The Pink Panther hits Saigon

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Ants

I ALWAYS GET FINISH LINE NERVES towards the end of long journeys. And my final day of the Ho Chi Mission was no different. During the last six weeks The Pink Panther and I had clunked 3000 km through three countries, taking on every type of tropical terrain imaginable. The journey had by no means been incident free: Panther had had several engine rebuilds and was partially held together with cable-ties, and I now had a large scar across my left shin. But otherwise, we were recognisable as the same beings who had set sail from Hanoi all those weeks earlier. With only 50 km to cover until we hit Saigon I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to us in the dying strides…..

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.

Ba Kham and Beyond

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Ants

Whereas in Vietnam and Laos stories and memories of the Ho Chi Minh Trail are abundant, in Cambodia the situation is very different. Although several fingers of the Trail crept their way through this ‘neutral’ country during the Vietnam War, almost no trace of it survives. And finding anyone with any real knowledge of the Trail here is nigh on impossible. Wanting to see if I could dig up any clues, I hired a translator in Ban Lung, Ratanakiri Province, and headed east for a few days.

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!

The Road to La Hap

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Ants

I’ve been so busy riding, navigating, sweating, trying not to fall off and finding enough food for myself that I haven’t had time to blog. Apologies. Here’s a brief taster of what life on the Trail is like…

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.

Meeting The Pink Panther

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Ants

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

Why go it alone?

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Ants

In a few weeks time I’ll be loading my panniers, polishing my pistons and setting off solo down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. For the best part of two months it’ll just be me and my trusty, ever-so-slightly-bright-pink Honda C90 moped. No back up, no translators, no medics, no crew. Just me and the familiar hum of 90-cc of raw moped power.

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?

A short ride in the jungle…

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Ants

Back in October a TV director I work with alot rang me: “Do you want to do a couple of weeks work setting up a new series for ITV?” The subject was the massive recent surge of elephant and rhino poaching in Africa. The presenter was a major Hollywood film star. ‘Why not, sounds interesting, but as long as it’s only a few weeks” I replied.

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…

The Next Adventure….

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Ants

Right, enough namby-pambying around with television crews, drivers and translators. It’s time for another proper adventure. The sort where I find myself lost in the middle of the Southeast Asian jungle and survive on nothing but twigs and peanut butter for weeks on end. The sort where I’m well and truly On My Own.

So, in the Spring of 2013 I shall be saddling up and setting off to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for a solo trip down the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail. Travelling by Honda C90 moped, I’ll start from the heaving, cacophonous streets of Hanoi, bump through the karst clad Truong Son mountains into Laos and battle through the dense jungles of Cambodia. My two-wheeled odyssey will end in Ho Chi Minh City, better known as Saigon. As well as following parts of the Trail popularized by this burgeoning biker tourism, my journey will also take me to places few foreigners ever get to see.

Whilst I am a relative veteran of ridiculous adventures in unfeasible vehicles, this will be the first time I have gone solo. For someone with no mechanical know-how, and who’s terrified of spiders, snakes and the dark, it’ll be quite a challenge: especially as it’s said that the jungle in Laos is haunted by ghosts from the war. There are even parts of the modern Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam that the locals won’t travel on, for fear of spirits. I’ll have to learn to survive on my wits, fix the bike and sleep in a jungle inhabited by wild elephants, Very Large Spiders and even the odd tiger. Riding the bike will be the easy bit, overcoming my own fears somewhat harder.

During my trip I’ll be raising funds for Mines Advisory Group (MAG) who do sterling work in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia (amongst a long list of other countries) clearing UXO. I’ve set up a Virgin Money Giving page here and shall be soliciting for funds in the next few months…

Watch this space for more juicy info on the trip, sponsors and MAG.

Bombs and bikes: riding the real Ho Chi Minh Trail

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Ants

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“You’ve got to ride a dirt bike like you’ve stolen it” said Digby through gritted teeth, as he accelerated through a particularly gnarly section, the wheels weaving between rocks, mud spraying up from the bike in all directions. All around us was deep Southeast Asian jungle, with no form of civilization for miles. If anything happened to us out here we were in trouble; the only thing to do was to hold on and enjoy the ride.

