Vietnam in Summary (the short version)

As ever in travel, there has been good and bad. But on this trip, the good has far outweighed the bad with which I shall begin to get it out of the way.

The Bad

Vietnam has a garbage problem. It is most noticeable in the countryside where impromptu dumping grounds appear by the roadside with alarming frequency, and where the shallow river beds we have encountered during this dry season are choked with garbage bags. In some cases, there are efforts to burn the garbage but this just creates a toxic smoke that smoulders futilely without removing the problem completely.

The road system is mayhem. And therefore fortunate in that traffic moves comparatively slowly. We have encountered level highway crossings on several occasions with no advance warning and no signalling. So, yes, you're forced into playing a game of chicken while oncoming highway traffic blasts across your direct line of travel, usually from an acute angle that makes visibility near impossible. Trucks regularly make right hand turns from the far left lane while motorbikes make left turns from the far right. Biggest vehicle wins the day. Honking is incessant. The rule of 'every person for themself' governs.

The Good

I love that motorbike tires come wrapped like candy, in shiny foil. They brightened my day each time I caught sight of them in the corner of a workshop.

I am going to miss the sweet drinks. Everything from coffee with its sweetened condensed milk to the best peach iced tea I've ever drunk has been heavily sweetened. And it is wonderful... although maybe not so for my waistline.

Fresh fruit has never tasted so good. Cherries are prohibitively expensive, but the local fruits like pineapple, oranges, mangoes and watermelon have been a delight.

With few exceptions, we have been greeted with kindness and good cheer. Even while cruising at speed through a remote village, we were greeted with loud hellos and waves which we endeavoured to return with equal enthusiasm.

The preparations for Tet (the Lunar New Year) are delightful, and a bit confusing to western sensibilities. The exchange of gifts is familiar to those who celebrate Christmas, as are the decorations filling shopfronts, parks and living rooms. But the burning of paper offerings (replica money and gold ingots) is more unusual, especially as small bonfires break out in the gutters in front of small businesses in the centre of the city.

This country is a flower-lover's paradise. The orchids are phenomenal and grow everywhere. And the bougainvillea... it is a plant that I fell in love with in Spain two decades ago, and enthralls me still. I'm not quite sure how I manage to not get any photos of it on this trip, but the visions of it during our rides across the country are stored up in my memories.

Vietnam in Summary (the long version)

Some final thoughts (for now) as we while away the final hours of our month in Vietnam...

It took us a few days to find our sea legs, hardly surprising when you consider the extended travel time and number of time zones between here and home. But once we got into the swing of things, we found the sights and food and adventure that we had hoped to.

I confess to being surprised at the emerging capitalism in the country, evidenced by the number of housefronts hosting commercial activities of some kind. Even in the rural areas, many front yards host coffee shops, restaurants, or small convenience stands. And in a country with a very low average annual wage, there is evident significant income disparity. For those interested in the long read, this link provides a more comprehensive summary of Vietnam's recent economic path than I will manage: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/22/vietnam-40-years-on-how-communist-victory-gave-way-to-capitalist-corruption

There is a surprising amount of US entertainment on TV, much of it sub-titled rather than dubbed. Newspapers and magazines are not prevalent, but with few exceptions, even in the remotest hills, you can get online with a data plan for comparatively cheap by Canadian standards. And there is nothing by way of the internet censorship present in China.

The country is wonderfully accessible. Sure, the state knows exactly where we've been (we surrender our passports at each hotel so our stay can be registered with the authorities, and our SIM cards were bought from the state-owned telecom) but we have had a sense of freedom. The road system is up-to-date in Google Maps, and though it hasn't been at all reliable for locating sundries like restaurants, bakeries or convenience stores, I suspect this has mostly to do with difficulties in translation and the often very temporary nature of business installations, some of which appear out of nowhere on the sidewalk for a few hours and vanish just as quickly.

We have seen a police presence on the roads but we rigorously abided by the speed restrictions and were never pulled over. At the request of the bike rental agency, we made a point of avoiding the southern coastline where tourists on bikes have been creating mayhem with the result that the police are now confiscating bikes ridden by foreigners through a small, localized area. We have seen no evidence of a fire service, but ambulances of a kind abound, albeit never seeming in any particular hurry.

There has been no chance of Adam and I surreptitiously blending in; between our (often grimy) appearance and utter lack of language skills, we get noticed. As wealthy outsiders, we have been happy to support the local economy but have been happier when we haven't had the feeling of being extorted. The cost of food and bottled water has varied dramatically, but we have learned to avoid the tourist traps and have a better sense now for what is fair. Vietnam is in short, a very cheap country to visit at present, once you manage to get here anyhow. Though I do recognize (and hope) that this is likely a temporary condition while the country becomes more developed.

Some quirks: the waiters will put packaged moistened towlettes on your table along with extra cans of beer. If you don't use either, you're not charged for them. I prefer the restaurants that give out free 'napkins' of newsprint, or in one case squares of paper containing someone's diagnosis of heart disease (you can't make this stuff up).

It is best not to consider the hygiene of dish washing. Frequently, this seems to consist of scraping off the lumpy bits then rinsing the dishes in a bucket of water while crouched on the sidewalk. While waiting for one oil change, we were solicitously offered a drink of water from cups that had moments before been emptied and immediately replaced on the table after use by the previous occupants.

I don't mention these things to criticize, I mention them because they have expanded my level of tolerance and understanding. We have taken precautions where possible, in exclusively drinking hot beverages, beer or bottled water for example, but with other things like the dish washing or reuse of bed coverings (on a few isolated occasions), it is best not to linger too long on the subject as there is nothing to be done about it.

Overriding all these matters has been the general solicitousness of everyone whom we have encountered. And some beautiful scenery, the likes of which we will not soon again encounter.

Hanoi, again

Our return to Hanoi has proven just what sort of jet-lagged neophytes we were on our initial arrival in Vietnam. The city no longer seems so chaotic and untidy. And we discovered a great restaurant and five bakeries within three blocks of our hotel which once we perceived to be located in a bit of a foodie wasteland. We have returned to the same wonderful hotel that we stayed in on our last visit and were greeted by the kind and friendly staff who made our last stay so enjoyable.

We dawdled about Saigon on our final day before departing for Hanoi - locating a larger duffel bag for the trip home so that more of our riding gear could be packed into our checked luggage than on the flight over. The market stalls are awash with counterfeit labels, primarily North Face, but most of the major brands are represented. We suspect much of the "gore-tex" to be fake and wouldn't trust the performance of the sportswear so haven't been in the least tempted to shop for outerwear, but the new duffel only has to get us home and as such cheap was the order of the day.

The country is beginning to prepare for the Lunar New Year. Fresh orchids decorate the streets of Saigon. We have seen small orange trees and flowering cherry branches being delivered on the backs of motorbikes. The candy counter at the bakery was swarmed last evening as customers stocked up on treats for the holiday. And countless coolers of fruit accompanied our fellow travelers on the flight from Saigon to Hanoi. The park employees were out en force today sprucing up the garden beds and planting a sea of pink azaleas.

Adam is revelling in the cooler temperatures of Hanoi. When earnestly entreated by the concierge to put on a warmer jacket, sir, Adam just chuckled and went about his day in long-sleeve flannel. Despite initially finding the weather in the south to be oppressive, I quickly adapted once I was free of my riding gear. Accordingly, I have spent the day in Hanoi shivering despite wearing my fleece sweater and long johns. I've also asked for a spare blanket so I can keep my half of the bed warm enough tonight. Raising the thermostat only makes our room stuffy.

