Day 44 - Hanoi, the North, and the end of an era.

Firstly, Lukas's arm is fine now. He was taking the antibiotics for a few days and it cleared right up - just a scab remains, and his arm has deflated back to a more ordinary size. We're very relieved about that! :) In the last post we had just arrived the countries capital - Hanoi. After much hunting around for a reasonably priced, decent hotel, we eventually found somewhere in the old-quarter down a quiet street, a few doors away from the city's main hostel, with a handy internet cafe opposite (always full of shouting, smelly young children), and a decent pizza restaurant around the corner that we frequented a few too many times in our days here. In total we spent 5 days in Hanoi, enjoying being back in a city, and experiencing the freedom of having choices of places to eat, drink, and shop once again - something you don't realise you miss until you have those luxuries back once again. We bought things like decent driving gloves, scarfs, a few extra layers of clothing, and replacement socks (pairs seem to go missing when we get laundry done?).

Our Vietnamese friend Lan (one of the girls we met on the boat trip in Nha Trang) happened to be in the city at the same time visiting family and friends over the festive period, so we spent some time with her looking around, shopping, eating, and helped us get some things sorted, like buying playing cards - something we found unusually difficult to do here. Also did some night-time exploration of bars and restaurants, taking some pictures of the city and lake illuminated at night.

The lake at night illuminated like the bat-signal, lights beam from the tortoise monument situated at the lakes centre


We spent a lot of time exploring the city on foot (driving in the traffic here was a little overwealming at first). Lukas and myself especially enjoyed roaming the street of the inner-city residential districts in the north - down narrow alleys, and winding streets, seeing how the people who lived here really lived. Being the start of the holiday season, children were not at school, and many people had finished work, so there was plenty of activity to observe. There was a real mixed bag of accommodation, anything from crumbling shacks, to near-mansions can exist on one street, and the variance in building height differs greatly from one building to the next. The most interesting stuff was seeing the people interact with each other and with their local environment - everything from buying goods, to chilling in a roadside bar, washing clothes, to taking out the trash to the meandering bin-man. We also passed through endless markets where we saw the usual array of S.E.Asian vegetables on offer, and the meat stalls with cuts arranged openly on the street ready to be cut to requirement. We also saw a level of meat preparation we had not seen before in the more urban marketplaces. Chickens still alive, crammed into small steel of wooden cages. From these you select your bird, which is then placed upside down in a large cone, it head sticking out of the small-end. Then its throat is cut, and is left to slowly bleed dry. Once empty the bird is plucked, and then cleavered to your specification. A far cry from selecting a prepared bird nearly wrapped in plastic from a supermarket shelf!

Chickens being bled dry, plucked, and washed for sale. You pick one and watch as they prepare your meat from being alive, to being ready to cook. Spared you the really gory one here - it's quite messy. Sorry vegetarians out there :)


We also saw the beginnings of the dinner we wish we never ate - dog meat :S Whole dog carcass that had been cooked, ready for selecting your cut, and dog heads to the side (assume they eat parts of this too?) with the teeth snarling back at you as the cooked flesh has pealed back from the skull, and simultaneously pet dogs roaming around the streets and being played with by children... a confusing level of contrast between pet and food. We have heard from people we've met crossing the Laos-Vietnam border, that you see trucks filled with dogs leaving Laos, destined for Vietnam - perhaps they only eat imported dog, and keep their home-bred varieties for pets...? Who knows. It just seems so different to the level of separation we're used to at home.

Dog meat stall in the residential street markets


We attempted to see a few tourist sights such as monuments and museums, but because of the approaching new years - everything was gearing down and either closing early, or was not open at all - but we wanted to spend the new years here to see how the Vietnamese celebrate it in their capital city. It was a little annoying, but we got to see parts of the city we might not have otherwise ventured into, and it gave us an opportunity to do some fun photography. Photography such as chasing these bikes carrying mini-orange trees around, apparently good luck to have in the home around new years - you couldn't look at a street without seeing a handful in your field of vision - they were everywhere! And the trees came in all shapes and sizes. Some bikes were grossly overloaded with the weight of these things, and we witnessed some funny moments where people were trying to secure them to their vehicles.

The bikes we were chasing around the city, trying to get the perfect shot. They really were everywhere!


