A trip to Poyang Lake

Our journey is not all about cycling. We went out of our way to the city of Nanchang so that I could visit Poyang Lake to look for the rare Siberian cranes that spend the winter there.

I had failed to find a guide, so equipped with our road map I set out on foot from our hotel across Nanchang to the bus station. I queued in line to buy a ticket and when I reached the window I showed the lady my map and pointed to the town I wanted to go to. Her vociferous head shaking, arm waving and chinese indicated that I was in the wrong place. It was dawning on me that I had no "plan-B" when I was rescued by two female students who spoke some english - apparently I had to catch a bus from the road opposite. The students kindly took me there and told me to stay on the bus until it terminated - however their conversation with the driver, which involved more vociferous head shaking, arm waving and me being trapped in the closing doors suggested something was amis, as did the 1 yuan (10p) fare. The bus started off in the right direction but after 15 minutes went the wrong way into a district of wholesale markets and stopped. I had no idea where the hell I was, which must have been obvious by the look on my face as some of my fellow passengers sought to help. I pointed at my map and there was some discussion, following which they indicated I should get into the trailer of a motorbike cart (these are a bit like a Robin Reliant van without a chassis and mainly used for transporting goods). I did as suggested and cruised several blocks of the wholesale markets much to the amusement and disbelief of onlookers. I was deposited at a different bus station, queued in line again and pointed at my map and this time got a ticket. For the journey I bought what looked like a blueberry muffin but once unwrapped was in fact a dry bun with jam on top. I nipped to the toilet before boarding the bus - as I stood at the urinal I noticed that along from me a man was squatting, pants down, shitting in the trough.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful. At one point the sun broke through the grey smog and the passengers closed all the curtains, enabling me to focus my full attention on the drivers attempts to kill us. Eventually we arrived in the town that I didn't know the name of and enquired if there was a bus to Wu Cheng village. A lady drew me a map of how to find the bus but it resembled a chinese character so I took up the offer of a motorbike taxi, who took me to a mechanics yard across the street where two battered, filthy minibuses were being taken apart for scrap - or so I thought until it was indicated that this was the bus to Wu Cheng. I settled in for a long wait.

Next to me an old lady was dozing with her young grandson in her lap. The child was wearing crotchless "porno" trousers and started weeing all over the lady, which woke her up enabling her to direct the piss onto the bus floor. After an hour all the moveable wooden benches and stools that constituted seats were full, but we didn't leave until we were packed in like sardines - and only once we had reached a bumpy, unsurfaced road did the conductor attempt to collect fares. Ten minutes into the journey and the lady in the seat in front of me stuck her head out of the window and vomited down the side of the bus. She was sick the remainder of the journey and I did my best to avoid the strands of puke being blown back into the bus. We passed a sea of fluffy cotton plants and stopped at the edge of Wu Cheng.

I pointed at my phrasebook for directions to the wildlife reserve office and set off on foot. It was further than I thought and I was tiring of being stared at so I took up the offer of a motorbike taxi for the remainder. When we arrived at the reserve HQ it was all shuttered up, which was a major blow as I had planned to stay there the night and get them to hire me a guide and boat. I tried using my phrasebook to get information from the taxi driver but it was looking hopeless when three young science academics from a visiting university appeared. One spoke english and knew the reserve. It was a month before the cranes arrived. They arranged for the taxi driver to take me to a spot to look for birds and if necessary he would also find a family in the village who could put me up for the night.

I clung onto the back of the motorbike as we slid around on the muddy riverbank. The "ferry" across the river was full of sacks being unloaded into a waiting truck by two old men. My taxi driver went off to get his jacket and left me at the waters edge. I figured we would be waiting hours for them to unload the boat so I boarded, shouldered a sack, covering myself in smelly shrimp powder and carried it to the truck. As far as the men doing the unloading was concerned this was like a gift from heaven - they were laughing and cheering and couldn't believe their luck. I had lifted about four sacks when another boat docked alongside, which with a sinking feeling I realised was the one we were waiting for. Taxi man reappeared, we boarded, everyone had a go with my binoculars and we departed.

There was no road on the other side only a bumpy, sandy path and as we sped along it was a little bit like riding a bucking bronco. We went through a small pond at speed soaking my right leg and then through a dilapidated village with no vehicles before reaching the lake shore - a vast flat wetland receded to the smoggy horizon. For the next two hours I would use my binoculars to spot a speck in the distance and taxi man would drive us there along tiny tracks or just through the grass to get a closer look. It was fairly futile and a cold wind got up so we headed back to Wu Cheng.

There were no more buses, which was probably for the best, so I hired two blokes with a minivan to take me back to town. They spent the journey hacking up greenies and gobbing out the window, chain smoking and blasting their horn at anything that moved - the holy trinity of chinese driving. I took a bus back to Nanchang and it was dark when we arrived. I had no idea how to get back to the city centre so I boarded the first bus and hoped for the best.

