Another early start takes us out into the morning mist of busy Khe Sanh town on day three, just round the corner for breakfast at a street side open air pho (pronounced fur) shop. This is pho as good as it gets we are assured by those in the know. It’s authentic and tasty, but not all of us are convinced that spicy beef broth is really breakfast food. After that, we head back past the old airfield and beyond.
The mist quickly burns off, and in the short time it takes to get to our fuel stop, the sun is blazing and the temperature high again. Roy bemoans the lack of ice cream availability at the fuel stop, but the fact is that we are so far off the beaten tourist track, that there is no demand for ice cream here. The locals don’t have spare money for such luxuries for a start. They just want fuel and nothing more from their fuel stations. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t even have that today. This is a problem: the Minsks don’t have the range to get to the next station en route.
Mark and Lee do some quick reckoning and make the decision to send the support van, with newly procured plastic barrels, to get fuel from further back. It will then take the short routes to catch us up again before we run dry. Sorted. Off we head back onto the HCM highway. This section isn’t anywhere near deserted this morning. We pass a military base, villages and plenty of mostly two wheeled traffic. Like every other road in Vietnam, livestock wanders the verges and tarmac. Dogs, chickens, pigs, cows and water buffalo – none blessed with much road sense – keep us on our toes and our speeds honest(ish) as any of them could be broadside across the road around the next bend, or wander in front of us without warning.
Maybe half an hour after the failed fuel stop the group has broken into two by a short distance. This isn’t an issue as we have a front man, a tail man and procedures for any of us acting as corner men to ensure we don’t lose anyone. Nick, on a Japanese bike with more than eight horsepower, understandably decides he’s had enough of sucking clouds of two stroke smoke for the moment, and nips past us to the front of the rear group, briefly disappearing round a bend ahead of us.
The Minsks follow, Jake, myself, Boyd and dad I remember for sure. We round the bend and are faced with one of those scenes that you know straight away isn’t right, but that takes a moment to process. Nick is on his back on the right side of the road, moving, but clearly in distress and without his helmet. His bike is ten yards up the road facing the wrong way and laying on its side, back wheel spinning in the air. Time slows down. There’s no real indication of why he is off. No other bikes are involved, there isn’t much gravel on the road, there’s no cow with a Yamaha print in the side. Nick’s clearly a competent rider, but not been at it that long – maybe he just made a mistake? I pull up as quickly as I can with drum brakes and head straight for Nick. He’s not happy, rolling weakly, bleeding from his throat and right hand. Boyd arrives at him fractionally before me so I leave him to make the assessment while I deal with the still running bike on its side, leaking fuel from the filler cap. I hit the kill switch and have it upright, wondering how to get it into neutral with the clutch lever snapped off at the root, when Mr Chin arrives to take over.
I go back to help Nick and find out what happened – something about a rope. The cut on his neck is significant and bleeding but superficial, thankfully. If it had been artery deep, he’d be dead already. The rest of his throat sports a rather nifty rope mark, a dozen red diagonal lines. Not quite Clint Eastwood Hang ‘Em High style, but if it scars and he lives to tell the tale, it’ll be a good one. Now I’m more worried about a crushed windpipe. But he seems to be breathing ok; not happy, but not dead, paralysed or choking out. He seems more concerned with his slightly mangled fingers, which we take to be a good sign. We tell him he’s going to be ok and hope like hell we are right.
Within a few seconds tail-man tour guide Mark is on scene, taking command and breaking out the first aid. I realise that Nick has no choice but to stare into the sun from where he is, so decide that the best thing I can do for him is to stand astride him so that my shadow covers his head. Mark hands me his phone which is dialling Lee, the lead-man tour guide – “keep calling that number till he answers” – I get him at the third or fourth try “Lee, it’s Danny. We’ve got a man down. Mark says you better come back.” While Mark patches Nick up and tells him “Nah mate, you’re not gonna die. Few stitches and you’ll be having a beer with us this evening” (bullshit we thought at the time, but he was actually right), it becomes apparent what happened. A water buffalo on one side of the road is tethered ten yards up a slope on the other side. The rope is flat on the floor, but the beast takes two steps and the rope, hooked round a concrete post, rises up to throat height. Nick’s only mistake was being unlucky with his timing. Boyd scrambles up and unties the rope before we have to start scraping locals up too. I’m raging inside about the sheer bloody stupidity of it, but it’s Vietnam – shit happens, whadda ya gonna do?
