Mr Beem's Asian Journal
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fifteen days in Vietnam |
On the way to the Vietnamese border
Well, after I left Sihanoukville on the coast of Cambodia I went back up to Phnom Penh to sort out the travellers cheque issue. If you've been following the story you'll know that I had a lot of cheques stolen, and then had enormous difficulty in getting them replaced, which was the whole point of using them. Amex eventually paid up, they made lots of apologies that it had taken so long to settle that matter - over TWO MONTHS - but 'they were sure that I must understand that with such a large claim - US$ 7,500, they had to be careful, etc. etc.' To be honest I didn't understand and still feel that the whole thing, from beginning to end, was a complete disgrace. It is over now, but I am still a little bitter - can you tell?.
I had picked up a Vietnamese visa in Sihanhoukville which only took a matter of minutes and cost US$ 30. I went to great lengths to explain that I was taking the bike and needed assurances that this would not cause a problem. They said that the bike would only be allowed to stay for fifteen days but that I was allowed to stay for thirty...how I would organise this they were not sure. They all came outside to look at the bike and they were unanimous that he was the most 'Det Lam' - beautiful bike - that they had ever seen. I stood there like a proud father patting the saddle and agreeing whole heartedly. I asked if they could give me a letter confirming that I would be able to take the bike in. The boss said that it was not possible to issue a letter, because they were Immigration and the final say was with Customs and one department could not tell the other what to do, but he was certain that I would not have a problem.
Off I went down Highway 1, which links Phnom Penh in Cambodia directly with Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam. The road is fairly ordinary, a few good bits and plenty of bad bits, in fact something for everyone, "formula GP" and dirt biking with a splash of Enduro thrown in for good measure. It should take five or six hours to make the trip depending on traffic. All you have to do is keep on Highway 1 and it will lead you straight to the border and then on to Saigon - this old name for the city is coming back into fashion again, as Ho Chi Min City doesn't exactly slide off the tongue does it ?
I followed the road to the market town of Lepong, where it just seemed to fizzle out into a bunch of fruit stalls. I asked the first smiling face that came up to me "which way Vietnam" I would like to think that it was a case off 'opposites attract', but it was probably more like 'birds of a feather'. Anyway the village idiot pointed toward a small road running past a line of shops and said "Vietnam". Being nobody's fool I pointed to the other road and said "Vietnam", he shock his head and pointed back at the road going past the shops "Vietnam".. So that was good enough for me, and off I went.
Needless to say it was the wrong road. I thought at some point this little lane must join up with the main road because I kept stopping and saying Vietnam and they would point further on down the road. It didn't seem right but they can't all be the village idiot, can they ?. The road got worse the bridges got smaller and I had to start making detours to cross the bridges that had collapsed.
Then it started to rain. I should have bought a decent map. I had travelled ninety kilometres at an average speed of twenty kilometres an hour if I was lucky and it was getting late.
I finally came across a bunch of young blokes who were sitting at a little lean-to bar drinking rice whiskey and eating deep fried sparrows, or one of their smaller avian cousins, and the beautiful part about this meeting was that two of them spoke some English. I had a slug of the rice fire water and a mouthful of sparrow and this put me in good standing with the Lads most of whom were a little the worse for wear. It turned out that I was only fifteen minutes away from the border crossing - not the one that I was aiming for but never the less a border crossing - and if I hurried I would get there before they closed. I refused the second glass of the locally made moonshine and jumped back on the bike...I could hardly believe my luck.
Goodbye Cambodia
I arrived at the border check point in good time. They were very thorough in checking the paperwork, the officer said we don't get many farang (foreigners) crossing here. It was no great surprise to hear this. They stamped my carnet, stamped my passport and said that if I had any problems getting into Vietnam that night I could come back and sleep there, there was no hotel but they would find me a bed. I thought the Cambodians were great from the minute I arrived in their country to the minute I left.
