Running on EMPTY...twice...in 24 hours!!!!

Rickety bridge in DPB...a remant from the war against the French back in 1954.

These last couple of days have been exceedingly ridiculous... so, here we go!!

Wednesday, Sept 14th... just after leaving the internet shop where i last posted, Romain and I hit up this dessert shop, lit attractively in green and pink flourescent lights. SE Asians seem to have a liking for all things kitschy. We used the "point at the picture" ordering technique and ended up with a taro flavored float and a mixed fruit sundae. YUM! Since we were the only people in the shop, the Vietnamese owner decided we would like "western" music...so he took out the karaoke VCD and started the techno "happy birthday" disc. LOL...Then he brought out the big guns! A 500 mL bottle of home-brew cherry wine. He wouldn't quit with the shots until we finished the entire bottle!!! He also dished out a whole plate of wafer rolls to go with our ice cream, and brought out two more strawberry soft serves...EACH! After we seriously could not down anymore cherry wine, he brought on the Bia Ha Noi...I had to run the unopen bottles back onto the shelf to refuse! Then, after we proposed to leave, he strong armed us into going for some CHAO (rice) at about midnight...the restaurant was closed though! Reluctantly, he walked us back to our guesthouse... we thanked him profusely for the ridiculous evening and shoved money into his pocket because he wouldn't accept it any other way. WOW! Talk about Vietnamese hospitality!!!


Taking a breather on the side of the raod...we gave Morris (our Minsk) a break because he was having trouble accelerating...

Thursday, Sept 15th...We toured the miltary historic sites of Dien Bien Phu and had a late lunch before setting off at about 4:30 pm for Lai Chau. eep! It was getting late, but how long could it take to cover 103km?!? Well...ha ha, if you run out of gas about 3/4 of your way through...a while!! At about 6:30, we noticed that the Minsk wasn't really accelerating too well...so we stopped at the side of the road and gave the bike a chance to cool down...maybe it was overheated?? A passing local took the bike for a spin too, and everything seemed fine; so we set off again. Ha ha, the bike then puttered to a complete stop after we hit a small hill. DOH! We switched the valve to "reserve" and managed pull another 15kms before the tank was bone dry. It was 7pm and pitch black outside, but thankfully, we used some wild gesturing and broken Vietnamese to wrangle Romain a ride into the nearest town for 5 litres of precious gas.

Passed the time by taking pics of the moon while I waited for Romain to come back with the gas...

*News Flash* Never trust a man's judgement on gas. Yep, so I did suggest before we left DBP to fill up, but hey, according to the Minsk manual...we were supposed to get 250 clicks out of a full tank! oh well...

So, we arrived in one piece at about 8pm and headed straight to a restaurant promising BUN CHA (noodles in soup with grilled pork). Right before leaving Hanoi, we had the most delicious bun cha so we had our hopes up. My lord! I may have been veggie for I dunno, the past 6 years or something, but this did not taste like pork. MYSTERY MEAT!?! It was very "wild"...hopefully just wild boar...and not dog or something! eep!


Beautiful landscapes on the way to Sapa...

Friday, September 16th... From the crazy mishap with the gas the night before, we decided to play it safe and fill up the tank completely before starting the 180km run from Lai Chau to Sapa. The weather changed from blazing hot to winter chilly (ok...so it is Vietnamese chilly...like 15 degrees C?) all in a day. I think we've climbed about 1000m though!

Noo! The internet shop is closing...will continue this saga soon.

The road from Lai Chau to Sapa was absolutely amazing...the curves were not too tight and we whizzed past the beautiful country landscapes at...I would guess, 60km/hr. (Ha ha, the Minsk has no gauges...) We had lunch in Phong Tho, and LOL, we stopped at this particular PHO COM shop because I made the passing remark, "Hey, there were white people in that place!"...the first fellow tourists in 4 days! WOW! About 40km to Sapa, Morris started to putter out...noooo!! NOT AGAIN!?!? Using the last of the petrol in the regular tank, we managed to make it another 20 clicks up around the huge mountain. We switched to the reserve tank after that and prayed for downhill sections...we saved gas by cutting the engine and yelled "beep beep" as we rolled down the road. Pushing the motorbike and running after it to reach a downhill section was really only embarrassing when people were watching I guess! LOL... Amazingly, we managed to coast most of the 20km to Sapa and the tank only hit empty about 200m from the petrol station in the town centre. PHEW!!! We made it into Sapa at about 5pm...so yes, we ran out of gas...TWICE!!!! in 24 hours!!

*News Flash* Never trust the Operator's Manual nor the guy from the rental shop when asking about mileage on a rental bike....

The bornes on the side of the road helped us navigate and I made rough speed estimates from time to time...