The road from Muong Lai toward Hanoi

Xin chào, các bạn và quí vị,

We’ve arrived in Ba Vi, Vietnam, in the cooler elevated region west of Hanoi, after another four days or so of mountain biking and living fully each day in northwest Vietnam. Once again, we’ve been out of email range for an extended period, so this post will attempt to catch you up, visually and otherwise, on where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to. Thanks to whomever turned off the daily rain deluge; we haven’t seen rain since Nov. 8, and we are mos def not complaining.

Nov. 7: We departed our rustic lodge in Muong Lai, where sweaty shirtless Vietnamese guys in matching sneakers played furious badminton matches in the rain-kissed courtyard. The open-air hotel lobby, filled with teak tables and chairs and which doubles as a drinking area, held an impressive array of jars filled with rice wines flavored with scorpions, worms, cobras and our favorite: giant lizard (see photo). By that point, one of us was sporting a shiner and bruised ribs after flying over the handle bars during a rapid downhill descent two days earlier, another of us had come down with a chronic migraine and a stomach virus and a third and fourth were also on the road to Chunkytown, if you know what I mean. The expedition was going native, right quick.

Lounge lizard, Vietnamese style

Nov. 8: Our longest day – 11.5 hours – on the road, from Muong Lai down to Dien Bien Phu, the site near the Lao border of the decisive Vietnamese military victory over the French in 1954, and then all the way back up to Tuần Giáo and then down Highway 6 to Sơn La, the pleasant if kitchy provincial capital seated in a gorgeous valley surrounded by jagged stegasaurus-like mountain peaks.

The way this Roadmonkey expedition was planned, when were weren’t pedaling, we had one 12-seat van transporting people, one “Joe the plumber” type van filled with our mountain bikes, and either me or my co-leader, Brent Wexler, riding the Honda 125cc motorbike. So to get from Muong Lai (see map here) to Sơn La, we got to know each other quite well in between breaks for bathroom and food and panoramic vista photo opps.

the road to Sơn La: let the sun shine in.

But in Vietnam, particularly outside the major cities and towns, “road” is a euphamism for a path precariously carved from a deforested hill or mountainside. And when that path gets rained on for days, it morphs into an orangey sludge-filled Slip-N-Slide that is not fun to drive on a motorbike. And yet, the Vietnamese can get pretty much anywhere they want on a motorbike, regardless of weather, conditions or the formal existence of petty items like pavement. I was on the bike on this particular day, and didn’t fare as well.

The Vietnamization of Oakley trail shoes and (warm!) marino Ibex shirt

Oakley trail shoes: they survived northwest Vietnam, after a washing.

Mudslides are common in the northwest of Vietnam, given the climate, precipitaiton, steep hillsides and incredible human need for wood, which devastates the trees that othewise would anchor the soil that tends to vomit itself by the kilo-ton onto the roads here so frequently.

Traffic back up: We got stuck behind this mud-swallowed lorry, on a not-so-impressive segment of Highway 6, 40km west of Sơn La

Not impressed: Villagers responded to us usually, but not always, wreathed in smiles and choruses of "Hey-lo!"

Driving with class: our van driver - his name actually is Van - taking a GQ break on the road