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Published: August 9th 2007
Hard Seat
The Longest 10 hours on a train everAside from the usual broken-down palace warnings, I remember my father giving me one piece of advice before the crowds of Southeast Asia: Don't Rent a Motorbike in Vietnam. To be fair he was probably talking about a place like Hanoi - a largely unremarkable city save maybe the heat and the constant streams of weaving motorbikes they call normal traffic. Good advice, I think. This traffic seriously looks like FLOWING motorbikes in every direction, all moving in and out of each other, each one CONSTANTLY blaring its horn. For some reason they have the highest traffic mortality rate in the world. Hmmmmmmm.
As an aside, crossing one of these roads is a good adventure itself and consists of you walking out into the street at a CONSTANT pace and making eye contact with oncoming traffic so that they don't run you over. Once you get the hang of it, it's really quite fun. You actually wait less time to cross the street than anywhere else because most of the time you just step out with reckless abandon and let the bikers sort it out. Every once and a while you will see some poor sap waiting for a break
Other seats on the train
Is this lower or higher end seat? in the traffic that will never come, or darting arross the street in a mini 100 yard dash. Amatures.
Anyway, we weren't in Hanoi - we had taken an overnight hell train to Sapa. Our innocent 17 year-old hotel clerk actually had the guts to tell us it was a soft-seat, reclinable, air conditioned train. Please see the picture and tell me how accurate you think this is. (Also she charged us double price.)
Sapa was a draw for us because it is mountianous and beautiful place, made all the more compelling by boasting the coldest climate in Vietnam. Sounds pretty good when you've been sweating for a month. We enjoyed our time there, but the town was touristy and the hassleing to buy from amazingly persistant little girls was a bit much.
Getting somewhat tired of poor food, aggressive people and rip-offs, Richie and I embarked on the best part of Vietnam - getting the hell out of there. As you've pieced together we weren't just going to just into a rattletrap public bus like the rest of the suckers. Oh no - suddenely I decided I knew how to ride a motorbike and that I
Richie
Tired and slightly grumpy just might not die en route (then I had to convince a driver of this). Sorry, Dad!
Now as I mentioned Sapa is a mountian town with the coldest climate in Vietnam. Lai Chau, our destination, is over a vertical kilometer downhill and is the hotest city in Vietnam. Between them: a windy Tram Ton pass. 2 km high at one point, this pass weaves through the mountains as the highest in Asia. You should be starting to see the draw of an open, two wheeled option...
Honestly, this was one of the amazing trips I have ever been on, an easy highlight of the trip so far. You got to weave downhill all over low traffic mountian roads, getting a feel for leaning and gearing your bike in the best possible conditions. If you dared to look up from the road you were surrounded by breathtaking green-clad mountains, valleys and boulder-filled rivers. Richie was hanging onto back of the bike for dear life, often giving me pieces of advice like "Truck!", "Corner!" and "Oh-god-slow-down-john-we-are-going-to-die".
I swear we went through 5 different temerate zones as we weaved through the mountians. It would be biting cold, then sweaty
hot, then enormously windy - we were actually IN a cloud at one point. Our favorite was when our guide, driving a separate motocycle, pulled to the side of the road and suited up with full rainpants, rainjacket and heavy googles, leaving us to conclude, correctly, that we were fucked for the next weather change.
Arriving in Lai Chau with little more than a sore behind, we were off to a small, newly opened border crossing to Laos near Dien Bien Phu(OPEN with Visas on Arival in the to-Laos direction - a difficult piece of information to come by) for Richie's final part of the trip...
Updates soon!
Ps. To those unaware I may be continuing this blog longer than expected... I am expecting a job offer from Abu Dhabi! Crazy!
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