Less than a week before I’d been sitting in an office in London when my boss turned to me and asked; “How do you feel about a little trip to Lao next week?” A few days later I was on a plane to Bangkok, bags hastily packed, a slight sense of trepidation as to what the hell I had let myself in for. My mission: to recce a 600 km section of the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail for a TV programme I was producing. And since the only two people who knew the Trail well enough to act as my guides were bikers, we’d be doing the trip by the glorious medium of two-wheels.

My boyfriend Marley was less than delighted about my latest task, ‘So, let me get this straight; you’re going to be spending a week riding a motorbike through the jungle, with your thighs wrapped around another man? I’m not the jealous type but…”

“Well, it is my job” I’d replied weakly, before heading East.

The other man was Digby Greenhalgh, the Australian head honcho of Hanoi-based motorbike tour company Explore Indochina, a bike and Trail obsessive. We’d be joined by Don Duvall, equally bike and Trail obsessed. Don, dubbed The Midnight Mapper, has lived in Lao for 10 years and dedicated his life to mapping every single square inch of the country by GPS from the back of his trusty Honda XR400. 56, going on 20, and with a proclivity for frequent peals of laughter, Don’s cartographic retentiveness knows no bounds, and to date he has mapped more than 50,000 GPS points in Lao. I couldn’t have wished for two better people to be riding with.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail is arguably one of the greatest feats of military engineering in history, a Goliath of ingenuity and bloody determination. At its peak this 20,000 km transport network spread like a spider’s web through Vietnam, Lao and Cambodia; an indestructible labyrinth through which the North Vietnamese fed the war in the South. Without the Trail, there could have been no war, a fact which the Americans knew only too well. In a sustained eight year campaign to destroy it they flew 580,000 bombing missions, dropped over 2 million tonnes of ordinance on neutral Lao, denuded the jungle with chemicals and seeded clouds to induce rain and floods. At one point Nixon even mooted the notion of deploying nuclear weapons.

Amazingly, considering its importance, there are very few people today who know of the whereabouts of the remaining sections of Trail. Backpackers may ride a sanitized, tourist version of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam, but only a smattering of devotees make it as far as the real Trail in Lao, many of these bikers. Much of the vast network of roads and tracks has simply been lost forever to the jungle, and most sections that do remain are heavily contaminated by UXO. Even today, almost 40 years after the last bomb was dropped, UXO is a deadly legacy of the war, and still kills around 200 people a year. Since our ride would be following some of the main arteries of the Trail, UXO was something we had to be very careful of – there would be no diving off into the jungle for a wee.

The three of us set off from the village of Nongchan, a scrappy border settlement in the shadow of the Truong Son mountains. This jungle-clad spine of karst peaks stretches for around 1000 km along the Vietnam-Lao border, and would be our companion for much of the ride south. Since I’d never ridden a dirt-bike before, and now wasn’t the time to start, I’d be riding pillion with Digby on a hired Kawasaki KLX 250, with Don solo on his Honda. As I poured myself into the non-existent gap between Digby and our tower of luggage, Don let out a whoop of laughter; “Jeeeesus, you two are going to have an interesting time, this ride is hard enough alone, let alone with two of you on that bike.” By the time I’d wedged myself in there was barely room for a Higgs Boson.

Nongchan’s wooden shacks petered out into lush jungle, the morning mist hanging over jagged karst outcrops, the red dirt road cloggy from recent rain. Bomb-craters punctuated the roadside, a reminder that during the war this area, the Ban Phanop valley, had been pummelled into oblivion by the US. Forced through a natural gap in the mountains from Vietnam, all southbound traffic on the Trail was funnelled through this valley, a fact the US knew only too well. It was so heavily bombed one US pilot called it ‘the most God forsaken place on earth’. Looking at the dense, verdant jungle that flanked us as we rode, it was hard to imagine that forty years ago it would have looked like the surface of the moon.

The first village we came to was a single dusty street of ramshackle stilted houses. A gaggle of excitable, raggedly dressed children crowded around the two bikes, curious as to the identity of these newly arrived aliens in their midst. For people who rarely, if ever, had seen foreigners before, the sight of Don clad in head to toe Robocop-like armour must have been akin to ET walking into a pub in Somerset and ordering a pint of cider. But within seconds Don was laughing with the village chief and had the ever-expanding horde of children giggling happily.