We went in search of Hanoi's famous egg coffee this morning. Adam prefers the hot version while I'll take it over ice. Legend has it that the inventor, having run out of the more traditional sweetened condensed milk additive, whipped an egg yolk with sugar until fluffy and mixed this with coffee instead. I'm quite sure that these are not the healthiest coffee habits to be importing into our daily routine at home...

We followed up coffee with a visit to the Vietnamese Women's Museum. It was a stop recommended by a lovely Korean woman on our flight over, but one that I didn't have the energy to follow up on during our first stay in the city. There were fascinating analyses of women's roles in the family and of the indigenous textile industries. Each if the exhibits at the museum was incredibly well sign-posted (a failing at other museums we have visited) and all of the signs were translated fully in French and English, making this museum the most accessible of any visited to date. Perhaps because the subject-matter was less geo-political in nature, I found the tone to be more neutral than any of the historical sites we have seen. Adam was less engaged than I, but then he doesn't share my enthusiasm for sewing, knitting or needlework either and there were rather a lot of exhibits dealing with those particular subject matters.

Ho Chi Minh City, at last

Our arrival in Saigon was hardly auspicious. While Adam is feeling much better again, he hasn't been sleeping terrifically well. Being in a different room each night, surrounded by different thumps, bumps and sounds doesn't help. So when he fell back asleep early in the morning, I let him enjoy a lie in, with the result that we began our journey from Bien Hoa into downtown Ho Chi Minh City later in the morning when the heat and humidity were already settling in.

It took us just over an hour to cover thirty kilometres in dense traffic before we began the hunt down the narrow back alleys for our accommodation. Typically, we have been booking our hotel mere hours or minutes before we check in, once we're certain we can reach our destination comfortably by day's end on the motorcycles. But when we began investigating the hotel scene in Saigon a few days ago, we were mildly concerned to note that the vacancy rate was much lower than we have experienced elsewhere. So we pounced at an auspicious looking place and booked it, before delving into recent reviews which confirmed the lack of elevator (a minor pain if we were assigned a room nine flights up) and recent construction activity in the building.

We therefore had some reservations about our choice before we arrived and discovered that it was more akin to a hostel than a hotel, and a bit careworn. To our relief, we were assigned a ground floor room but when we realized it was immediately adjacent to the lobby and separated only by a translucent glass door, we balked. We put a premium on good sleep and knew that we were unlikely to manage this with the light and noise streaming in from the lobby. So we paid the generous cancellation fee and walked.

We repaired to a coffee shop nearby, booked into another hotel and then, refreshed by the cold drinks, headed over to the new place. Here we are very happily ensconced in a nautical themed room on the upper floor. Yes, we have to climb one flight of stairs as the elevator only travels to the sixth floor, but this is a minor inconvenience for our comfort otherwise. We are more centrally located to the things we have wanted to see in the city, so despite the cost of the cancellation fee, all has worked out well.

This is the only hotel to date that has not had motorbike parking available. Elsewhere, our bikes have been typically parked in the lobby or a secure underground garage. As the XR 150s attract a lot of attention, we've been grateful to have them securely attended to. We assured the hotel clerks here that we would take our motorcycles away just as soon as we could drop our luggage, and then we were off to return the bikes. Adam and I are in complete agreement that we'd prefer to navigate Saigon on foot going forward.

It was with some regret that we bid goodbye to the motorcycles. They've had a few quirks: dumping oil all over my right boot each day, or Adam's footpegs held on by nothing more than a hope and a prayer instead of the more typical cotter pin (until we identified the problem a few days ago and corrected it with some spare lead wire I had kicking around), but the bikes have served us well. I got a bit misty-eyed saying goodbye. So Adam treated me to an ice cream. It was delicious!

Over the past couple of days, Adam and I have really come to appreciate Ho Chi Minh City. The sidewalks are easier to navigate than those in Hanoi, and the city generally seems to be tidier. Plus there are cosmopolitan touches like French patisseries and fashionable brew pubs.

We visited the Independence Palace yesterday, a microcosm mid-60s design. There were some lovely examples of lacquered furniture on display, and we were given access to the basement bunkers and situation rooms. The best sight however was that of a tour bus driver who had opened his otherwise empty lower luggage compartment from both sides to allow air circulation, and then hung a hammock in this shady spot to nap while his colleague guided their gaggle of passengers about the palace.

We tried an excellent local Vietnamese restaurant last night then drifted over to the brew pub. Their core beers are solid but Adam and I regretted branching out and trying a coffee porter and a sticky Belgian brew.

We had an early start today and headed out in the coolness of the early morning to the War Remnants Museum. Here the adage that history is written by the victors comes true. While the story-telling was entirely one-sided it did at least lack the hysterical tone of the similar narrative at the museum at Khe Sanh. It was interesting to see the photos taken by international war correspondents all gathered together, but I didn't learn anything factually new. Most harrowing were the photos showing the after-effects of Agent Orange as it continues to impact the population today.

We found lunch in a delightful bakery, an oasis of cool, before venturing out in the scorching afternoon sun to visit the Jade Emperor Pagoda. We were delighted by the pool of tortoises outside the pagoda and the delicately intricate wood carvings within. I was a bit taken aback by the infiltration of colour-changing LEDs surrounding Buddha and the main Taoist shrine. I confess my aesthetic sensibilities lie with the more traditionally austere shrines I visited in Japan, but it is wonderful to see the Jade Emperor Pagoda as an active and vital part of the local community with continued relevancy.

Tonight, Adam and I treated ourselves to a delightful meal at a French bistro before retreating from the heat to watch the (thankfully undubbed Avengers) before catching up on the news of the day.

Towards the End

Ho Chi Minh City is within sight. We've arrived in Bien Hoa, one of the suburbs, after a long day on the bikes. We covered more mileage today than on any other single day of this trip, nearly doubling our average, and it took most of the day to achieve it.

We were lucky to again have clear skies, and the road out of Da Lat reminded us of our favourite days on this trip, riding through the hills of the Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park. There was a great deal more traffic today however and that kept us on our toes. As we descended from the central highlands toward Ho Chi Minh City, the heat overwhelmed us. We'll be happy to be free of the motorcycles soon as this will mean freedom too from our heavy armoured riding gear.

We passed a floating village today, the first of that kind of settlement we've seen. And once we'd descended from the highlands with their endless coffee plantations, we began to pass through more rubber plantations again.

Lunch today was a brief pit stop in the shady forecourt of a Roman Catholic Church, munching on oranges and semi-stale baguettes. Lunch on the road is a thing we haven't mastered but we did have copious water on hand today so we're learning something! Dinner was an unusual take on steak and eggs, served on a sizzling cast iron pan, tex-mex fajita styles. We are noticing more international fare available in these parts so I settled on Japanese bubble tea for dessert while Adam opted for tiramisu. Then we were fortunate to catch the beginnings of the eclipse of the super blue blood moon on our way back to the hotel.

Central Highlands

Our transfer to Da Lat from Nha Trang was rather longer than anticipated yesterday when we got held up in a road closure while road maintenance was effected. We opted for the newer highway between the two cities but with it being new, erosion in the hilly sections has been taking a toll and crews were out yesterday setting off controlled rockslides that then had to be cleared from the road surface.

