Return to Thailand and quick trip back to Auckland

21 April to 3 May 2017

The lure of Thailand and its beaches was calling. It was a long [M- loooooong -M] journey but worth it once we got there.
In the morning we flew from Hanoi to Bangkok. Once in Bangkok we made our way into the train station to sort out our tickets. We had a few hours to wait before the train left Bangkok - after rejecting the overpriced left luggage stall we relocated bags and all to a restaurant across the road from the train station, where we reacquainted ourselves with Thai food.

Soon it was time to get on the overnight train to Surat Thani. We used overnight trains a couple of times when we were in Thailand about five years ago and were sold on the concept. We settled in for the night once the attendant had come and turned our seats into bunk beds. 

Happy train times!

The train attendant woke us up and shortly afterwards we were arriving in Surat Thani. What then followed was a longwinded combination of buses (to the bus station at Surat Thani and from the bus station at Surat Thani to Krabi), local transport in the back of a ute (from Krabi to Ao Nang) and a long tail boat to transport us to Ton Sai (from Ao Nang to Ton Sai).

We had taken the government bus to Krabi, along with a mixture of locals and other tourists. All Mark’s research had suggested we should get off the bus at the first bus station in Krabi, where the locals all got off the bus. But as we got up and started moving towards the door we were told that the foreign tourists stay on board. Despite our protests. Having a person yelling at you to stay on the bus does make you second guess your research. We were taken to the tourist “bus station” two minutes down the road. It was a wide concrete space, with a handful of other tourists and a single man sitting at a desk selling an overpriced transfer to Ao Nang. But it wouldn’t leave until the van was full. There were other tourists there that were slowly coming to the realisation that the tickets they had purchased wouldn’t actually get them to their destination and they were going to have to pay this guy more to get the transfer to Ao Nang.

It was stinking hot (38 degrees) but we were pissed off that we had been taken to a complete tourist trap fake bus station. [M-and that I hadn't backed myself to trust my research over the person in front of me. I guess we'd been spoilt by 2 months in Vietnam where (almost) everyone we interacted with was honest and actually gave us good advice. Thailand, unfortunately, has had a lot more practice fleecing tourists. -M] We took the high ground and walked around the corner to the real bus station. We found the local transfer easily and felt moderately smug that we had avoided the overpriced transfer.

A quick longtail boat ride later and about ten hours after we had got off the train in the morning - we had arrived!

This was a pretty great change from Hanoi crowds and traffic.

Ton Sai beach may just be Mark’s favourite place in the world. It has cliffs coming out of the water and rock climbers everywhere taking advantage of the sheer cliffs. We had a couple of days to relax and enjoy the place. We had come here five years ago when we came to Thailand. It was a bit sad coming back. Previously all of the backpacker accommodation had been beachfront. Now the backpacker accommodation has been pushed back from the beachfront and there is a large walled off area where a resort is going to be built at some time in the future. Despite the changes the beaches are great, the water was warm and it was nice to spend a few days relaxing.

Not pictured: the BASE jumpers hurling themselves off the cliff directly overhead and landing just down the beach!

Sunset from a ladder partways up the cliff. Frank wouldn't join me... -M

When we were last at Ton Sai we had hiked up to a view point over the beaches. There was then some monsoon type rain. I decided to turn back, and Mark continued on to a lagoon, which was peaceful and beautiful, he was the only there. [M- still a life highlight -M] This time I hiked all the way to the lagoon (I’m much more awesome than I was five years ago). It was beautiful. You hike through a jungle path and then climb down to the lagoon—linked to the ocean by underwater caves—where you are surrounded by high cliffs with a rim of jungle at the top, with the sun streaming in from the small gap hundreds of feet above Our photos couldn't do it justice, so you'll have to imagine it.. It was a great place for a swim before we walked back down the track to the cave filled with penis statues.

No worries.

Action Frank was glad it was dry this time.

So these ladders didn't exist 5 years ago, there were some dodgy muddy ropes hanging down the sheer little cliffs instead. In fairness, this made it a lot easier (and safer...) getting down, but also meant we didn't have the place to ourselves.

Frank found even the ladders a bit exciting.

Prize for the best caption for this one.