The whole village was a living war museum, and as we wandered up the street Digby pointed out the countless bits of war ephemera converted for use in everyday life. Spring onions sprouted in rusty cluster bomb casings, women leaned against ladders made of aluminium fuel rods, boys paddled in canoes fashioned from fuel canisters and a chicken nested in a missile nose-cone. Outside the small wooden temple the faded wing of a US F-4 fighter leaned against a tree, children peering at us through a large hole in the metal.

Walking past one house we noticed two large 500 lb bombs lying under the steps; “I’m sure those are still live – look, they’ve still got the fuses on” said Digby, pointing to their shiny tips. No one seemed the remotest bit concerned though, and children’s bare feet ran past inches from the fuses. We later found out from an NGO that these two bombs were indeed live, and that the man who had found them was keeping them until he could sell them for scrap metal. It highlighted what terrible risks people here would take with UXO in order to sell the valuable scrap metal and put food on their family’s table.

Every village we rode through that day, and for much of our journey, bore the same scars of war. Cows wandered along the road wearing bells made of mortar fuses, houses were held up by cluster bomb casings and schoolyards were pockmarked with bomb-craters. Often red UXO-warning markers poked out of the dust next to houses, outside schools or on the edge of the dirt track. Yet these reminders of war seemed so incongruous with the children who waved and shouted ‘Sabadee!’ as we rode past, and the shy mothers smiling down at us from their huts.

Lao is a country of a thousand rivers, and as we rode south through Khammouane, Savannakhet, Saravan, Sekong, Attapeu and Champassak provinces, we would cross what felt like a hundred of these. Methods of getting across these rivers varied, according to depth, width and how many people were watching. Generally it was a case of throttle-on-feet-up-and-ride, hoping we wouldn’t smack a large rock in the middle and get an ignominious ducking. Deeper crossings saw me being hoofed off, while Digby edged the bike across and I walked. If we were lucky there might be some sort of makeshift ‘bridge’ – a questionably stable structure made of bamboo or galvanised metal.

One river crossing was somewhat more perilous. This particular river was several hundred metres wide, and while trucks could just about drive, bikes had to make the short journey on an extremely narrow, very unstable wooden canoe, steered by a toothless old man wielding a single pole. Digby rode the bike on in front of me, the wheels wedged in the rut at the bottom of the canoe, his legs resting on the paper-thin sides for stability. “Just crouch down, sit behind me and don’t move” he said, not even daring to turn his head for fear of tipping us. I obeyed, hardly daring to breathe as the old man inched us across, so slowly that a large green lizard paddled past, eyeing us with a beady yellow eye. At one point we wobbled so violently I feared we’d be joining the lizard, and I could see Digby’s legs shaking with nerves. Once we reached the safety of the far bank we both laughed hysterically, watching as Don did the crossing with infuriating ease and gusto.

Tired, muddy, elated and in need of a Beer Lao, we rolled into Villabury at the end of the first day, 120 km on the clock. “You’re going to love tonight” Digby had said earlier, a glint of mischief in his eyes, “We’re staying at a tranny hotel.” I had visions of rolling up at a one-horse town in the jungle and finding a sequin-clad oasis of dancing ladyboys. Instead we were greeted by a rather corpulent, grumpy transvestite, whose short skirt revealed a pair of startlingly hairy legs. Nevertheless, it didn’t deter from the novelty of the situation, and the $8 rooms, cheap beer and fried rice were just what we needed.

The real crux of our ride was a 60 km section between Nong and Ta Oy; “the boonies” as the boys called it – dense jungle inhabited by remote tribes, elephants and the odd tiger. “No one’s ever ridden this section two-up” warned Digby, as we filled up at a petrol shack in Nong where part of a tank languished outside, “I’m not even sure it’s possible.” The ride was every bit as hard as Digby and Don had warned, a thrilling cocktail of river crossings, mud, rocks and steep hills, the tree canopy enveloping the track in a green womb. Only one hill managed to get the better of us, the bike sliding over in the mud, caking us both in a sticky layer of Trail dirt.