We were stranded with many other foreign motorcyclists, huddled in the shade of a single overhanging tree. The locals showed their superior preparation by unfurling hammocks and taking refuge in a small glade of trees just down the slope from the stoppage. Adam and I had each packed a litre of water in the morning but this was barely sufficient to survive the wait in the baking sun. I nibbled on a baguette while Adam continued his fast in an attempt to cure whatever it is that is ailing him.

After four hours, the highway was reopened and this set off a flurry of activity as those on motorbikes geared up to retake the road while drivers of passenger vehicles which had been running the whole time to maintain air conditioning, jostled through the herd and sought to gain the head of the queue. The mass of vehicles rounded one switch back and then was stopped again, and here chaos took hold. Trucks, buses and cars filled both lanes of the two-lane highway surging up into the pass, only to meet oncoming traffic similarly arrayed.

And here we had an advantage on the motorcycles - we were able to thread our way through the sea of large vehicles while the two flag guys marched up and down waving their batons futilely in attempt to get traffic flowing again. We climbed away from the coast and into the clouds, emerging in the central highlands, a landscape that is new to us in Vietnam. Gone are the rubber plantations and rice paddies, we are now surrounded by coffee plantations and stands of tall pines.

Da Lat is evenly temperate year round and we were delighted to don sweaters yesterday evening when we walked out to replenish our supplies of bottled water. The city is surrounded by fields of greenhouses, stretching to the very edges of the hillside cemeteries, and occupying any patch of bare ground.

Adam never whinges so it has been tough to know how sick he has been feeling but his paleness yesterday evening was a bit ominous. I am delighted that he has regained some colour today and has begun eating again - perhaps tempted by the delicious mangoes available in these parts. I have been impressed by the giant hydrangeas lining the sidewalks of the main boulevards.

Sea Breezes

Vietnam has been gripped by football fever. The country's under twenty-three soccer team made it to the AFC final yesterday and so we joined everyone else in watching them lose a tight game to Uzbekistan. Despite the loss, the celebrations in Quy Nhon continued well into the night. I managed some fitful sleep but Adam is suffering today. He's eaten something funny too so we've been sticking to a bland diet today in hopes that whatever ails him passes soon.

We got our second required oil change completed in Quy Nhon yesterday where the mechanic very kindly fashioned a temporary but perfectly serviceable footpeg for me out of a scooter passenger peg. My footpeg was a casualty of the epic day and Adam has been riding my bike since, coping with the little nubbin until something could be done. I'm back on the older bike now, with its squeaky rear brake and clunky suspension. I wasn't very lucky on that draw when we collected the bikes!

Between rainshowers yesterday afternoon, we took a stroll down the beach in Quy Nhon. We'll be leaving the coast for good soon and wanted to soak in some final sea breezes. Otherwise, we spent a relaxing day reading (me) and catching up on Dakar Rally news (Adam).

Our destination today was Tuy Hoa but upon arriving there shortly after one under sunny skies, we decided to push on for Nha Trang. We weren't particularly keen on seeing the city itself, but it makes a handy jumping off point for the trip into Dalat tomorrow. Nha Trang is awash with western franchises including KFC and Pizza Hut but we found some fried rice for dinner, and a great bakery so we're set for breakfast tomorrow.

There may be no crying in baseball, but some days there are tears in dirtbike riding.

Yesterday was epic. I have never been pushed so close to my limits, neither by the two half-marathons I've completed nor by any of the strings of all-nighters I pulled in university and since in completing architectural projects.

Lately we've been finding restaurants and convenience stores so frequently en route that we started off the day with four oranges, 1.5 litres of water and a square of Ritter Sport chocolate in reserve between us. Neither of us suspected the rigours that the road was going to put us through yesterday.

We woke to rain in Quang Ngai so indulged in a rare lie-in followed by foraging for breakfast noodles and coffee before hitting the road around ten. Shortly after eleven, I complained to Adam that I felt my drive chain loosening - it was flopping a bit and slipping on the cogs when taking off from a stop. Adam pulled over immediately to effect a roadside repair when the farmer and his family poured forth from the house opposite and insisted that we use their yard for our work. We displaced a young calf, then the box of rusty wrenches appeared and everyone in the yard set about my bike.

Adam tried to keep a lid on the chaos while four pairs of inebriated hands got busy tugging on this thing and that. With Adam finally satisfied that the chain had been tightened closely enough to spec, he was invited into the house to pay his respects to the photos of the farmer's dead wife and his parents. And this he did, waving incense and bowing formally. Then it was on to the toasts where some very fine moonshine was being poured liberally from a plastic shake cup. By now, the neighbours had begun appearing and warned us not to imbibe too much lest we become a menace on the roads. For the sake of politeness (and frankly because he rather enjoyed it) Adam finished off a shot while I happily munched on the proffered bananas. Our helpers would not accept payment for their kindness so Adam gave them his Leatherman multi-tool in thanks. And then it was back on the road.

We turned up a mountain road that promised a few twists and turns and some lovely scenery on our way to Quy Ngon. Soon, we entered a construction zone, with alternating sections of concrete and gravel but we continued onward, not overly worried that this unevenness was slowing our progress for the day. We look back on our photos from this section and marvel at our naivety admiring the views and continuing blithely onward.

When next we encountered a stretch of muddy ruts, three feet deep, we briefly faltered and paused. But after all, we were on the sort of motorcycles made for this stuff. We watched in bemusment as locals pushed their scooters through the mud in bare feet, then regrouped and re-boarded three-up to continue on their way. In this, the lightweight scooters had the advantage over us.

The scooter tracks continued right alongside the cliff edge, avoiding the deep morass of the main road that had been chewed up by heavy trucks and diggers. Adam had to ride my bike over a couple of washouts, where visions of my recent tumble down the hill psyched me out. Seeing what we were getting ourselves into, and not knowing when we might re-find good road, we began to ration our water and oranges. Adam didn't yet know about my chocolate stash.

After several hours, we reached an isolated hamlet and gained an audience for the greatest exertions of the day. The entire width of our passage was choked with deep ruts and oozing clay. I rolled off my bike at one point and began to blend with the landscape as I became coated in filth. We had to manhandle our bikes through the ooze, pushing and hauling one bike at a time, all the while knee deep in sucking clay that threatened to pull off our boots no matter how tightly laced, and holding onto the tires as if gravity had multiplied a hundred fold.

At some point mid-afternoon, we reached a brief section of concrete and thought we were saved but it too evaporated we were thrown back into the muck and the horror. We knew what lay behind and felt we had no choice but to continue onward, hoping that the downward slope of the ground meant we were being carried off this hill and toward deliverance.

I have never felt more fear for our well-being. The shortage of water frightened me most because we were working so hard at dragging the bikes through the slop. Late in the afternoon, we stopped for our last few mouthfuls of water and chocolate to give us strength for a final push. It became apparent that we were not going to be able to outrun darkness and another terror set in. Would we ever get off this bloody road?

My legs were exhausted, I could no longer hold the bike upright when the wheel jerked and twisted in a muddy, rocky rut. Adam had to help me countless times pick up the bike and carry forward another hundred metres. I heard the fright in his voice when he saw me topple into a deep concrete drainage ditch that marked one edge of the track. I bounced back unharmed, not thinking it anywhere near one of most spectacular wipeouts of the day, but I didn't have his perspective and I gather it looked pretty bad. It was a struggle to pick out the path by our headlights on the uneven terrain. And the exhaustion was unrelenting.