The following day we did the epic journey back to Bangkok. The night train from Surat Thani would get us back to Bangkok about five hours before our flight so it was all going to work perfectly. Then the bus that was taking us to Surat Thani broke down and we sat on the side of the road for 45 minutes. Once again we were told to get off the bus at a fake bus station. This time the conductor picked up our bags and took them out of the bus telling us we were getting off here. Not much room for argument.  [M- oh, and there happened to be a man with a taxi van just waiting there, how convenient! Thieving fuckers. Luckily I could see we were right next to the local bus station I wanted to get to, and probably actually had a shorter walk than from the actual station, but man I was pissed at the blatantness of it -M] We made it to the train with nine minutes to departure, which was cutting it a wee bit fine given it had been a ten hour journey to get to the train. We were heading to Bangkok to catch a flight back to Auckland so that Mark could graduate in person (Mechanical Engineering with first class honours!). We had a flying visit catching up with as many friends and family as we could cram into six days. Graduation day itself was awesome, especially after the four years of bloody hard work that Mark has done.

Aren't we adorable.

Woo, finally!

Our final days with the motorbikes

17 to 20 April 2017

Hanoi
We planned on making it to Hanoi today but when we got up there was torrential rain. Outside our window the rock wall around the garden had been breached and water was just pouring in from the flooded fields. We debated sitting tight but eventually decided to put on the stylish rain gears and go for it. [M- There was a truly absurd amount of water falling out of the sky. I was wearing my bit Vietnamese poncho that covers the whole bike, and I would have to bail out the litre or so of water that collected in a low point in it every few minutes, while dodging the aforementioned gravel piles that were being washed into the road. At least it wasn't cold -M]

Although they have a wet and dry season in Vietnam there doesn’t seem to be any drains on the road for these weather events. All over the road there was grit and rocks that had been washed down from the hills onto the road surface. At one point Mark drove over a puddle which turned out to be a large pot hole that he seemed to half disappear into. The shock was so violent his wing mirrors were flung out of position, everything that wasn't previously saturated was then, and he discovered a few days later that he had put a dent in the front wheel rim.

As we were nearing Hanoi the rain finally cleared up, and we had our first and only interaction with the Police of the whole trip. The officer stood in the middle of the road so we had no choice but to pull over. [M- we had previously read other people's advice and discussed this, and agreed that the best strategy, contrary to all NZ instincts, was to drive past without stopping. Unfortunately we couldn't have done that without literally hitting the guy -M] He pointed to a sign that showed two cars and indicated that they were not allowed to overtake. He then pulled out a book, all written in Vietnamese with 2,000,000 VND underlined ($100USD). We pulled suitably surprised faces. He then had a bit of paper with 1,000,000 VND handwritten on it and he started pointing to that. They wanted drivers licences and our motorbikes blue cards. Thankfully the NZ licences have a picture of a motorbike on them when you have your motorbike licence this removed one possible source of complaint for them.  For a while Mark tried arguing that the sign showed cars not being allowed to overtake but that motorbikes were fine to overtake. This didn't get anywhere and they continued pointing to the "fine" we needed to pay - immediately, on the side of the road, to them, in cash.... Eventually Mark suggested that I type into translate "please write me a ticket and I will pay it at the police station". Bingo! The first officer read this and straight away had a "dammit they're on to me" face. I showed the translation to the two other officers and they all realised they weren't going to be getting any cash from us - we were handed back our documents and waved on our way.

[M- I was pleased and proud that I was able to get through the whole trip without doing anything to contribute to the endemic corruption in the countries we visited. I later learned though that the cops would have been within their rights to confiscate our ownership papers and hang on to them until we did pay a (actual) fine in person, a process that would have taken several days and completely ruined our plans for selling the bikes, causing us much more damage than what we could have negotiated the bribe down to.  So I'm glad they were corrupt and lazy enough not to call our bluff, because that could have been a very expensive principle otherwise. I'm also not 100% sure to what degree I was actually taking a principled stand for law and order here versus just trying to save some cash while acting self-righteous about it. -M]

I had been quietly confident that my seven weeks of motorbike riding in Vietnam would mean I was prepared for driving in Hanoi. I was wrong. It was all of the scary parts of driving in Saigon amplified.

The main goal while we were in Hanoi was to sell the bikes. We knew we had the backup option of being able to sell them to a local mechanic. The downside being they screw you down on the price, give the bike the once over lightly then add $150+US to the price before selling them to another backpacker. We preferred to sell them to other backpackers. We spent a bit of time wandering around trying to find a central backpacker area where we could set up and accost any foreigner that walked past with our sales pitch. Our first afternoon we sat outside a café with our handmade signs. It was a bit demoralising. There was no interest. Mark did take on the role of wise old motorbike mechanic and give advice about what to look for on a bike to some German girls who were trying to decide what type of bike to buy, but that was about it.

