Jonathan: I really needed the toilet in the above photo.
Denise: I noticed the guy in the red.
Jonathan: Hoi An was a lovely place to just chill. We did nothing on our day off, and much of the afternoon was spent in the horizontal allowing for our bodies to just relax. I was also watching the first day of Dota TI9.
Denise: We decided to go for sun downers on the beach, we missed the sun go down but the appreciation of the evening was still there. The lantern festival was in ancient town at the river but we have seen it before and don’t like the crowds. It was a great move because we ended up meeting the lead singer from the Dirty Skirts, Jeremy De Tolly. The South African band that made it big around 10years ago.
Jonathan: It made me feel quite old. Omw, where is the time flying. 10years! What a cool evening though !Ness even went on stage to sing with Jeremy. I declined as I would probably wreck the sound system with my vocals.
Denise: We even went night swimming!
Denise: Fast forward to the next day (because the rest of the evening is none of your concern). We got on the bike and headed to Kon Tum.
Denise: We had an amazing stay at an ethnic minority family of Vietnam, we stayed at their homestay. A heads up, this was roughing it a little for me. No showers, no basins, holes in our reed floor and thatched roof so rain got through, not badly, but it made its way through.
Jonathan: I wouldn’t classify it as amazing. Maybe I just had the grumps from the day’s ride. We rode through our first intense rain and I was drenched through and through. My soul was even wet. Our hiking boots are waterproof….. So the problem comes in with the tongue of the shoe. Due to the splash back from the tires and the water running down my bike pants it absorbs into the shoe via the tongue. Also, because it’s waterproof the water in the shoe simply damns up. Yes, I basically had water up to my ankles which then overflowed at the shoelaces. It freaked me out and I…… Need counseling just thinking about it.
Jonathan: The homestay was nice and basic and also very cheap. However, I was more relieved to just be near a bed and some food. It was a downer that we couldn’t wash up properly. However, I promised Ness we would stay at a hotel in the next big town, Ban Me Thuot… Or something like that.
Denise: Which brings us to Jono’s next outfit.
Jonathan: The title of this day would’ve been ‘Fuck the Police (via Google translate)’… Yes, I got pulled over by the popo.
Denise: Well, Jonafin got pulled over because my Jono is English. Yup, Jono pulled a “Me no speak Engels”. Hahaha, so Google translate between Afrikaans and Vietnamese.
Jonathan: I was doing 55km in 50km zone. The cop was super kind and not aggressive. He simply reminded me to watch the speed limits. For those of you who are wondering….. Yes, I don’t have a license and yes it did occur to me I could be in big kak if push really came to shove. However, Vietnam works differently from South Africa. Anyhow, I only got off with a warning and a series of well wishes for myself and Ness for the rest of our journey, all on Google translate. Also, I had my black plastic bags on when I got pulled off.
Denise: Giggles through out the ordeal.
Denise: There were some beautiful sites on the way. We even stopped at a little Ca fé and there were harvesting peanuts….. Using a motorbike!
Denise: Yes, I got one in my eye!
Jonathan: We had an amazing lunch, Com Gá Quay…. Which is chicken cooked rotisserie style with rice. It was so delicious. We were starving at this point. I’m such a guy. All I remember is the food.
Denise: I remember the “hotel” being so freaking noisy! Who moves furniture at 2 in the morning?? FFS!
The next day, I dressed in my biking gear with a poncho, Jono however took the non-environmentally friendly route.
Jonathan: I wrapped myself up in plastic from head to toe. We only had like 220km. We could have an easy ride to Phuoc Long. It was supposed to be …. Easy.
Denise: We travelled up into the mountains and the views were STUNNING! We even stopped at a waterfall that was a little off route, but worth it.
Denise: The roads were so good throughout our whole trip, and continued to be in such great condition… Until they weren’t.