9,000 - 10,400 miles: Hanoi - Nanchang (China)

We killed a couple of weeks escaping the crushing heat of Hanoi on top of a mountain at Tam Dao and amongst the bays and pinnacles of the coast. It was a real pleasure to have the company of Gil and Stuart after so long on our own and we had a great 2 week "holiday" with them in Hanoi, Halong Bay and the misty mountains of Sapa.

After a month off the bikes we felt healthy and rested. We fitted the new tyres and leather saddles that Gil & Stuart had kindly brought with them, dusted off our steads and rolled out into the noise and chaos. Crossing the Red River we headed north out of the city and most of the morning a wind coated us with sand from construction sites. In the afternoon smiling people waved and peasants led their buffaloes through bright green paddyfields - it was such a familiar sight to us by now that I was almost sad to be leaving. The next day we passed farmers winching bamboo baskets full of custard apples down from orchards perched on limestone cliffs and we cycled up a long valley and over a pass before reaching Lang Son. The children were finally back at school, though we were surprised to see them carrying their own seats as well as their satchels! Our new saddles had crippled us and we could barely sit down so we had an enforced rest day and visited the ubiquitous limestone caves and pinnacles in this pleasant town.

It was a short ride to China and one of the most pleasant border crossings of the trip, set amongst forested hills. The Chinese immigration area was a different world - brand new glistening stone, immaculate landscaping, glass and tarmac designed to make Vietnam look like the poor country it is. We had to put all our panniers through an x-ray machine, the first time anyone had checked them since we left home. We cycled under one of China's nine famous gateways and into the Far-East. The road to Pingxiang was like a dream and in town there were proper shops and more than a whiff off modernity amongst the concrete. We hoped we had arrived in the Promised Land.

On our first night the police came to our room just as I took ill and Tracey answered their questions above the sounds of retching and defecating emanating from the bathroom. I spent the next day in bed watching CCTV9, China's english language channel for promoting China to westeners (lots of smiling Tibetans). It was restorative enough and after drinking my noodle soup out of the bowl like the locals we began the 150 miles ride north to Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province. Things started well with scenery of forested hills, birds singing and a pleasant road but the further we went the more the real China was making its presence felt - trucks and buses blasting their horns, endless monocultures of sugarcane and tree plantations, poor peasants living a third world existence and ugly, dusty towns. It was swelteringly hot and our saddle sore arses became more painful by the hour. On the second day I started to feel ill again and the final day's ride into Nanning was an endurance and one of the few days on our journey when I felt like giving up and going home.

Nanning was a shock. A large city that at first glance looked like it had been built yesterday. A gleaming 21st century city with shopping malls, tree lined avenues, cycle lanes, chinese dressed in modern western clothes whizzing around on funky electric scooters. Consumerism had come to town and the streets thronged with huge buzzing crowds beneath signs for WalMart, McDonald's, Addidas and Septwolves. It was hard to comprehend given the third world countryside we had just witnessed. It was like two different countries and easy to see what was motivating the biggest rural-urban migration in history.

We spent three days in Nanning getting well, resting our bums and getting to grips with modern chinese culture - crowds line dancing in public places, feeding golden carp in People's Park, strange drinks with jelly balls and the heady stench of fermented tofu in the night market. I was swept up in the shopping euphoria and bought some "Playboy" trainers to replace the shoes that were rotting on my feet.

The four days riding north-east from Nanning was not a highlight - busy, noisy, dusty roads with filthy thundering trucks, it was hot and humid and our arses were killing us. The scenery was unremarkable and punctuated by quarries, brick kilns and archetypal communist era factories belching pollution. The towns were grey and dreary and cities new and placeless, but the chinese people were helpful and friendly and we sought solace in cheap tasteless ice lollies. The days were still hot and humid and sleeping at work and playing cards in the shade seemed to be the national past-times.

Away from the tourist centres and major cities almost no-one in China speaks any english. This was not necessarily a new experience for us but even with a phrasebook we found it impossible to translate chinese characters or get to grips with the pronunciation of the tonal Mandarin language. Ordering food for The Vegetarian was almost impossible so Tracey took to going into the kitchen with the chef, pointing at various vegetables and miming how she wanted them cooked - unorthodox but effective. On the whole food was either excellent or too oily and bore no resemblance to Chinese food back home.
Finding a cheap hotel room wasn't straightforwards either - hotels have to be approved to accept foreigners and have to register foreign guests with the police. Many cheap hotels have not gone through this process and so we often found ourselves turned away and had to hunt around for a place that could take us. This bureaucratic system seemed to be enforced differently across the country and in some places we were taken in at cheap guesthouses that were clearly not registering us with the police.

