been tasked with keeping an eye on the foreigner, although if that was the case, he really needs to practise his subtle stalking skills.

At around 1 pm, just as the mechanic was putting the engine back together for the second time, a peal of thunder rolled around the hills and Kaleum was engulfed in a violent downpour. Everyone vanished indoors, except for three tiny, naked children who hurled themselves with gusto into the newly formed puddles. A woman castigated them from her shop, the children merrily ignoring her.

Then – Hoorah! This time the Panther started. And not only that, but she sounded like her old, purring self. Not a hint of a rattle or splutter. I said thank you at least ten times, paid the lovely mechanic 200,000 kip (about £17) and rode off, delighted.

It’s too late to ride anywhere today so sadly I am going to finish this and go and check myself back into Room 101. I can hardly contain my excitement at seeing my friend the dead gecko again. Tomorrow I’m going to head for Sekong to hunt down a hotel with proper plumbing, laundry and wi-fi. If I succeed, I’ll upload some photos to the last two blogs.

For now – adios.

The fabulous mechanics

I woke up yesterday at the usual hour of 06.30, stirred by the stifling heat  and a blast of Lao pop music. Everyone seems to get up early here; it’s too hot not to.  It was time to hit the Trail anyway -today I was heading out of Nong, into the real boonies.

Having studied some old Ho Chi Minh Trail maps and the GPS, I decided to head East, towards the mountains of the Vietnamese border, to a place called La Hap. If I had time, I’d ride on to Ta Oy. La Hap was an important staging post on the Trail and I’d heard it was an interesting ride there.  So having filled the Panther with petrol and strapped a spare bottle to the front rack, we headed out of Nong, on a dusty dirt road. The first part was disappointingly easy – a straight, packed dirt track. Young banana plantations and burnt patches of forest flanked the way, the latter from the local practise of slash and burn agriculture.

Soon, the road narrowed to little more than a deeply rutted footpath, winding through a tunnel of bamboo forest. Recent rain had churned the dust into a gelatinous mess, and I wobbled along a  narrow strip of dried mud, which wove tightrope-like between the puddles and crevasses. After about an hour I came to a confusing confluence of paths, and stopped in what seemed like a deserted village to get my bearings. As I was scrutinising the GPS, a young woman appeared on the path with five gourds of water strapped over her shoulders.  Out of one corner of her mouth hung a blackened tobacco pipe. She looked startled when she saw me, and when I said ‘Sabadii!’ (Hello) she simply broke into a run and bolted past me into the forest. I don’t think they see many foreigners round here, I thought to myself.

Five minutes later, two more women passed me, carrying wicker baskets filled with leaves. I said ‘Sabadii! and shot them my most ‘I’m a friendly foreigner’ smile. But alas, they thought differently, and once again hitched up their sarongs and sped into the thickets of bamboo.

Somewhat amazed by the people’s reactions, I headed east again, along the most heavily bombed bit of road I’ve ridden so far. The narrow track was lined with enormous  craters, and within 10 km I came across the bombed out remains of three old Ho Chi Minh Trail trucks, and numerous old Trail fuel drums. As I stopped beside the mangled, rusted remains of one truck to take a photograph, I saw a group of people  walking towards me, about 50 metres away. As soon as they spotted me, the same thing happened, they all about-turned and melted into the forest.  Very bizarre indeed.

House built on cluster bomb casings

Apart from these few terrified people, the track was empty, winding through dense, humid jungle. The further I went, the harder it got: steep hills, rocks, deep ruts and mud. Some hills were so steep and rocky I stopped at the top and wondered how on earth we’d get down it, but somehow we always managed. We bumped and slid down, ground and clanked up. Panther’s poor little engine strained and wheezed, and her city tyres spun in the mud. At one point going was so slow it took us three hours to go 15 km. Keep Buggering On, I thought to myself, and km by km we nosed forwards.

At the top of one particularly steep hill I turned off the engine, took off my gear and sat in the path, sweating, my head pounding from the effort. It was only now that I truly appreciated the density of the jungle, and quite how remote I was.  Walls of trees hemmed me in on either side, and the only sound was the cacophony of cicadas. It struck me as odd that I couldn’t hear any monkeys or birds – did it mean there was a tiger in the area? The thought was enough to make me down some water, stuff some peanuts in my mouth, crank the kickstart and ride on.

