The bells! The bells! Cycling in central Vietnam

We are heading south through Vietnam, as part of our "sabbatical" - riding around SE Asia (and maybe other countries, tbc) on our tandem (www.badgerandfrog.com). In the past few days we've been following the main artery through Vietnam, the QL1 which runs all the way from the north to the south of the country.

Our experience of Vietnam has been incredible: wonderful people, beautiful countryside, excellent infrastructure, fantastic food, great quality guesthouses - all perfect to make for a great cycle tour.

However, following this arterial road is tough. We are riding a bullet proof Cannondale MT1000 mountain bike from 1999. It handles everything we have thrown at it - has been shoved inside of and on top of planes, vans, buses (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyFHnC1mpKE), trains - has been ridden over crazy rough roads, handled biblical rain, lightning, sand, dust, rocks, everything! Despite this, the roads have been hard to handle.

Setting the scene
Let me try to set the scene...

Noise
First: imagine a world where engines stop running after 200 metres. That is, unless you beep your horn. A lot. About every 200 metres.
Second: imagine a world where traffic violations are negated if you beep your horn, before, after, and ideally, during the performance of a crazy manoeuvre.
Third: imagine a world where car, bus, scooter horns are so loud that they temporarily partially deafen you as they rattle pass inches from your nose.
Fourth: imagine a world where if you are a truck or bus driver you are expected to drive like a dangerous lunatic, safe in the knowledge that it is part of your job description, and that other road users will respect you for doing this (I will excuse car and scooter drivers from this category - they are by and large good and respectful drivers), as long as you beep your horn!
Fifth: image a world where this is the norm. Where this is established driving culture.
(Nota bene: I seem bitter about this - but remember I have lived in London, Italy, and Boston (MA) so I'm used to crazy driving, but this is unlike nothing I have ever experienced - yes, even in London.
To add on to this - most guesthouses and hotels back on to this main road. They have poor sound insulation, so you are exposed to the ongoing cacophony 24 hours a day.
And, to add on to this even more, in some cities we have what I can only call "The Communist Alarm Clock" - between 5:00 am and 06:30 am public address systems in the streets blare out music and talking which wakes you up.
The bells the beeellllls!!!

Mud and rubble
Like much of the rest of the country, the road is being constantly developed. It is being dug, widened, re-surfaced, extended - seemingly along it's entire length. We can see where houses that used to line the original road have been simply cut through by the developers - leaving exposed staircases and inner rooms exposed to the elements. Maybe in the near future the road will be wide and perfect and wonderful, but for now, February 2015, we find a muddy, dug up road, that forces us to leap between road and pavement, and rubble, and mud. Despite us having a mountain bike tandem we are finding the bike taking a pummeling, and we've ripped up another tyre yesterday, despite us using the toughest continental touring tyres we could find. 
We can also add sand into this part. This road kind of follows the coast. I say "kind of" because sadly it does not hug the coast, only allowing us infrequent tantalising glimpses of the beautiful coast. However, there is plenty of sand and salt around, just adding to the fun we've found from the mud and rubble.

Pollution
The roads are polluted. Ignoring the heavy manufacture lining the roads, the heavy lorries and buses kick out visible fumes. It's like how I imagine Victorian England rolling into the industrial age. The exhaust fumes from the traffic hang heavy in my lungs and a few days spending 6+ hours in the saddle. There's a description here which just covers the tip of the iceberghttp://climate-journal.asia/motorbikes-make-space-for-bicycles-in-hanoi-vietnam/ .

The result

The traffic forces us to hop between road and the hard shoulder/pavement area. Buses and lorries particularly will overtake at any moment, on a single carriageway, approaching a blind hill - and, as detailed above, as long as they beep their horns, then it's all fine. Yesterday, on top of our usual near misses, we had two very very near misses, once from a bus and once from a lorry forcing us to evacuate the road. That's not so easy on a fully laden tandem, with about 235 kg in total, including the riders.
Here's a video showing the view from the back of our tandem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2thP3LDlKM

Other options?
There really are no other options to get from north to south, without spending weeks finding side roads. That's a shame, as the side roads are truly stunning, but it would take some significant time out of our trip, which will sadly not last forever.

Solution:
So, we will fast forward from our current location, in Qui Nhon (http://badgerandfrog.com/where-on-earth-are-we-now/), thankfully off the QL1 to Ho Chi Min City (ex. Saigon) on the train. This will save us about 8 days and 700 km, and whilst we are disappointed that we will not complete this part of the jounrey, the combination of saving about 8 days, avoiding the pollution, and avoiding the crazy driving, make it an absolute no brainer.

We are very much looking forward to being able to enjoy this awesome landscape again!

Breakfast snacks anyone? Laos-style

Meaty breakfast treat?