We also discovered that parking in Hanoi is outrageously bad, even for motorbikes. There is just no room. Roadside space is at a premium and the ladies selling their street food get a bit pissed off if you encroach on “their” space. If you can find somewhere to sneak it during the day that is fine. But after 6pm the roadsides have to be cleared. Locals seem to bring their bikes inside into the entrance / dining / living area of their home. For the rest there are designated patches of paid parking on the side of streets. There appeared to be some complex rules around this parking that we could not grasp. We spent an hour driving around in the dark (Mark’s blue LED’s came in handy for making sure I was following the right bike) pulling up to parking spots only to be yelled at in Vietnamese and shooed away. Finally we cracked the code and were allowed to park.

Mark's bike in all its LED glory

Our second day of selling the bikes and I was making noises about selling to the mechanics. We relocated and parked our bikes outside the new hostel we were staying at. There was much more foot traffic but still no interest. Late in the day an Austrian / Swiss couple wandered past. They were wanting bikes and were planning to ride in Vietnam and Cambodia. After much chatting about our trip and the strengths and weaknesses of the bikes they were keen to test ride them. It was weird seeing someone else get onto my bike and ride it away. After they had taken both bikes for a ride they were giving “we’re interested but we want to think on it overnight” signals. Then miracle of miracles the German girls from yesterday wandered over – they would like to test ride the bikes too. Could there be a bidding war?

The German girls returned from their test ride and there was a flurry of conversation between the others in German – reading between the lines we think it was hey we were here first, they’re ours and please don’t force the price up for us by offering more. [M -God I wish I could have understood, there was some serious discussion going on -M] The German Austrian couple handed over the initial cash deposit to seal the deal and we finalised handing over all the paperwork the next morning.

Now that the bikes were off our hands we were free to tourist in Hanoi. I dragged Mark along to the women’s museum which covered women’s involvement in a number of areas of Vietnamese life – family, weddings, the American war. Unfortunately there was no air conditioning and it was really really hot so the museum didn’t go down so well. Mark fell asleep. [M- we both fell asleep. It was the most boring pile of rubbish you could imagine. No, I don't need to see the special wedding headdresses for all 30 of Vietnam's ethnic groups. The concept sounded good, but wow, that place could be used as punishment. -M]

We then went to the water puppets show. It’s one of those things you do when you are in Hanoi that is not necessarily amazing but was an enjoyable way to spend 45 minutes. There are a bunch of puppets controlled by hidden puppeteers with the stage being a pond. The puppets are pretty amateur looking and there is traditional music being played by a fairly disinterested looking band. There were about 15 little pieces which seemed to revolve around a fisherman fishing and not able to catch any fish – instead catching his fisherman friend with the net, or ducks being chased by the fox. There were also dragons with sparklers in their mouths! We ended our time in Vietnam this evening having dinner with the couple that bought our bikes. [M -Eating quite possible the best pizza I've ever had, which wasn't what I expected in Vietnam -M] Hopefully they stay in one piece.

Karst away

9 April - 16 April 2017

Ninh Binh

From our remote village of Lam Son with no foreigners we travelled to Ninh Binh, which is well back on the tourist trail. The people in Saigon who put us onto it described it as Halong Bay with rice paddies instead of ocean, which is about right: massive limestone cliffs rising straight up all around you, and plenty of flocks of tourists on the main routes. We stayed in a great home stay with a local family and were well looked after. The roads here were great. Good surface, and just unbelievable canyon views. If you really hated crowds you could skip Halong bay altogether and just do the boat ride down the river through multiple caves here.

And I once again totally fail to capture how great a place is with my lacklustre photography, Nice foreground though.

While in Ninh Binh we visited Bai Dinh temple, the largest temple in Vietnam. It was indeed a very large temple, with a massive complex of multiple buildings to walk around and hills to climb. We explored for quite a while, but it was the highest hottest it's been so far - 39 degrees but with the humidity it felt like 44 - so we cut the exploring short today.

Enormous temple is enormous.

WOO GIANT TURTLE! It was too hot for decency.

Cat Ba Island

From Ninh Binh we travelled to Cat Ba island. The island is an alternative place to stay as a starting point for Halong Bay tours, and has plenty of caves and karsts of it's own too. We had a great hotel that looked out over the harbour and had raw cliff rock as the corridor wall on the opposite side.