The few villages we did ride through in this area were home to some of Lao’s fifty different ethnic groups; animists who speak no Lao and have few ties with the central government. Pot-bellied pigs, skinny dogs and chickens scrapped in the dust, and no one seemed to be doing much. It was as if achievement was measured by who could do as little as possible, for as long as possible, in as much shade as possible. There were no schools, no temples, no electricity, and by the looks of the swollen stomachs of many of the children who ran after us, not enough food. It was so remote here we didn’t even pass the ubiquitous, overloaded mopeds, which frequently trundled past us during the rest of our ride, weighed down by anything from bananas to saucepans, logs and even live pigs. The only traffic we saw on this section was a handful of women walking barefoot along the track, large bamboo tobacco bongs slung round their necks. Amazingly, two of them fled into the jungle in terror at the mere sight of us – evidence of the rarity of foreigners in these parts.

At Ta Oy we emerged from the crepuscular darkness of the jungle onto the packed dirt of a new road, a row of parked up diggers and width of which suggested this was destined to be a major highway. It was a bizarre juxtaposition to the remoteness of the jungle. Aching and adrenalized, we checked in to the only ‘hotel’ and celebrated our victory over the crux by getting utterly inebriated on Lao Lao, a potent local moonshine which should only be imbibed in the absence of anything else. Since Ta Oy was, as Digby so eloquently put it, ‘a shithole’ and our hotel was a plywood, mosquito infested dive, getting drunk was an exceptionally good idea.

The accommodation may not have been high luxury, but one of the many wonderful things about this ride was our ever evolving environment. We breezed along sections of graded red dirt, spun through glutinous mud, sped along the occasional winding ribbon of tarmac and bumped over original Ho Chi Minh Trail cobblestones. And as we pushed south, the topography changed entirely, morphing from jungle to strange pine-clad plateaus, redolent of Greece or Turkey. At Chavan, a parched plateau used by the French as an airstrip in the Indochina War, we ate a picnic lunch in an old bomb-crater, then spent an exhilarating few hours trailing Don’s bike through the pines, leaves eddying up behind his wheels. Later that day the land changed again, the beautiful Bolaven plateau rising to our right, Truong Son mountains to our left, blue sky and ochre dirt completing the picture. Dipping down towards Attapeu as dusk fell, we passed the rusting hulk of a tank, abandoned in some distant battle, every ounce of removable metal stripped from it for scrap.

Our last stretch was 200 km of surprisingly smooth tarmac between Attapeu and Pakse, a final dash before I had to cross the border to Thailand and catch a flight home. The ride had been such a blast, and Digby and Don such excellent companions, I wasn’t relishing the thought of being catapulted back to the normality of an English winter. With barely a moment to spare before I had to leave for the airport, we skidded into Pakse, a backpacker haunt on the Mekong, and after a hasty goodbye to the boys it was all over. Much to the disgust of my neighbour on the long flight home, I hadn’t even had time to wash or change, and travelled the whole way to England covered in a thick layer of Trail mud. It was a strangely satisfying end to a truly marvellous adventure.

To join a small group ride down the Ho Chi Minh Trail contact Digby through www.exploreindochina.com. Prices depend on group size and length of the ride.

To buy Don’s marvellous map go to Laogpsmap.com. The map costs a bargainous $50.

This article first appeared in Motorcycle Monthly’s June edition.

UXO clearance, a Laos wedding and a spot of turbo-pampering: a sneaky peek behind the scenes of a BBC shoot

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Ants

A few days ago I crawled off the plane to England in a state of total exhaustion after nearly a month in Vietnam and Laos filming a programme for the BBC. The show, due to air on BBC2 in May, tells the story of two female presenters driving a section of the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam and Laos.

The Trail, a 12,000 mile network of roads and tracks that cut through the jungles of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, has been hailed by many as one of the greatest feats of military engineering of all time, and the reason America were never able to defeat the North Vietnamese.

We filmed our presenters as they tackled a perilous, UXO-contaminated 800 mile section through the jungles and mountains of Laos and Vietnam.

Here are a few of the more memorable moments from the shoot.

The UXO legacy in Laos

The statistics relating to America’s bombing of Laos are hyperbole defying. In their efforts to cut the Trail the US flew 580,000 bombing missions, dropped over 2 million tonnes of ordinance and gave Laos the deadly accolade of being the most bombed country in the world. The legacy of this still exists today: 50,000 people have been killed by UXO in Laos since 1964 and around 200 people still die every year.

