Vietnam - Brothers of Anarchy

Going for two weeks without getting on a bike was always going to be tough so we hired a moped each with the prospect of going to the beach in Vung Tau which is about 2 hours away according to the hotel staff. Well it turns out that it would take a little longer than that as I will explain.

First of all only one bike arrived as they thought we could both fit on one which would have been amusing for all involved apart from us, so we had them get a second bike.

Approximately 300 yards from leaving the hotel we'd gone the wrong way and we just got more lost trying to get out of the city. Mark had tried making an improvised satnav by strapping his phone to his arm but the locals said that it was a bad idea as it would be stolen. We eventually got back on track using good old paper maps and out of the chaos of the city.

We've mentioned before about the lawless roads, well it really is bad. No one stops for anything, and if that means going down the pavement or wrong way down a road then so be it.

We arrived at a river crossing where we had to take a ferry along with several hundred other bikes. It turned into a bit of a free for all and someone ran over Tim's foot in the process. During the crossing we continued with our celebrity status as the entire boat just stared at us for the entire time, apparently no one has seen a tourist on a moped before and especially none as freakishly tall.

Offroading it through people's gardens 

By taking the ferry we were essentially taking a shortcut which meant smaller roads and less and less people going our way. This soon got so that it was just the two of us on the road, which brought into question whether we were on the right road or not. To remedy this Tim would go past people shouting 'Vung Tau' and we'd hope they'd point in the direction that we were going.

We stopped at a local 'café' for a Pepsi, the woman that ran it spoke no English but got her whole family out to come and stand next to us to compare how tall we were to them, it turns out we're taller. We hastily got on our way after they showed us where we were on the map and before they tied us down to the floor with stakes Lilliput style.

Just a little further down the road, we came across a road block due to road works, you couldn't get through at all, and in traditionally Vietnamese style there were no signs or detours available, hell we hadn't even seen another road to take for  some miles. So we improvised by going down some alleys between the houses and driving across people's back gardens, getting lost as we did so. The paths here were not much wider than the bike and not designed for small moped wheels but we persevered and came across another road. We followed this for some time and came across the café we'd stopped at just 20 mins earlier!

KFC do takeaway over here

We sorted ourselves out though and made it to the motorway going in the correct direction and everything and we soon stopped for some noms at a restaurant. We parked the bikes and a man ran out to give us a ticket so that we could find our bikes again when we came to leave. This is despite them being the only two bikes there and we were sat around 2 meters away from them, still everyone needs a job and we wasn't going to stop him doing his. We had no idea what anything was on the menu so Tim ordered using pictures of food . We're not entirely what animal we ate, although the dog that was sniffing around a few minutes earlier suspiciously vanished. It was good though, even Mark managed to eat something. We hopped back on the bikes only for the man to check our tickets to make sure we had the right ones and continued on our way.

Not long after we were in Vung Tau, the journey had taken four hours and time was tight as we had to be back for our New Years Eve party that night. We were not allowed to park our bikes anywhere, so we got as close to the beach as possible only to discover that there wasn't a beach at all as the tide was in and the waves were about 12 foot high crashing into a wall. It was like a cross between the surf at the end of Point Break and sea in The Perfect Storm. We decided it wasn't a good idea to go for a dip and headed home instead.

The journey home wasn't so much fun, it was getting to be rush hour and the motorway was very busy. So the Vietnamese road rules came into play again. Apparently it's ok to drive the wrong way down the middle lane of the motorway. It's also ok to reverse an arctic lorry out of a side road onto the motorway completely blocking it with no warning. Oh and the busses… many a time they fly past you in the fast lane only to cut across all 3 lanes, and pull sideways into the bike lane to let someone on or off, at least twice Tim had to do an emergency stop because of this, but it's ok, they bloke had put his hand out of the window so it's all fine.

We didn't get lost coming home but it did still take us 3 hours because of the traffic. We pulled up at the hotel at 6pm, with the party due to start at 6:30. Tired and filthy we rushed to get ready and joined the other guests and the hotel staff for a free BBQ and lots of free wine.

It was quite nice actually, the hotel staff are very friendly and try to help with everything as much as possible. The food was good too, but it became apparent that body size is directly proportion to how much alcohol you can consume as several of them got very drunk after a couple of glasses. We also met some other guests like Pervert Jim from Holland who basically told us all of the best places to get prostitutes from around the world, how much to pay, what to expect and so on. I think he's talking to the meer cat people about getting a comparison site setup!

The party finished about 9:30 so that everyone had time to get to their real NYE bashes, we went to a few bars and found a new way of getting free beers. No one believes that we're brothers, so we bet them free drinks if we can prove it (which being brothers we can!). Tim loves a good scam so I think this ploy will be used a fair bit over the next few days.

Pervert Jim has invited us to go out with him and his sex ring of friends, we declined this and went to meet the hotel staff who were taking us to the fireworks. On the way back to the hotel Mark's "wife" from a few days ago charged across the street and demanded to know why he hadn't called. Not taking the hint, her and her mute sister followed us into the next bar opposite the hotel and continued with her visa application. Tim came up with a plan and nipped outside for some fresh air. 2 minutes later Mark's phone rang so he had to conveniently go outside to answer it. Tim had tipped off the hotel staff opposite, so Mark dashed across the street and we all made a run for it out the back of the hotel.

We had to high5 every one of these people!

We made our way to the fireworks where about a million people were gathered and there was a big crush as the crowd surged, Tim was in his element here as it meant he could legitimately push people around. The countdown began and everyone cheered as per the tradition and the fireworks went off. We then had to high five every person there  as per our celebrity status!

We headed back to our hotel for a few more beers, it was quite surreal sitting on 8 inch high chairs in the middle of the road drinking beer while people brought us random bits of food to try while trying to explain to one particular local why Leicester City probably wasn't the best Premier League Football team to pick to support. At 5am we gave it up and finally went to bed, it had been a very strange day worthy of any good sitcom!

Happy New Year people!