The only map we could find was in chinese characters and it had no topography or distances. We had no idea of the names of the places we asked directions for by pointing at our map, but in this way did discover that illiteracy is far higher than government statistics indicate! In short we had no idea what lay ahead and it was with some surprise that we began a long ascent into a range of hills on a very hot day - but we left the trucks and industry down on the plain and began to see old village houses made of ochre coloured bricks and tiled roofs, receding rows of hills and the clear water of mountain rivers. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that had live snakes and frogs in its aquarium larder alongside the more usual fish and turtles. Late in the afternoon I watched a fisherman with his bamboo raft and fishing cormorants. In the friendly town of Mengshan our hotel owner was so helpful that he took me on his motorbike to his favourite noodle cafe for breakfast.

It was mostly downhill through towering limestone pinnacles to the tourist town of Yangshuo. We enjoyed the panoramic views from the roof of our cheap riverfront hotel, eating western food (apple crumble never tasted so good), getting lost in the countryside on a tandem and the fantastic cast of thousands sound and light show performed on the Li River, one of the few things on this trip that my mum would have loved.

It was a pleasant, if hot, days ride north-east from Yangshuo through limestone hills and orchards of persimmon fruit across the state border into Hunan Province. We washed in an irrigation canal and managed to find a spot for our tent hidden from China's millions in a plantation of green tangerines and pomelos. The highlight of the 50 miles to the town of Daoxian were the old grey brick village homes with curved tiled roofs and gable ends but the entry in my diary reads "lots of quarries, dust, noise, dreary towns, poor people pulling hand carts, brick factories, sore arses". It didn't get better. I'm thinking of writing a book "101 places not to visit before you die" and the area around Chenzhou would make the top 5. At one point we approached what appeared to be a dilapidated prison, as we got closer I realised it was a derelict school, but as we passed we could see the children inside.

"Transforming China" is the mantra and its hard not to agree that transformation is desperately needed. What this means is a construction boom unprecedented in the history of mankind - China in 2009 is the world's biggest building site. Everywhere we went there were quarries turning hillsides into aggregates and cement, brick kilns, roadworks, new railways, bridges, coal mines, construction site after construction site - some villages consisted entirely of building materials and scaffolding. Thundering along the roads are thousands of dumper trucks piled high with sand, rocks and coal which simply blows off coating people, buildings, plants and cycle tourists in a grimy layer. We passed villages so filthy they were Dickensian. More often than not by days end we looked like coal miners.

Understandably foreigners were rare in these parts and whenever we stopped a curious crowd would gather to stare, speculate and pose for photos with us. In contrast to the rest of the world, we became fascinating to teenagers. For a generation embarking on the western dream, the real thing was hard to ignore and we found ourselves being stalked by curious youths with ginger afro's and tight jeans.

As we struggled uphill along the cracked concrete highway north of Chenzou being coated in dust and sucking in the filthy black fumes of noisy trucks Tracey broke down in tears, sobbed that she could take it no more and wanted to catch the bus - which was a fitting point to reach the 10,000 mile point of our trip. Once we were off the highway things improved a little until we ran into roadworks which plagued us for the next 50 miles.

Farmers in an array of straw and bamboo hats lined the approach road to Chaling's friday market with fresh vegetables. Inside butchers carved up dead dogs, live fish splashed in enormous steel bowls, jovial women sold all manner of dried leaves, sticks and herbs. It was a colourful, bustling place with a friendly vibe, lit by the morning sun.

It was a more pleasant ride north-east from Chaling up into some hills and over the state border into Jiangxi province. Our map ended and there were no Jiangxi maps for sale, so we managed to get someone to write the name of the city we were headed to in chinese characters so that we could follow road signs and ask directions by pointing at it. We camped the night in a conifer plantation not knowing where we were or how far it was to where we were going. It was was 70 miles through some enjoyable countryside with fantastically decrepit old villages from China past. Barely able to sit down we pedalled tiredly into Ji'an's bright lights as the sun set and a kindly young traffic cop showed us to a hotel.

The bunting was out and the flower beds immaculate in anticipation of the much hyped 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic and the forthcoming Golden Week national holiday. Our 30 day visa was running out so we left the bikes and fled by train south to Hong Kong, which to all intents and purposes is still a separate country. I would have happily bought an "I love HK" t-shirt. A place of sea and islands, green jungled hills and forests of skyscrapers, gleaming malls, skywalks, historic trams and beautiful parks, of giant buddhas and incense filled temples and perhaps most uniquely a hugely enjoyable east-meets-west culture epitomised by western tourists taking photos of themselves eating Hong Kong noodles while in the restaurant next-door chinese tourists were doing the same with their beans on toast. We were incredibly grateful to be hosted by Jo, a friend of two cyclists we met in Lahore. We spent a week based at her flat on Lamma Island and were humbled by her selfless hospitality, in awe of her ex-pat teachers tropical lifestyle and hung-over by her socialising.

