Are you as anxious as I was to know what the result of my motorbike border odyssey in Vietnam is? Well, before I tell you I have to describe what I was thinking about the two possible results the last few days:

In case I would not be permitted to drive my motorbike through Vietnam I was sure I wouldn’t be able to believe it for a few days after spending so much time and energy for trying to get it in. Interestingly, I was thinking exactly the same would happen if I received the word go from the authorities. Why? Exactly for the same reason as in the first case as after spending so much time and seeing how un-informed and sometimes unhelpful the people I had to deal with are and how much bureaucracy is going on all around me, my conviction in good result started to weaken and fade towards indifference slowly but surely. I can’t even explain the feelings I had properly as I couldn’t understand them myself. I was just sure that I would not be able to believe any result regardless… So confusing all this is…

So I went to the police in the morning and the girl that was one of the very few there that can actually produce and English word here and there sat me, as the last time, in the big conference room. In about 10 minutes she really appeared with a paper stamped with a red round stamp. “So the procedures do work on time, even though a long time..” I thought to myself as I half expected that they would tell me they still haven’t heard back from Ho Chi Minh City. They did though and that was good. What was not so good was when she tried to translate the most important part of the letter for me. It was a refusal that only re-iterated the “law”. “No motorbike over 175cc is allowed into Vietnam. Mr. Vsechovsky’s motorbike has engine much bigger than this and he therefore can not take his motorbike into Vietnam.”  That was it. End of story… :-(

However, now having the letter I had an address of the headquarters that issued it. I still couldn’t give up as this was “THE PLACE TO GO TO”. This was where the big heads are and I needed to talk to one of them.

As I still had the right to board a SINH Café tours bus back to Ho Chi Minh City I packed my things at the guesthouse and went to the Cao Dai temple where I left the tour yesterday. Before that however, I wanted to talk to Nguyen again to ask him whether he would be able to help me with finding a small pick-up truck to take my bike through Vietnam as this possibility was starting to look like the one I might need to resort to. However, trying to call Nguyen several times in a span of about 2 hours was unsuccessful. So at 12:20 I found myself sitting in a Sinh Café tour bus again, together with this time only 12 other people and we were heading to two hour distant Cu Chi tunnels.

When we arrived to Cu Chi tunnels – a site of successful Vietcong resistance against the Americans during Vietnam war, we first saw a “documentary” film. I’d say it was more of a propaganda film where all the Vietnamese guerilla, Vietcong and civilian people were obviously having great fun since they are all smiling whatever they do and where they are all heroes while all the Americans are all cowards who can only bomb the shit (excuse my French) out of Vietnam (which they did, I know…). I couldn’t help not to make a joke at the end of our excursion when Michael (another Ozzie who was also on the bus with me and who I met during a lunch) was wondering what all the things in the souvenir shop made out of coke, sprite and beer cans have to do with a site like this. I explained that as I saw it it was supposed to be utilizing all the empty cans the American soldiers left behind – all the solders that according to the documentary we saw just before never set a foot on the ground around Cu Chi because they were too afraid of the evil Vietnamese.

There is more than 200km of these tiny narrow tunnels in Cu Chi area with some leading to the Saigon River under its surface and some, on the other side, lead to the American base 10km away. Knowing the extent of the tunnels and seeing the tools they were dug out with one cannot help not to be impressed. We even tried to go through one of the “bigger” tunnels, but still, most of us got out after the first 30 meters underground as soon as we could as it was hot and the tunnel gets really narrow further in the following 70m section and one has to crawl on his chest at some places. As most of the other people in our tour I was not ready for this as I was still in my riding pants with all the protectors inside them so I was not only hot but also my movements of this kind are somewhat restricted. We also saw an operating room and a kitchen, with a few hundred meters distant chimney opening to deceive the Americans from dropping bombs directly on their heads while they were eating. We were served tea in the kitchen and had the opportunity to try so called “Vietnamese hamburger”, which looks more like the square potato chips, only not fried. That is kind of how it tasted like too. It was very filling. We also saw a wreck of US military tank, which was one of the few photo spots.. The whole area was heavily bombed in 1968 so there are young trees of similar age only everywhere we walked.

At Cu Chi tunnels you also have the opportunity to shoot from a machine gun to a target of a big animal. This is an expensive fun however as one shot costs USD1 and you can buy a minimum of 5 shots. I’d love to try it but shooting my daily budget in 3 seconds does not sound too economical at this point…  ;-)

During the ride back to Saigon I was still wondering what might be the real reason behind having such a law that prohibits bigger size engine motorbikes. OK, it might be faster and stronger, but in Vietnam traffic you would be stopped by a collision with the first person trying to turn suddenly or going in the opposite direction, if you actually had space at all to even accelerate. The bike is definitely not bigger (even with my huge additional tanks and panniers on it) or heavier than many of the small bikes here as so too often one sees one of the 110cc motorbikes carrying loads that you would have trouble fitting on a pickup Toyota Landcruiser truck.  They can also pull seemingly incredible loads on big trailers, hooked to the bike either directly or through the sometimes very long load, making some of the bikes actually longer than a medium size bus. Sometimes I really can’t believe what I’m seeing and wonder how a 110cc little engine can pull all that weight. Last one was today when I saw one of the older 100cc models pulling a high trailer with more than 20 people on it! I actually saw once how these super heavy loads take off. It is simple – you just have at least two other people who will push hard to get you into motion. I guess they just simply can’t stop until they are at their destination. Or also today I saw a guy driving the bike, having a huge, head-high barrel behind him on the seat and he still managed to have a passenger – sitting on the top of the barrel!! Can you imagine the very fine balance they have to exercise?
None of the bikes is built for things like this and yet, it is fine. But watch out for the big engine bikes on the roads! They might be built for the load, have adequate brakes (and probably better than most of those little bikes have even unloadad) and all that but THEY ARE EVIL! Watch out for the evil machines and keep them out of the country. A single one of these bikes like mine would probably endanger communism or I don’t know… Or are they just coming up with ideas to create yet more paperwork to have fun with?

When we arrived back to Saigon I bought something little to eat and went to an internet café to do some reading on my other options to get to China in case I was unsuccessful (which I expect) tomorrow and trucking my bike through Vietnam would be more expensive than I could afford. I also wanted to send a few e-mails and read the new ones of course. I shouldn’t have done that as I have received two of the worst news from the two sides of my family (one from each) on the top of my today’s morning very bad news. So right now I’m at my new record low point of this trip. I am not a happy camper at all right now. :-(