Heading back into town, Russ and I decided to go for the whole tourist experience and had a massage and reflexology session before dinner. Then we decided to get drunk and stay out till two in the morning.
Early the next day, and feeling a little fragile, we headed off to the train station. As usual our platform was as far away from the entrance and up and down as many steps as it possibly could be. I seemed to be carrying most of the luggage; not only my suitcase, but a laptop and the tripod as well as a camera bag. There were at least six flights of steps to negotiate and because I couldn’t carry it all at once I had to do it in stages, back and forth, up and down. By the time I finally got everything to the platform the train was in and I was sweating buckets.
The double-decker train was very crowded and ringing with the high-pitched chatter of children. My head was pounding; we had very upright seats and a five-hour journey to Nanning ahead of us. At least we had some food - there had been no time for breakfast at the hotel, but we had managed to pick up some tea and a few hard-boiled eggs marinated in soy sauce. I felt a lot better with something in my stomach, and as we passed through various stations the crowds of passengers gradually thinned. After a couple of hours I got a double seat to myself, and was able to lie down, albeit with my legs tucked in and my bum sticking out. Fixed in that rather inelegant position, I tried to get some sleep.
This was the first of two trains we were supposed to be taking to the border, but when we arrived at Nanning we found there wasn’t a train to Pingxiang that day. Packing the gear, we jumped into a couple of taxis and headed for the bus station, hoping to catch a ride on from there.
Heading into the city, I stared out of the window, thinking how nice it was to be in the back of a cab. The driver was separated from us by a grille of metal bars that completely surrounded his seat, presumably designed to stop anyone robbing him. Still, it was a comfortable ride, and - sitting in nose-to-tail traffic - I had to admit that my heart sank at the thought of another bus ride. The buses here were pretty gnarly and the drive to Yangshuo really hadn’t been much fun. The seat backs kept collapsing without warning and I reckon we must have almost crashed twenty times. Still, I was resigned to the fact that with no train it would have to be a bus. That was until Russ phoned me; he was in the other cab and they were already at the bus station.
‘Listen, mate,’ he said. ‘We’ve just missed a bus to Pingxiang.’
‘Have we? That’s handy.’
‘Why don’t we ask these cab drivers if they’ll take us all the way?’
A splendid idea, and in fact it turned out to be a pretty reasonable option for five people. And on top of that we could leave immediately. Fantastic, I had the buzz again. The last throes of my hangover were receding, I wasn’t on a bus and tomorrow I’d be back on a motorbike. Yee-hah! It was turning out to be a good day after all.
You get good and bad days when you’re travelling and no matter the circumstances you just have to suck it up. The up side is that when you do get the buzz, boy, do you really get it. The down side is that travelling with someone other than your wife or girlfriend can be potentially awkward. If you’re not careful you can fall out with your best mate - even Ewan and I came close to that for a couple of days on Long Way Down. It’s almost inevitable - nothing tests a friendship like travelling together for a long time, especially when you’re separated from your family.
Russ and I have been working side by side for the last four years but this was the first time we’d done anything like this. When I’m with Ewan on motorbikes I might not see Russ for a couple of days, but this time we were travelling in the same vehicle almost all the time. Because he’s a great organiser, he likes to do things his own way, and now and again you have to fight your corner to make sure that you get what
you
want. There’s no question that when we find ourselves in trouble he’s the first person to step forward without thinking about himself, but I still get irritated by some of the things he does. Then again, I imagine he feels the same way about me - it’s the norm in situations like this. It would probably be a bit weird if we didn’t fall out occasionally. Generally, though, we were getting on really well, and as we made our way to Pingxiang I realised how glad I was to be sharing this amazing experience with him.
By the time we pulled up outside the hotel I was pretty jaded and looking forward to a good dinner and bed. We paid the drivers, unloaded the gear and wandered into the lobby. It was as if we’d walked into an Austin Powers movie: the furniture pure sixties, leather sofas with polka dot cushions; garish abstract paintings on the walls; glass tables with sway-backed chairs covered in striped suede or flowers.
Yeah baby!
The restaurant tables were separated by lengths of purple gauze and pink nylon, like an opium den in old Shanghai. All we needed now was ‘Mini-Me’ and a couple of bongs and we could sit and smoke and devise a plot to hold the world to ransom.
