Open Writing

Vietnamese women keep the streets clean. Rubbish is placed in or swept into the gutter from business premises. It is then placed in carts and wheeled through the streets to a central collection point where it is loaded into a truck.

Returning to the hotel I opened the box containing 'my' bike only to discover that I had possession of Mary's. Although this caused initial panic, the discovery of a long seat tube allayed my fears and I did not experience any problems throughout the 1000 Km of riding in the country.

On 1st March 2000 I set off southwards in drizzly rain which soon turned into a downpour. After a miserable 100 Km ride I arrived in the small town of Ninh Binh. Mary's bike had undergone its Vietnamese initiation ceremony, being completely caked in mud.

Booking in to the superb Thuy Anh Minh Hotel I introduced myself to the two Canadian cyclists, father and son, who were my fellow guests. On their travels northwards having used their bikes and buses from Ho Chi Minh City, they had experienced a range of different road conditions. Their meeting up with me was somewhat fortuitous given that they were both riding cotterless cranks which had worked loose. I was probably the only person within several hundred kilometres who possessed the appropriate tool for tightening them.

After enjoying coffee with them the following morning at the nearby Tarn Cac Lake I picked up a tailwind and combined with the dry, warm conditions I was able to observe the people working in the rice fields as I bowled along the flat highway. After some 90 Km I rode into Thanh Hac. Before booking into a hotel I stopped for coffee and biscuits at a roadside cafe. Sitting down with the lady owner I showed her photographs of my family and a selection of scenes of Huddersfield.

Rolling along the next morning I stopped for a chat with a Dutch cyclist riding a heavily laden bike who had just come over the border from Cambodia. Soon afterwards I had my first of many encounters with Vietnamese people. A motorcyclist came alongside and invited me to visit his family house for tea. He turned out to be s supervisor at the local Coca Cola bottling plant; a sure sign of forgiveness by the USA. His hospitality was overwhelming but I had to tear myself away in order to complete the 120 Km to reach Vinh that day.

After booking into my hotel that night I ventured out to look for a restaurant. Choosing an outside table I was soon besieged by a group of young men all wanting to enter into conversation with me in English. They were all students at the local university. Very few foreign travellers stop off here so they welcomed the opportunity to converse with a native English speaker, their English language tutor being an indigenous Vietnamese.

They wanted to know what I thought of their country and how I lived my life back home. They got on to the topic of football. "Vietnam will never be a major participant on the world stage" they told me "We are too small in stature and could never mount a challenge to any of the European teams we regularly watch on satellite television". Inevitably they asked me if I lived near Manchester and were overawed when I told them I was only 40 Km away from Old Trafford. I bought them each a bottle of beer and we then returned to my hotel room to continue our discussions and to drink coffee. They wanted to meet me again the next day but needed to clear it with their tutor.

The following morning two of them appeared at my breakfast table having received encouragement to practice their English with this rare English speaking visitor to their city. As they had arrived on bikes I was able to join them on an escorted ride around the city with visits to the American War Museum and the park, modelled along Chinese lines.