We took a day trip by boat around technically-not-actually-Halong-Bay-but-basically-the-same the next day. It was pretty sweet cruising along with the big limestone cliffs coming out of the water. The boat trip included kayaking around a bay. We split away from our group to go into a cave, ignoring a "no entry - danger" sign. Once we had gone as far as we could into the cave we tried to turn around and get out. There was quite a strong current that was sweeping us further into the dark end of the cave. With a little bit of team work and after a few stern words Frank and I got out of the cave - minus Frank's sunglasses. [This passage is the minimum agreed upon description. You can two quite different versions that go into more detail...]

The boat also stopped off at Monkey Island. This was a random island in the middle of the park which has somehow become a stopping off point for the day trips in this area. The main attraction on the island are the monkeys. They have been introduced onto the island as a tourist attraction and rely on what the tourists feed them since they apparently can't feed themselves in this habitat. The shop on the island sells half bananas for the tourists for this purpose. We got much amusement from watching people who were busy feeding the bananas to monkeys as the monkeys would sneak up behind them and grab the extra bananas from their pockets or bags and scare the shit out of the people. There were lots of google results for "monkey island bite." A bit later we climbed to the top of Monkey Island for a break from the entertainment. 

Frank on a rock

Mark on another rock.

So many rocks!

OK back on the boat.

Heading to North Vietnam

We left Cat Ba island to head to the north. The ferry from Cat Ba island to the mainland travelled through the scenic karsts shooting out of the water. Once we got back to the mainland we headed towards Quang Uyen. We made some scenic detours on the way. 

Including the obligatory rickety suspension bridge.

Frank's favourite. I had to stop taking photos when we ended up in tangle of dead-end roads in a village where Google maps completely lied to me about the existence of a scenic detour loop.

We also experienced Vietnamese road policing in all of its glory. As we were driving along in the middle of nowhere we came across a huge queue of trucks, initially it just seemed to be one of the random truck checkpoints that you come across now and then. But then the queue kept going and going. Because we were on the bikes we were, along with all of the others on bikes, able to weave our way in and out of the trucks and continue making progress.  Eventually we came across the culprit, a truck lying half in the gutter on the side of the road and slewed across one and a half lanes of the two lane road.

For some reason, the Vietnamese decided he best solution to this was to get another truck to come and unload the boxes from the crashed truck into the new truck, using like three guys. This was stopping traffic in both directions for miles. There were literally over a hundred trucks queued up waiting for this blockage to be cleared (long narrow windy road so no way to back up or turn around if you're a truck) and this was on a fairly low traffic road, these guys had been there for hours. Even on motorbikes it took us ages to get through because there were a few cars that could squeeze through the remaining gap coming in fits and starts down the road, and then a bus taking many minutes testing whether or not he could quite fit through the gap. Meanwhile there are no road signs warning about this, no diversions in place, no frigging control of the traffic that was trying to push its through what remained of the road and just clogging everything up even worse, just a few police ineffectively standing around smoking. Holy balls did this make me appreciate NZ/ general first world standards of competence and policing traffic control and the existence of tow trucks.

Phew. Before heading to Hanoi we took a day trip to Ban Gioc waterfall. The river and waterfall is the natural border between Vietnam and China and this is the second-biggest trans-national waterfall in the world after Niagara. I crossed a bridge and took a a cheeky detour up to border of China a few km before this (where the border veered away from the river a bit) and poked my head over to look at the brand new and empty road on the other side of the row of stone markers and think idle thoughts about how easy it would be to have a real outlaw motorcycle trip before resolving to be law abiding and stick to proper border crossings.

So on I went towards the falls, figuring I'd be forced back across the river when the time came down a little detour to a marketplace in roughly the right area. I'd expected more signage for such a major tourist attraction, but oh well. I parked and carried on down a pathway, and suddenly noticed that all of the signage was in Chinese now. Huh, odd, I guess they get lots of Chinese tourists here. I continued down towards the falls, getting steadily more confused as I started passing officials in unfamiliar uniforms and the tourists started looking 100% Chinese.

So it turns out border control is really lax in that part of the world, who knew? I realised I had casually waltzed into China and started worrying about the fact that I was pretty obviously the only white person here and it wouldn't be hard to work out that I hadn't come from the same side as everyone else. I decided trying to get one of tourist boats to ferry me across would probably make it worse, and skulked back the way I had come. Whoops.

Waterfalls. I am just to the right of the falls in the crowd of people somewhere...

