Trip to Vietnam central highlands

Back to our Vietnam photo tour. The day before yesterday we brought the boys in Saigon airport, put them in a car and distances them out to the coast of Mui Ne, where we are in the last few days have not made other than to sunbathe, swim in the surf waves and drinking good drinks. The boys arouses proper attention, they are about twice as high as an ordinary Vietnamese, and especially Mads, who has put her hair up in Samurai hairstyle sheep many glances.

Elephant riding in Buon Ma Thuot

Mui Ne is 3-4 hours driving from Saigon and the journey there is most of the time the main road between Saigon and Hanoi. That it is the country's main highway is not reflected in neither its size nor quality. Generally, there are few cars in Viet Nam, most traveling on scooter or motorcycle. The cars are typically trucks, buses or larger vehicles with CHAUFFEUR. All tests come forward and all overtakes everyone, there are several places recorded a solid line, but it has only symbolic value. It is no obstacle to overtake one that overtakes and then simultaneously with flashing lights and honking the horn to point out 'that here I come'. Well the boys slept most of the time, there were several bad accidents along the way.

As fate would have it, we arrived at Mui Ne in monsoon rain, more rain than we ever having experienced here. And now the boys otherwise really down and experience the good weather...Thank God it cleared up the next day. Vietnam travel information

Ah, but I have shown just taken a giant leap in history. Last time we were on the blog was just before we were going with Easy Riders Dalat, to Dak Lak, on the motorcycle. We knew that we had agreed to adventure, but that it should be so different we had not dreamed of. At 9 am we stood ready out on the main road with our luggage, very excited on whether there would emerge no Bikers up. No need to panic, they came with freshly washed motorcycles and large plastic poser and laces to tie our luggage to the back of the bikes so it seemed like back support. Equipped with helmets, we drove out of town and into the mountains. Travelling around for two days with two locally experienced guides who could show us everything there was to see who could find the most incredible little coffee / tea places along the way and had tremendous understanding of how when our bottoms just needed to acute pause. At night we slept at Lak lake, which was the original idea that we should have slept in a longhouse, with minority people, but I think they thought we needed to stay overnight, so they recommended us a real bed in a kind of resort. In the longhouse we would have to live with cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and elephants. The elephant then tried the next day it took us through the seas.

After a day's journey through the mountains we ended up in Dalat, which is known as the city of eternal spring. Here is an average temp of 17 degrees. The city is the largest producer of flowers and vegetables, and it is also those that produce wine, Vang Dalat.

The next morning, Peter was out playing golf on a very beautiful track that say the least, was lying in the middle of the city. Peter had had an adorable female caddy, and I was with a spectator and photographer. In the afternoon we headed to Saigon for a walk on 6-7 hours in a good car.

Tomorrow we go to Saigon again and visit on the way Cu Chi tunnels, where the boys hope for that they can shoot with an AK-47...!

1750 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh city to Hanoi

Matthieu Pouly a 26 year old French philosophy Student, is the first person to have travelled alone on a bicycle from Paris to Hanoi. The journey took him 18 months. I was present when Matthieu met the press in Hanoi and all the time I was recalling to mind the many follies of my youth in the colonial period. 

Vietnam countryside village

The last stage of Matthieu’s voyage- the 1750 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh city to Hanoi - called up old memories. When I was Matthieu’s age. I cycled between Hue and Hanoi,a distance of over some 1300 km, just one – third of Matthieu’s journey from France. 

Yet, more than 50 years ago , that was something to be proud of . And to people of a liberal profession like myself, it was pure madness. Anyhow,as we were rebelling against the colonial regime and all the structures of the great feudal- bourgeois family, and because we were more or less influenced by 

Andre Gide, we found in those long excursions a cheap means of escape. Matthieu was luckier because he had a different motive, being of a generation un affected by Gide’s complexes. He was trying to illustrate cultural, ecological and humanist concerns through his “Transhuman” project. 

And I wonder if while pedalling along the former Colonial Road No 1 and now National Highway One, the young Frenchman, who brought with him a message of “World Citizenty”,was aware of Sur la Route mandarine,a book written in 1925 by his compatriot Roland Dorgeles to proclaim his colonialist faith a la Kipling? Other Times, other ways. 

It would be difficult for people to day to imagine how conditions were on the main portion of the Mandarin Road in the 19 th century. Our great – grandfathers would have to spend a month and a half covering the distance on foot. 

To have a rough idea of all the risks involved we should read Leu Chong (Tent and Writing Desk) by Ngo Tat To,who devoted an entire chapter to the odyssey made by two young men travelling to the royal capital for court examinations. 

“From Thanh Hoa the road became more and more difficult. Beyond Ha Tinh fore Bidding scenrs uere encountered frequently. All day long one was enmeshed in bush

So dense that one could rarely have a glimpse of the sky above. Ahead were cliffs that looked like towering walls while swift torrents threatened to cut off one’s way at any moment. Going up one had to keep the head thrown back ; going down one had to lean on one’s knees. A wrong step wouldd surely land one in some unfathomable chasm. ”

The stretch across Mount Trong was infernal torture. The travellers had to chop their way through the bush while their feet , despite the protection of thick rush sandals,bled from cuts caused by knife-sharp rocks. At night the two students and their servants would sleep in hammocks strung between the branches of a big tree “It was so dark. The night would be shattered by the hooting of owls, the chattering of monkeys and the roaring of tigers. A cold wind would bring with it whiffs of some fetid odour. In his fever-troubled sleep.