SE ASIA ON A TANDEM

After nearly three months on the road we'd reached the final leg of our trip as we set off for the airport to fly down to Ho Chi Minh city!  There was a huge queue at the check in desk but we passed the time away chatting to a nice Australian couple who'd spent a few days in HCM and were heading to Hanoi - they gave us a few tips and recommended a trip on the Mekong River. The flight was on time and it was all pretty relaxed until we made our way out of HCM city airport to get our cab - we were directed to the taxi area within the car park and it was absolute chaos! It looked as if lots of Vietnamese were returning after Tet and I felt quite sorry for them facing the prospect of returning to work after all the festivities. After a few minutes wait our taxi arrived and once we were out of the airport the roads seemed fairly quiet. In fact our first impression was that it seemed much quieter than Hanoi and it was much the same when Max went to pick the bike up from the train stat...

  Sleeper train We boarded the sleeper train at Vinh station around 9pm. This was going to be a first for both of us and my only concept of what it might be like was what I'd glimpsed from a travel show - one of Michael Portillo's train journeys I seem to recall.  Max had already warned me that although he'd booked first class cabins this just meant we were sharing a room with two other people rather than four 🫣. Plus we'd only managed second pickings meaning we had the top bunks!! Well I took one look at the top bunk and thought "how the bloody hell am I going to get up there?!!" There wasn't a ladder, just one fold out footstep which was going to require one helluva stretch for me to get myself up there! Looking back it was quite comical really and I'm not sure what the other couple made of me telling Max I couldn't do it 😂😂. In the end he gave me a leg up and I somehow managed to scramble up in the most ungainly fashion, all dignity gone in a...

Hanoi to Vinh via Ha Long Bay We set off from Hanoi for the final cycle leg of the trip. Seven consecutive days of cycling with one particularly challenging ride - well 70 miles which I for one was going to find difficult - midway through. We'd booked an overnight cruise around Halong Bay  (a tactical distraction from Max to stop me complaining about the amount of cycling we were doing 😉) which I was really looking forward to - and we were keeping our fingers crossed that the weather would perk up a little for that🤞. The hotel staff were very keen to help us with all our luggage as we loaded up the bike outside the hotel - this process always takes quite a while as we battle to squeeze everything in! Max never misses the opportunity to point out we're carrying too much, he means me of course although he's had to relent a little on that score as my bag slots into the pannier so much easier than his 😉. This particular morning we seemed to attract even more attention than u...