New-years eve we went down to the lake in the old-quarter, where it seemed most of the city congregated to watch the fire works displays. It was really crowded, which was good as the penguin effect started to kick in and keep us warm enough to sit comfortably outside. As midnight came, the fireworks began (no countdown here), 15 minutes of big bangs, and pretty lights, finishing in a crescendo of colour, accompanied by 'oooooo's' of impressed on-lookers. Once the fireworks ended everyone instantly stood up, turned and bolted, attempting to avoid the inevitable gridlock that ensued.

Fireworks from the lake


We walked around the 3 major lakes here, through the parks, used taxi's, drove our bikes and walked through most of the districts. Never have we come to know a place we have stayed quite so well on our journey. Also there was the question of what to do with the bikes... We were really leaning towards wanting to just continue our journey on them into Laos, and continue all the way through Cambodia, Thailand, and back to Ho Chi Minh in the south of Vietnam for our flight home in April. But the border was a long way to go with no guarantees we could cross, meaning loosing a few days traveling to get somewhere we could sell them again, or if we got desperate enough - simply ditch them. So I grabbed my passport and went to visit the British Embassy for some advice. It was not good news. After some phoning around the border control people, they discovered it is technically possible to cross the border on a bike as a foreigner, but it would require more paperwork that we had time to do, which included getting our own Vietnamese driving licences for bikes and would also involve cooperation from the guys we originally bought them from down in Mu-Ni. Our hearts were broken :( Defiant as ever we thought we might just risk it, try and blag our way through the border control - say 'we rented them and were told we could continue our journey across the border'. Either way we had a journey still to make - heading 140km east to the coast, to a place called Halong bay.

Satellite view of the Gulf of Tonkin - Halong Bay, and it's 3000+ islands


Here we were to find some unique geographical features created when the sea levels were much higher, leaving 3000 or more incredible islands rising from the sea. The idea sounded great, and there are countless tours run from Hanoi city on a bus, but after checking the weather, and seeing no rain (only cold temperatures below 10 degrees C), we decided to drive again, stay overnight in Halong city on the coast and book our own tour boat when we arrived. The drive took longer than expected, and it was cold! We were starting to get tired of this shit weather, and longed for the days we wore t-shirts and shorts, caked in sunscreen, and had to stop driving in the middle of the days because it was too hot... We arrived in Halong city, and decided against trying to make it Cat Ba island (the largest island of the group, and the only one containing hotels), as it was getting dark (we'd slept in a little, and check out pretty late). Updated visual-journey progress. Finding a hotel was similar to our usual routine; start somewhere that look nice - too expensive, try every hotel in the area, find a reasonable room for a reasonable price, then haggle them down a little. Got a decent one in the end - the tallest we'd been in yet - 10 stories, and we were on the 8th floor, thank god there was an elevator this time :) Had the air-con unit yet - could pump out some serious heat, which was badly needed after our freezing journey there. We then got some grub and crashed out. The city itself it a bit grim - nothing to really do except go on tours, which is why most people do package tours direct from Hanoi. As the guidebook correctly states, 'Halong bay is the attraction, Halong city is not'. Waking the following morning we were going to drive to the dock where the boats depart, find out some info on the options available and to get ourselves a good deal. Got on the bikes that were outside the hotel (they always bring them inside for the bulk of the night), and Peter couldn't get his key in the bike... Turns out some little bastard had tried stealing it. They'd jammed a screwdriver into the ignition and snapped the main rod that the key activates and you turn to start the bike up. Bugger! Peter was not happy at all. It was also still TET (Vietnamese new years) holidays. Nowhere was open. So he proceeded to take his bodywork apart to get to the problem to see if it could be fixed. It could not. And the hotel people (who rightly felt a little guilty having not seen this crime take place right outside the completely glass fronted building), got a garage down the road to open especially and have a look. Peter's ignition is not a standard part, and the only ignition blocks they had didn't work in his bike, despite 2 hours of trying to wire them up without success. In the end they had to hard-wire the bike 'on', and to turn it off he has to unscrew the front panel, and manually unplug the electric block that connects the ignition to the rest of the bike. Peter was even more unhappy. 'He was pissed' just doesn't cut-it.