Phone calls are made. Nick is looked after as the adrenaline wears off and he crashes into shock pretty hard. But he’s young and fit. He’ll get through it fine. Talk of calling an ambulance is shelved when it’s learned that the van is already on its way back with fuel. Nick gets through the shock and reckons he’ll be able to get up and into the van with help, so that will be his ambulance. We take it in turns holding a poncho to keep the blazing sun off the man on the concrete – “oh, that’s why you’re standing there” says Boyd when he realizes that’s what I was doing already. I’m half cooked though, so glad of the break. I duck into the shade of the hill to look on, alternating between sympathetic noises and angry ones.
The van arrives. Miss Phe instantly goes into mother mode, concerned and fussing over our downed comrade. Logistics happen. Mark, Miss Phe, Mr Yu and the van driver will be going back to the nearest hospital to fix Nick. Fuel is unloaded and in the bikes before we know it. The whole thing goes really efficiently and I have to commend not only the tour company reps, who were totally professional, but also the tour group, who stayed cool and useful, or at least out of the way, in the face of what could have been an extremely serious situation. Miss Phe, who has only traveled in the van so far, goes into badass mother mode as she mounts a dirt bike taller than her to go with the van (“She’s a bladdy weapon on a bike mate!” – intones Mark). The rest of us continue with our one remaining mechanic, Mr Chin, acting as tail man.
Ten minutes later John falls off. There’s some permanent running water across an uphill right hand bend which has some green slime growing in it. Slippery as hell. Dad reckons that if John hadn’t fallen off, he would have had a go. Judging by the multiple gouges in the concrete, he’s not the first and won’t be the last. No major damage though. John is down a bit of skin on his arm and knee but is good to carry on. My inner smartarse surfaces, unbidden – “What’s up John? Upset that Nick was getting all the attention?” – Hmm, I don’t know this bloke that well yet. I hope he can take a bit of banter. He doesn’t punch me and we ride on.
Nick, when you read this, I’m sorry. But the rest of the road is even better than the day before. It’s the best road I’ve ever ridden. I’ve written a lot of stuff about how great some amazing roads have been and this road makes me a liar about all of them. Holy crap it’s supergood. Like yesterday only better. Perfect weather, perfect unending twisties through steep sided triple canopy jungle. Jaw dropping views across hills and rivers. Barely another soul for miles. We carve up the baking countryside, ever vigilant of rogue gravel patches and fallen rocks. Weaving through constellations of oddly tall water buffalo turds. We even get occasional sections of road works, consisting of dug up concrete, which are like mini off road tasters. Trying to do this at a brisk UK road bike pace would be impossible. But at warp factor Minsk, it’s just fabulous.
Speaking of Minsks, we get plenty of rest stops. With only one mechanic and reduced support, the old bikes take the opportunity to, erm, show their character. Mighty 13 coughs a terminal sort of electrical cough and dies just as I start to climb a hill at the back of the pack. Roy waits for me, Mr Chin arrives and has half the engine covers off, before swapping his heavy panniers full of tools and spares to 13 and motioning that I should continue on his bike, number 4. I’m gutted to lose my semi trusty steed since she seems to have half a horse more power than some of the others. Even more so when Boyd snaps a drive chain half an hour later and ends up on the newly invigorated 13. The cad! Besides, 4 handles funny. Ok a different funny from 13, but I was used to that. Pragmatism gets the better of my sentimentality when I realise that 4 has even more grunt (a quarter horsepower is a significant margin when you only have eight to start with). Boyd is quite happy with 13 anyway and refuses to give her back. She rewards his affection by burning out the rest of her generator as, under the circumstances, I find a new and unexpected bond with 4 and leave him in a cloud of blue smoke.
Mr Chin is kept busy all day as bike after bike decides it wants in on the action. We find shady spots to wait for him to fix them and catch up. He fixes them. He catches up. He is calm, implacable, quiet. He doesn’t need his black facemask and wraparound shades to be the coolest dude ever, but they help.
With all the delays, dusk is starting to fall by the time we are riding the flat road on the last stretch towards Phong Na national park. We really need to get there before dark. Minsk headlights are underwhelming, and only about 20% of other road users seem to know that headlights are a thing in Vietnam. I return a wave to a peanut seller as we pass, and almost get T-boned by a cow that pulls onto the main road without looking. I go one side, John, behind me, goes the other. Limestone karsts jut from the horizon ahead as we ride above flooded fields, racing the sunset like extras in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
We get to our very nice hotel a fraction before dark, and enjoy beers overlooking the river while we can still see it from the open air bar. We salute Mr Chin. A dragonfly parks on the ceiling just in front of one of the many geckos, apparently oblivious to the danger. We watch expectantly for a few seconds before a lightning movement has the dragonfly coming second. Wings folding backwards as the gecko crunches.
An hour later, in defiance of our earlier scoffing at the idea, Nick arrives with the rest of the crew to cheers and hearty congratulations on not being dead. Big day that one.
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