About four hours out of Nong, I rode into my first real village, where children watched open-mouthed as I rode past. Even better, there was a shack selling a handful of drinks, and I gulped down a tepid Pepsi. Within three minutes of me pulling up outside the shack, I had an audience of at least 50. The whole village had gathered, like iron filings to a magnet, to study me drink my Pepsi. Saying hello didn’t garner much reaction at first, they simply stared in surprise at this unexpected intrusion. Then a couple of Vietnamese men appeared, and started talking to me. Since my Vietnamese is rather lacking, we didn’t get much further than the fact I was English and had ridden from Hanoi.

Emboldened by this, a few of the young men started laughing and joking. It’s amazing how much you can understand without understanding anything, and I didn’t like the gist of their jokes. At one point two of the men pointed to me and said something which caused the whole village to break into laughter.  It could have been harmless, but I instinctively didn’t feel comfortable, so I said bye, waved and rode on.

Soon after the village, I came to a wide river crossing. A bare-breasted woman washed in the river, looking at me inquisitively as I rode past. I pointed to the river, and then to the bike, and gave her a thumbs up. She nodded.  Well there was only one way to find out….

The first section was easy, but in the middle the river ran through a deep gulley. There was no way I’d get across there without a ducking. As I pondered my options, a man on a moped rode into the river from the other side. Seeing my predicament, he got off his bike and walked through the water towards me, picking up a large bamboo pole on the way. I pointed to the deep water, and shook my head. He got the picture. Out of nowhere appeared two boys, who the man efficiently marshalled into action. Next thing, the bamboo pole was through Panther’s front wheel and we were hoisting her over the gulley; me and two small boys holding either end of the pole, my Saviour holding her up at the back. I thanked them all profusely and off they went. Another obstacle crossed.

Moped supermarket crossing river

To my surprise, a few km later I came to a perfectly smooth ribbon of tarmac, leading south to Ta Oy. It seemed so incongruous after the rigours of the last few hours. I rode the last 20 km to Ta Oy, amazed at the road, passing line-painting teams asleep in the shade. I later learnt that it was only finished last week. I couldn’t get over the fact that less than 20 km away were villagers who have barely, if ever, encountered foreigners before, yet here was this gleaming superhighway to the Vietnamese border.

Finally, at five o’ clock, I rode into Ta Oy. I was so tired, hungry and thirsty I dived into the nearest (Vietnamese) restaurant and collapsed in a dusty mess at one of their tables.   Plain rice has rarely tasted so good.

To donate to MAG (Mines Advisory Group) please go to my Virgin Money Fundraising page HERE.

PS Sorry no pics – my 3G dongle is way too slow! Will upload some when I get to a better connection.

With the MAG team today

DURING THE VIETNAM WAR MILLIONS OF TONNES OF ORDNANCE WERE DROPPED ON THE VIETNAMESE COUNTRYSIDE. AN ESTIMATED 30% OF THESE BOMBS FAILED TO DETONATE AND TODAY, IN QUANG BINH AND QUANG TRI PROVINCES, 100% OF COMMUNITIES REMAIN CONTAMINATED WITH UXO.

I VISITED SOME OF MAG’S (MINES ADVISORY GROUP) FIELD OPERATIONS IN QUANG BINH, TO SEE HOW THEY ARE HELPING TACKLE THE PROBLEM…..

The last American bomb was dropped on Vietnam 40 years ago, yet the impact of that conflict still affects millions of Vietnamese today. It’s estimated that between 350,000-800,000 tonnes of UXO (unexploded ordnance) still remains here, polluting a staggering 20% of Vietnam’s land surface. Moreover, upwards of 100,000 Vietnamese have been killed or injured by UXO since the war ended. Such statistics almost belie belief.

MAG have been working in Vietnam since 1999, during which time they have removed and destroyed 191,596 items of UXO, and cleared over 7 million square metres of land. Quang Binh, the province I am in now, and neighbouring Quang Tri, are their two main areas of operations.