In the meantime, Lukas and myself made use of this time to research the options and costs of a tour - the only reason we'd come here. We'd need to book for the following day, as Peter's bike mishap and a little internet time took up most of our time... We had booked a tour that started at midday the following day, on a boat with groups of other tourists. The guy we booked from offered us 2 rooms (as you can only fit two people per room), for which we paid extra, and played a few games of cards to decide who get the luxury of their own space. We were also told by the guy that beer was $1 (16,000 dong), and we could bring our own booze on-board with no complications (both conditions identical to the boat trip we took in Nha Trang), so we took him for his word and handed over the cash for a 2 day, 1 night tour. The next day we checked out of the hotel, parked up at the docks, and boarded our tour boat. One we started to move, the tour guide lady on the boat told us that we now had to share our second room with a stranger. This didn't really bother us that much in principal, but we paid extra cash to have the second room for one person (paid the price for 2 people, to get 1 room as a luxury), so we obviously wanted the difference refunded. She wouldn't give it to us, and said we had to get it from the guy (the agent) who we bought the tickets from. We weren't sure we'd ever see him again, and started to kick up a bit of a fuss... We had to share otherwise this poor guy would have nowhere to sleep, but they purposely overbooked the boat to get as much money as possible from it. We'd already paid the fee for the extra space. This made us unhappy. Then we find out the beer on board the boat is double what we were promised, we became even unhappier. At our first stop we looked around some caves, which to be fair were pretty spectacular, but were ruined by some really crass lighting - it looked so Disney due to the array of colours used, you'd think you were in a Star Trek set, on another planet and Kirk would jump from behind an stalegtite at any moment.

Disney caves - spectacular, but lit up like a Christmas tree


On the islands there were the usual tourist shops, some selling beer for 13,000 (90 cents). So we bought a round of beers, and grabbed some waters for the night. When we arrived back on the boat they shoved a printed notice in our face telling us we had to pay a 15,000 dong cover charge for every can of drink we bought on board - another broken promise form the agent who sold us the tickets. We were furious, and outright refused to pay anything. We bought a couple of more beers onshore in protest, and started drinking them. Once we were back on the water, the guide sat down with us and tried convincing us to pay to charge. We refused, and a full-on argument broke out. We caused quite a scene, and Lukas and Peter were really shouting at the girl. I the end she asked to speak to just one person as we were all shouting, so me being the calmest/most-English, became the mediator, and put our case across. In tern she communicated back into Vietnamese to the captain, who was a real hot-head. They just weren't getting it. The guy they employ to sell tickets lied to us. We bough them on a set of conditions that were explained to us. They moved the goal posts and expect us to pay more money than we intended. There was no way were budging. It was simply the last straw, 3 pretty big lies, that cost us money on each occasion. It wasn't the money, it was the principal of just being lied to so much, we were disgusted with their behaviour - it's just not the way to do business, not in any country. Combined with Peter's bike, and the amount of lying we'd experienced at our expense in the country so far, we just snapped. They wouldn't budge either, and eventually treathened us with our passports (you have to hand them over everywhere you sleep for visa reasons, the boat was still a hotel effectively). We didn't care, and demanded to have police waiting at the shore when we docked to sort it out. We stopped drinking the beer we bought on-board to not further agitate the situation, and drank their beers instead, clocking up a pretty sizable bill. We drank our own drinks in our room at night while playing cards (also prohibited by their rules). The sight seeing wasn't great either. Although it was not raining, it was cloudy, and visibility was restricted to a few kilometers, so the beauty of the bay was mostly masked by mist. Was turning out to be a nightmare trip, and we began to regret ever leaving Hanoi.

About as good-a-view as we could get, given the weather conditions


In the end they magically produced another spare room for the other guy to stay in, and we got our room that we paid for to ourselves. Which made things a little better, and the trip improved after a spot of cyacking around a bay area, that allowed us to go exploring some of the caves large enough to enter at the waters edge. Some were quite large and we ventured in at least 10 metres, well at least far enough until we couldn't see a thing, got scared and started back padeling. It was quite tranquil, and pretty fun. That and the two ozzy girls we met on board whom we shared a few cards games with were the saving grace of the experience, and made us start to think, perhaps it was worth doing after all... maybe.

