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Monday
Day One of the big ride, and I don't mind admitting to being a bit fretted. It's only the test day, so it won't be too arduous, but still, I have no idea whether this country of charming oompah loompahs is really going to have a big enough bike.
I'm also praying that the ironmongery I have grumblingly humped all round Asia (cycling shoes with cleats, my own pedals and a giant stem extension) is going to fit their kit.
I needn't have worried. Well not about that. Almost immediately the challenge turns out to be completely different.
Imagine you are a tour operator needing to provide bikes for all shapes and sizes, and which can cope with Vietnamese roads. You go for heavy-duty mountain bikes (in this case a Trek frame), with soggy nobbly tyres and big shock aborbers on the forks.
Anybody can ride these, but they are slow and weigh a tonne, particularly if you're a freaky giant-type. In this heat and humidity, and knowing I've not even sat on a bike for 6 weeks, this will be tough.
It's a test day so we're only doing 20km while we are near these guys' base of operation so the bikes can be tweaked to suit all tastes. My saddle comes up to the shoulder of the wonderfully smiley, non-english-speaking mechanics. They ask to have a photo taken of me, the bike and them as evidence.
"You should have seen him, he was THIS BIG".
And we're off. It's like riding through a Turkish bath. Everyone's shirt is sodden in 15 minutes. This is just 20km on the flat, roundabout sea level: in two days time we will chugging up steep hills around Da Lat at 1500 metres. OMG.
The short trip is to Cu Chi. A cute name for a fascinating, but un-cute place. This is the location where the tunnel network used by the VC is preserved, and it is mind-blowing. The original network contained around 200km of tunnels, most only big enough to crawl through, at depths of 3m, 6m and 10m and astonishing complexity. Ventilation disguised to like termite hills, a chimney system to allow underground cooking while avoiding a smoke plume, a well, an array of man traps, a workshop to convert tyres into sandals, a workshop to defuse bombs and then take out the explosives, an escape out into the Saigon river, the list seemed endless. I tried to lower my self into one of the self hiding entranceways. It was so small I simply couldn't fit.
It slowly becomes very clear that the Americans had absolutely no chance of winning the war at all. These tunnels were literally in they back yard, and for much of the time they either had no idea they were there, or they just just for storing stuff. Actually they provided a major transport route from the Ho Chi Mink trail down through Cambodia, as well as a place to attach from and disappear back into and hide. You just had to marvel at the Vietnamese.
A tiny thing not to be forgotten was that in the car park there was a Cashew tree. This is a significant piece of tree. And then you see the fruit. And you see why they are so bloody expensive. 1) a big tree, not easily climbed 2) a big fruit, sparsely growing for such a big tree 3) the tiny nut hanging out of te bottom of the fruit. The fact that Mr KP gets whole bags of them to The Duke of York to 'fill a gap' when I am drinking a second pint of Doom Bar is positively weird.
Then the coach whistled us back to Saigon for our last night. 7.30am tomorrow and we go off properly. I will spare you the details, but needless to say I didn't let that stop me having a distinctly thorough evening with my old chum Leon who moved out here a few months ago; big 'thank you's to him!
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