Day 11 Easy Rider - The unexpected!

We had more or less gone through 11 days of riding without any major hiccups or accidents. Lewis and I had felt that we were more or less naturals at riding motorbikes and we had been filming a lot of it on our cameras for the last 11 days.

We proceeded on to our last leg of our journey from Hoi An to Hue where the famous top gear mountain pass was filmed. We decided that we also wanted to film this part of the journey, in doing this Lew tied the camera to his neck, but this time tieing it too close to his body and was looking at the camera whilst moving. By the time he looked back up the bike slipped, stacked and fell on to his foot. His foot took all of the fall from the bike and scrapped his foot along the floor, pulling flesh and skin off. Bleeding badly, he washed his leg and was determined to carry on, but Phuc and I said, that it had to be washed and cleaned before we moved on. A big downer on the trip. But nonetheless we were determined to carry on and after having it washed and cleaned progressed to go through the mountain passes seen on Top Gear.

Having reached the top of the mountain, our guide told us to turn off our engines and coast down... and what a way to enjoy the views, no noise from the engine, but just the wind blowing pass your ears....

End of Easy Rider - On to Hanoi.

Easy rider had come to an end after 11 days, we managed to reach as far Hue but due to time restrictions and Lew's foot, we'd had to get a sleeper bus to finish the last 700 odd km to Hanoi.

So it was a 15hour sleeper bus all the way to Hanoi. This is where I met up with Maysan, Minh, Sam, Shelly and Jason. We spent a couple of days together before Lewis and I went to ha long bay for a 2 days and 1 night.

Another one on my to do list was to find a Wing Chun school to train in whilst I was in Hanoi. It did mean I had to miss out on exploring north Vietnam but I guess it was just an excuse to come back to Vietnam again. Having looked at several schools I came across this school through a local who we met in Hanoi.

The training was very different from what I have done in London but was very good for fitness and building strength and conditioning. Where in London my training was based very much on forms such as Siu Lim Tao, they did less on this and concentrated on lots of Chi Sao. Training was only 2 hours a day but was a killer, all the Chi Sao was so draining.

Day 6 Easy Rider

An earlier start than normal as there's was a lot of kilometres to kill. Morning coffee was followed by a short ride to our first stop was at a sea lake, so called due to it's size. The lake is actually a result of a dormant volcano. Some great scenery.

We progressed on to visiting another ethnic minority village, the bananh people. We had coffee in a beautiful bananh building with carefully crafted wooden architecture. There was a wall full of letters from people that have visited and trekked into the forest to live with the bananh people... All saying wonderful things about the people and experiences, something definitely to consider in the future.

Our day was easily delayed with some unfortunate events, first Phuc was pulled by police for speeding, for this we lost almost two hours of time. It was followed by me having a flat tyre, and almost stacking my way down a hill.

It was a mind blowing day of views with the most part of the day sunny and scorching hot, but as we entered the mountain path at 5pm it was getting dark and the rain was pelting down. Riding through the heavy rain with no street lights in pitch black had adrenalin running through the body, was an exhilarating ride!

Day 4 Easy Rider

Another 180km down, and going into our 4th riding I've had to avoid many things whilst on the bike. Main obstacles are the bloody potholes, which can be huge going over them at 50-60mph ain't good... Almost stacked a few times!!

Things I've had to avoid today...
A funeral procession going 10mph
A cow running towards me whilst going downhill.
A small pig running across the road

This is aswell as the potholes, oncoming traffic and adjoining traffic. There aren't many rules when it comes to biking in Vietnam... So you have to keep your wits about you!!

Day 3 Easy Rider - Buon Mai To

Arriving in buon mai tou, phuc kindly took us to a friends place for dinner.

We were welcomed with beer, rice wine, a hotpot and a very nice family. Phuc, our guide has many friends all over Vietnam which was a great chance for me to get to know the culture and the people. The family was extremely friendly and welcoming. The head of the family, Thanh, tried his upmost to communicate with us with his broken english picked up from when he worked for an American company 40 years ago.

He asked us about our families, what I did for a living and about our trip. He was interested about every aspect of our lives as well as sharing his own experiences about his own life.

A very interesting and humble man, that welcomed me back to his home if I ever came back to Vietnam. By the end of he night he was calling us his sons and that he wished us luck and good health on our onward journey.

Day 1 Easy Rider - Ride to Da Lat

Our first day on the open road was a 140km ride through the mountains to a small town called Da Lat. It was probably my favourite place in Vietnam. It had a totally different vibe from anywhere in Vietnam, it had an amazing 2nd hand market, where you could pick up clothes for $1-$2.

Da Lat is situated in the mountains and at night can get pretty cold. Having done our first full ride through the mountains in the pouring rain with no waterproofs, our first port of call was to buy some jackets and gloves for the rest of the journey so I wouldn't be freezing again riding through the mountainous rain.

I stayed in Da Lat for the evening, so that the next day I could explore more of the town and do some abseiling and canyoning, recommended to us by our hostel. It was an amazing $30 I'd ever spend. Starting off with a few easy 3-4 meter abseils down rock faces, we ended up cliff jumping and finished with a abseil through a waterfall of about 10-12 meters. You can never imagine the power of water, but when abseiling down and there so much water pounding down at you, its quite a scary experience.

Easy Rider - Nah Trang

I've now moved up north of Saigon to Nah Trang on a sleeper train but watching top gear the Vietnam special, touring Vietnam on motorbike was something I wanted to do instead of all the buses and trains.

Arriving in Nah Trang there was two options, one was to buy a bike for around 250-300 dollars and sell it off when we arrived in Hanoi or to hire a guide and a bike (easy rider) to take us around from Nah Trang all the way to Hanoi.

Easy rider was recommended to me by a friend who went traveling last year, and Lewis and I decided to hire a guide for 12 days to take us on a motor bike journey from Nah Trang all the way to hanoi. Easy rider was a way to not only travel through Vietnam by bike but also to experience the real Vietnam, the culture and spending time off the beaten track with the locals.

It came at a price of 40 dollars a day each, but it included accommodation, bike hire, petrol, entrance fees to all places we would visit but most important of all the knowledge of our tour guide. Unsure of whether the forty dollars a day would be worth it we decided to hire Phuc (our guide) for the day and asked him to give us a taster of what easy riding was about in Nah Trang. Phuc was the 2nd person in Nah Trang to be an easy rider after his brother, and it proved that our forty dollars would be well spent.

We started at 1030 riding for around 45 mins to an hour stopping at various famous locations in Nah Trang including the famous Pagoda with wooden Buddha as well as the nearby fishing village. After our ride we hiked for about 40mins upstream to a waterfall. Climbing over seriously big boulders and walking through deep jungle was hard but extremely good fun all followed by a refreshing swim in the river!

Our day moved on to riding to the other side of town to one of phucs friends leaving drinks... Another experience of how welcoming the Vietnamese are. We sat down with some of his friends, eating, drinking and talked about what we did back home and our future travels.

A great days experience of Vietnamese culture and adventure and on this basis Phuc was hired!

Easy rider here I come!!!