Hello everyone, dec 26th my birthday and we are off westward to the hochi min trail after spending a relaxing somewhat overcast two days in the lovley town of Hoi An..somewhat touristy but a pretty spot..christmas day was spent drinking a bottle of white wine watching the crashing waves on the south china sea ..sounds romantic , the one spot we can go to get away from people. We are all caught up on our HBO movies after guesthousing yet again due to unsuitable camping options.
Our ride here was less than relaxing. We have hit the monsoon season and we are trying to get out of the monsoon rains by riding south. From Hue we spent the whole day, pretty much in a monsoon. Riding in a monsoon is one thing but riding through Vietnams 3rd largest city on a bicycle, in a monsoon, over Christmas is pretty well crazy. Honking horns of buses and trucks, beeping of mopheads, floating bicyle riders weavign all over the place and the whole mass of commuters obeying no particular traffic rules. Needless to say it was stressful and a releif to get through the city intact and make it to my 51st birthday..as already mentioned today.
Chirstmas dinner was the ususal: snails, panckakes, some kind of asian salad with cold noodles and peanuts, and cheap beer all to keep the bugs at bay. We have yet to get sick.. We tried last night to get some pictures posted but none of the computers would recognize the camera so you will have to wait, again, for pics. The guesthouse / hotel here gives us free computer/internet access but no recognition of the camera. The weather forecast from "Weatherunderground.com" is for warmer, mid 20's, and partly cloudy skies for just about the next week all along the trail. It is not raining yet this morning at 8:20 so hopefull we'll have luck on our side for the ride and for Sal's B-day.
Peace and love to all, Stan & Sally
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Hue
About a week ago we left warm and sunny Laos and crossed into Vietnam on Highway 8. This is a rathe remote crossing but the scenery promised to be spectacular, and I"m sure it was. However we were stuck in clouds and drizzle and couldn't see a thing. For the majority of the past week that has been our weather. Several of the days have been mostly dry for riding but it is still damp and we have to work to keep everything dry.
Most of the ride has been on Highway 1, the main north-south route which is a busy highway. The traffic is pretty easy to deal with but the constant honking of car/bus/truck/motorcycle horns gets old in hurry. The drivers are pretty good however so that helps. We rode two days ago for about 6hours on a section of the Ho Chi Minh trail and that was a wonderfully flat, smooth and quite ride. On that section we crossed the old DMZ at the 17th parallel but not much for signage to tell you anything all all about it.
We have given up on camping due to weather, and lack of places to camp, so we've been guesthousing/hotelling it at between $15-20 per night. All the places are a bit musty and no heat so we finish the ride in damp clothes and start again the next day in the same damp clothes. As you must guess we are looking forward to eventually getting someplace dry. We'll continue south tomorrow, Dec 23, and cross at 1700' pass so hopfully that will help change the weather pattern.
We found this internet connection while just riding around Hue so didn't bring the cable to download any pictures so yo will have to wait for that. We spent this morning touring the "Citadel", the fortress of the last empire in Vietnam that lasted from early 1800's to about 1945. Very impressive place that suffered much during the French and American wars, plus the weather and general neglect. It has been placed on the World Heritage Site list and they are slowly rebuilding it. Was well worth the extra night here to see it and the other sites in Hue.
We are about 5500km into our ride and the Surly Long Haul Truckers just keep on trucking along. Very strong, dependable bikes.
Hope everyone has a great Christmas this year and keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We miss you all.
Stan
Most of the ride has been on Highway 1, the main north-south route which is a busy highway. The traffic is pretty easy to deal with but the constant honking of car/bus/truck/motorcycle horns gets old in hurry. The drivers are pretty good however so that helps. We rode two days ago for about 6hours on a section of the Ho Chi Minh trail and that was a wonderfully flat, smooth and quite ride. On that section we crossed the old DMZ at the 17th parallel but not much for signage to tell you anything all all about it.
We have given up on camping due to weather, and lack of places to camp, so we've been guesthousing/hotelling it at between $15-20 per night. All the places are a bit musty and no heat so we finish the ride in damp clothes and start again the next day in the same damp clothes. As you must guess we are looking forward to eventually getting someplace dry. We'll continue south tomorrow, Dec 23, and cross at 1700' pass so hopfully that will help change the weather pattern.
We found this internet connection while just riding around Hue so didn't bring the cable to download any pictures so yo will have to wait for that. We spent this morning touring the "Citadel", the fortress of the last empire in Vietnam that lasted from early 1800's to about 1945. Very impressive place that suffered much during the French and American wars, plus the weather and general neglect. It has been placed on the World Heritage Site list and they are slowly rebuilding it. Was well worth the extra night here to see it and the other sites in Hue.
We are about 5500km into our ride and the Surly Long Haul Truckers just keep on trucking along. Very strong, dependable bikes.
Hope everyone has a great Christmas this year and keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We miss you all.
Stan
Thursday, December 8, 2011
bus-rail to border town Nongkhai
Hello again..it was a bit of a trial getting all the way from Denpesar,Bali to the thai laos border, but we finally made it and recovering from the event. The positive side is that we have ahd a very postive Thai experience inthis wonderful town situate d along the Mekong river. We are staying at a lovely guesthouse peacful clean overlookignthe river and efficently run by westerners and thai.