Of course the day we were due to ride motorbikes it was pouring with rain. I thought I heard the patter when I woke up and looking out of the window I could barely believe it. My one hundred per cent record was intact: it had rained in Ireland, then again in Georgia when we picked up the Urals, it had been pelting down the day we rode the Enfields out of Delhi, and now it was raining here. What is it about me and motorbikes and the rain? Oh well, I thought, at least it wouldn’t be cold.
We’d had four days to cross China - and while we had only seen a tiny fraction of this huge and diverse country, I didn’t think we’d done too badly, considering the problems we’d had getting here. Perhaps I’d get the chance to explore the country more on a future trip. Before we’d set off, Russ and I had agreed that if we made it just as far as Nepal on this trip we’d be happy. As it turned out we’d not only made Nepal but we’d seen a flash of China too. Now we were on our way to Vietnam, then Laos and Cambodia, and I was really excited. Despite the rain and the clouds hanging grey and drab over the mountains, I couldn’t wait to get back on a motorbike.
We had a bit of hassle at the border: because of the situation with Mungo’s knee we’d flown Anne in but we also needed Matt, Mungo’s friend, as back-up. He only had a faxed visa for Vietnam, and we thought that might be a problem. It turned out we were right.
Arriving at the border we transferred from the cab to a government tuk-tuk which took us on to customs. The Chinese inspected the paperwork and stamped our passports, but when we showed them Matt’s visa they wouldn’t let him out of the country. They were looking out for his interests: he was living in Beijing and his Chinese visa was up for renewal. They told him if they stamped him out of China he couldn’t come back. If the Vietnamese wouldn’t accept the faxed copy - which they thought was quite likely - he’d be stuck in no-man’s-land. It was a very good point. Once Russ’s paperwork was in order, he went across to the Vietnamese side to ask the question. The Chinese had been right - Vietnamese immigration would not accept a faxed visa.
Luckily we had people waiting on the Vietnamese side who might be able to help - not only our interpreter Chi, but a government attaché the authorities had insisted should travel with us. We’d had the same type of ‘guide’ in Libya on Long Way Down, and though being watched all the time is a pain in the arse, it might just work to our advantage now. I crossed into Vietnam, found the interpreter and explained the situation. I’m not sure exactly what happened but she spoke to the attaché and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing the Vietnamese immigration officials located Russ, who was back on the Chinese side of the border with Matt. They told him that they’d spoken to their ‘leader’ and a special dispensation would be granted. If Russ filled in the form they would issue Matt with a visa there at the border.
At last we were all standing on Vietnamese soil. And we had motorbikes waiting. I’d already spotted them: two military-green Minsk motorbikes that had been brought to the border by an Australian called Digby, who runs a tour company in Hanoi. They looked like a couple of World War Two scramblers with knobbly tyres and chunky frames, the serial numbers painted on their petrol tanks. The bikes were named after the city of Minsk in Belarus where they were made. First produced in 1951, the factory had been manufacturing bicycles since 1945 and decided to expand their market with a motorcycle. They were simple and reliable and ended up being exported all over the world.
Digby told us there was a freeway that linked the border crossing here at Dong Dang with the capital, but the last thing we wanted was to sit on some manic motorway. He suggested a route through the northern hills instead.
It was great to be riding again, back in control of my own destiny after a succession of other people’s vehicles. The bikes, which had been built in the 1950s, were 125 cc and being two-strokes there was no engine braking: in fact there didn’t seem to be much braking of any description. They had the old drum system that people like Geoff Duke used to use and when I tried them they didn’t offer much. But then they didn’t go very fast either and we were both experienced riders. The gearing was one down and three up; there was no battery, but the most important part was the horn. Everyone in Vietnam rode on the horn - you were expected to hoot and be hooted at; that’s the way it was. If for any reason the horn stopped working we’d have to pull over and fix it. Digby told us to watch out for the driving, which apparently was as bad as anywhere we’d been, though after avoiding articulated trucks hurtling down our side of the road, I wasn’t overly bothered. What could Vietnam throw at us that India or Georgia hadn’t?
