January 6, 2017
Conclusions
AND so we are back home. The bike boxes travelled without damage and, almost as important, the plane reached Toulouse without crashing.
The ride didn't turn out as we'd planned, of course. We thought we'd be riding from south to north but ended up riding north to south. It's a shame the way it happened - it will take a while to mend what we now know is a broken bone in Steph's wrist - but there is good in even the bad: in this case, the prevailing wind behind us and the chance to ride on truly tiny roads rather than the Ho Chi Minh highway that was our first plan.
We enjoyed Vietnam. But, equally, we were glad when the journey ended. It's hard to say why and I don't think I'll ever be able to. But there are times, aren't there, when you feel you have stayed long enough in a country and that each day has started to produce diminishing returns.
A big part of that was the frustration of communication. There's just no link between Vietnamese and any language we know. Even the tone is hard to interpret. And we so longed to meet people, to exchange more than our names, ages and state of health.
I've often said that real touring starts when you don't understand the locals. But, even then, you normally get by with gestures. In Vietnam, not even the gestures worked all the time. We so often longed to sit and talk but the chances were limited. We spent wonderful hours with two students who guided us round Hanoi for the pleasure of meeting westerners, and we sat and talked on the eve of new year at Dalat. But the exceptions proved the rule: that by and large, we were tongue-tied for lack of words.
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If you travel that way, do keep off Highway 1. It's not misery unbounded but nor is it great fun. The Ho Chi Minh trail would be better, passing as it does through the mountains, and the scenery is apparently dazzling. But distances can be challenging and accommodation isn't plentiful.
Circumstance led us to discard our National Geographic maps, which showed only a few roads worth knowing, and relying on Openrunner instead. There was no cycling option there or on Google but that may have made it better. There were times when our route took us into fields or along impossibly muddy tracks. But there was always an alternative and often the roads were delightful, not much more than a metre wide.
As I said before, you know you're in the heart of a country when the locals come to see you, take your picture, rather than the other way round. It happened over and over. If you ride in Vietnam, to me there's no better way.
But there is, nevertheless, that lack of communication.
Thanks for riding along with us. I hope we've given you an idea of a fascinating and supremely friendly country.
Bonne route!
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