The big trip Day 1 The morning of the big trip was now upon us. We all met at Willam and Rachel's hotel and started getting the bikes ready. We hadn't even left the car park and already Willam's bike would not start, Nadia's clutch wouldn't release and Robin's bike was smoking like it had a 40 a day habit. Betty was ok... for now. Our first stop was a place called Chicken Village. This is where one of the 53 hill tribes of Vietnam live ...

The long road to Dalat We knew it would be a difficult trip to reach Dalat as it was around 200km and involved climbing from sea level to 1500m. What we didn't realise was that the welds on the luggage rack had cracked. Hania said that the bags felt further back and within 5 minutes they were almost touching the rear wheel. This time, however, there was no mechanic close by. We were in the middle of nowhere, 70km from any village.  As we were sat, quite de...

Fairy stream and sand dunes The road to Pan Thiet was extremely bumpy, as most of it was still under construction. This wasn't a major problem until after a particulary big bump Hania shouted 'STOP THE BIKE!'. The luggage rack was hanging on by about 2mm of metal. We managed to remove the bags before it completely broke and I went on a mission to find a mechanic. This turned out to be easier than I thought as it seems everybody in Vietnam does bike r...