Category: Vietnam 2005

Ok, so i believe last time we posted news was from Dalat, and we are now back in Hanoi.

So here is how it went since Dalat. We drove heading towards Saigon, but on the way we went to see some really nice waterfalls, and has leaving Dalat, its just “hill” roads, we didnt have time to make it to Saigon in a day, so we stopped in a place along the way for the night. Had an early start next day and headed to Saigon (again). Nothing to worry about, but i had an accident on the road, some guy coming the other way spontaneously turned left, and looked behind him as he was turning instead of watching the traffic (me) go the other way, so yeah, i crashed into him. Front wheel just went boom (we had spares) and i started to act like superman and just flew over the 2 bikes and landed nicely on the road a couple meters away, nothing broken, just a bad ake in my left leg (which i’ll have checked when i get home). The guys were sorry, so they invited us to lunch and drink, although we didnt really want to drink as we still had about 80kms to do, we did grab a few glasses ;) We had a rest and a couple coffees before taking the bikes again to finish the day in Saigon.

The original plan from Dalat was to arrive early afternoon in Saigon the same day, book our train tickets back to Hanoi and set off for the Mekong Delta to get the most of it in the little time we had left.

In the end, it took us 2 days to get to Saigon, the 3rd day we spent getting our train tickets, and getting our motorbikes loaded in a train to be there before us, but that meant we had to give our bikes in the same day, which meant we couldnt go in the Delta with our bikes :( So we booked a 2 day / 1 night tour there. I’m not very fond of such tours but we didnt have much choice, and in the end it turned out quite nice, and as it rained *a lot* there, it was actually a good thing we didn’t have our bikes with us.

So this 2 day tour brought us back in Saigon a 7.30pm, just in time to grab some food and jump in our train for Hanoi. And we are now back in Hanoi after spending the last 30 hours in the train, back in our first guesthouse when we arrived, waiting 7am so we can have a room.

Mitch and myself are leaving Hanoi tomorrow morning (11am or so), we are stopping in Hong Kong, and the good thing is we dont need a visa to leave the airport, so we gonna spend the 10 hours transit in HK tomorrow :) And we should be arriving in Paris around 7am monday !

Pit will be leaving Hanoi Monday, so he’ll back some time tuesday.

I’ve just uploaded my last photos, enjoy!

Hey there,

Not much to say, been seeing so beautiful landscapes along the roads, i didnt take many pics, but Mitch took a few so there you go, his photos are being uploaded right now, so you might get a chance to see all his pics that he has been keeping for so long ! :)

Anyway, we are in Dalat right now, we have just come back from a nice ride in the country, nice lakes, and ‘artificial’ gardens, although artificial, very nice, but it breaks a bit of the beauty being too tidy!

We are planning to ride to Saigon tomorrow, should be a nice ride down from the mountains. I don’t know how long we’ll spend there as we would really like to have a couple days in the Mekong Delta before heading back to Hanoi.

Enjoy the few pics below.

Hello !

Well, just a quick stop in the net cafe to say hi! :)
Last news was posted from Hue, we’ve been in a few places down the coast since.

First stop was in Hoi An, a small town, very well preserverd, but where the tourism is expanding a lot! We couldn’t explore much of the area (we wanted to go to a place called My Son 100Kms away) as the rain fell, and we decided to have an easy day in the end, had a “bottle shop” kind of day ;) Played pool all afternoon, and evening, and night, with loads of draught beer to keep us going. Met a few people, quite a few Ozies (seems like Ozies come to vietnam alot for short breaks). We spent 800.000 Dongs that night, knowing that food and beer is cheap, well, thats 40 euros ! (Needless to say we had quite a few beers). Good thing we slept only 10 meters away from the bar ;)

Our next destination was going to be Nha Trang, but by the evening we were only half way there (thanks to the road works, and the intense circulation, and crazy trucks and buses), so we stopped for the night in a place called Qui Nhon, not much there, mainly a beach resort for Vietnamese it seems. Anyway, early night, early start.

Back on our Minsks early morning, we took the road south to Nha Trang where we arrived mid afternoon after quite a few breaks along the way to enjoy the view. Really beautiful, Nicolas took a few photos, so when he manages to upload them, you will see ;)

So we arrived yesterday in Nha Trang, had a nice evening, Mitch went diving on a ‘tour’ today, and should be back in an hour or 2. Pit and myself, recovering, had a lazy morning, late breakfast, and here we are posting some news, its nearly 1 pm. Program for today: a few pagodas and temples, a ride in the area, and another good evening in perspective ;)

Our next destination should be Dalat, then Ho Chi Minh ville (saigon) where we ‘ll go for a trip in the Mekong delta before grabbing a 2 day train ride with the minsk loaded to get back to Hanoi to end the trip.