Inert UXO outside a cafe in Sepon, Laos

This was a key aspect of our story and near Sepon, Laos, we filmed a private UXO clearance team run by the MMG Sepon Mine. The team leader was a Swedish ex-special forces giant of a man called Magnus, cooler than a winter’s day in Magadan and harder than Rambo on steroids. Magnus has worked in every bombed hellhole on the planet, and his geographical resume reads like an FCO warning list: Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Bosnia, Kosovo. “Sudan was terrible”, he admitted, “But this is still the most bombed place on earth”. Just that day his team had uncovered two live 750 pound bombs and a phosphorus bomb, within feet of the main road to the mine.

Magnus was entirely unflappable, and had soon become the collective object of desire of the whole crew. Even one of the presenters, who isn’t strictly into men, was soon giggling like a smitten teenager. By the time the interview was finished we’d christened him Magnus the Magnificent. There’s something unbelievably admirable and utterly intriguing about a man who risks his life daily to dispose of bombs for a living. When we asked him out for a drink that night he replied “I never drink, not when I’m working with bombs”. What a splendid chap.

The next day we encountered a very different type of UXO clearance, two women using $10 metal detectors to illegally search for scrap metal. Despite the danger, the people in this area of Laos (Khammouane and Savankhannet provinces) are so poor that they risk their lives in order to search for UXO, which they can then sell for around 30 cents a kilo. One of the women had a cluster bomb in her basket – a potentially fatal find. It was heart-rending to see poverty driving people to take such drastic measures simply to put food on their family table.

Illegal scrap metal collectors, Laos

Meeting the Misty Pilots

It can be hard not to instantly vilify the Americans and what they did here when you see first hand the extent of the UXO problem in Laos, a country which remains one of the poorest on the planet. But war is a multi-faceted beast and it’s only too easy to condemn with the benefit of hindsight. So it was fascinating to get the chance to interview Roger van Dyken and George Buchkowski, two members of the elite US Misty Squadron, a 157-strong force of experienced fighter pilots whose sole task during the war was to knock out the Trail.

Both men, like a number of US Vietnam veterans, have returned to the country they were once at war with numerous times. Hearing their story, and how they are now friends and ‘brothers’ with some of the men they once fought against was testament to the astonishing power of forgiveness, and how you should never judge a man until you’ve walked a few miles in their shoes.

A rather impromptu Laos wedding

One evening the whole crew somehow ended up at a Laos wedding that was going on in a field outside our hotel. Around a hundred guests were gathered around a towering stack of speakers, drinking copious quantities of Beer Lao and dancing to blaring live music. Before we knew what was going on, Tui, our translator, had grabbed the microphone and was speaking rapidly in Lao. He then switched to English, looked at us mischievously and announced ‘BBC crew, you must all get up, stand in the middle and dance’.

Shit.

There was no escape.

A hundred expectant faces swivelled towards as we shuffled into the glaringly empty dancefloor. It could have gone so wrong, but somehow, without saying anything, we all came to the same conclusion; if we were going to dance, we had to do it properly, there was no room for British reserve. As the band struck up all eight of us broke out into the most idiotic, extravagant dance moves. Hips swung, eyebrows waggled, arms were flung in the air, knees grooved – it was like some ridiculous scene from Pulp Fiction. By the end we were all weak with laughter and the audience was baying for more. It wasn’t until 2 a.m that we all staggered off the dancefloor to bed.

The End – and some much needed turbo-pampering

Suffice to say, much of the accommodation on the shoot was pretty basic, so what a joy it was to roll up to the 5* Fusion Maia resort in Da Nang on the last day of filming. I’m not normally one for perfectly manicured resorts, I generally find them dull, claustrophobic and overly obsequious. But a day at Fusion Maia after the rigours of the last few weeks was just what we needed. Private villas with swimming pools, a luminescent white-sand beach, buckets of gin, all-inclusive spa treatments and a bath you could do lengths in. Joyous.

The Beach at Fusion Maia, Da Nang

If you want to find out more about the UXO problem in Laos and what you can do to help, please visit www.nra.gov.la.

Some of the key NGOs working in UXO clearance in Laos are:

MAG International

Norwegian People’s Aid

Handicap International

UXO Laos