Beautiful place .. beautiful people
Into Vietnam
I rode the bike about five hundred metres down along the south bank of the Mekong river until I came to the Vietnamese check point. It was late - about six in the evening - and they were all playing volley-ball, or was it badminton - whichever. One of the players stopped, as the rest looked on, and picked up his uniform shirt. He was only wearing shorts and tennis shoes, but he put his shirt on, brushed back his hair and pointed to the office. So in this semi official state he cleared me into Vietnam. He was not familiar with the procedure for a carnet and all he really wanted was for me to fill in the customs declaration and make mention that I had a bike and put down its registration number on the form. I don't know why - now that I think back on it, but I thought just in case there is a problem it is better to have all the paper work in place, so I asked him to stamp the carnet, which took a further fifteen minutes. If I had it all to do again I don't think that I would bother even mentioning the carnet, it just created confusion going into the place and then again on the way out. After all the carnet is not really any advantage to you, it merely insures that if you do not re-export the bike the insurance company will pay what ever duty should have been paid when the bike entered. So if they are not fussed about it, why should I be.
By the time that I had finished all the paper work the volley ball game was over and it was already dark. There's no accommodation near the border so I had to drive for an hour to the next town. The first thing that I noticed was that the Vietnamese are nowhere near as reserved as the Cambodians, by comparison they're bordering on a bunch of cheeky bastards. I had to take a river ferry to get across one of the tributaries to the Mekong. I had no local currency, so the ticket guy waived the small fee and said that I could go for free. While I was waiting for the ferry to return the bike started to draw its usual crowd of motorcycle enthusiasts.
These guys were a little different, one guy started pushing up and down on the seat to check the rear suspension and another moved my leg aside so he could have a good look at the engine - I mean I was sitting on the bloody thing while all this was going on. I got off so that they could have a better look. They didn't mean any harm, they were just genuinely interested in the bike, and I like bikes so I can understand their interest. When I stood up the all the interest was immediately switched to me. Being exceptionally tall for my height, five feet, ten inches (178cm) they took it in turns to come and stand next to me and measure where they can up to on my shoulder, one of the local giants came level with my nose. The ferry came and I left, quietly hoping to myself that the whole country wasn't going to be like this.
Getting directions was dam near impossible, but I did eventually find a hotel that was run by a Vietnamese guy that had been brought up in America, so he gave me some local info and changed some dollars for Dong (Vietnamese Pesos). I had dinner at the local market and was the cause of much speculation as to my origin. The food was cheap and tasty and the locals made a big fuss of me, running around to try to find a chair big enough for me to sit in. The market restaurant furniture looked like it had been nicked from a pre-school or Kindergarten...everything in miniature.
Next day I was on the road early on my way to Saigon. Crossing to the north side of the Mekong river proved to be more challenging than one could reasonable expect, the hardest part was actually finding the ferry, I have come to understand over the past few months that distance is flexible and very much open to interpretation. 'One Kilometre' can equal three hundred metres or close to a mile depending on who is telling the story. At a little service station I met an old guy who had worked with the Americans during the war and was enjoying the opportunity to show-off to the on-lookers his linguistic skills, he actually got on his bike and showed me the way to the ferry. We had half an hour to kill before the departure time so he bought me an iced tea and told me a little about his life. Apparently he had been having a rare old time - he had learned English at a Christian mission school as a child and when the Americans had needed interpreters he was a walk-up-start. He was quite well regarded and worked for all the top brass and they looked after him as if he were an old mate, best-of-this, best-of-that.
When the US Army left his life took a dramatic turn for the worse, basically he was considered a traitor to his own people, he was sent to prison be re-educated for seven years, when he came out after learning the error of his ways the punishment continued, he was not allowed to have a ID card, he could not own or buy land or be employed by the government or any statutory body, consequently no wife, no kids and a life-time of shit work. He was remarkably untroubled by all of this and didn't seem to be dirty-on-the-world at all. He actually reminded me a lot of a monk or a priest - very calm, very serene. Later on I was to meet others like him, who weren't quite so philosophical about the same events.
The Ferry sounded its horn to signal that it was time to board. I lined up with all the other (little) bikes and took my turn to race up the boarding ramp, which I did with a remarkable degree of confidence and skill that I do not normally possess. It seems that every little kid or teenager in Vietnam makes their pocket money by selling lottery tickets, if you sit down or even just stand still for half a second someone will be waving a handful of these tickets in your face. I was standing in the shade with the other passengers waiting for the ferry to finish loading. I was busily miming, smiling and nodding with my fellow motorcycle commuters about how big the bike was and doing lots of twisting motions with my wrist, all the time being constantly interrupted by little ticket sellers using giant smiles and dreadful frowns as part of their sales patter. I had just refused another one when the guy next to me poked me in the arm and pointed to the girl again. I explained that I was just travelling through and wouldn't be there for the draw - but thanks for the offer anyway. He pointed to the girl again and started rubbing his finger and thumb together. The girl pushed the ticket at me again and pointed to the deck - "alright then" I said "I will take one, one for me and one for the bike - one way please...sorry I am not too bright".