Having been picked up from my hotel at 07.00 this morning by four members of the MAG team, we headed for the first site, the village of Vinh Tuy 2. Vinh Tuy had been on the north-south Ho Chi Minh Trail during the War, and hence had come under years of heavy bombardment. Tang, the Technical Operations Co-ordinator, explained that they were conducting a Community Liaison project in the village; a house to house survey to find out the locations and identity of UXO. At the first house we went to, an old lady in rice waders and a non la (traditional conical Vietnamese hat) came out and greeted us. Within seconds she was pointing to the end of her garden, the word ‘bombie’ (cluster bomb) clearly decipherable.  As she talked, two young men lurked in the shadows behind her, muttering to themselves. Duong, the MAG translator, turned to me and said, ‘Her husband fought in the South during the war and was sprayed with Agent Orange. Perhaps that’s why her two sons are like this’.

On the way to the next house, MAG stopped a man walking past, asking him the same question ‘Do you know the locations of any UXO in the village?’ ‘Yes’ he said, ‘Right here in this bamboo bush.’ He gestured to a clump of bamboo a foot from where we stood. ‘This is where we used to throw any bombies we found, there must be quite a few under there’. Less than 10 metres along the path Tang pointed out a clump of leaves that had been sprayed red. Underneath it lay a heavily rusted 2.75 inch rocket, looking dangerously innocuous – a 40 year old, foot long bit of rusted metal with a deadly blast radius of 500 metres.

Community Liaison, Vinh Thuy

In the next village we visited, Vinh Tuy 1, MAG were at the second stage of their operations – the clearance. Tam, the Team Leader, took us to a house where a one-man MAT (Mine Action Team) was operating. As Tam talked, we heard the whine of the metal detector, and the de-miner shouted to Tam. ‘He’s just found a HE (high explosive) 37 mm, do you want to  come and see it?’ Tam showed me a safe path through the garden to where the de-miner was standing. In the earth a metre away, cordoned off by red tape, lay what looked like a carrot, barely distinguishable from the soil. ‘Are you ever afraid?’ I asked Khanh, the de-miner. ‘No, I’ve been doing this for ten years. I know it’s dangerous so I’m very careful’. When I asked him how many UXO he’d cleared he laughed ‘Oh, alot – too many to count’.

I’d been with MAG less than an hour at this stage and could NOT believe what I had seen. However much you read the statistics, however much people tell you how bad it is, nothing prepares you for the shock of how much of the stuff there actually is. It is quite literally, everywhere. Not one person we spoke to in either village gave us a negative answer, they all knew the locations of UXO. Can you imagine what it would be like to share your everyday existence with bombs that could blow you to bits at any moment? No, neither can I.

MAG team leader Tam

Next came, without doubt, the hardest part of the day – meeting a family very recently affected by UXO. Having driven about 20 km to another village, we parked outside a half-built house and a thin, beautiful woman came out and shook our hands, inviting us in for tea. At her side was a young boy, a red scar running under his left eye. As we sat on the floor Lom, the mother, poured us tea, and told us the whole tragic story.

Last August, her two sons, Phuong (8) and Phong (12), had gone out with a neighbour’s child to look for scrap metal. Her youngest son, Phuong, the one beside her now, wanted a new kite and was hoping to earn some money from selling bits of metal they found.

In the forest next to the village, the boys had found half a bombie, and not knowing what it was, Phong started to hit it with a hammer. The bombie exploded, killing Phong, and filling his brother’s body with shrapnel. As Lom told us this she pulled down his trousers, showing us skeletal, heavily scarred legs. ‘He’s already had several operations, and he’s waiting for one more. I need to borrow  5,500,000 VND (about $250) before he can have it though.’ For someone earning around $200 per year farming rice, raising $250 is no easy task.

‘What about your husband?’ I asked Lom. As she answered, tears began to pour down her cheeks, and she struggled to get out the words. Duong and Chi, two of the MAG staff, both began to cry too. ‘Her husband died two years ago. He fell off the roof when he was building this house’. Oh god, it was too much to bare. Next I was crying, and we all sat on the mat, tears rolling down our cheeks. How could one woman possibly be so dreadfully and cruelly unlucky?