The trip here on the other hand was less tha pleasant. Our flight to Bangkok arrived late and we had plans to make the evening train to the border. On arrival I checked with the tourist office at the airport got a train schedule then went downstairs to find out that the newly high tech skytrain into Bangkok wouldnt allow bikes..much to my disgust..which if of course I verbalized! So we had to take a shuttle bus to the airport bus station where we were informed that we had to take 2 buses to get to the train station one being a mini-bus which didnt take bike!! so we had to take the Big bus number 555 to be exact and change somewhere ine bowels of Bangkok. Stan had to haul the loaded bike up 3 stairs make a sharp turn to get the bikes inside the bus. First bus took at least an hour due to standard bangkok traffic congestion etc...2nd bus number 73 we caught and the bus driver strted to take off whith stan only halfway up the stairs with the bike!! the bus lady was extremely rude and even when I asked here "train station" in thai she blatenly ignored me and stan had to disrupt the bus driver from driving to get any kind of answer. In comparison to Bali on one was smiling etc but then again most folks on the NYork subway dont smile either.
Finally we arrived at the station and the trian lady on the contrary was very helpful. She wanted us to catch the 8pm tain that was leavign in 5mins but we had jsut got here hadnt had any victuals all day and pretty shell shocked so we opted fro the 8:45pm. This was an overnight train and we missed out on the 2nd class sleeper and was on the 3rd class free air con via windows!. Hey weve ridden trains in India and in comparison this one was fine until we were sitting right in front of the most obnoxious group of young thai lads Ive ever meet.
They were our companions for the next 14hrs as the train was only 5hrs late arriving. The while time they were smoking ciggarretes(prohibited in public areas) between the cars and drinking sam sam thia whiskey and were disgustingly drunk,rude loud etc etc..no one on the train said a word which we found quite unusual not even the train personnel or the police. The ride would have been tolerable had it not been for that event and Oh yes "the crazy lady". I can pick out those characters pretty quick after my years in the emergency room.. Anyhow she was sitting acroos the aisle sobbing away to be comforted by someone then she was manically happy then she was holding another guys hand for awhile and then she was having an anxiety attack after he got tired of her holding his hand. He got away from here and then she started pacing the train. Finally she retuend to our area madly pointe her finger at people at which point she went over to the guy across from us and started stabbing him in the head with her finger. Not sure of the order but she turned aroun dlooked madly at me and before i knew it she had stabbed me right in the eyeball!...Yep I was downright pissed and my first inclination was to beat the living shit out of her. I stood up and ordered her to sit down etc made the crazy sign at her(she was thai) and finally she got the message and went back to pacing the other end and finally got off the train. Do you think anyone on the train did anything??? Stan was half asleep and only caught the tail end of it all.
So my eyeball still aches but is intact we are non the worse for wear and yes we have another story . Hoping that our stories will get more lighthearted as this trip continues. We paln to leave in am cross the friendship bridge into Vientianne Laos and head eastward to Vietnam where we will continue northward.
So life is good right now hopefully it will stay that way.
peace and dont point your finger at me! I might have a flashback.
The trip here on the other hand was less tha pleasant. Our flight to Bangkok arrived late and we had plans to make the evening train to the border. On arrival I checked with the tourist office at the airport got a train schedule then went downstairs to find out that the newly high tech skytrain into Bangkok wouldnt allow bikes..much to my disgust..which if of course I verbalized! So we had to take a shuttle bus to the airport bus station where we were informed that we had to take 2 buses to get to the train station one being a mini-bus which didnt take bike!! so we had to take the Big bus number 555 to be exact and change somewhere ine bowels of Bangkok. Stan had to haul the loaded bike up 3 stairs make a sharp turn to get the bikes inside the bus. First bus took at least an hour due to standard bangkok traffic congestion etc...2nd bus number 73 we caught and the bus driver strted to take off whith stan only halfway up the stairs with the bike!! the bus lady was extremely rude and even when I asked here "train station" in thai she blatenly ignored me and stan had to disrupt the bus driver from driving to get any kind of answer. In comparison to Bali on one was smiling etc but then again most folks on the NYork subway dont smile either.
Finally we arrived at the station and the trian lady on the contrary was very helpful. She wanted us to catch the 8pm tain that was leavign in 5mins but we had jsut got here hadnt had any victuals all day and pretty shell shocked so we opted fro the 8:45pm. This was an overnight train and we missed out on the 2nd class sleeper and was on the 3rd class free air con via windows!. Hey weve ridden trains in India and in comparison this one was fine until we were sitting right in front of the most obnoxious group of young thai lads Ive ever meet.
They were our companions for the next 14hrs as the train was only 5hrs late arriving. The while time they were smoking ciggarretes(prohibited in public areas) between the cars and drinking sam sam thia whiskey and were disgustingly drunk,rude loud etc etc..no one on the train said a word which we found quite unusual not even the train personnel or the police. The ride would have been tolerable had it not been for that event and Oh yes "the crazy lady". I can pick out those characters pretty quick after my years in the emergency room.. Anyhow she was sitting acroos the aisle sobbing away to be comforted by someone then she was manically happy then she was holding another guys hand for awhile and then she was having an anxiety attack after he got tired of her holding his hand. He got away from here and then she started pacing the train. Finally she retuend to our area madly pointe her finger at people at which point she went over to the guy across from us and started stabbing him in the head with her finger. Not sure of the order but she turned aroun dlooked madly at me and before i knew it she had stabbed me right in the eyeball!...Yep I was downright pissed and my first inclination was to beat the living shit out of her. I stood up and ordered her to sit down etc made the crazy sign at her(she was thai) and finally she got the message and went back to pacing the other end and finally got off the train. Do you think anyone on the train did anything??? Stan was half asleep and only caught the tail end of it all.
So my eyeball still aches but is intact we are non the worse for wear and yes we have another story . Hoping that our stories will get more lighthearted as this trip continues. We paln to leave in am cross the friendship bridge into Vientianne Laos and head eastward to Vietnam where we will continue northward.
So life is good right now hopefully it will stay that way.
peace and dont point your finger at me! I might have a flashback.
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