The Chinese embassy gave us a new 30 day visa, we watched the 60th Anniversiray fireworks over the harbour and made our way back across the border to Shenzen - a small town that grew to a city bigger than London in just a couple of decades. It was the end of the national holiday and only 1 seat left on the train. Tracey spent the night in a comfy 4-birth sleeper while I stood with the other poor souls in a smelly, cold, cramped corridor being constantly bumped by trolley carts and passengers boarding/leaving with the entire contents of their house. It was still dark when we were kicked out in Ji'an and we wandered the deserted streets and fell asleep in a park huddled against the morning chill. When we woke the place was full of sprightly OAP's bouncing around, stretching, dancing and performing Tai Chi. We retrieved the bikes and within half-an-hour were cycling through roadworks being covered in dust by dumper trucks - welcome back to China!

It took us four days to reach the provincial capital of Nanchang, 170 miles to the north-east. Not for the first time we camped next to ancestor graves that dot the chinese countryside and were woken by the sound of dynamite. Along the way we had planned to stay the night in Xiangtang but it was a down-at-heel place, the main drag lined with the pale pink lights of brothels and bored girls in doorways so we pedaled on and found our way onto a quiet road that ran along the top of the flood defence for the meandering Gan River. As we rounded a bend we looked down on a Mad-Max like scene of dozens of giant, rusty dredging boats eating the sand banks and islands in the river and pumping the contents into a waiting flotilla of hundreds of giant metal barges to be shipped downriver to become the bridges, apartment blocks and roads that were under construction as we rode into Nanchang the following day. The roads of China had been so bumpy that as we hunted for a hotel a screw on my front rack snapped, leaving half the screw inside the frame.

Cycling the steamy highways of SE Asia

After 4 1/2 months and 3,500 miles of cycling through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China, looking like a noodle and a grain of rice, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and headed north to more temperate lands.

It was a period of my life when I felt like I was melting and watched T constantly wiping the sweat from her upper lip. In hindsight the monsoon was not as wet as we had imagined (although we escaped the worst of it by fluke of luck in cycling through Vietnam, which is least effected), though ironically the rain turned out to be the best bit as it cooled everything off and the tropical storms were amazing to witness. Nevertheless the heat and humidity did at times take us to the edge and we were saved from combustion only by consuming 2,000,000 litres of sugary iced drinks.

I had been to this part of the world before and had wonderful holidays, so had been looking forwards to this leg of the trip. Turns out that SE Asia on a bicycle is a very different affair. For a start people aren't constantly running out of their homes pointing their baby's bum at you so that you can watch it wee/poo in the gutter as you pass. As concerned planet lovers we think the Asian "no nappy" approach is great, but not something to witness on an hourly basis.

The biggest disappointment was the cycling itself. SE Asian countries have not developed a network of surfaced rural roads linking villages - instead all roads feed into the surfaced highways, so if you want to travel any distance you have to ride the major roads. Although at times these are used as much by buffalo carts as heavy vehicles mostly they are busy, noisy, dusty and sometimes dangerous - and there is something about highways that makes them less enjoyable than minor roads regardless of the volume of traffic. We did ride some lovely country roads but they were few and far between.

As if in compensation we were entertained by the antics of millions of motorbike riders carrying their loads of live pigs, ducks, chickens, cows, dogs, rats and pet cage birds, ; transporting TV's, fridges, washing machines, full-length mirrors, billboards, window panes and fully inflated paddling pools. Parents carrying new-born babies in one arm while they drove with the other, whole families piled on for a day out, teenagers cruising on the week-end, elderly grandmothers with walking sticks climbing on board for a lift to the shops, passengers slumped asleep behind the driver, children in uniform driving themselves to school - At times it seemed as if they were playing out their lives on their bikes.

There are few chain-stores and most businesses are family run, very often from the front room. During the day these spaces are dining areas, cafes, shops or motorbike repairs and by night the dining room, living room and bedroom. It was always a pleasure to make a stop for food and drink in these places; looking around at the family photo's on the wall, the offerings in front of the shrine, the children's toys and if we needed the toilet we were usually escorted through the house, past grandmother asleep on the daybed, to their own bathroom - it was a small but intriguing insight into their lives.

In Asia if one person is selling something there will be a dozen others nearby selling the same thing. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the roadside. All of a sudden, as if by magic, lining the highway for a mile at a time we would pass vendor after vendor selling exactly the same thing. Some of these were understandable - salt sellers next to salt pans, fruit sellers next to orchards, stone carvings next to quarries, but others seemed completely random. In Thailand on a quiet stretch of road we passed 50 vendors all selling steamed chinese buns - the only roadside bun sellers we saw in 3,500 miles.