We turned back south and spent that night in a small village on the main highway. We walked down to a local restaurant where we had the best pork ribs ever. While we were there a group of locals forcibly and repeatedly shared their rice wine with us. It was pretty potent stuff! It was a great way to end the last of our road trip adventuring though. From there we planned to have one last massive day in the saddle to get to Hanoi and find some new owners for the bikes.

Ho Chi Minh Highway

  4 April to 8 April 2017

The Ho Chi Minh Highway runs up the spine of Vietnam from Saigon to Hanoi, The most scenic portion of this road is between Khe San and Phong Nha - our drive for the day. It's about 230km which would be one of our longest rides. There is little on the road between the two towns. We got up early and stocked up with eight banh mi bread rolls and some cakes at the local bakery. We also—following the finest Vietnamese safety standards—finished off our 1.5 litre water bottles, filled them up with petrol from the pump, and strapped them onto the bike as there is only one petrol station on the road - fairly unusual as you normally don't need to go far to find a petrol station.

So many corners...

The road was fairly deserted with very little traffic on it. We were just able to drive around the many many corners and admire the view when we turned off the engines and coasted down the hills.  

Beautiful views, average camera.

Rainforest unfortunately means rain, but Frank was dressed for the occasion.

After a quick mechanic stop for Frank's bike we made it to Phong Nha just before dark. Phong Nha is famous for its national park which contains many caves. The most famous of them, the largest cave in the world, offers a multi-day cave experience, but at US$3000 each we decided to give that one a miss. 

We opted for the more touristy boat down the river to the Phong Nha cave. Once you are in the cave the driver turns off the engine and you are slowly paddled through. The cave is all lit up with coloured lights, you walk through and then you are picked up by the boat at the other end. 

Approaching the entrance, almost time to shut off the un-muffled car engine driving our boat. 

Ahh, sweet silence, and bitching cave formations. We went through a kilometre of similar scenery, and apparently it goes on much further.

Eventually you leave the boat and do some more wandering on foot, 

And carry on up a few flights of stairs to another cave. You can tell Frank is disappointed about the lack of bats.

My bike had started spewing larger-than-normal clouds of white smoke, so while we were in Phong Nha I had a top end rebuild and had the cam chain changed. Or at least I paid for these things, same problem recurred a week later so who knows... I picked up the bike that morning and we hit the road. During the course of the day we made stops at six separate mechanics and unusually only one of these stops were for Frank's bike. 

(For those who are interested - Frank had a flat tire which was fixed; my chain fell off - I was pushed back to the mechanics shop, the chain was reattached and my wheel bearings were replaced (apparently actually tightening the chain slipped everyone's mind); we got out of town into the middle of nowhere - my chain came off again - I fixed it this time; in the next town I got the chain tightened; after some intermittent engine failure I got a new spark plug; after continued intermittent engine failure I had the spark plug read and after he messed around with the HT lead the problems were fixed!)

After such a frustrating day we stopped at another one of those weird empty resorts that we seem to keep finding. It smelt a bit odd. But there was a pool.

The other patrons (a few dozen of them later in the day) were amused as Frank and I raced down the slides.

Google Maps Leads NZ Tourists to Illegal Jungle Border Crossing: International Incident Narrowly Averted

After thinking that 230 km was our longest ever day our final leg on this part of the trip was 253 km. At the beginning we were on the Ho Chi Minh Highway so the great scenery and winding roads continued. We took a little detour down one of the roads and headed to the border with Laos. There was a border marker that we drove in circles around to leave and enter Vietnam / Laos multiple times. Apparently this drew the attention of a border guard. I had checked google maps and there was a cool road that ran along beside Laos - which purported to be on the Vietnamese side of the border - the border guard told us that we would be in Laos and we could not go down the road. I tried showing him the maps with the border lines to little avail. When he started telephoning someone Frank suggested that we move on swiftly.

Apart from this detour up into the jungle-clad mountains on the Laotian border, today was fairly bland as far as scenery. There was heaps of water buffalo on the roads as we drove along and children waving at us in every village. Our stop for the night was Lam Son. It was a very small town but it was starting to get dark so we needed to stop. I don't think that there were ever many tourists there. As we walked down the street just about every person we passed asked us the questions which seem to be the limits of English here - what's your name? how are you? where you from? 

We went for a walk into the smallish national park built around some ancient fortress that evening, and had multiple species of glow-worm and firefly surrounding us as we strolled back after dark, a fitting end to the jungle-based portion of our journey.