Eventually, the mud just ended. And we entered the edge of a small town. Stopping at the nearest convenience store, we were obviously in such horrendous shape that the shopkeeper tried to charge us six times the going rate for drinking water. Even in his desperate state, Adam bargained him down to a little more than twice the usual cost. And only then did we feel saved. Later, we confessed to each other that while we had pondered stopping at one of the isolated farms we passed and asking for water, we didn't expect them to have fancy reverse osmosis systems and feared accepting something other than bottled water, so we preferred to go without.

Reaching the highway fifteen minutes later, we considered our options. We could retreat to Quang Ngai, tails between our legs, and start out again southward tomorrow by a more direct route. But that would mean an hour up the highway in darkness. Instead, we blew the bank and booked ourselves into a private bungalow at a swank beachside resort twenty-four kilometres down the coast. The ride along a darkened highway was as harrowing as we had anticipated - all of the usual hazards (dogs, kittens, pedestrians, and bicyclists travelling opposite traffic in our shoulder lane with no lights) were ever-present only now they were shrouded in darkness.

I presented quite the sight as I strode mud-clad and rank into reception to collect our key. Then I climbed fully-clothed into the shower to wash all of the encrusted filth from my gear. The bungalow was quiet and perfect for our needs, and worth every penny.

Later, Adam confessed to me that at the outset of our trials, he was anxious to see some dirt action on this trip. And as neither of us could have predicted the exertions that were going to be demanded of us, we gamely continued onward. But we are both resolved that we will turn back at any such future obstacle on this trip. We got away with our gamble yesterday, and we recognize our fortune.

A couple of things became clear on the road yesterday. The number of roadside shoe stalls has been explained by the numbers of random single shoes found floating in the muck. Shoes are lost with such prevalence that they must be restored with equal frequency. And I can only imagine that our day more accurately reflected the experience of the wartime Ho Chi Minh trail than anything we've experienced to date, minus of course the threat of overhead bombing. Not an inconsequential difference.

Today we finally reached Quy Nhon by the direct highway route. After getting our bikes washed at the roadside stand fortuitously located immediately opposite the resort, locating food and more bottled water, we opted for the highway once we got moving today.

Upon arrival in Quy Nhon, we took a wander around the city. It is lovely, located next to the sea in a wide sweeping bay. The city is tidy and clean, unlike so many other urban centres in Vietnam. So we have decided to stay on an extra day, and get some laundry done. The gore-tex outer gear will have to wait until our return home, so unfortunately the funk of adrenaline and sweat will follow me around for another couple of weeks. But clean socks and base layers will go along way to improving the mood.

Adam replaced his phone this evening so is currently engaged in configuring a new Samsung. I am delighted that we will no longer have to swap a single phone and the e-book back and forth.

And finally, our goals have shifted. We're in recovery mode now. We have the bikes for another week so we'll take it easy and work slowly and steadily toward Saigon. The Mekong Delta now seems out of reach. And while we probably have more highway miles ahead of us than either of us would prefer, we have been chastened.

[Back to normal: a clean bike and a cow grazing at a bus stop on the highway.]

Around in Circles

Today was a comedy of errors from beginning to end. We began the day with a short jaunt out from Hoi An to see the Cham temples at My Son. But upon arrival, and bearing in mind the 2.5km hike from the carpark to the ruins (in all of of our riding gear, in a rainstorm) as well as the sorry state of the temples after the bombing during the war, we decided to move along post haste without seeing the temple complex. Sometimes I have to remind Adam that I am architect, and these things are interesting and relevant to me, but this time I was happy to avoid the coach loads of sightseers and a sweaty march in 30 degree temperatures, in a rainstorm.

We had not backtracked more than a hundred metres down the road before Adam found a squirrelly dirt track that he liked the look of, veering off in roughly the direction of our travel. So off we proceeded. The last time we attempted this on foreign soil, we ended up unknowingly driving across the French Military exclusion zone surrounding the Ouvrage Hackenberg on the former Maginot Line. With mild trepidation therefore I followed Adam into the wilderness but warned that I would partake in no bush crashing as we are in a part of the world littered with as yet undiscovered unexploded ordinance. He readily agreed to this compromise and then we met this sign:

Google Translate informs me that its meaning is:

"Orange area

Many people, animals, and animals fall in love.

Chat vibration, airborne, vibration, vibration, vibration.

."

Which was no help in understanding what we were getting ourselves into. A ways along we encountered a flooded river crossing that better explained our predicament. We hemmed and hawed about proceeding, considering the steepness of the bank and the deepness of the crossing and ultimately decided not to continue. We knew that we had at least two more river crossings ahead that were also possibly washed out, the river was steadily swelling with the rain, and there was no sure indication that the road would lead us out to pavement at the other end. (Adam blamed our lack of serious knobby tires as his reason for not proceeding and I readily assented.)

So back we bumped and slid, through the deep clay ruts out to pavement. Once we'd circled around and reached the lane that Adam thought might have connected at the other end, we went exploring down another track that dissolved from concrete path between rice paddies to deeply rutted farm track. It was at this point that the farmer, pursuing us slowly through the wet clay on a scooter, gently but firmly ordered us back to the main road and on our way. I suspect he didn't understand Adam's love of adversity motorcycling and simply didn't want us to get stuck (nearly getting stuck being Adam's idea of a heavenly day of riding)

Sometime after one o'clock, we stopped at a roadside stall for a banh my sandwich, and while crouched there, I checked that my phone was staying safely dry in my breast pocket (it was). It occurred to Adam to do likewise (it wasn't). Two inches of rainwater had pooled in Adam's breast pocket so we may again be shopping for a new travel phone. The iPhones are not having a good time of it on this trip.

We passed through some lovely country this afternoon, and had it not been raining so hard, we would doubtless have enjoyed the view. But as the day wore on, the rain grew steadily heavier. Mid-afternoon we stopped alongside the twisty road on a soggy grass verge to attend to nature's call. There were no better options along the narrow road, and this gave us good visibility to oncoming traffic. And here I performed the most graceless dismount I have yet managed from a motorcycle (and I've managed a few in my time). As I stepped off my bike it began to tip, and being concerned that it is not equipped with handguards, I was worried about snapping the brake lever. So I attempted to set the bike down gently when the grassy bank gave way and I flipped ass over teakettle down the steep slope toward the river below. Adam gave a yelp of horror as I disappeared but not having a working camera at hand, couldn't document my predicament as I quite thankfully wedged myself into a brushy heap about ten feet below the road surface. I managed to clamber up to the road again, we got the bike righted and then continued off down the road, chastened by the day.

[The river into which I nearly rolled]

Sometime after three o'clock we determined it might be time for a coffee pick-us-up and began to study our options for lodging for the night. When hotels in Hoi An began popping up, we realized we had travelled 115 circuitous kilometres to cover 20kms as the crow flies. So we bailed on the twisty roads, took our lives in our hands, and made for the highway, gratefully arriving in Quang Ngai and achieving a more respectable southward distance of travel of 110kms by day's end.

