Good morning Vietnam

Alarm clock set for 4.30 am. Had spent the previous 3 days working at my daughter and son in law's new flat in Copenhagen, with my wonderful brother Ole, while my daughter and extended "family in law" were celebrating a 70th birthday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

As usual I woke up 1 minute before the alarm went off, and made short work of the one kilometer to the Metro, which would take me directly to Copenhagen airport. A good day to leave Denmark - cold and rainy.

Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) considered the economic capital of South East Asia, has a population of more than 9 million people....and approximately 7.0 million registered motorbikes and scooters I would have to do battle with! Stepping onto the streets of HCMC I was mesmerized by the flood of vehicles weaving their way across the city, inches apart. Young women wearing "piss-pot" helmets waiting at traffic lights, families riding pillion 4 up + baby, a bike with a wardrobe passing by. Blasting horns and screeching brakes constantly. Can't wait to enter the fray!

Your riding day in Vietnam at this time of year is relatively short. If you don't want to ride in the dark, 6pm is about the limit.

Vietnam uses the Latin alphabet, but with all sorts of little "squiggles" in various places on some of the letters, changing the meaning of the word. It might right as well be Chinese as far as I am concerned! It does help with recognizing towns on signboards - only problem, there are hardly any road signs. Google maps are doing a pretty good job though. Fortunately, I also have a good paper map, which I use when my iPhone wants to take a break due to "sunstroke".

A quick update on mattresses in Vietnam! A number of articles I read about Vietnam mentioned that mattresses were generally extremely hard - like sleeping on a plank, or straight on the floor, some said. I wondered whether it was perhaps some sinister plan from the government to curb population growth!! Not so - 3 out of my 4 nights here so far, have been on a hard mattress. I did bring a  blow-up mattress and pump with me, but haven't used it yet - as I quite like the hard version!

Finding a decent breakfast was top priority - considering I had skipped supper the night before. I was heading north following the beautiful coastal road towards the very popular seaside resort Nha Trang. After a few kilometers I saw a sign next to the road PHI Kite School. Having not had a proper conversation with anyone for a few days, I thought I might find a few English speaking people there to chat to. Turned out to be a great stop. A British guy was running the business, including a small restaurant right on the beach.

As mentioned in my previous post, I spent the night in a Nha Nghi. Nha Nghi means guesthouse in Vietnamese, and stands for cheap, comfortable and generally good quality accommodation. And they are everywhere in Vietnam. Most of them are cosy, family-run businesses, but some of them have a seedy side, and a bit of a tarnished image! In the urban areas some operate as love-hotels, and can be rented on an hourly basis. The vast majority, however, are run as proper guesthouses. I paid $8 for the night, for a room with wi-fi, hot water in the shower and airconditioned.

After the obligatory photo with my homestay hosts in Hoi An, I headed north towards Da Nang and the bucket list, Hai Van Pass. Reaching the green rice fields just outside Hoi An, I saw an elderly gentleman with his signature lampshade hat. A few meters from him another guy in the rice field attending to a water buffalo. I asked the old guy whether I could take a picture. He nodded, and walking towards the buffalo he asked me to remove my helmet and wear his hat instead.

I can now post text again on my blog, but unable to upload pictures yet, so they will have to wait!

It was time for an oil change on the Honda again. It has to be done every 1000km at a Honda Head dealer or at one of the 5 Style offices in Vietnam. At this point I had already done 900km since the last service, and it was still 500km to Hanoi. 

Next morning I asked the receptionist at my hostel to book me another night. Much to my surprise she just said, FULL! Instead of booking a room at one of the many other hostels and hotels in Hanoi, I decided to continue my journey towards Cat Ba Island - a 2-3 hour drive away. The road from Hanoi takes you through Haiphong - a massive container terminal - which turned out to be packed with trucks carrying containers to and from the port. Fighting pollution is not high on the list here in Vietnam, so it wasn't the most pleasant part of my journey so far.

After warm goodbyes, and a couple of photos we left our Buddhist host for the ferry on the other side of the island. Cat Ba Island itself only has a population of 16.000, but is visited by 2,5 million tourists every year. We had visited the island during the low season, and did not in any way feel overwhelmed by flocks of tourists.

Breakfast at LANs Homestay was just delicious - pancakes with syrup, mango, papaya, banana, guava and condensed milk coffee. Ready to roll.

The past few days - from a biker's point of view - have been pure bliss. We were heading for the Ha Giang loop, but before that we wanted to visit the cave Ho Chi Minh spent almost 2 months at in 1941, called the Pac Bo cave. It is situated amongst forested limestone mountains, blue rivers and green rice paddies, probably unchanged since 1941 when Ho Chi Minh walked across the border from China and set foot in his native Vietnam for the first time in 30 years. Ho had left Vietnam in 1901 on a French ship from Saigon, and settled in Paris with a friend.

Our main target today was the tower marking the northernmost point of Vietnam, on the border to China. The area is considered the last adventurous frontier of Vietnam, and only a few years back pretty hard to reach. Now it is on the backpackers Ha Giang loop, and you are unlikely to have the recently built tower all to yourself.

Vietnam is changing fast! In particular when it comes to infrastructure. One day Sebastian and I were standing admiring the view, when suddenly we heard a loud blast. On the other side of the valley - kilometers away - we could see smoke, and part of the mountain side tear away. A bit of road widening going on. Later in the day we happened to pass the blast area, and several bulldozers and diggers were busy loading rocks and stones onto huge trucks. We had to wait for about an hour while they cleared a path.

SaPa is situated in the mountainous area of northwestern Vietnam, at the foot of Indochina’s highest mountain Fansipan. It is just over 3100 meters. SaPa was also the place where Seb and I would part ways for at least a couple of days. My 30day Vietnamese visa was running out, and I had to do a so-called “border run”, which entailed a 2 day journey from SaPa to the border town Nha Meo, and back to rejoin Seb again somewhere in the northwest! It would turn out to be a journey with both ups and downs.

The following morning I continued my journey towards Yen Bei - the meeting point with Seb. My whole left side had taken a hammering - even if the fall had been at a relatively low speed - probably 15-20 kilometers. My left knee was twice the size of my right, an open cut in the middle of it, my left arm had cuts and bruises. Despite panzer-glass, my Apple Watch was completely destroyed, having left an “Apple Watch” imprint on my left wrist, which took ages to heal. I am so glad I believe in the so-called ATGATT principle - all the gear all the time!

I had decided to follow the coast as close as possible on my 1700 km return trip to Saigon from Hanoi, having already covered the entire western side of the country - the Ho Chi Minh Road - on my way up a month earlier. The hospital had kept me longer than expected due to some administrative issues regarding my insurance, so I only got away in the afternoon. Ninh Bin - about 3 hours drive from Hanoi - would be the first stop after my newfound freedom! It’s a lovely little city in the Red River Delta, and very popular with backpackers.

The day before I was going to leave for Hoi An, I was contacted by a Danish newspaper, which wanted to write an article about this “old weed” who decided to spend 2 months in Vietnam on rice and noodles. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with a journalist from Denmark, and a couple of hours mailing pictures and other information. Interesting! Let’s see what comes out of that! On my way from Hue to Hoi An, I decided to make a stop at one of Vietnam’s biggest attractions - the Ba Na Hill Sunworld resort.