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Day 27
I wake up.... Its 6.50 Christmas Eve and I start to email people about bikes I've founded listed for sale on "Craigslist Vietnam" that are advertised as being in Hanoi. It would appear that the four or five bikes that are available are all being sold by back packers...... There must be thousands of bikes available for sale in Hanoi but without being able to read Vietnamese we are limited to only a few... And come 9.30 I receive a reply whilst we are having breakfast. The response is from a guy from Europe so the English is not word perfect.... He has a Honda win for sale for $300 dollars that comes with two helmets and already has a rack made for two back packs.... Excellent we think and arrange to meet at 10 o'clock outside a church..
We are there waiting for them to turn up and by ten past ten they have arrived....
The bike is red in colour with a yellow star on the fuel tank representing the Vietnam flag....
From a distance it looks fine but on closer inspection I see a few things that i don't like.... I can only find Honda written on the seat and that's it.... It's not on the engine anywhere, or the instrument cloister or exhaust..... Its Nowhere....
My concern is that this bike isn't really a Honda at all and is actually a Chinese copy...
I'm still a little apprehensive of riding on the streets in Hanoi with its mad locals so combined with this being a unfamiliar bike I jump on the back and the guy takes me around the block on it, leaving Shiree to chat to his girlfriend... The bike seams to do everything asked of it so when we arrive back at the church I put my concerns about the bikes authenticity to one side and go off in search of cash..... $300 dollars.
They specifically want dollars so this involves us going to various banks trying to get them to give us American dollars from a Vietnam bank, withdrawn from a UK account....
This proved a tricky and time consuming process.... Whilst attempting to carry out this withdrawal I received another email from someone else I'd contacted who has a Minsk for sale.... I'd prefers the idea of a Minsk whilst in the UK so told the guy with the Honda we were struggling to get the dollars out, which we were, and then arranged to quickly meet up with the Minsk owner....
This kind of back fired on us as the Minsk guy couldn't meet us till the afternoon and whilst working this out the guy sold the Honda win......
I then received another email from a guy with another Honda. Shiree was happy to come along to the first bike viewing but lost interest quickly in viewing a few so with her sights set on more fake clothing than you can shake a stick at and I requirement for warmth we part company, both intent on satisfying our own shopping goals...
I try to arrange a meeting with the second Honda guy by a big lake in the middle of Hanoi where water puppet shows are purformed. Its close to were I am and easy to find, but the guy wants to come to our hotel so after 30 mins sorting out a time and place I meet him in our hotel lobby. The bikes perfect and advertised for 450vmd which is around £135, so cheaper than the last one too... I give the bike a quick once over.... It's covered in Honda logos that are all In the correct place and it has a sturdy looking rack on the back... I'd like this bike so it's only down to money... I'd pay the asking price without any worry but it's only now that between the two of us we find a rather large stumbling block.... The guy wants $450 dollars not 450vnd which is more than double what I thought he wanted... Because its a Vietnamese website it puts all the prices into dong automatically so after trying to find a price we were both happy with and failing he takes the bike away... It's at this time that Shiree appears back at the hotel and we go to our room to us the wifi...
Vietnam is the counterfeit capital of the world and there is more North Face clothing here than in all the North Face shops in Briton combined.... Most feel really cheap but Shiree's found one shop selling half decent copies that actually feel reasonable quality... There more expensive than the surrounding shops but feel nicer so having found a coat she likes and haggled to get the price a bit lower we head off to get it.... Whilst there I ask the shop keeper where we can buy a motorbike from and he circles a few streets on our map.... There the other side of town so we set off on foot in search of a place selling old bikes...
It takes around 40 mins to walk to the indicated streets and when we arrive we find bikes everywhere... The place is littered with them, every road is double parked on both side with bikes but not one of them is for sale.... We do however find a few dealerships selling brand new bikes and a few shops selling push bikes, but no secondhand motorbikes anywhere...
We are beginning to wonder how in a city so full of small bikes is it not possible to find any for sale....? It's proving a lot harder than expected and I'm loosing hope of ever find one for sale.
We take rest in a cafe that faces the large central lake to use the wifi to check for anymore replies from this mornings emails but here are non. I ask, as I usually do when we walk into a shop a member of the cafe staff if they know where we can find a cheap bike for sale and it's here our luck begins to change...