Our hotel suite tonight is monstrous and we are happy to have room to spread out our drenched clothing. But it isn't without anachronisms - a corner of the ceiling of the equally massive bathroom opens to above and may be overlooked by suites on upper floors. I'm glad I didn't notice that feature before hopping naked into the shower.

Our food situation improves as well. We are getting better at spotting the signs of an open restaurant (other patrons crouched on the ubiquitous plastic stools) and better at ordering (managing to order a single chicken instead of the two we had begun with tonight). The meal was delicious - organ meats fried up with onions and pineapple slices; the diced chicken stir fried with chillis, garlic and ginger; and rice and veggies on the side. And beer, the fourth local brew we've tried on the trip to date. All quite respectable lager style beers.

Over the Hai Van Pass, with Goats

We sought out pho for breakfast before leaving Hue, and then I continued on my hunt to locate an iced milk coffee to replicate the one I had during our first week. No luck yet. And alas, there were perhaps too many onions used to make the soup broth, or maybe something else upset my stomach but whatever the case, I was feeling distinctly barfy by the time we did a drive by of the Thien Mu Pagoda and got to the outskirts of Hue.

Adam graciously offered to swap his open-face helmet with my closed-face model just in case... but after a bit of a breather and a water break, I began to perk up. And just in time as we were set to ride the Hai Van Pass (of Top Gear notoriety) when I would need all of my wits about me.

Adam plotted a wonderful route away from Hue, through quiet country lanes but as we approached the pass, we joined the busy single highway that would take us to its lower flanks. We had to pass through a couple of short tunnels alongside heavy trucks and coaches, and never have I been so glad for all of the horsepower that the XR150 will produce. We were able to keep up with traffic better than many of the scooters on the road, though it was at this point that my big bulky helmet was returned to me, providing a much appreciated sense of security.

Most of the heavy trucks are diverted along a straighter toll route now, but the Hai Van pass road is still flocked by large tour coaches and trucks that wish to escape the toll charges. I'm delighted to have had experience riding through the European Alps to fall back on because while the Hai Van pass is not as twisty nor as high, it is much busier. Three young Asian men came off their scooters just ahead of us, upon encountering a herd of goats on the road. One of them braked too hard, dumping two of them into the road before the other drove into them. Adam was able to stop and confirm they were not seriously injured, while I sought a safe course out of the melée of goats and off the road until Adam could catch up.

The high peak was lightly shrouded in cloud so we did not linger but continued down into the heart of Da Nang. This port city is awash with hotels, with more being raised along the beach to the south each day. I grew about as impatient as I have ever been in traffic yesterday afternoon - tired of the incessant honking of taxis and shuttle buses who feel they own the road and resent a motorcycle taking up anywhere near a safe blocking position in the adjacent lane. Adam dealt with all of this much better in his usual implacability and delivered us safely through the heart of Hoi An to our hotel on neighbouring Cam Nam island.

The island is accessible by a single bridge and then narrow lanes, barely a single car width in size. We threaded our way through this maze, slowed up at one point by turning into the alley in front of a public school at final bell. But with bikes being so common no one seemed the least perturbed as we inched our way through a sea of kids and their parents with their own scooters. Our guest house is on the far end of the island in a quiet neighborhood, where we are disturbed only by the requisite roosters.

We walked back toward the centre of Hoi An last night and ran into a friendly Scotsman named Alan who, freshly arrived from Malaysia, had heard something about a shuttle into the heart of Hoi An from the island but finding nothing of the kind on the dim streets seemed delighted in discovering a pair of English speakers whom he could regale with his tales of life in Northern Ireland in the bad old days. He joined us for dinner and more than a few beers then cajoled by the ever energetic Adam, walked back with us towards our hotels.

Adam and I borrowed a couple of rickety bicycles from the guesthouse this morning to poke about Hoi An. We got our flight from Saigon to Hanoi booked, reminding us that this adventure comes to an end in a couple of weeks. I kept my shopping urges in check as we pedalled by countless dress and leather goods shops. Travelling by motorcycle imposes some limitations and space is certainly one of them so there will be no additions to my luggage until the bikes are returned.

We enjoyed our first street food experience today, ordering banh mi sandwiches from one of the roadside carts. It was dripping with several sauces and entirely delicious. We followed this up with a quiet stroll around the island before repairing to the guest house to enjoy the strains of the neighbours practicing their (distinctly off-key) karaoke favourites at full volume. This at least drowns out the public address speakers as they begin their exhortations to toil and moral life.

Hue and the Cities of Ghosts

We had a lovely ride down the coast from Dong Ha to Hue yesterday, interrupted only by rain as we approached our destination. The day began with some backtracking north to the Truong Son Martyrs' Cemetery - the military cemetery for North Vietnamese soldiers killed around the 17th parallel during the war with the US. The cemetery has none of the austere solemnity of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, or the Commonwealth World War cemeteries in Europe, but there is a poignancy with the conflict being so recent in seeing families come to honour the memory of their loved ones. The presence of these families brings the impact of the conflict into stark relief.

We travelled on to another significant relic from the war, the Vinh Moc tunnels. The signage and directions at the site were scarce, but eventually we found what we thought was the furthest tunnel entry, and began to work our way underground back toward the car park. As we approached the first vertical shaft to descend however, I had a minor freak out. There were no lights or active ventilation in the tunnels, and the passage inclined inward over us as we hunched our way forward, and then quickly reversed course to the tunnel entry. Adam was terribly understanding about losing our entry fee to my claustrophobia, and so I'm not really in a position to comment on the tunnel complex; we had but a whirlwind visit and then were back on our bikes heading south.

We have been noticing family tombs in farm fields and on hillsides since we began our travels but as we have approached Hue, a former capital of Vietnam, virtual cities of the dead have been crowding the sandy seaside landscape with tombs outdoing each other for ornate splendour. It seems slightly curious to me that so much space should be given over to ghosts, and in some small hamlets tomb structues outnumber houses, but there it is.

Hue's UNESCO designated sights, and most particularly the former Imperial City, are a huge draw to tourists. Western food and drink is readily available in the city centre, and there are countless purveryors of silk and knock-off North Face gear catering to the foreign hordes. We were bemused last night to find ourselves among an exclusively white crowd (save except the waiters) at the restaurant where we had dinner as this has been a rarity since leaving Hanoi. We headed away from the central core this evening, to eat with the locals and have our fill of nems (aka fried spring rolls) before hitting up the bakery next door for some after dinner treats. Then it was across the road to stock up on fresh fruit for lunch on the road tomorrow.

As for Hue itself, sadly much of the Imperial Palace complex was damaged during the battle for this city during the 1968 Tet offensive but restoration efforts are returning the grounds and buildings to their former glory. Adam derived more pleasure from the lizards and fish occupying the moat than he did the architecture, but he indulged my enthusiasm as we roamed about the palace grounds exploring the old wooden palaces and masonry gates.

Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail

Adam has tweaked his back. Apparently, he bent down funny to buckle his boot with the result that he is now hobbling around like a man twice his age. I've never seen him this way, and though I chuckle a little at he who likes to gently rib me about my own fitness levels, I am also sympathetic. The bike seats are only marginally comfortable for a full day of riding and can't be helping his recovery any. The Advil supply is again being plundered, this time to ease a non-flu related ache. I am mostly back to my old self post-influenza save for a lingering cough that I try to suppress, especially while our helmet radios are on.