Peter and myself cyacking around the bay - was really quite pleasant and turned our lifted our spirits a little after the experience on the boat so far


Midday and we docked back at the port, and we paid the price for the beers we drank, but not the service charge on our own drinks, They then handed our passports over without saying a word. We'd won, back of the net! :) We're glad it didn't get out of hand again. So we refueled, loaded up the bikes and hit the road again. We were all ill by now from all the driving in the cold weather, and the boat trip was the nail in the coffin - temperatures were sooooo low we all came down with nasty colds. Mine seemed to be pretty bad, and I felt like I had the flu all the way back - my whole body ached, and was having some hot & cold flushes. The ride wasn't pleasant. On the way back I broke the chain on the pony - it just gave in and flew off. Had to push it (backwards - wouldn't go forwards as the chain was jammed) to a nearby garage that was shut due to the holiday. After some sad-face-pulling they agreed to open for us and see what they could do. No part shops were open, so this small garage had to mend the broken link, rather than replace the whole thing, which took a while, and once finished was only a temporary measure. I couldn't accelerate or down-shift fast- everything had to be gradual and slow, or the chain would simply break again, but she made it all the way back.

Pony having a brand new chain fitted later in Hanoi


We were all cold, ill, tired, and aching. We decided that's enough. We were planning to to go to Sapa in the north of the country, but with this crap weather it was pointless, as it's all about scenery up there, and so we agreed to sell the bikes back in Hanoi, and use the money to fund buying some plane tickets to somewhere warmer. The signs were telling us it's time to give them up. If we kept them our distance per day would be limited, and staying north would mean more cold, and we'd had over 3 weeks of naff weather since leaving the south, and we yerned for warmer climates. We checked ourselves back into the same hotel we were in several days before, and set about fixing the bikes up for sale. I got a brand new chain fitted and spark plug, Lukas's was okay, and Peters we couldn't fix due to the unavailability of the part until the stores reopened fully in a few days time. We also gave the bikes a proper cleaning - 50p to have 3 people slaving over the cleaning of a bike for 20 minutes. Same as a can of coke over here.

Pony getting the cleaning of a lifetime


We composed an advertisement, and thanks to some brilliantly rendered hand-typography by myself, and some spot on distribution by Lukas around town, we had a couple fo phonecalls within hours. We were aiming at selling to other travellers, and not wanting to rip anyone off, and needing a fast sale, we set the price at $200 a piece - trying to sell them as a trio, but willing to split if neccessary.

The ad we photocopied and posted around town


The viewings went well. The first couple to look were only interested in one bike, and low and behold they preferred the Pony! She was very flattered. Quick fix and a wash, and she was good as new, and the most attractive again :). But the first phone call we received was from a pair of American travellers, who wanted 2 bikes, and we would rather shift 2 at once and deal with the 3rd separately. After another successful viewing, the Pony trumped the others again, and thankfully we convinced them (or rather they convinced themselves after test driving) that Peters bike with the broken ignition was the better buy - it really is the best bike of the three, we just didn't have the time to hang around for the part and get it fixed. It still worked, you just have to unscrew a panel to get it going first. And so we were glad the people who'd be travelling had the two best bikes to help them get there. They wanted to sleep on it, but they seemed really keen on the idea. Reserving those two bikes for them, we went back to the German couple who were living here, and informed them Lukas' bike remained if they wanted it. And they decided to take it. Nothing wrong with it, was in good shape, just the one least suited to longer distances, as her top speed was only around 70kmph. So one sold, and another deal to seal in the morning. We went out and blew a silly amount of money on some French red, followed by some beers, and a decent meal. The next morning our heads ached, but awoke to receive a call from the young Americans, Al & Aliah; sealed! They wanted the bikes. Best way to start a day - with good news. We were thrilled the bikes would be doing our journey in reverse, and continuing to carry fellow travellers across this great land. So we had our last day with them, bought flights to Vientaine, Laos, with the money for the following day, signed over the bikes and then went for dinner with our bikes new owners to share travelling tips. We told them of the route we took - best route to use, and good places to stop off en-route, and in-tern they shared their experiences they'd already had in Laos, and highlighted a few things we should try and do as our journey continues. It was quite an emotional experience parting with the motors, and I had to take the pony for one last spin around town before handing her over. The experience was so different to when I first tried driving her, all her quirks i'd learnt to cope with and use to my advantage, I was a good driver now, and we'd spent enough time in the city to have a really good drive around in traffic, and be more than confident of my surroundings, and location. It was a good last drive, and I felt sad letting her go. I will miss that old bike.

Lukas saying good bye to his Ruzenka


That brings us bang up to date. Just checked out of the hotel and waiting for the Taxi to take us to the airport, then onto Laos, and more adventures in teh second country in our journey. Until next time.



More photos from Lukas as usual.