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.