We had a lovely twisty ride out of Phong Nha yesterday, through some of the most uninhabited areas of Vietnam that we've yet encountered. We even lost cellphone service for awhile, so far were we from human settlement. By common agreement, Adam and I have decided to ride the western Ho Chi Minh trail (the singular road that is so designated today), keeping inland and enjoying the hill country. We had some bike maintenance to attend to yesterday however, so we ducked eastward to the coastal city of Dong Hoi.

As part of out motorcycle rental agreement, we are required to pay for an oil change at a licensed Honda dealer every 1,000 kilometres. This service interval is as spelled out in the owner's manual and the strict adherence to it by the rental agency gives us some degree of confidence about the bikes we're driving. As motorbikes are the ubiquitous form of transportation in this country, Honda dealers are easily found in every city but the inland hills are dotted only with small rural towns so we had to find a larger urban centre.

The oil changes were effected in a trice, out on the sidewalk where we'd pulled in, so I was under pressure to quickly select our hotel for the evening. I opted for a seaside resort hotel that was a very reasonable $23 USD for the night. And though our room was very comfortable, it was a bit strange having the hotel to ourselves. Apparently the (predominantly Russian) tourists don't arrive for another month and a bit so the seaside restuarants and cafés are all shuttered for maintenance and refurbishment. Unfortunately, being some ways out of town, we had to ride our bikes back in for our evening meal, a middling banh mi.

Until this evening, the food has thusfar been a bit of a disappointment though this may have as much to do with the limitations of our use of Google Translate when ordering, as it has had to do with the food itself. We have had some reasonable bowls of breakfast pho but some less delightful treats as well, including lukewarm hot dogs with sandwich bread and tang as one notable breakfast offering. The meal this evening was a delicious affair of seafood and fried veggies with garlic. Maybe we just need to practice our ordering skills more.

I have also at long last discovered the delights of coffee, in iced form. This treat, enriched with copious quantities of sweeteened condensed milk, arrived instead of tea after some arm-waving and terrible mis-pronunciation at a roadside coffee stall in the middle of nowhere. I haven't yet found its equal, but I shall continue searching.

Today's ride took us up into a cloud bank and some gentle rain for the first time on the trip. Most of the drive was through areas of subsistence farming. We judge the prosperity of areas based on the mode of transportation used by students heading home for lunch. In many areas, the school kids are on e-bikes and bicycles, but today most of the kids were on foot with only a few having bicycles to speed their way home. Goats are also terribly popular in these parts, adding a new hazard to the roads as they have free run like their brethren of cattle, dogs, and chickens.

We had expected the run down to Khe Sanh to take longer than it did. The museum there is short on interpretation and long on bias. The photos were interesting, but one could gain no real sense of the scope of the US firebase that once occupied the spot. There are a couple of helicopters, a few tanks, and a mouldering C130 scattered about the museum grounds but most distracting were our two pursuers around the site, shaking trays of Armed Forces paraphernalia and entreating us to buy the cap badges and zippo lighters purportedly dug up at the site. I can't blame a person for trying to earn a living, but we had no interest in buying and simply wanted to better understand the history of the area.

Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park

We have decided to indulge and kick back for a couple of nights at a farmstay in Phong Nha. For the first time since leaving Hanoi, we have run into the tourist horde - mostly European and Australian students, renting scooters and running amok. We look absurd in our armoured gear and DOT approved helmets, but I do feel smugly safer.

We agonized at the gas station on the edge of town whether to pony up for the $30 USD/night room rate at the farmstay but have been delighted that we did. The Phong Nha Eco Mountain Farmstay is a short ride from town, but all the more pleasant for being away from the hustle and the hostels. It's the off season now so they're out of ice cream, but otherwise we can get food at the canteen here any time of day and this saves us a dark ride home from dinner in town.

We rode through the north end of the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park yesterday and passed through the most uninhabited part of the country we've yet encountered. We are into the area now that was overlaid with the intertwining strands of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the war years. We are reminded not to wander off the trafficked portion of the roadway as this province was heavily bombed, and immeasurable quantities of unexploded ordinance remain undisturbed beneath the carpet of green foliage.

The scenery today was even more stunning as we turned back into the park and travelled to the Paradise Cave. Adam was of course resentful at having to pay to park our bikes. And grumbled even further at the $25 admission fee for both of us. So needless to say, he would not countenance paying for the golf cart shuttle from the parking to the 'entrance.' And so, off we hiked through the jungle on a humid morning. I'll confess that the 1km initial hike wasn't so bad, but I think even Adam's spirits flagged when we reached the end of the walk only to discover it was a staging area for a 570m vertical climb to reach the mouth of the cave. I wasn't feeling so smug about my gore-tex riding suit by the time we got into the cave and the steam pouring forth from the top of my jacket was obscuring my glasses.

Paradise Cave is a large cavern into which a kilometre of wooden walkways and stairs have been extended, and here the baroque comes to life in nature. The variety of textures of the calcium deposits is extraordinary. And even Adam grudgingly confessed to enjoying the excursion and though he would not agree to 'giving in' and paying for the shuttle back to the bike parking, he did buy us a couple of ice creams to fortify us for the walk.

And with our circle through the park complete, we can now park the bikes, open a beer, and enjoy the magnificence of the countryside view.

The iPhone Bites the Dust

Tragedy befell my phone yesterday during a nav check at the end of a farm track. My old iPhone 4S landed face first on jagged concrete and smashed to smithereens. I'm amazed the phone still works at all with little shards of glass chipping off with every swipe across the face. Adam gave me a bit of gentle ribbing - he knows how lost I feel without being able to double-check his routing. But during one of our breaks, he was also researching options for repair or replacement at our destination city for the day, Hà Tînh. The old iPhone came along because it was expendable, though one never actually expects for the worst to happen and I felt unmoored without a phone.

Once we reached Hà Tînh, some lovely young women at the Viettel store across from our hotel got me set up with a new Vivo phone. I'm slowly coming to grips with Android but enjoying having a larger screen again. And I'll be delighted when I can crosscheck Adam's proposed tracks through the rice paddies as we travel onward to Phong Nha today. The phone came with a new external battery pack, and very incongruously, a six pack of Budweiser. So our intake of Bia Ha Noi has been briefly interrupted by the consumption of Budweiser. My phone also has a flash rose gold protective case, but when language is a serious impediment and the friendly young women think rose gold is the appropriate choice, you roll with it and save your battles for insisting that they show you the English configuration switch.

We have made it into the coastal flat lands now. The scenery is less enthralling but opportunities abound to stay off the main highways as the fields are bisected by hundreds of tracks of varying degrees of robustness. There are signs everywhere of the main roads being upgraded and one imagines that in a decade this country might be less appealing to visit by motorcycle. By small motorcycle anyhow; the big GS touring bikes will have their day when highways become the default way of getting anywhere. I would by no means inhibit development in the country but I will delight in being here at this time when it is possible to stay off the main truck routes and explore the rural areas up close.

The only serious scraps we've been in over pricing have been at the fuel pumps. For reference, the Vietnamese Dong is currently sitting about 20,000 VND to $1 USD. It takes some getting used to all the extra zeroes on the money and things are generally quite cheap by our standards, although not always consistently so. We've spent anywhere from $1.25 to $8 on a couple of coffees. But for some reason about half of the gas station attendants that we've encountered have tried to make us pay double what the pump reads (for two bikes even though we filled off a single pump) or pocketed extra cash as we've tried to make sense of the large bills. Sure, we've paid too much for a couple of bottles of water but too much ($2 for 3 litres) is still really reasonable in our estimation. The rudeness and duplicity of the gas jockeys has been really frustrating and beyond any other degree of price negotiating we've experienced.