This morning we were looking for breakfast in Thakhek, Laos. We have got into a routine of having omelette and bread and were looking for some different options. We saw a small cart outside a restaurant with some interesting looking meaty snacks on them and went to have a look.
Under scrutiny one of them turned out to be dried crispy frogs and another dried crispy grasshoppers.
#NoThanks #I'llStickWithMyOmlette

Crispy dried frogs

Dried grasshoppers

Portugal! May 2014

Portugal 

I first visited Portugal about 4 years ago on a work trip. I spent two days in Porto and hated it. It rained the whole time, the town seemed to be a complete impoverished dump, and despite having great fun in the evening I left with a very negative impression of Portugal. The best thing was a visit to the Taylor's portery (?I guess that's the right term?) in Porto. I am a big fan of port, particularly white ports, and this trip introduced me to pink ports which I had never had before and were and are absolutely fantastic. On that visit to Taylors, a special bottle of port, more than 30 years old, was opened. Of course, after that amount of time in the bottle the cork is typically damaged and would break up and fall into the drink if pulled out the usual way. Instead, they super-heated a sharp piece of wire, and cut the entire neck off the bottle, rather than risking any spoiling from the cork. It was shared around a lot of people, but I have a wee dram and it was excellent, a strong thick rich ruby port, well aged.

In fact, whilst we were wandering around Lisbon at the end of our trip, we found some super old ports, the most expensive one we saw was from the year 1900 and had a price of 1800 EUR, cheeky.

This time we were visiting for a friend's wedding. We took the opportunity to spend a couple of days in the capital Lisbon, and my gosh it was an incredible city. We took a very reasonably priced 4* hotel in the centre (55 EUR/night) and were right in the heart of town. The city was a big city with a small city feel which I really liked. Situated on the mouth of a river, so not directly on the atlantic ocean, with great architecture. The town has maintained it's famous old tram system – built in the early 20^th century, wooden framed trams are still used both for normal transport and also now as town tours. The trams rattle along the tracks, climbing the steep narrow roads up to the castle and twist around the narrow mediaeval streets. The tourist tram I can highly recommend. As part of the trip, there is an audio guide in many languages and it really gives you all you need for a good understanding of the life of the city.

One day we hired bikes, which were extremely cheap – 14 EUR each all day – and took a big tour of the city. There are flat cycle paths that take you along the river and to several scenic spots, but we also went off piste and cycled up to the Santo Jorge castle which was a tough steep cobbled road – we got some great compliments from people who were walking up and couldn't believe we were riding up!

http://www.strava.com/activities/141495389

   

Leaving Lisbon heading to the wedding venue a couple of hours up the coast in Quiaios. We took a room at the ComVida Quiaios (http://comvidaquiaios.caritascoimbra.pt) which was fantastic. It was very hard to find, and looked brand new, maybe even freshly converted or even built into a hotel. We even suspected that we were the only guests when we were there. The location is fantastic, our room had a “partial sea view” from our balcony and we found out that it is run by a charity and is actually part of “turismo social”. The price was incredible – we paid only 45 EUR per night. I can highly recommend it to anyone. The area was very quiet, but is a very popular resort for the Portugese and Spanish in the summer months. Of course it felt very hot for a bunch of Brits, but for the Iberians it was not yet warm enough.

Quiaios was quite sleepy, and despite us arriving very late (10 pm) we still found a small pizzeria where we found some great food, and after that we found a small local bar which was open to 4am! People were extremely warm and friendly and I really enjoyed it.

In the restaurant the tv was on. They were showing seemingly endless, different although exactly the same to us, Portugese soap operas. They were typical fare, attractive people, arguments, very cliched Mediterranean fayre. However, one thing stood out. One of the scenes was in an office, and the name of the company in that office was “Nottingham Investments” - very amusing and random for guys from Nottingham to see this in Portugal.

If you are going to drive the motorways in Portugal, I recommend to get the pre-paid toll pass. At one of the toll gates we blundered and drove through the pre-pay part as there wasn't a gate present! One of us ran back to try and press and get a ticket, risking certain death at the same time. In the end we had to reverse back up to the gate to get a ticket, it was ok in the end but could have been tricky. The roads were great, and suspiciously empty. There were signs indicating speed cameras, but we did not see any.

On the way back we took the coast road near Figuera da Foz which had spectacular views. The rock formations were very strange with strata sticking up at 45 degrees. The coast roads were beautiful, but also a little scary, with broken surfaces, and crazy extreme drops to cliffs below.

In Figuera da Foz we wanted to eat and we were introudced to La Francesinha. This is apparently a Portugese tradition and the perfect cure for a hangover!

To describe it thus: Ham and steak sandwich with a fried egg on top smothered in a thick winter duvet of cheese on a bed of chips, chorizo and hot dogs bathed in a spicy tomato sauce. Food of the gods. 8 EUR. Hangover cure, priceless! 

The name means "Little French Woman" - all the lovely and disgusting details are explained in full here 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesinha

  

The beers were very good. It seems that Portugal sells two beers only: Sagres and Super Bock. Both are excellent. I also tried a dark Sagres and this too was very good indeed. There is also a beer museum at the Praca di Comercio although we didn't try it. The Praca di Comercio is very nice, from on high it almost looks like St. Mark's square in Venice. It has the river where the ships can land, a big open space with plenty of food and drinking outlets. A beautiful arch leading through to the main shopping street. Great place to hang out.

The final evening was fun. Benfica had just won the Portugese cup, so the city was alive with celebrations. The evening was warm, but a little too chilly to eat out in shorts and t-shirts without hugging one of the heaters. Then we stumbled across the red carpet and the crazy dresses and tumultuous fans for the portugese golden globes. It appears that gold or silver sparkly dresses are in this year. We arrived at such a good time, as the week after Lisbon was hosting the final league of the Champions League, and lots of attractions and amusements were being set up, so the city had a real buzz.

Lisbon – great city, cheap, fun, big with a small feel. I can't wait to go back.