SE Asia is also the land of Lilliput and when you are sat at a table designed for 3 year olds its hard not to feel like Gulliver. For a ravenous cyclist the biggest nightmare are the tiny portions of food - many times I had the patrons gasping as I ordered a second or third plate of food "no wonder these westeners are so big, look how much they eat!". It was surprisingly easy to forget how tall we were by comparison and then find ourselves shocked at how short everyone else was - somewhere in central Vietnam a man asked to have a go on my bike but I had to refuse him when I realised my seat was at chest height. In hindsight perhaps it was our giant-like stature that caused such an interest in us rather than the fact of being strange westeners on cycles.

Asians are as obsessed with having white skin as westeners are with getting tanned. It is this which has driven women to wear ninja outfits of wide-brimmed hats, face masks and arm length gloves in 40C heat. Often all that could be seen of them was their eyes hidden in the shade of their hats. Understandably they were shocked and appalled to see Tracey with naturally blue skin, out in the heat of the day in a vest top and shorts. Every time we stopped they would be over, gesticulating at the sun and prodding Tracey's skin - something they soon regretted as lathered in sun cream and sweat she was as slippery as an eel. Doubtless there are now wild rumours spreading across the Asian countryside that western cyclists are as slimy as frogs in a pond.

Thailand's King, Ho Chi Minh and Chairman Mao - I feel like I know them all personally. Asians cultural deference to authority has elevated these leaders to god-like status and in every town and village they look down at you from statues and posters. As we passed through dozens of places every day we were being greeted by their faces at every turn. On the TV there seemed to be endless programmes highlighting their achievements and every other day was a celebration of the day they were born/died/liberated the nation. Coming from a culture where authority is challenged and ridiculed it was hard to understand the reverence surrounding these iconic figures and their ubiquitous presence in peoples' lives.

But perhaps the memory of SE Asia that will stay with me most is cycling for hour-after-hour, day-after-day past millions of smiling, waving rural people living in grinding poverty away from the cities and tourist towns and behind the facade of rapid economic growth.

7600 - 9000 miles: Saigon to Hanoi

We crossed the Sai Gon River with the morning traffic and cycled out of the city. As mid-summer approached The Navigator was confused to find the sun in the north - we were still only 11degrees north of the equator. We rode 70 miles on a hot day of traffic, noise, beeping and roadside development to Dong Xoai. Unfortunately the Vietnamese are followers of the Indian school of driving. The highlight was a roadside glass of freshly squeezed sugar-cane and lime juice over ice and the beginning of a 3-a-day addiction. Our other pleasure on quiet nights in one street towns has been eating the ubiquitous pimply pink lychees sold at the roadside - 50 pence a kilo for a taste of heaven.

Tracey was woken at 5am by the public tannoy but i've been wearing ear-plugs to bed since Pakistan. Vietnam is still a one-party state, slower to give up some of its ways than its communist ideology. In Dong Xoai we joined the Ho Chi Minh (HCM) Highway which stretches north alongside the borders of Cambodia and Laos for 1,000 miles. Parts of the road follow the route of the legendary HCM Trail used by the Viet Cong during the American war as a supply route from the communist north to their forces in the south. Although the traffic is not heavy the Highway is far too narrow for the buses and trucks driven by madmen and it was only a marginally less dangerous route than when American B52's were dropping bombs, napalm and Agent Orange. It was over 6 weeks since we had cycled up a hill and it was something of an enjoyable novelty as we started our ascent into Vietnam's central highlands. It was a novelty that soon wore off as we mopped the sweat from our brows with rags. Tracey renamed it the Hilly Ming Trail.

Apalled at Tracey being out in the sun a lady on a passing Honda insisted on giving her a conical hat to wear. It would have been very practical if it had not kept blowing over her face everytime she went downhill! The following day we passed the first hill-tribe people wearing woven bamboo baskets on their backs and saw two wild looking women smoking cheroots.

The Americans left some more subtle legacies than unexploded ordnance: people waved at us with two fingers in the "victory" V, children rushed to the roadside hands aloft waiting for us to give them "high fives" as we passed and eveyone knew how to ask for "one dollaaaah".

The Vietnamese are awake at 5am, eat breakfast by 7am and are tucking into lunch, beer and rice wine well before midday. Dining is done medieval banquet style, that is anything not consumed is thrown on the floor. As we were generally running an hour or two behind their time the best way to spot a popular restaurant as we cruised through town was to look for one that was ankle deep in bones, napkins, empty cans and squeezed limes.

Signposts were in short supply and the government has helpfully renamed half the towns, making it more difficult than it ought to have been to find our way. Approaching the town of Kien Duc (formerly Dak R'Lap) we were amazed to see the Cim Chay Ngoec Nho Vegetarian Restaurant and called in to give Tracey a break from rice and water spinach. As we were to discover Vietnamese veggie restaurants are not as you might imagine and we were served fake squid, prawns, beef, ham and even fake pig fat - all mostly the texture and flavour of rubber pen ends. But it was cool and there was a breeze and almost a view - all quite rare in those parts. It took us half an hour to drink a litre of iced tea in the thimble sized cups we had been given. But when we went to pay the family who owned the restaurant refused to take payment from us saying we were guests in their country - we were stunned and humbled. Truer to form a woman in the grocers down the road wanted to charge me double the going rate for a bottle of water. People all over the world are in turns generous and greedy - life's Ying and Yang in these parts.

