Riding the Super Dong..Rach Gia to Phu Quoc..Post 12

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After a great nights sleep at the Lang Du (apart from Rhianydd being woken at one point by a small lizard gazing adoringly up at her from her pillow),we loaded the bike for the hundred yards ride to the Super Dong.... where... we promptly unloaded it again, as the dockers said it was too heavy to go up the plank to the deck of the hydrofoil..this might sound like a trifle but in 90 odd degrees in full bike gear a 10 minute load operation tends to become a bit of a headache...Still never mind we've got a couple of weeks on Phu Quoc to recover!! The dockers stiffed us a little for loading the bike onto the ferry but given how much bigger it is than all the little Hondas they usually deal with we didnt feel it was completely unjustified.
The Super Dong lived up to its name as it was super fast, super comfy and had super Jason Statham fims running back to back for the three hour ride...Super!
All the Vietnamese folks on board ( virtually everyone) left the airconditioned cabin as soon as she left the port and spent the whole journey on the cramped rear deck getting absolutely soaked in the spray coming up over the sides, smoking themselves silly and all laughing fit to burst! I couldnt drag myself away from Transporter, Transporter 2 and The Bank Job which, I suppose, must prove that even travel nuts like me eventually get a bit blase.....
Arrival at Phu Quoc was straight from the "Idyllic Island Paradise" brochure...A turquoise bay, shoals of brightly coloured jellies bobbing in the water and white,white palm fringed sand...The bike was manhandled onto the dock in a trice and we were soon loading up yet again......We were headed for a beach hotel called Cassia Cottage for a couple of nights before moving onto a second place called Beach Club for the rest of the stay on Phu Quoc...
I'm going to cover our stay on Phu Quoc in a blog entry just before we leave to go to Saigon ( Ho Chi Minh City) for the final week of our trip. Lazy I know, but I fully intend to spend most of my time on the island doing the best approximation of nothing that I can manage. So, you'll find nothing in this blog about our stay, (even though as I write we have already been here for a few days)..Instead I thought I'd round off the mainland trip with a few observations for anyone who may ever consider doing something similar...i.e. Those brave or stupid ones amogst you, I'm still not sure which..
Firstly , and most importantly, a motorbike is without doubt the best way to see Vietnam..The tour buses (and we have seen thousands) are unbelievably cramped and invariably driven by lunatics...People we have spoken to say that though they are frequent, you still have to spend long hours waiting for connections and obviously they only go to the tourist hotspots..Most of the places we have had the best experiences are not on their itinerary at all...
The roads though teeming with traffic, are usually, with the few exceptions you will have read about in the blog, relatively slow moving, and if you ride carefully and responsibly, are as safe, if not safer, than the roads in the UK..The trains are an extremely slow option, get booked up early, and again connections sometimes take days rather than hours..
If you do decide to go for the bike journey there are loads of options...All of the printed guides insist that the russian built Minsk dirt-bike is the bike to go for, and we were certainly happy with our beloved "Poppy" ..Lightweight, gutsy and with fantastic ground clearance it is the Talebans bike of choice (Now there's a recommendation you dont often see, check out the internet for photos of Minsks carrying rocket-launchers)..In over 2500 kms we only had one major fault when the clutch died on us and we were lucky enough to hit a town with a Minsk mechanic at exactly the right time....If this hadnt been the case though it may have been a very different story...As opposed to what all the guide books tell you the Minsk is now a vary rare bike in Vietnam...In the south they are literally unheard of and spares are difficult/impossible to come by.....However if you are careful that the bike is in a good state of repair when you buy it, ensure that you have any major spare you might conceivably need, and ensure that you perform checks on all of the major items as often as is humanly possible you will definitely be riding the best bike for the very mixed terrain that you will encounter, and, one that is surprisingly comfy even with 2 hefty (in comparison to the vietnamese) westerners and full luggage on board...If comfort and street cred dont figure in your criteria however, I think that any 125 cc auto moped/scooter would do the trick...The fact that they might break more often being offset by the amount of mechanics (hundreds of them everywhere) with spares to spare!!! The Minsk though, tough durabilty aside, has the distinct advantage of being very cheap..."Poppy" along with every possible spare part we could think of still only cost just over 300 pounds sterling..Given the fact that with a bit of luck we may be able to sell her at journeys end this makes the Minsk a bit of a No-Brainer!!!
Whatever you decide to ride, weathergear is impossible to do without....It can change from brilliant, baking sun to a bone-crushing deluge of chill rain in less than a minute, so make sure you've got waterproofs and make sure you can get to them quickly...We were soaked through on one occasion before we could pull over, find them, and get the stuff on!
Safety gear, it goes without saying, is a necessity at all times, but , on roads that switch from smooth tarmac to red sand to gravel to mud to chalk to vegetation to anything else you can think of, in the blink of an eye, you would have to be brain dead to ride without armour...Just keep it lightweight and breathable and you still stay cool and...Big plus...You wont suffer from dehydration in the same way as you would without it...
As far as the actual travelling goes there are fuel sources everywhere, even in the back of beyond you will find a lean to shack with litre bottles of petrol and, (as long as you have oil with you), you are laughing..Out of the tourist hotspots no-one has any English and, again contrary to what the guides tell you, there seems to be no French spoken either...A good Phrase book and an aptitude for charades is therefore an absolute must...Also a definite necessity is a good compass and the ability to use it in conjunction with a map...Road signs are virtually non-existent, even at major junctions, and, given that the few maps which are available, awful and archaic as they are, have a tendency to swap between western versions of place names and Vietnamese versions (very, very different), route finding by direction is often the only way to get where you're going (or at least somewhere near)....Having said that we have had more fun getting lost and eventually getting found than you could imagine, so dont sweat it, someone always helps you out in the end.
Vietnam is in all honesty, contrary to the impression I may have sometimes given, extremely easy to see by motorbike....If you have a problem here people will fall over themselves to help you out..I have seen more selfless generosity here than anywhere I have been in the world and even the challenges that have popped up along the way have invariably led to real "highs" from dealing with the vietnamese folks that have been there whenever we needed them......
Whoops, starting to sound a bit of a "traveller cliche" , bear with me...I love this place!
Thats it for now...The next section of our trip, with the possiblity of a few easy jaunts around the island of Phu Quoc, will, if all goes according to plan, be spent in a prone position clutching the neck of an ice cold Tiger beer bottle..So think about us occasionally and we'll be back and blogging when we get to Saigon.
Oh, one last thing, if you do ever get to Vietnam dont miss out on the "Funny Establishment Name Game"!! Hours of fun for all the family....We have seen many a rib tickler...a Restaurant charmingly called "Phuc Me" and its sister establisment "Phuc Me 2" also "Slip Me 1" (I can only surmise there must be a "Slip Me 2" somewhere..)and my own personal favourite when we saw three shops in a line going by the names of " Tong Me " "Gen Lee" "Miss Dung" ( which I thought was a german film from the seventies).......!!!
I know you dont believe me but its all true!!!!!!!!!!
Bye for now..

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Photos

Poppy mounts the Super Dong!
Assisted by several brawny men in uniform!
Be still my beating heart!