The roads in Vietnam are fairly good, but the road users are really bad, perhaps the worst I have ever seen. I kept being reminded of that old joke...you know the one... "what's the last thing that goes through a grasshoppers mind when he hits a trucks windscreen - His Arsehole". So I was heading towards Saigon trying to keep my arsehole out of my mind...and that's not a joke. These guys come around a corner three abreast and make no apologies, between the trucks, dogs, and cows I am surprised that there is anyone left alive in Vietnam. I am not even going to mention the millions of maniacs on little bikes...all right I know, I just did.
Through Saigon
Rush hour in Saigon lasts about as long as happy hour in a Bangkok Girly Bar, that is too say all day and most of the night. There are not that many cars in the city but they make up for that by having more motorbikes per square foot than any other city in the world - I swear it's true. Apart from the horrendous traffic Saigon is a very nice city. It has tree lined avenues, good hotels and guesthouses, all the goods and services that you could ever wish for and some of the most industrious inhabitants that I have ever seen. The food is great and there is still a strong legacy of the French colonial era - bread, pastries, wine, cafes, and French-style architecture. All in all not a bad town, but my visa was for fifteen days only and I had to travel the length of the country in that time so there was no time to hang around anywhere for too long, so I was soon on the road again.
Na Trang is a coastal town and is something akin to Australia's Surfers Paradise or Brazil's Rio De Janeiro, except a lot smaller and much quieter, but never the less a lovely town. It is Vietnam's scuba-diving capital and a popular holiday destination for locals and foreigners alike. The town council/local government are spending big bucks landscaping the seaside boulevards and generally making the place more attractive. I was looking to meet up with a guy called Jeremy Stein, who runs an outfit called Rainbow Divers I had promised Fred in Cambodia that I would talk to him and see if they could set up a referral network between the two operations. I found him at the Sailing Club and we had a chat about the possibilities and I left it for them to sort out the details. I met a nice German girl called Beatrice over on holidays from Hamburg and we hung out for a couple of days. Then it was time to continue the trip north, basically I was following the main Highway up the coast and with eighteen hundred kilometres to cover I could not afford to stop anywhere too long.Three hundred kilometres a day is big driving in this country, you really have to concentrate and keep the radar on maximum the whole time.
As anyone who has ever observed teenagers can testify, particularly the female variety, they have an uncanny capacity for conversation. Western teenagers indulge this passion with incessant use of the mobile phone. Vietnamese young ladies do so by going for rides on their motorscooters four abreast, all the time jabbering madly and gesticulating profusely whilst paying no attention to other road users and laughing constantly. This practice would be considered rather charming if it were not for the traffic hazard that it presents. So if the jabbering girlies, the kamikaze truckies, the bastards in the buses, Bovine beasts, Crazy Canines, and myopic motorists don't run you off the road or simple knock you over, then some dickhead on a revved up moped will want to race you, he will let you know this by cutting in front off you and wiggling his tail as-it-were and then taking off with more noise than speed, he will repeat this little exercise until either his mum calls him on his mobile and tells him its time for his bed or you get the shits, give your wrist a twist and just leave him behind. It would be fair to say that driving a bike in Vietnam is never dull. The country is often breath-taking and on the whole the people are friendly enough. Some lack the warmth of their close neighbours in Laos and Cambodia, - but there are exceptions.
Having said all that Vietnam is still a great place to ride around, or in my case up and down. The Armirite mountains separate the country from Laos and Cambodia to the west and the China Sea forms its borders to the South and East. China is its northern neighbour. It's a long skinny country, close to three thousand kilometres as the bike rides, and the scenery is always changing. In the south you have the Mekong River Delta and its annual floods, which makes this region the rice basket of the country, up to three harvests a year. Moving north it gets a little hilly and makes for some excellent riding. In the middle it is relatively flat with sand dunes and rice paddies, but the soil is quite poor and the scenery a little dull, and up north of Hanoi you get into some serious hill country. A huge mountain range with plummeting valleys and peopled with the country's colourful ethnic minorities.