Vietnamese school children have a 3 month summer holiday. Those not put to work by their parents running the family business are bored out of their minds and the sight of two western cyclists coming down the road was too much excitement for some of them - the sound of cycling in Asia is children yelling "hello, hello, hello, hello, hello" from every house you pass. Some of the older, wittier ones also muttered (in Vietnamese) something which probably translates as "you stink of piss" which of course was hilarious when we waved back smiling.

We passed a sign with fluffy rabbits, gentle tortoise and friendly pot-bellied pig: back home this would indicate a children's petting zoo, here it was a restaurant. Overlooking the town of Dah Nong, from the 3rd floor balcony of our hotel we had a splendid view over the surrounding hills, the construction sites of dams, bridges, hotels, homes and roads and the dead fish floating in our hotel's pond/larder, but there was a beautiful sunset.

The next day we cycled uphill until lunch by which point we had "jelly legs" but the air was fresh and cool. It was an interesting highland landscape of hills and distant mountains, of coffee plantations, pine trees and stands of jungle not yet logged. Hill-tribe people were living in box-like wooden shacks with corrugated steel rooves and had given up their traditional hand-woven clothes for "Doldace & Garbana". Thankfully it was mainly downhill to Dak Mil. I went for a wander around the towns lake and was harrassed by a young prostitute the whole way. In the shady dim of the market the women in pajamas waved plastic bags on sticks to keep the flies off choice pieces of meat and pigs ears. On the way to Buon Ma Thout we detoured to see some waterfalls and cycled along a lovely forest road before braving the traffic into town.

While in Buon Ma Thuot I made a day trip to explore the dry deciduous forests of Yok Don National Park. The Park is home to 17 species of endangered mammals but this says more about the plight of Asia's forests and its wildlife than the Park itself. My likeable guide, Chau, gave me an insight into conservation in Vietnam: Two Forest Rangers passed us on a trail and I commented that they seemed to have a great job, Chau explained that they would have were it not for the poachers, illegal loggers and hill-tribes encroaching on the Park. In attempting to stop them the Rangers were sometimes attacked with guns and knives, though apparently they are good at Kung Fu! We stopped to watch some brightly coloured birds and mosquitos descended. I was suprised to see Chau become agitated, trying to swat them away - usually the preserve of foreigners. He explained that many people had died of malaria here last year but stoicly refused my insect repellant. Later on, with dissappointment and shame he told me that no Vietnamese visit the Park to look for wildlife, only western tourists. The Vietnamese prefer to eat it and back in town porcupine meat and green pigeons were for sale at the market.

Further north we cycled uphill again into pine clad hills and were engulfed in rain and mist. There was nowhere to stay in Ea Drang but a few miles further on we hauled the bikes up a steep dirt track and camped in an orchard of sorts with long views and a stream fed pool. It was a pleasure to once again sleep to the sounds of nature. We passed the neat rows of rubber tree plantations before a long climb and quick descent into Pleiku, a town burnt to the ground during the war and rebuilt with Russian help. We got caught in torrential rain on our nightly hunt for vegetarian food and we were actually cold (in t-shirts) for the first time in 5 months.

There is a degree of mistrust and conflict between the hill-tribes and the Vietnamese government, which may explain why we passed a procession of brightly coloured propogandist billboards depicting Uncle Ho's brave new world as we made our way to Kon Tum. We paused a day and hired a local guide from the Bahnar people to take us on a hike through some hill-tribe villages. A wedding party was underway in one village so we bought an egg each for the bride and groom and 1/2 litre of rice wine and went to wish them good luck. I was quickly hauled off to drink rice wine through a giant communal straw from a large pottery urn and forced to sample the wedding feast which was being eaten by hand off banana leaves - some of which tasted better than it looked. It didn't really have the appearance of a wedding party and the guests were taking it in turns to take to the stage and sing, but in essence it was like weddings everywhere - people were getting drunk and having a good time.

From Kon Tum we took the opportunity to leave the Hilly Ming Highway for a day and make our way on quiet local roads. It was a slightly surreal day, I was served orange boiled eggs for lunch while a child serenaded us with his only english phrase "fu** you" and in the afternoon we found ourselves cycling through the middle of a Jarai hill-tribe village and then along a muddy track for 15 miles. In the one street town of Plei Kan I spent the night with my head in the toilet and subsequently Tracey spent the "two dullest days of my life" while I recovered. The highlight was watching a Vietnamese gameshow on TV that was a cross between The Price is Right and Play Your Cards Right - the top prize was a holiday in Cambodia.