Jonathan: It was raining and I had all my plastic protection going on. And we rode through beautiful agricultural roads… Quiet…. peaceful. Icing was added to the cake when we rode along the border of Cambodia. The stunning jungle scenery spotted with agricultural plots made for another ‘great route’ . Until, we ran out of tar road. The logging trucks had mashed and damaged the road until it had become a mush of loosened mud. To add even more icing to the dark forest cluster cake, it was clay. Wet clay, in the mountains where it had been raining for who knows how long?
It dawned on me that we hadn’t seen any vehicles or sign or life for over 10km of riding. Also, we were travelling slower and slower to a point where we were navigating ‘snot’ pits at a whopping 5-10km/h. Also, the noob that I am, kept on clutching front brakes whilst navigating wet clay. And when I acted in desperation to stop the bike the tail slid out and we ended up spinning 90° to the road. Ness was laughing her way to the bank…. Until she didn’t.
Denise: It was funny because he had the bike in 1st gear and the back break on and we were just sliding down through the clay, there was nothing we could do, Jono had his one foot on the floor trying to gain control but his foot was even slipping. It got so hectic that I had to put my phone away and just hang on for dear life. We did a few 90° spins where Jono, like a pro, kept us from falling, until I was lying on the floor with the bike on top of me. Jono managed to get out, but I think the passenger pedal was on my ankle between the bone and muscle so I couldn’t wiggle out. It was very sore! It felt like we had fallen, I was pinned under the bike and Jono casually got up looked to the road and tried to figure out what happend before he remembered he had a wife that was on this trip with him.
Jonathan: I remember relaxing my concentration a bit and then lost traction with the road and did the whole clutch the brakes thing. We were going quite slowly, luckily. I got a massive fright and had the bike on top of me. While I was wriggling myself from under the bike, I kept on hearing Ness crying, “Ow ow ow ow …”, But in reality it was more like the following image.
Jonathan: At some point I realised that we hadn’t seen a house, humans or anything living for that matter for a good 1.5 hours or so. We also had no cellphone signal and no way of knowing how far the prevailing road conditions would last. Would we have to sleep next to the road in the jungle? What if we have an accident and do some serious damage? I had placed us in an extremely vulnerable situation. I had to focus and ride as carefully as possible.
Denise: Luckily there was only another 30 minutes of this “snot” before we hit the nature reserve that had paved roads! Oh My Word, Jono could have kissed the guys at the entrance of the park.
And I did not sound like a yapper when we came off the bike, thank you very much!
Jonathan: We were very fortunate to have reached the park. Thank goodness. The relief was as pervasive as the clay to that road. Here are some happy pics of relief shortly after the ranger station. Also, I would like to add that Ness was positive and ever supportive throughout the ordeal. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion.
Jonathan: This was not the last of the ordeals for the day. After exiting the park and riding through small towns just outside of Phuoc Long, it started raining. It was a dense downpour affecting visibility and making navigation difficult for Ness.
Denise: My phone got so wet from the rain that the touch screen didn’t work, it’s pouring with rain and Jono and I can’t communicate without shouting at each other over the rain.
Jonathan: Also, while entering Phuoc Long, the bike was losing power. I realised that due to the strain and extra work she had to put in on the snotty roads her range would obviously be shorter. I had underestimated that. So now, we had no way of navigating to a petrol station nor did we even have a hotel to stay in. Somehow, as things seem to work out we turned left onto the mainroad, on a downhill just as the engine tuned, “naaaaahhhh bru”, we freewheeled into a petrol station. And there was a hotel right next to it.
Denise: LMFAO!! The day we had, and it ends with us on a bike with no petrol, in the pouring rain, with no phone, free wheeling into this petrol station!!
Jonathan: Hahahaha…… How friggin amazing things sometimes turn out!!
Denise: We spent 1 night there, and before we checked out, we needed to clean this mess up because that chain was still playing stuck in the mud.
Denise: An “easy ride” to Phouc Long, took Phuck long!
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