With only fifteen days on my visa I was pretty much confined to Highway One, there was little time to go exploring down side roads. But the Highway goes through the most interesting towns anyway so there is still plenty to see and do. And there were quite a few home-made vehicles on the road, which was also interesting.
After Na Trang I headed north up to Danang and went exploring around China beach which was the main 'Rest and Recreation' area for the American troops during the war.
There is not much to see there now except a huge string of white sandy beaches and the usual collection of food stalls. North of Danang is the historic town of Hue, which was the former capital of the country in times gone by. It straddles the Perfume River and is overflowing with Vietnamese history. It's a great place to spend a couple of days sight seeing. There is a surplus of accommodation and the touts can be a little persistent, so patience and a sense of humour are two valuable commodities when you first arrive.
I was keen to get up to Hanoi as I was planning to speak to some people about taking the Northern route into Laos, and if I was going to do this I would be cutting it fine with the visa so I moved on up to the town of Vinh, which is a fairly ordinary large town with little to recommend it. Its main claim to fame is that Ho Chi Min was born just outside of town and that makes a nice half-day trip.
Ho Chi Minh's birthplace
From there I left early the next day for the ride to Hanoi. Highway One turns into a three lane motorway which deposits you almost in the middle of town.
I went straight to the old quarter to find a Cafe/Bar called Highway 4, which is the head quarters for the Minsk Motorcycle club. Minsks are a Russian motorcycle built in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. They are a simple and reliable 150 cc old technology contraption, which seems to inspire extreme loyalty in their many owners; the club has well over three hundred members. I rode though the narrow streets of the old quarter which are all named after the wares and services that they sell, and found the Cafe.
Smoking a traditional pipe outside Highway Four Cafe
The boss wasn't there but the staff phoned him at home and like so many motorcycle enthusiast he was keen to offer assistance to a fellow biker. He arranged for the barman to lead me to a motorcycle workshop where I could replace the leaking front shock absorber seal, and just opposite there was a hotel that was biker friendly, i.e. I could park Mr Beem in the lobby. I spoke with the mechanic, who like mechanics all over the world was sure that he could have the job done in no time at all - parts permitting. I left the bike at the workshop and booked into the hotel. I unpacked...something that gets a little tiering after doing it a couple of hundred times had a shower and went for a look around. As I walked through the narrow streets lined by ancient little shophouses, I couldn't help but feel that I was in the movie 'Suzy Wong'. It was all hussle and bussle and everything happening at a hundred miles an hour. I found a quite place and had something to eat, personally I find Vietnamese food a little bland, but the good thing is it is dirt cheap. After that I went for a walk around the Sacred Lake and turned in early, ready for an early start on the bike repair.
The mechanic had started on the bike the night before so by the time I got there the front strut was already off and he was starting to remove the seal. When we looked at it there didn't seem to be much wrong, but it was leaking so we decided to replace it. So off he went in search of a new one. An hour later he was back. He couldn't find the right one but he had found a Mazda car seal that was the right internal and external dimensions but was a little too thin, the obvious answer was to put in two so we would have the right thickness. It made sense to me...sort of, so that's what we did. We replaced the oil and away I went. The good news is that it worked, the bad news is that it only worked for a while but the leak was not as a bad as it had been before, so I guess I was ahead. I was hoping for a proper repair as I had heard that the roads in Laos were fairly rough and shocks make all the difference to a bikes handling and cornering in those conditions. But on the road you take what you can get.
After that I went to the cafe to speak with Nick, he runs Minsk Motorcycle tours around northern Vietnam and is the best man to talk to about road conditions and border crossings in that area. The upshot of the conversation was that there had been big rain up north and the roads were in a bad way and the one that I would be using had been cut by a landslide, he also doubted that the crossing that I intended to use was open to foreigners. So that put paid to that idea. He recommended that I go back down to Vinh and cross over at the crossing west of there. It meant another day's ride down a road that I had just come up, but it was my only option and the view is never the same coming from the other direction so it was no great hardship. Next day I left Hanoi.