Our waiter is finishing work in 15 minutes and says he'll take me to a place where I can buy a bike and that he'll help me with the bargaining.... We are as greatfull as we are dubious but are running out of options fast.... Google translate is proofing useful and with this aid i manage to work out that this guys help will cost us $10 dollars.... If we get a bike out of it then it's money well spent... It's not long before Shiree is left in the cafe and I'm experiencing a $10 dollar white knuckle ride as pillion on the back of our waiters bike travelling out of Hanoi's city centre.... It's instantly noticeable that these guys spacial awareness us very very good.... We pass things with inches to spares but this guys no show off, it's just the way it's done here, and it's done by everyone. We travel for around 10 kilometres out of town and turn down a dirty little side street and stop outside a area with thousands of bikes.... There are many companies operating here and who owns which bike is a mystery to me but the waiter seems to know what's going on... I'm after a Honda Dream and within seconds I'm surrounded by them... They are all purple with white knee fairings and chrome luggage racks... The prices fluctuate hugely from one Honda dream to another, and I can see no justification... They all look the same so after a few bikes we find one in budget at 5 million Dong.
Honda is plastered all over it and I'm happy... This is the bike the locals use and since coming here has been the bike I'd most wanted to buy so I'm happy... It starts up find and moves forward so I buy it... 5 million Dong is pretty much $300 dollars and its dollars they want.
I hand over the cash and jump on our new bike... It's another semi automatic, like the one we hired in Laos, but unlike the one in Laos its a Honds,... Which means its working properly and much nicer to ride... Although it's referred to as a semi automatic its only referring to the clutch... You still have to change gear yourself in the normal way, but there no clutch leaver to pull. It all works fine, I quickly check all the gears as we go down the side street heading back to the main road.. The only issue I can find as approaching the junction is the brakes..... They'll need some work I think as the brake leaver comes back so far it only stops when it comes into contact with the handle bar, and the foot brake is no better, but working both brakes together along with the gears we make it in out way find... The waiter makes frequent checks over his shoulder as I negousate the many perils of Hanoi's road network and after a short while we stop for fuel and a crash helmet purchase... I buy two helmets that cost $12 dollars for the pair... They are the most expensive on offer and the waiter assures me there very good whilst whacking one on the handlebar of his bike... The ride out to collect the bike followed by the accompanied ride back into town has been very useful... It's enabled me to experience the roads before we head off in our own. A kind of gentile introduction for which I'm grateful. I notice that people in bikes all swarm around together and I adopt the approach that I'm in a school if fish, and it works well, if there is a car, or a turning the bikes manoeuvre around them in mass so I keep myself in the middle of the bunch, ignore every horn I hear and go with the flow.... This seams to work for the majority and it works for me... We arrive back at the cafe and the waiter is gone.... Off to spend his recently earnt $10 dollars and I'm safely inside the cafe having completed my first Vietnamese road journey where I find Shiree sipping win.... We haven't got phone communication as Shiree's phone it appears does not like being in Asia and I've been gone around an hour so expecting the worst she's found red wine.... Im not sure if "expecting the worst" means me not returning at all or returning with a bike.
I explain to Shiree my school of fish approach whilst trying to convince her that it would be a good idea if she got on the back for our trip back to the hotel instead of her preferred option of walking next to it and all I hear all the way back to the hotel is "I Am A Fish" on repeat from behind me as Shiree sits, probably with her eyes closed on the back of the bike for the 5 minute ride back.
We park it up outside the hotel and take some photos of the adjustment screws on the carburettor. I do this as the local Vietnamese have a reputation for tempering with westerners bikes when there left, then hanging around in wait for your return, quickly offering help when you can't get your bike to start for a small sum. I guess being armed with a photo if the screws positioning when the bike runs well will help me re-adjust my own back to where they should be, avoiding any payment to tampering Vietnamese locals....
It's Christmas Eve, so after a shower we head out into the old quarter.... Our plan is to simply wonder the old quarter streets stopping in anywhere that takes our fancy for a drink then move on to find somewhere else......
The horns and sirens have been whaling all day so the first bar that we find in a street with little traffic we enter and wonder halfway down the bar..... In this place it's possible to hear yourself think and it's really undervalued so we take hold of the drinks menu. Shiree notices a cocktail called Saigon and this is what we have..... We take it in turns to order different surprise cocktails.
We are the only people inside the bar, and the bar staff are sociable and speak good English... I ask the bartender if he knows anyone who could make a luggage rack for our bike and he says he'll make a call.... 15 mins later I'm being sat on the back if another Honda Dream... The bar mans brother is taking me to get my bike as he's going to make the rack for us.... I just have to follow this guy in my bike back to the bar here he'll then take it off and start work on it.... And that's what happens... He is also going to put a new rear tyre on the bike and sort the brakes out and it'll be back for 12.30 tomorrow.
We have a few more cocktails and head back to out hotel.... It's only 10 o'clock but it's the latest we have stayed up in ages.
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