Lom and Phuong

Our final location of the day was Phong Nha Khe Ban National Park, 30 km away. Here MAG are coming to the end of a three month operation, clearing an area of 28,900 square metres. ‘Do you want to see a demolition?’ asked Duong. I nodded vigorously. ‘At the end of every day, we destroy any UXO we’ve found that day. Today there is a Blu 26, a mortar and a projectile. If we wait twenty minutes we can watch the detonation.’ Duong explained that the bombs were put in a pit, surrounded by sandbags and detonated using a  donor charge. ‘You can press the detonation button if you want’ suggested Tang. More vigorous nodding.

With three minutes to go until detonation, loudspeakers warned everyone in the area to go to the designated evacuation points. ‘Even the monkeys know to run away’ smiled Duong. Tang knelt down, connecting a long cable to the detonation box. He took my hands, placing my right forefinger on a red button, and my left forefinger on a green button. ‘I’m going to say Three, Two, One. On One – press both buttons at once’.

‘Three! Two! One! Go!’ I pressed hard on the buttons and BANG, a terrifyingly large explosion rendered the air, throwing a plume of black smoke and debris high above the tree canopy. I let out an involuntary ‘Shit!’ and leapt up, shocked at the noise. This was only three relatively small bombs, yet the noise and reverberation had been astonishing. War must be a deafening place.

MAG de-miners at Phong Nha

Well, what a day it’s been. MAG’s team were superb and I want to express my huge thanks and gratitude to them for their time and kindness. Even more than before, I’m amazed at the scale, efficiency and sheer brilliance of their operations. Thank you MAG.

If you want to donate to MAG please go to my Virgin Money Fundraising Page HERE. I’ve decided to up the target to £2000 – MAG deserve it!

]]> http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/a-day-in-the-field-with-mag/feed/ 1 http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/meeting-the-pink-panther/ http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/meeting-the-pink-panther/#comments Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:12:56 +0000 Ants http://www.theitinerant.co.uk/?p=491 Continue reading →]]>

Finally, after months of planning and procrastinating about this trip, I’ve made it to the Start Line in Hanoi. Most importantly, I’ve been united with my mighty Trail steed – the Pink Panther – and what a glorious beast she is.

Digby, the splendid head honcho of the Panther’s creators, Explore Indochina, took me to meet her first thing on Thursday morning. After a typically hairy Hanoi ride, we arrived at Explore Indochina’s garage – a whole warehouse crammed with motorbike porn. Lines of beautifully restored vintage Urals and Minsks stretched from wall to wall, serried ranks of the finest Soviet steel. Digby and his business partner Cuong probably own the largest collection of vintage Urals in the world, and to see so many of these handsome machines under one roof was quite a sight. Behind the Urals, in the gloom at the back of the warehouse, I spotted a glint of pink, and there she was; the Pink Panther, a shining paragon of pink perfection.

‘Take her for a ride’ said Digby, ‘she goes like the clappers’. Having arrived the day before, and had rather too many Beer Hanoi’s with Digby and some of his friends the night before, I was feeling somewhat cerebrally challenged. A jet-lag and hangover cocktail is not a pretty thing, believe me. For a split second, as I got on and turned the key, I felt like I’d never ridden a bike before. ‘Shit, this could be embarrassing,’ I thought, trying not to look flustered. Luckily, the split-second was just that, and as the Panther purred to life everything felt roughly normal again. Digby was right, she does go like the clappers (for a moped that is..) and we zoomed round the block without incident.

Before we left the garage I asked Phu, one of the mechanics who’d built her, whether he thought the Ho Chi Minh Trail was possible on a Honda C90, ‘Yeah, easy’ he replied, ‘as long as you don’t forget to put oil in’. (I omitted to tell him that I have a bad track record of remembering to put oil in vehicles). He then talked me through what they’d done to the bike, which had started life as a 1989 green Honda C50, and was now the hot-pink C90  standing before me. ‘It’s had new everything – new pistons, valves, spokes, chain, exhaust, suspension – everything’. ‘Look, its the best bloody Honda C90 on the planet’ added Digby, ‘You won’t have any problems’. Let’s hope they’re right.