While on the road yesterday we encountered our first example of a brutalist monument at Truong Bon, marking the north end of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Associating as I do the hammer and sickle iconography with cold war films from the 1980s, or satirical efforts produced after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I find the straight-faced use of the Communist imagery to be strange, and just slightly unsettling.

Tracking South

This morning provided some of the most enjoyable riding I've had in ages. We chose a squiggly line on the GPS and pursued it south. It was a magnificent road with little traffic that led up high into the hills and through a pass into the adjacent valley. This landscape doesn't grow old and it's fascinating to see the different ways it is cultivated, from orchard to rice paddy. 

The kids are wonderfully friendly, most of them shouting "hello, hello" and waving madly when they catch sight of Adam in his open faced helmet. I'm sure I'm more of an enigma behind my full-face number but they get a wave in return from me as Adam is usually up the road before he can react. 

Chickens, dogs and even oxen range freely over the roads so that when we want to gaze on the landscape, we pull over to give it a safe amount of concentration. Road hazards occupy our attentions while on the move. We have come across orange stalls, pineapple stalls and sugarcane stalls in the past couple of days - farmers selling their wares at roadside. Large snails were also on offer this afternoon but had significantly less appeal. 

We have taken ourselves far off the tourist track today and fetched up at a rural hotel for the night. Our room has the appearance of a converted stall in a barn, with suitably rustic furnishings. But for $9 USD, we'd be churlish to complain too much. The meal from a stall down the road came in at $10 USD but for the first time in days, Adam and I are stuffed on sautéed chicken, steamed rice, stir fried veggies, soup and beer.

Karst Landscape

We rode out of Hanoi yesterday, finally stretching the bikes out to a whopping sixty kms/h on the fastest downhill stretches.

The bikes have a certain familiarity but mine has been ridden like a rented mule (I suspect) and the gears tend to crunch slightly while the suspension clunks mightily on bumps. The seat is far more comfortable than any of the factory KTM models I've had the pleasure of perching on though this steed is not blessed with copious horsepower.

My XR150 has about 35,000 kilometres on it already, but Adam has a much newer model. He accomplished this by snapping the throttle cable quite unintentionally on the first bike that was brought out for his inspection. There seems to be a strange concern for the state of the plastics on the rental bikes so I've had to document each nick and scratch to the graphics while turning a blind eye to the quart of oil that gets dumped onto my right boot over the course of a day's drive.

It was my turn to choose lunch yesterday, so eventually I turned in at one of the hundreds of stalls that line the main road out of Hanoi. And here my stuffy nose served me well - Adam informs me that our soup, which included for the first time blood sausage, had a distinctive whiff of the farmyard. I picked up no such detail and happily munched around the aforementioned blood sausage. Until our Vietnamese improves, our strategy is to take what comes when we order two house specials, and leave what we don't like.

We got our first glimpse of the striking karst landscape - limestone cliffs rising from the plain. Both of us resolved to wear full riding gear going forward as some of the high passes grow quite cool. We ended the day with a magnificent plunge into Mai Chau.

While staying in Hanoi's hotels, we fooled ourselves into thinking that we were enjoying Vietnam's famously firm mattresses, but the hotel in Mai Chau corrected our misapprehensions. An authentically firm mattress borders on fabric wrapped plywood. It was not the mattress that kept us awake however, but the karaoke that kept up until after midnight and then was followed too closely at 4:30am by the blare of propaganda music and exhortations to work broadcast from loudspeakers throughout the valley.

On the Mend

We've moved on from the Old Quarter into a lovely place in the French Quarter, the Midori Boutique Hotel. I look forward to the prospect of staying here again before we fly for home. We've been given an inside room, with a 'window' opening onto a tiny shaft of an atrium but the result is blissful quiet, away from all the street noise. And the staff have been friendly and helpful. Also, we have a rain shower. And who doesn't love a rain shower?

Jet lag for us looks like bedtime around nine, sleep, then awake again around two, followed by a second bedtime around four in the morning before catching another few hours of sleep prior to breakfast. We catch up on email and the news in this middle of the night wakefulness while I take pains not to cough and splutter in Adam's directions. He figures I've got another three days of serious contagion left in me and this flu has transformed itself now into hacking and sniffling which is a welcome, if still inconvenient development. The exertions of the day tired me out, but the nausea is subsiding and for that I am terribly thankful.

We wandered across town today to Huu Tiep Lake, site of remnants of a B-52 shot down over Hanoi in 1972 and now decaying in a small fish pond. (And as seen in Top Gear's Vietnam Special). The pond itself is is within a dense residential block bisected by laneways that the builders of the medieval era would have found too narrow. These are not the constrained streets of old French hilltop fortifications, but rather narrow crevasses giving the only access into a large city block. Pedestrians share these pavements with motorbikes, mercifully fewer in number, so one can't let one's guard down even here without danger of being clipped by a handlebar.

Nearby, we paid our ten cent entry fee to check out the caged birds and the bathrooms of the botanical gardens. The dusty looking peacock had the run of the cage while his bedraggled peahen was shut inside a tiny box, to peck away undisturbed at her tray of corn.

We were mildly dismayed to discover that Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum wasn't opening on Friday afternoons, but the magnificent displays of hibiscus made up for some of the disappointment. Even on a quiet Friday, the mausoleum was overrun with tour buses, Adam's idea of a perfectly terrible afternoon.

We did accomplish one critical mission today, locating a roll of electrical tape. We took an auspicious turning and found the street lined with hardware shops, carrying some of the largest roller bearings either of us had ever seen. Traditionally, it seems shops of a certain kind have been grouped along streets. So you've only to find the hardware street, or silk merchant street, or funerary goods street, if you're looking for a certain item. The hardware street is the most consistent one we've yet found holding to this old tradition of clustering.

Dinner tonight was a bust. Adam made a selection and marched us to a spot which hadn't yet, and maybe wasn't going to, open for the evening. And as we both turned up our noses (wrongly it may have transpired) at the Spaghetti Box Italian place, we settled on Chinese Buddhist cuisine instead. The deep fried tofu was acceptable, and Adam ploughed through a plate of steamed root veggies, but neither of us enjoyed the stewed aubergine. Maybe we should have tried the vegetarian meat... But it was the bakery that saved the night serving up fresh baguette and pain aux raisins.

Hanoi

I glanced in the mirror and noticed a constellation of new freckles around each eye. But this was impossible; I hadn't yet seen the sun. What I had noticed were tiny pricks of broken blood vessels, such was the force of the vomiting and coughing that overwhelmed me from our arrival in Hanoi.

When planning this trip, I imagined that jet lag would slow us down for a day or two on arrival in Hanoi. What I did not anticipate was incubating a flu on the flight over.

I am grateful that it struck four hours after arrival because while I hate barfing at the best of times, doing so when strapped into a window seat in economy is not the best of times. So, I spent the first 24 hours in Hanoi staring at the hotel ceiling and listening to the cacophony in the street below. Adam had selected a hotel, the Helios Legend, where our bedroom was flanked by an ante-chamber so I was able to sit up during my worst moments and let Adam try to get some rest in the bed next door.