Even so, Digby warned us that no one looked when they pulled out from a side road or backed out of a driveway, so we needed to be ready to take evasive action. The only other rules of engagement were the usual ones; namely give way to anyone bigger than you.
After getting a feel for how the bikes handled we took off, weaving our way between a line of trucks and a 4×4 that was backing, unsighted, across the road. We headed down the freeway for a couple of miles before turning on to a minor road and climbing into the hills. This was more like it: riding a bike on bumpy roads in the middle of nowhere. I loved it.
It had stopped raining, but it was almost as hot as India and even more humid. We were in jeans and T-shirts, open-faced helmets and no gloves, and even with the bit of breeze we were creating, my clothes were sticking to me. At least we were riding though, and not just any old bikes either; these had been here since the Viet Minh fought the French.
We climbed slowly into the hills on fairly empty roads. The countryside had a similar feel to what we had seen of China: thick, tropical vegetation, the same green-domed mountains and lush damp valleys. It had a different atmosphere though; it was less ordered, the people seemed less well off and their world a bit more chaotic. We rode through little towns where kids waved and Mediterranean-style villas sat alongside old shops with tin roofs and thatched stucco houses.
The road was sweeping rather than switchback; the mountainside kept at bay by stone walls, many of which had partially collapsed, rocks littering the tarmac. We passed a few trucks and the odd bus, but most people were on motorbikes. Spotting a kid who was struggling with a bike that wouldn’t start, we pulled over to help. His bike was so overloaded it was ridiculous; he had four enormous - and I mean huge - sacks strapped onto this tiny little two-stroke. Covering the seat and scraping the road on either side, the sacks weighed the bike down so much that not only would it not start, there was no clearance on the suspension either.
I gave him a hand, keeping it upright while he got enough purchase to try and kick it over. He tried and I tried and he tried again before eventually it started. Then he swung a leg across the tank while I stopped the bike from falling over. He took off with his toes trailing the ground and the load wobbling precariously. I steadied the back end and gave him a bit of a shove and he waddled off up the hill with the engine straining so hard we took bets on how far he’d get.
An hour or so later we were cutting through hills filled with grazing cattle, a few of them wallowing in pools of mud alongside the road. They had black faces and massive curving horns. They’d been shitting everywhere and I remembered how good an explosion of dung or mud looks from behind, so coming up on a huge pile I steamed right through it.
I got it badly wrong; I hadn’t realised how high and short the mudguard was and instead of fanning a great wave either side of my bike the pile erupted like a geyser. Immediately I was covered in evil, stinking cow shit - all over my shirt and jeans, in my eyes, my beard, in my mouth. There was so much of it I couldn’t see properly. I had to get off the bike and hunt down a bottle of water to wash it all off. I wouldn’t be trying that again in a hurry.
It was incredibly hot now; the clouds low and the humidity almost total. We stopped for lunch and sat on a wall gazing across paddy fields to the distant hills marking the horizon. It was great to be riding again, but it was also very draining in this heat - the air was so moist it sucked your breath away.
On the move again, we made our way down towards the main road that would take us into Hanoi. There were lots of scooters and mopeds around, and small-bore motorbikes like the ones we were riding. We’d seen plenty in India, of course, but there they only carried people: here they seemed to carry everything from piles of bamboo, to hessian sacks and pigs. I’m not kidding; I was taking a bend when this guy came by on a bike no bigger than mine with three live pigs strapped to it. They were tied on their backs one on each side and one crosswise like a top box. The guy gave me a nod and a wave, chugging along to market as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which I guess for him it was.
We took the old road into Hanoi, crossing the Red River and following a tree-lined avenue where villas stood in gardens surrounded by ornately crafted wrought-iron fences. They had been built by the French in the nineteenth century and while some were as sumptuous now as they’d been then, others looked run down and dilapidated. We passed an open stretch of parkland overlooked by Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum: a massive flat-roofed building with marble pillars. It reminded me of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed body is on display in a glass casket just as Lenin is in Moscow. His face is still on every bank note even though the communist government abandoned his policies back in the 1980s. Some people revere him, some hate him; the Vietnamese who fled to the US after 1975 will tell you he was nothing more than a murderer.