Now that the Panther was mine, there was nothing else to do but take the bull by the balls and start riding. If you’ve ever been to Hanoi, you’ll know that the traffic here is insane, a seething, omni-directional, cacophonous cavalcade of cars, bicycles and mopeds. Forget all that ‘Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre’ stuff you learnt at home, this is traffic in tooth and claw. A ceaseless, merciless river of men and machines. Mopeds surge in all directions, hooting and weaving. Cars come at you from the wrong side of the street. Bicycles wobble across the lanes. Women in traditional conical hats stagger across the road carrying back-breaking loads of fruit and vegetables. It makes London look like Stow-on-the-Wold.

The big issue facing me now is how to cross the border into Laos. Although there are numerous border crossings between the two countries, and backpackers frequently hop across, rules about foreigners driving bikes across the border are notoriously tricksy. Effectively, it all boils down to ‘the c*nts manning the border on the day,’ as one person succinctly put it.

The crossing I’ve got the best chance of getting across is Na Meo, only a few hundred km from Hanoi. This would take me into the north of Laos, near the famous Plain of Jars. However, lovely as I am sure it is up there, it wasn’t on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The two main Trail-related crossings are much further south, at Cha Lo (Mu Gia pass) and Nam Phao (see below map – Cha Lo is the bottom one). Originally both Digby and my contacts in Laos had said there was no way I could cross at either of these, but in the last few days both Cuong and Digby have had reports that it might be possible. After deliberating about it all today and yesterday, I’ve decided to take the risk. I am attempting to follow the Trail after all. The worst that can happen is the border guards can say a big fat No and I’ll have to double-back up north and try my luck elsewhere. Admittedly that would be inconvenient, but that’s all part of the adventure.

I’ve just returned from having drinks with Digby and a gaggle of his English, Bulgarian, Australian, American and Vietnamese friends. Strangely, one of them, George Burchett, is the son of legendary Australian war correspondent Wilfred Burchett, who wrote perhaps the most famous  book about the Trail, Inside Story of the Guerilla War. Burchett walked the Trail in 1963, before the American War had started, and long before most of the world had even heard of the Vietcong.  Not only that, he was the first Western journalist to enter Hiroshima after the bomb. By weird coincidence, I’m reading an old hardback copy of Burchett’s book at the moment, so asked George to sign it for me, which he kindly obliged. For my superstitious mind, meeting George counts as a very good omen.

More soon…

For more photographs please see my Facebook page. 

The Itinerant is staying at The Landmark Hotel in Hanoi: a delightful hotel in the Old Quarter.

Flower seller, Hanoi

Although laughably small, with only about three moving parts and an engine barely more powerful than a lawnmower, the Honda cub is in fact a Goliath amongst motorbikes. Designed by Soichiro Honda as the answer to post-war, fuel starved Japan’s need for an  inexpensive mode of transportation, the cub was an instant success. Only a few months after production started in 1958, a new cub was coming off the production line every 12 seconds. Since then over 60 million have been sold in 15 different countries, making it a best-seller to make other best-sellers look like mere fads. Idiot proof, indestructible and easy to maintain, the Honda cub is in many ways the perfect vehicle. James May, who rode one through Vietnam in an iconic episode of Top Gear, even went so far as to say that it was ‘the greatest machine of all time; nay, the single most influential product of humankind’s creativity.’

Whether it lives up to this breathless accolade or not, there’s no getting away from the fact that the Honda cub is the both the best selling motor-vehicle of all time and the single most produced machine ever made. Yes, you read right: the single most produced machine ever made. Immortalised  as a ‘groovy little motorbike’ by California rockers The Beach Boys in their 1964 song Little Honda, it was also voted the Greatest Motorcycle Ever Made by the Discovery Channel in 2006, when Charley Boorman tried – unsuccessfully – to batter one of the poor little beasts to death. The cub was thrown from a building, loaded with 200 kg of pizzas and filled with cooking oil, but the  bike refused to die.