I wasn't recovered but staying any longer was a risk to Tracey's sanity. Sporting the "Skeletor" look we set off again and found that the HCM Highway was now a different proposition - there was hardly any traffic and much less populated, we were cycling along smooth tarmac past hill-tribe villages and beautiful scenery - stopping to admire the high thatched rooves of village long houses. In my weakened state it took all my effort to reach the next town 34 miles away. The following morning we rode steeply uphill for 3 hours past broken down logging trucks to a high pass and the only way I made it to the next town that day was that it was downhill thereafter.

There was some beautiful scenery of hills clad in tropical forests shrouded in mists and spewing waterfalls but it was depressing seeing some of the poorest people in the world laying waste to one of the planets most valuable natural habitats in order to grow bananas and corn. Slash and burn farming ought to have no place in the crowded 21st century and tribal people using chain-saws and vehicles can hardly claim to be practicing traditional farming. The maths is fairly simple: since 1975 Vietnam's population has doubled to 80 million and over the same period a third of its natural forest cover has been cleared for timber, firewood and cash crops.

I continued at snails pace from one town to the next until after several days we eventually turned east from the HCM Highway and dropped out of the hills, down into the steaming heat and rice paddies of the coastal lowlands to Hoi An. Along the way we passed men on motorbikes on their way to go fishing - only instead of rod and line they carried electric prongs and a car battery.

Spared the ravages of war and redevelopment Hoi An's old town is a living World Heritage Site of old colonial buildings and traditional architecture set in a river delta. It is unashamedly touristy but the first town in SE Asia we've seen with any charm and we stayed for 10 lovely days as a base to explore Hindu ruins, Marble Mountains and the South China Sea. Tracey went diving on the Cham Islands, completing an advanced PADI course and swimming with seahorses.

Much happier with the world we followed the coast road north to Danang where a Greg Norman golf course and expensive resorts are being built amongst the sand dunes and bomb craters. North of Danang a spur of the Truong Son Mountains stretches east to the coast and Vietnam's main highway climbs from sea-level up to the Hai Van Pass at 500masl - thankfully nearly all the traffic now goes through a tunnel leaving us to sweat our way up and enjoy spectacular coastal scenery and a fantastic descent to Lang Co, a spit of sand between a still lagoon and the blue sea. We joined the Vietnamese holidaymakers for their late afternoon swim wishing that every day's ride could end so blissfully.

We cycled with the thundering trucks and buses along Highway 1 and over two small passes before turning inland to the entrance to Bach Ma National Park, a jungle clad mountain that rises almost straight up from the coast. We were told that cycles were not allowed in the Park and that we would have to hire an exhorbitantly priced mini-van to take us along the 13km road to the facilities near the summit. While we were considering our options a man walked past and we grumbled that it wasn't very eco-friendly to allow vehicles into a National Park but not bicycles. Unfortunately for us he happened to be the Director of Eco-Tourism and agreed - he said he wanted the rule changed and would speak to the Park Director over lunch. They must have had a sadastic streak because they came back and said that they would give us permission to ride as long as we signed a disclaimer with regard to the condition and steepness of the road and that we write a report for them at the end as to the viability of cycling in the Park. All of a sudden the mountain loomed a mile above us in the sky, shrouded in cloud and it was a sticky 35C at the bottom.

I woke the market stall women from their siestas amongst the fruit and vegetables and piled additional kilos of food and water on my bike just in case it wasn't difficult enough. It took us 4 1/2 hours to travel 8 1/2 miles - this is in fact walking pace and its fair to say that I pushed nearly as much as I rode. The gradient was 10% the whole way up. Sweat poured from me and ran down my legs to fill my shoes which were squelching by the time we were only half-way. Physically it was the hardest ride of the journey so far and at times we both doubted that we could make it. As we went higher and higher the views across the forests, mountains and coast were absolutely stunning. The air cooled with altitude and as dark fell cicadas hissed like chain-saws from the jungle. We arrived at the Park restaurant to find all the staff drunk. They wanted us to camp in the car park where they were happily urinating and refused to show us further along the road to the campsite. We made our own way but couldn't find it in the dark and instead camped near what appeared to be an unused holiday villa. Leeches struck as we put up the tent. We were exhausted and dejected and surrounded by croaking frogs and giant insects.

Next day we swapped the tent for a room with a view and stayed for a couple more days. We had been physically broken but the forests of Bach Ma were a peaceful place with breathtaking views, tropical wildlife, cool air and kareoke singing Vietnamese. The ride down was lovely. We wrote our report and made our way along a bumpy local road and over a new bridge to an island of fishing villages and sand dunes littered with thousands of colourful grave temples that was a bit like a drive-thru cemetary. We got caught in a storm crossing another bridge back to the mainland and on into Hue, the 19th century capital of Vietnamese emperors on the banks of the Perfume River. The city is famous for its temples, palaces, tombs and pagodas but not for hairdressing and I left with a skin-head.