Adam ventured out on the first day to get a SIM card, and some local currency while I finally turned to the drugs and took some Advil. I didn't manage to keep any food down on our first day, but I tried. The Advil did allow me to get some rest however and we both managed an occasionally interrupted eleven hours of rest on our second night.

Remarkably, Adam seems unaffected by this flu so far. But we've been careful about avoiding all but necessary contact.

There was no room for us to stay on at the inn, so we were forced to push off on our second morning. I managed a baguette at breakfast and some sweet tea in a café so I had enough strength to fortify me for the walk about to locate my own SIM card and cash.

We dawdled over more tea while waiting for the apparent rush hour at the bike rental place to conclude before presenting ourselves to pick up the bikes that would be our companions for the next month. The Honda XR 150s are generating more interest than I would have anticipated. But being a breed of dirt bike rather than the ubiquitous scooter, they do stand out a bit when parked in the ranks of the crowded sidewalks. It's a tall bike, but I've become accustomed to those. And we're not carrying a lot of luggage this trip so it feels nimble.

I was, I confess, a bit worried about joining the notoriously hectic melee of traffic. But it has proven easier so far to navigate the streets on a motorbike than by foot. The sidewalks are so crowded with scooters, overflowing shops and impromptu food stalls, that one is often forced into the street as a pedestrian. And crossings are a unique hazard as motorized traffic rules the roads. There are few signalled intersections so the flow of traffic is near constant. Crossing the street on foot involves spotting a promising gap, a deep breath, and a firm step into traffic so that by meandering through vehicles moving at different speeds and coming from all directions, you find yourself alive and across the road.

Some things we have seen:

[A Vietnamese "Spyder"; friends still don't let friends buy Spyders]

[The ubiquitous, incongruous, and completely unexpected Christmas decorations that appear in all manner of shops.]

Home for Christmas

The decision to close out an open-ended trip is tough. Over the course of a couple of days at the beginning of December, Adam and I went back and forth, alternately convincing ourselves to continue on to Morocco and to make for Canada. Ultimately, once we’d made the decision to head home and booked our passage, bringing a few conspirators in on the plan, we were at peace. It was the right decision.

[What?! Leave all this? Adam basking in a sunny olive grove, southern Spain.]

We’d been chasing warmth for four months and although the daytime temperatures were lovely in southern Spain, the overnight temperatures away from a thin band along the coast were quite cool. We knew that camping wasn’t going to get any more comfortable. Financial factors, of course, figured in the decision. But most persuasive for me was the day of riding we’d just completed through some of the most beautiful, and gnarly, terrain. I just couldn’t manage the tough off-road conditions on the KTM 690. Falling off (really more like tipping over) is always a frustrating experience but righting the bike with all of its luggage every ten feet is also exhausting. And that day, I’d met my match. The track was just too hard but we’d come too many kilometres up difficult pitches to turn around, so we persevered and with Adam riding both bikes through the last stretch, we made it back to asphalt.

[Taking a break to admire the view in between righting the bike again, and again.]

So next time? Because there will definitely be a next time…

i. Aim for the weather sweet spot. The reasons are many as to why we began our European adventure in the middle of August, but that put us on the cusp of autumn that simply deepened and grew chillier as we travelled. Winter in the northern hemisphere is long and we blithely assumed we could outwit it. Not so much.

ii. Ride a different bike. The KTM 690 is a great all-round bike. It has good power, is nimble and is reasonably light. It keeps up on the highway though it is jittery, especially at higher speeds. It can tackle asphalt, gravel and clay, especially with the right tires although if these are too biased for off-road or on, handling is noticeably impacted. But there are compromises. The bike isn’t built for all-day highway riding, there just isn’t enough wind protection. And it’s too heavy to pick up out of the dirt all day long. So for the next off-road tour it will be a lighter bike and I will pack less. There, it’s down in black and white: I will pack less! I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to match Adam’s minimalism but this first trip has made clear what items in my panniers were superfluous to requirements.

iii. Pack a down sleeping bag. Being too hot is easy. Being too cold is misery.

And that’s all, really. This world is a beautiful one and we were terribly fortunate to be able to see so many of its facets. The next trip might be shorter but we will be so lucky if it matches this one for magnificent vistas.

[Zafarraya, Spain]

As for getting home, well, we chased across Spain from south to north in two and a half days of cold and misty highway driving. Then we caught a twenty-four hour ferry out of Santander, across the Bay of Biscay to Portsmouth, England. (Without pharmaceutical assistance, Adam managed to sleep for fifteen of those rolling and heaving hours. I got a lot of reading done.) We spent a few nights with my Forrest cousins, the co-conspirators in this plan, before dropping our bikes at Heathrow freight and catching a flight out of Gatwick. Hughanna and Man-Yee met us in Toronto, and kept us and fed us until Adam and I could get ourselves a new-to-us car and drive onward to Ottawa. So here we are with Mum and Dad. Our evasive e-mails and a tangled web of omissions kept suspicion at bay so that when we appeared at their doorstep, the surprise was complete. In a few days we’ll travel home to northern Ontario to spend New Year’s Christmas with Adam’s family.

So for now, until our next adventure, Happy Christmas!

[A Dutch ornament on the family Christmas tree.]

The Med

We've been chasing warmth since we arrived in Europe mid-August. But we haven't been able to outwit autumn and seem merely to be keeping pace with falling leaves as we venture southward. On Italy's Ligurian coast we camped one night in a grotty grove where feral cats roamed and there, falling chestnuts accompanied the leaves, greatly imperilling our noggins! While the tent did receive a few direct strikes during the night, I was let off with a glancing blow to my shoulder. Adam was wholly unscathed. He must have better guardian angels than myself.

Our other campsites in Italy were significantly more charming. One was located in a terraced former olive grove, with utility sink at every site! A great luxury. At the other, we were sited in our tent on a narrow outcrop directly overlooking the Mediterranean from where we could watch the cruise ships lumber past.

[Latte on the Ligurian Coast]

Moving across the coastal roads of the Ligurian Coast and the Côte d'Azur is slow going as the road snakes along the undulating contours of the shore. The area is enormously built up and traffic is forced to slow for town after town. Even I tried my hand at 'filtering' or lane splitting when traffic grew particularly dense. Mopeds and vespas abound, and general policy is to ride the centreline bypassing all of the wider, lane-bound traffic. This is a tougher manoeuvre on our motorcycles as the panniers widen our girth so we are not as nimble in narrow gaps, but anything to escape plodding traffic moving twenty kilometres an hour under the limit.

We timed our overnight stays on either side of Monaco, Nice and Cannes so that we could cross this especially densely populated area in a single day. We had a splendid day for it and enjoyed the views from high on the hills, out of the fray. Some road works forced us down into Monte Carlo but Adam's GPS found us a sneaky snaking and precipitously steep route through back lanes that kept us on the slopes and out of the city centre.

[Coast near La Spezia, Italy]

I had hoped to find the Côte d'Azur to be a warm and quiet place to park ourselves for a bit, but was put off by the ticky tackiness of the area and so in the end, we stayed only an extra day to see to some laundry and some more mattress patching. The days were still warm but even here the nights were cooling off, and so we continued our journey chasing the warmth.