The trip back down to Vinh was hot, but uneventful, and the leaking shock oil seal was no worse. I saw the usual five or six accidents and had just one close call myself...so - like I said - it was uneventful. I stayed in the same hotel that night, Vinh is such an uninspiring town that you feel the need to distance yourself from it as much as possible, so I spoiled myself again and took the twenty dollar room. That was my special frequent customer discount price. The main reason that I was staying there was that they had satellite TV and I could watch BBC World and ABC Asia, very few people in Vietnam speak English and you can start to feel a little isolated after awhile, so an evening surrounded by familiar sounds can be something of a comfort. I had a rat in my wardrobe so it was also nice to have some company. When I was checking out the next morning I was paying the bill, when the guy on reception came over with a look of a triumphant bird of prey on his face and said "Mr Buckerra have you stolen one of our towels" ? I tried to hold back the grin that was busting to get on my face as I explained that I had to use the towel to block the hole in the wardrobe to prevent the FUCKING big rat from attacking me in my sleep. He phoned back up to House-keeping in the room to confirm this story. Having done so, he made no effort at an apology, for either the rat or the allegation, something that I had come to expect in Vietnam.
Heading west out of Vinh the roads are good but the countryside is drab, at least until you get into the foothills of the Amerites then it becomes quite beautiful, windy two lane roads hanging on the side of vertical cliffs and cute bridges crossing raging mountain streams. I stoped to fill up with petrol about sixty kilometres before the border, I wanted to get ride of the last of my Vietnamese Dong, which I did. The problem was that I was still 50 cents short of the price displayed on the pump so I offered the guy a U.S. dollar to make up the difference, he looked at the note and decided that it was too old and he would not except it. The only other money I had were twenty dollar bills and it rather defeated the point of the exercise if he was going to give me my change in Dong. He pointed to a Chinese gold shop and indicated that they would change the twenty for me...into smaller bills. He wanted me to leave the bike there. We came to a compromise.I would leave the helmet. At the gold shop they were not the least bit interested in being money changers unless I bought something. I explained about the old dollar and she looked at it, then she gave it back. Eventually she offered me fifty cents for the dollar. I took the fifty cents gave it to the guy at the petrol station, wished them all a nice day and couldn't wait to get across the border.
The border crossing is right at the summit of the mountain, it is bleak and cold and the people look quite different from their lowland cousins, more squat and coarse featured. The officials are all lowlanders of course and they don't seem to be too happy to be stuck up in the mountains. I arrived at lunch time which is never a good idea. So I had to wait. I was the only one there, no one else was around and it was a little like a ghost crossing if you can imagine that. After lunch the immigration guy came back and stamped my Passport and charged me a dollar for doing so. He was surprised when I smiled and winked at him and handed over the dollar without complaint. I hope he was left with the feeling that he could have got more. The Customs guys just looked at the bike as a few questions about the other countries I had visited and took my declaration and said 'go'. This is when I started to regret getting the Carnet stamped on the way in. I asked then for an exit stamp. Oh the boss isn't back from lunch, you will have to wait an hour - sit over there. An hour and a half later the boss turned up. He wasn't sure what to make of the Carnet or where to stamp it so after a little coaching we got that sorted out, and I was free over the border lucky me.
Dateline Kuala Lumpur
Since then I have been on the road pretty much full time. I have rolled through Laos and have spent some time in Chiang Mai, in Thailand, part of it in the gutter.
Right now (November 20th 2003) I am in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I have been here just over a week. Most of last week I spent getting the bike ready for the next leg of the trip, to Bangladesh or Nepal...whichever flight works out to be cheapest. I have put new sprockets, chain, tyres, steering head bearings, shocky oil, indicators, and on and on the list goes. I am still waiting for BMW Malaysia to get back to me about the rear wheel hub, which is having some bearing problems ...they say that they will replace it under warranty - which I thought was rather nice of them.
This week I have been doing the Visa shuffle, so far I have only shuffled in the Indian and Pakistani Embassies I still have the Nepalese and the Iranian to go. It's a good chance to catch up on my reading. The BMW club and the Horizons Unlimited boys have been looking after me since I have been in town, arranging for local rides and organising for work on the bike at the best price, and of course endless cups of tea. It is Ramadan - the Muslim fasting month, so tea is the social drink at the moment...it's a nice change for me.
I am still waiting for info on a carrier for the bike - but I expect to leave Malaysia in a couple of weeks at the most. I will let you all know when I arrive in Nepal or Bangladesh.