Although some might question my choice of transportation down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, I know that I’ll be riding a machine that I can power with chip-fat, load a whole Vietnamese village onto the back of and go up the Truong Son mountains in first gear. Plus, on a Honda cub I’ll feel every bump, smell every pile of buffalo shit and admire the landscape at the sedate pace of  25 km/h. What could possibly be more perfect?

To read about a previous lengthy trip on a Honda cub see blackc90.com.

At the end of Black C90, 2010

Raw moped power….

When discussing the trip with friends the most common response is along the lines of ‘Why the blazes are you going alone?’ Even my insurance company, adventure specialists Campbell Irvine, suggested it would be ‘a lot easier if you modified your plans and went with a travel companion.’ And that’s the nub of it, travelling with someone else is much easier. Which is exactly why, this time, I need to go solo.

Apart from a stint backpacking round India, all my travels and adventures have been with other people. When I tukked from Bangkok to Brighton I travelled every single one of those 20.097 km with my dear friend Jo. Shivering on the back of a Ural at -40 with me were Mr Tom and Mr Buddy from The Adventurists. And my boyfriend Marley was my constant companion for 3000-miles around the Black Sea. And on every other expedition I’ve organised, or film shoot I’ve worked on, there has been a plethora of translators, drivers, medics and crew. It doesn’t mean that each and every mission wasn’t difficult in some way, but having other people there vastly mitigated the risk and adversity.

By stripping away the comfort of companionship I want to see how I cope, and what I’m really made of. Will I be able to fix my bike if it splutters to a halt in the middle of a river? How will I handle nights spent in a hammock in the depths of the Laos jungle? What will it feel like to ride into a remote tribal village alone? And could I outstrip Usain Bolt if confronted by  a many-banded Krait? The fact is, I’m deplorable at mechanics, scared of the dark and terrified of spiders. And if I always travel with other people, I’ll never be forced into situations where I have to confront these weaknesses myself.

I’m also alarmed at how fearful I seem to have become. A few weeks ago, I was relaxing with a cup of tea in Tanzania when I spied something red and black crawling across my shoulder.  I screamed, leapt a foot in the air, and sent tea, camera and filming equipment flying into the dust.  After several hysterical seconds Ben, the camera assistant, confirmed it was no more than a harmless beetle. ‘Jesus, and you’re going to Vietnam in a few weeks?’ he laughed. I can’t go through life acting like an extra from TOWIE every time I encounter something with more than four legs. So what better way to bash the wimp-factor out of me than a solo ride through the jungle?

Of course there will be countless times I want to share a laugh or a moment with Marley, or have a stiff G&T with a gaggle of friends.  But hopefully there’ll also be moments of simple achievement – working out what all those shiny metal things in my tool kit are, getting across a river, not screaming at the site of a large spider.  And those moments are what going it alone are all about.

What are all these shiny metal things for?

Four months later I’ve only just finished the job. That sure was a long two weeks. Sadly I can’t reveal details of the series or who the presenter was until it airs on ITV later this year. But if you want to see a few photos of the shoot, have a gander here on my new Facebook page. And if you want to hear more about the terrifying and tragic poaching epidemic that is sweeping Africa, follow the Environmental Investigation Agency’s Facebook page here.

So, now to the next mission: riding the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Gulp.

In four week’s time I’ll be flying to Hanoi to meet my steed, a pimped Honda C90, and setting off on a 7-week jaunt down the legendary Trail. My trip will take me from Hanoi, south through Laos and Cambodia and finally back into Vietnam, ending in Ho Chi Minh City. If all goes to plan and I don’t get eaten by a tiger along the way, I’ll be penning a book about the venture. Again, I can’t reveal details about the publisher and publication date yet, but will do at a later stage…

So the next few weeks are going to be a hive of Trail activity: finalising sponsors, poring over maps, working out how many bottles of gin I can squeeze into my panniers and deciphering the inner workings of a C90 engine. I should probably also get a little better acquainted with my GPS, since Marley told me the other day that I was “as good at navigation as Conan the Barbarian was at crochet”. Oh dear.

As I mentioned before, I’ll be raising funds for the superb Mines Advisory Group. To donate please exercise your digits and click here.

More soon…