So at the moment I am in Hanoi. I got here on New Years Day and it was a big shift from Laos where even the captial Vientiane seemed like a rural town in comparison. Here is it manic with the traffic everywhere and at first you wonder how anyone gets about... but before I get on to Vietnam, I will try and recap where I have been since Christmas,which I am pretty sure was when I last updated my whereabouts.
Wiring in Hanoi leaves something to ponder overSo after Luang Prabang I headed to the west, with Viang Xai as my destination. The scenery in the north east is phenomenal and I probably had the best views on the whole trip on Boxing Day as the little 250 climbed up some steep and rough mountain roads. It was one of those perfect days for riding, well it was until things started going wrong.
As you may have read in one of my previous posts, someone had fiddled with my bike when I was in Luang Prabang. Well it seems that it was more than just steal a bolt from the handle bars. Here I was on a real roller-coaster of a hill, up 2000m and all of a sudden the engine lost all its torque. I had checked the oil and air filters that morning so I knew that they were OK, but I am not mechanic and had no idea what was wrong with it. I kind of knew that it was something to do with the carb (bike type, not diet) but that was the extent of my expertise. I asked people on the hills, but not speaking Laos and them not being up with the gestures of charades, they just tried to give me petrol or oil. So I nursed by bike for 140km at speeds of around 15km/h up and down this magnificent scenery until I got to the town I was aiming for. On the way some bikes with Italian registration plates zoomed by. By the time I got to the town I saw their bikes pulled up outside a hotel, so pulled in and got talking to them.Two of them spoke some English and as it turned out one of the riders was a mechanic. With all the passion of a full blooded Italian he jumped on my bike without me having to make a request, talking to me all the time in Italian, believing that his emphatic hand gestures would ensure that I understood what he was saying. His friends translated.
First thing we had to do was get some more oil because the bike had burnt through the entire content as I tried to get it over these hills. We rolled the bike through the night air looking for a mechanic that was still open. We found one and set to work. Well, I should say he did. I tried to translate one language I did not understand (Italian) into another I did not understand (Laos). The Italian wanted oil and could not understand why the other mechanic was pointing to the bike and asking questions in Laos. So the Italian took out the dip stick and pointed to it. The Laos guy just sniffed at it. I am sure that the Italian thought that he was the village idiot and the Laos mechanic probably thought that the Italian had found a poppy field. I just pointed to an empty bottle of oil to the Lao mechanic and held up different fingers to the Italian to ask what type of oil. So when the Laos guy brought out oil the Italian looked at it and then started off in Italian, wagging his finger at the Laos guy saying that it was the wrong one. Then he just shrugged his shoulders and poured it in anyway.
He cranked up the engine, heard that it did not sound right and then reached down, found some small knob I had not noticed and tweaked.That was it.The bike sounded right. I test rode and it was great. Kind of felt dumb, but also glad that my bike at home is fuel injection.
That night we all went out for a pretty below par meal even by Laos standards, but had some fun.
The next day I rode with them for the first 50km until we went our seperate ways and I headed on to Xam Neua. It was a long ride, tiring with all it's moutain bends despite being sealed. It all seemed to be going well until all of a sudden my real wheel locked up. I pulled the bike up (luckily I was not going very fast) and at first glance the chain looked fine. But then I got off and discovered somehow the camera had had come loose and swung back, got caught by the rear wheel and had jammed between the tyre and suspension. It was pretty messy. The rest of that day it made me ponder - I think that I had always used photography as the excuse to travel - the idea of having no constructive purpose to the trip was beyond me. I am the last person to find sitting on a beach. But here I was with my main camera, that was a pain in the arse but took the most exquisit photos, out of action. It kind of forced me to look at the trip in a different light.
I never said that it was pretty or reusable...
I made to Vieng Xai. It is a beautiful area, with almost no tourists, nestled between great limestone pinnacles and hills. It was here that the headquarters were for the Pathet Lao, hidden in caves whilst the USA waged their secret war against them. It is hard to imagine nowadays that a secret war could occur where more bombs were dropped on this one small nation than all the bombs dropped over Europe during the entire second world war. Amazingly the Laos show absolutely no resentment towards the USA, most were confused as to why a country they had never heard of wanted to destroy them.
I took a tour around the caves and when you start to put into perspective how rudimentry their guerilla fighting was compared to what the USA had at hand, it appears like a phenomenal achievement. The unfortunate thing with the tours I have found in this region is that they are very one sided and biased, but that does not matter in the end.
One of the caves used by the Pathet Laos, this one for the military where they would watch across the small plane for US bombers coming in and then try to gun them down.
I like this sign at the entrance to the cave that Kaysone Phom Vihanh, the man who led the revolution and leader of the Pathet Laos against the Americans, resided for 9 years. Wonder what he would make of the advert...
I took a drive up the road to the Vietnamese border. Originally I had wanted to buy a bike so I could cross over, but in the end I rented one, which was probably a better thing given the reliability of non-Japanese bikes. I rode back to Xam Neua and after checking in wandered through the food markets. I tell you, these guys eat anything. I always find the meat section interesting. aside from the regular rat, there was squirrel, moles (dead and live), birds of all description and then in pride of place, with head included, dog. You only really see bitches in towns and now I knew why. I had already seen a couple of villagers walking with a dog on a bamboo spit, but this market was something else. I decided against posting a picture of them.
Next morning I pack up my belongings and headed on to Phonsavan where the Plain of Jars stood. It was a long but straight forward ride, the first 100km retracing my steps from two days earlier...
Ah bro, you lost the Camera? Gutting. Don't know what I would have done if I'd lost mine...actually no with mine I'd have no worries, I'd be down at the $2 shop buying a replacement :P
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