10th January – Coming down the mountains

It’s great to be in Hanoi, safe, dry and warm after three rather cold, wet and heavy-going days in the mountains.  I left Dien Bien Phu on the 7th but before I’d even left the city limits had noted a clunking noise coming from the engine area of the bike.  Rather than risk going any further into the mountains, I turned around and found a Xe May (garage) where they diagnosed that I needed a new chain and sprocket assembly.  The young man did this very efficiently while his retired father and I sat watching him, occasionally nodding at one another.  So I set off again an hour later but with a new back tyre and new chain and sprocket. 

Even the local mountain (Black Thai) people are cold

Before long I had to stop to scrunch up my thin poncho and put it under my jacket (like a tiny duvet) to keep me warm.  Then stopped at a very Hmong village and bought some gloves and a woolly hat to wear under the helmet.  These helped but then I entered a wet cold cloud so had to stop to put on my new rain jacket and trousers which I then wore for the rest of the day.  It was a well paved road though I could only go slowly due to all the turns and gear changes.  

Had a bowl of pho for lunch which helped warm me a bit.  Then set off into a much more remote area.  It was very beautiful and the road remained good despite being a lot smaller.  I was feeling glad I had taken this route and at about 2.00 with only 28km to go was confident I’d be in Than Uyen by 3.30.  

But then I hit road works.  Here they don’t create a slip road to allow traffic to continue to get by, the traffic is expected to just negotiate whatever is there.  And instead of doing, say, a kilometre at a time, they chew up 20km, creating a wasteland, and then get to work on odd bits.  So I had to drive in heavy mud, runny mud, over rocks and between construction vehicles as they were working.  The wet mud areas were the most exhausting because they are slippery and the last thing I want is for all my stuff to go over into the mud.  

At least this bit was flat but a bit obstructed

It took three hours to go the last 25 km and my arms were aching by the time I entered Than Uyen around 5.15, a sort of dull nerve ache that starts in the shoulders and spreads down the arms.  Than Uyen itself turned out to be a town without charm.  I found it hard to find any form of guesthouse on my first pass through the town but then came across a fairly basic place where I stayed.  I was unable to find a restaurant and the one place that was selling food could only offer me more pho.  So that’s what I had for the second time that day.  The guesthouse was filthy and cold and I slept in all my clothes.


The next morning was cold and misty again so I put on extra layers of shirts and was wearing my plastic jacket and trousers.  All went well, the road was patchy but not bad, except that I came across a sign after about 30km that said Yen Bai 230km when the map had said about 160 for the whole journey.  Nonetheless I went through some stunning countryside around Mu Cang Chai.  

Rice paddies near Mu Cang Chai

But then the road went up and up again into the mountains and before long I was in thick wet cloud for miles and miles.  Visibility was down to just a few metres in places.  It was wet, dark and rather scary because there were few other vehicles, except for the occasional truck looming out of the cloud.  Then when I thought the road was beginning to descend I came across more road works, only this was wet slushy mud for as far as I could see.   At one point the engine conked out, I had both feet in slushy mud and it was dark with fog.  I could hear nothing and I was on the top of a mountain.  I was really quite scared and despairing at this moment.  But I managed to get through that section though came across more road works.  This time, however, there were other people trying to negotiate the mud and I was at least beneath the fog and could see where I was heading.  The bike, my clothes and my shoes were covered in thick mud, and I was freezing for the rest of the day.  I tried stopping here and there to warm up but, other than running up and down the road or eating another chocolate biscuit, there wasn’t much I could do.  I just wanted to get off these mountains which I realised I’d been on since leaving Vientiane.  The journey was as long as the signs had said so it turned out to be at least 255 km or more.  


I was freezing and exhausted, teeth chattering, by around 4.00 when I got to Yen Bai which turned out to be very disappointing for a provincial capital.  Apart from my 20 minute stop for pho I had been driving for nearly 8 hours.  And then I couldn’t find a hotel.  Everyone I asked shook their heads or directed me to a flee pit could not possibly have stayed in.   I looked round three guesthouses but they were all grim.  Then at last someone directed me to a suburb back over the bridge on the road I’d come into town on, where I found a hotel that had certainly seen better days but was overlooking the river.  This was going to have to do and at 160k (less than £5) it was at least cheap.  But it was so cold and damp.  At around 5pm I went out to find something to eat and got some rice, pork and spinachy greens from three very nice chatty women who thought everything I was trying to say was hilarious.  Another very cold night.  I used the kettle provided in the room to boil water which I then chucked out and used the residual heat from the kettle to warm the bed.  No sheets, just an under-blanket and an eiderdown/duvet thing which didn’t look as if had been washed in a while. I slept in my clothes for a second night.

On the 9th I woke to another cold misty morning and when I set off at 7.30 I found the roads were wet and slimy.  Rain and dust make for a slippery combination so I had to drive carefully.  The muddy spray from the road made in hard to see; I had to keep wiping my visor with my glove but the mud simply smeared.  It wasn’t raining exactly but there was a constant spray, so once again, despite all the layers I put on, I quickly got very cold indeed.  I stopped at some god-forsaken place around 9.30 just to warm up and wash off the caked-on mud from my glasses.  The people in the place I’d stopped (café would be a generous word for it) looked bemused at first when I took off my helmet but they soon warmed up and suggested I eat what the woman sitting there at the front had cooked – a sort of white rice noodle pancakes with some black bits inside and a bowl of very tasty pork in a slightly vinegary broth.  It went down a treat and while I was eating this, a young man whom I took to be her son, gave me a small cup of what he said was vodka.  It looked like vodka and was potent all right but had more of a sake flavour.  Not sure it was quite what I was in the mood for at 9.30 in the morning but it was very nice of him.  The man sitting beside me was smoking out of a huge bamboo pipe and kept offering it to me which I declined.  Even if I had been a smoker the bucket he was resting it in was rather off-putting.

When I got back on the bike I was no warmer but had to keep going.  It was really foul weather and the traffic was increasingly heavy with trucks and motorbikes.  At one point I said something out loud and found it so odd to hear someone speak that I responded to myself by saying ‘Oh hello’.  I think I’m going slightly mad.  But I’d managed to book somewhere comfortable in Hanoi and just set my mind on having a shower and getting into warm dry clothes. 
Eventually I crossed a huge bridge and found that I had arrived in Hanoi streets.  Despite feeling cold I certainly felt excited to be entering a city whose name had evoked so much when I was growing up.  Hanoi was depicted as being the capital city of the Viet Cong enemy and here I was entering it on a motorbike.  I saw someone’s motorbike being washed so since mine was caked in mud from the past few days I had mine washed too.  Cost 20k and made a huge difference.  Amazingly it turned out I was not far from Ho Tay or West Lake where my hotel is.  It had been recommended to me by a older American couple I’d met in Luang Prabang as being somewhere a little away from where the tourists are concetrated.  I’d booked a premium room which, at £23 a night, was pushing out the boat a bit but I had lived very cheaply for a few days.  I was given a very comfortable room on the 6th floor.  The air conditioner is able to pump out heat whenever I need it and there is a restaurant on the top (11th) floor which has a spectacular view over West Lake and a very hazy polluted Old Hanoi in the distance.  I spent the rest of the day in my room washing the mud off everything with a wet sock and drying it all using a hairdryer and a cord I’d brought for a washing line.