Still a few things to do first before thinking of that anyway :)

Laters’

YoGiN

Hey everyone,

I know we haven’t been very good at posting some news about our trip, but thats due to the fact that we didnt have time, nor had a place to do so.

Last news were posted from Hanoi, 10 days ago or so, here is what we have been up to.

So we decided to rent russian motorbikes (details: Minsk 125cc, 4 gears, no speed indicator, no tank indicator, basically a good old engine set up on 2 wheels). As i had never been on one (well, not with gears anyway) it took me a little time to feel it and get used to it (and the clutch) , an hour in Hanoi’s crazy roads did it. We finally left Hanoi mid afternoon, and headed towards Hai Phong in the evening. We had a small night there and were up at 5 to catch the “slow” boat to Cat Ba. Theres only one boat a day were we could get our bikes on, no speedboat for us. Getting our bikes on the boat seemed pretty eazy, getting them off though, was a different story, but some local people helped us gladly for some little cash.

In the afternoon, we rode into the island on nice and empty roads (gave us a good training for going uphill, downhill, hill starts …) in a beautiful landscape, and we sorted out our 3 days and 2 nights “cruise” on a small boat with a dad and his son. The cruise was great, sailing among all those small islands, taking a swim every few hours, eating onboard, sleeping on the deck, visiting some caves, etc.. It was just great!

As we came back late afternoon to Cat Ba (3 days later) we had to spend another night here to catch to (even earlier) ferry back to Hai Phong. Once there, we took a good breakfast, and got on the road, heading to Nim Binh.

Only spent a day and night here, but enough time to visit the temples and old citadel of Hoa Lu, along with the beautiful landscape of Tam Coc. The next day we headed inlands towards the National Parc of Cuc Phuong were we spent the day, had nice walk in the forest, met 30 teenagers on vacation, spent a couple hours with them chatting in the evening. As we woke up, a quick visit to primate center, then we were on the road again, but this time, heading south west to catch the Ho Chi Minh highway.

From there onm we knew there wouldnt be much to visit along the day, so we needed to get as far as we could. But the scenery was amazing, rice fields, mountains, all the way, we did quite a few breaks just to enjoy the view. At some point we thought we were low on gaz, therefore started seeking a station, and what a surprise to have my engine just stop at the top of the hill in the shade ! We lost on hour there, to go get some gaz, but we were back on the road pretty fast, and ended up in a small town called Tan Ky ( which doesnt appear in any of our guides, but is there on the roadmaps we had bought before leaving Hanoi ). We filled up the tanks, and the found the unique hotel. First thing we did afterwards was to cross the street to get a few Bia Hoi ( local cheap beer ). We met a bunch of friends there, 2 young guys ( our age ) with their wives ( and kid for one of them ), they paid us a few rounds, showed us their house, and invited us to a local restaurant. We had a great evening, it’s good to see cool people after facing the crowds in the cities trying to sell you a ride on their cyclo or bikes, or selling postcards.

We left the next day around 9am and started a real trip down to Hue, i wasnt convinced we’d be there the same day, but we finally did it, arriving 12 hours later in the dark.
We drove in the mountains, barely crossing anyone along the HCM highway (which looks more like a “departemental” by the way), but we did cross some workers, coming our from nowhere in their truck, ending just in front of me, had to grip my brakes as hard as i could, but i did finally crash into the back of it, slightly bent the front light of the Minsk, and got a little burn (from the exhaust pipe) on my leg, but i was riding again 10 mins later.

We finally arrived in Hue in the evening, we had a “no bike day” today, visited the citadel on foot, refused all means of transport other than our own legs.

Tomorrow morning we should visit a few more temples in Hue, then head down the coast accross Danang to reach Hoi An were we will spend a night or 2 before moving on again.

I know you are all waiting to see some photos, unfortunately i seem to be having difficulties uploading our photos from the net cafe we are at at the moment, i might try from another later.

Cheers everyone !

Quite late here, drinking a last beer, with people we have met here. We have just spent a day in Hanoi with the heat, seen some really nice places.

We should be leaving Hanoi tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes ;) Not much to say right now, pretty tired, but here are a few photos to keep you going until next time !