A days ride along the Highway took us into the infamous wartime DMZ but as we crossed the Ben Hai River that once seperated North and South Vietnam there was little to see other than socialist propoganda billboards. In late afternoon sunlight we cycled a pleasant local road to the beach resort at Cua Tung and enjoyed a cold beer looking out to sea from our hotel restaurant. The lights from squid boats bobbed in the distance where once American warships bombed the local fishing village into oblivion. Next day we cycled along a lovely coastal road with unspoilt bays of white sand to the Vinh Moc Tunnels, built by the Viet Cong to withstand the US bombardment. We headed inland and after cycling under the arm of a working digger at some roadworks we made aquaintance once again with the HCM Highway. There was hardly any traffic, towns or facilities along the road which made for great cycling but after camping the night having to ride 30 miles before finding somewhere to eat breakfast rather took the edge off things. We diverted to the coast at Dong Hoi to eat rice pancakes and then rode back inland, amusing ourselves for a short while by asking for directions to Phuc Mi. On Saturday afternoons there are 10 million drunk Vietnamese men riding Hondas and Yamahas and on our way we were hassled by one of them and children begging for money. The residents of Xuan Son village earn their living by extracting as much money as possible from daytrippers to the caves at Phong Nha National Park. Their attempts to part us with our cash were so unwelcoming and Vietnamese tourists so overwhelming that we left the next day without bothering to see the caves.

We cycled uphill through the National Park into a sapping headwind for several hours. At the top of the pass there was a beautiful view across the forested slopes to receding rows of mountains on the Laos border. In the afternoon we passed small hill-tribe villages amongst limestone pinnacles and camped next to a natural pool with cystal clear water to cool off in. At night I washed the camping pots and fireflies danced over the water.

We continued north through the hills and then made our way down onto the plains where water buffaloes wallowed in mud holes to escape the heat. French missionaries had been effective in this part of Vietnam and huge churches towered above small villages. We were fairly shocked to notice that our hotel in Hu'ong Khe had bear paw rice wine alongside Johnie Walker. We were having a quiet jug of beer by the town's lakeside, protected from the rain by a tarpaulin, when we noticed two very large fish swimming near the surface. A small group of men rushed excitedly to the waters edge and a brick was thrown into the lake, a man stripped to his pants, jumped in and swam out to retrieve the huge carp which had been knocked unconscious. In the lowlands the temperature rarely dropped below 30C at night, sleeping without AC or fan was difficult and the intermittent power cuts affecting North Vietnam were unwelcome.

Oddly, the further north we went the hotter it was getting, turning us into cycling zombies dreaming of the cold. In Pho Chau we met a french cyclist on his way to the Laos border and enjoyed his company over dinner and a beer as the rain poured outside. The 60 miles to Tan Ky were amongst the most enjoyable in Vietnam with scenes of rural life, rolling hills, distant mountains, jungle, plantations, paddyfields and children riding water buffaloes. The road seemed to be used as much for drying vegetables as it was for traffic.

The only discernable difference between the North and the South seemed to be that in the North people wore green pith helmets and smoked tobacco from bamboo gongs. It took us 3 more days to reach Ninh Bihn in heat which was bordering on being dangerous. Many of the locals were cycling with umbrellas to keep the sun off. We were not due to meet Tracey's friends in Hanoi for another 3 weeks and we were supposed to be on a "go slow" but had cycled 500 miles in 10 days. We rested a few days and were glad to bump into two South African cyclists we had met briefly in Cambodia. They had set off from Cape Town 2 years ago making our journey seem like a ride in the park!

We were only a long days ride from Hanoi but decided to take the scenic route and visit some places of interest along the way. We stopped at Van Long Nature Reserve, a shallow, clear lake surrounding jungle clad limestine pinnacles that are home to a troop of Delacour's Langurs. It is estimated that only 300 of these rare black and white monkeys remain in the wild. A woman rowed us out onto the lake in a small bamboo boat to look for them. Had we not come across Frankfurt Zoological Society who support a project to protect the monkeys we would not have spotted them way up above us on the top of a cliff.

The following day we rode west to Cuc Phuong National Park. It was a joy cycling through the pristine rainforest along the 10 mile road that runs uphill through the Park to the park centre. We camped two sweaty and damp nights and went in search of wildlife before heading back the way we came. We tried to dodge the rain showers as we headed north on some disastrous roads through a scenic landscape but were very soggy by the time we found a hotel set on a lake. The 30 miles to Hanoi were Vietnam cycling at its worst - hot, dusty, bumpy, noisy and dangerous. We were two weeks early and it was unbearably humid but a glass of cold beer cost only 9 pence.