Let me give you a little bit of background. I am an over 50 year old women who has just successfully completed the Border Crawl ride with my husband & a friend. This was our 6th trip to Vietnam & we thought we had seen a lot of the country & it was quite possibly going to be hard to impress us. Not only did this trip impress us I would have to say it blew us away. Our guide Tony & invaluable mechanic Long went out of their way to make this the most memorable time. From day 1 it was obvious this was going to be a very different trip to anything we had ever done before, this was our 3rd guided motorbike trip. Our Minsks were very well prepared & very highly maintained & proved again to be a truly enjoyable ride. I stated in my original email that I had never done any off-road riding but had a fair amount of road riding experience, so when we came to our first dirt ‘road’ with potholes & everything else they could throw at us my first thought was’ I didn’t sign up for this’. By lunchtime we had ridden through knee deep mud, dirt, gravel & I had never had so much fun in all my life!! It was the hardest, thing I have ever done but I’ve also pushed myself way above what I thought I was capable of& not once did I ever feel unsafe or feel I was put in a position that I didn’t think I could handle. The guys give you a lot of confidence. Let’s go back to lunch, they were awesome, a picnic lunch was the last thing you expect in the middle of nowhere, but it just made it a more special experience. Our accomodation was always the best that was available in each place we stopped. We had a mixture of basic, clean, & luxury but it was always comfortable, & we had amazing hospitality at the homestays, although I must say that the Vietnamese love a hard bed. The ride itself was beyond my expectations, you can’t explain to anyone the sights you will see, it’s way of the tourist trail & so worth the journey to get there, one minute you are riding up a mountain into the clouds & the next a vast valley opens with karsts that you couldn’t start to describe. Tony & Long knew all the great places to stop for a photo or coffee or a pick me up at the end of the day to get us to our destination, they really were fantastic hosts. We are definitely planning a return visit, it can’t come quick enough. Again thanks to Tony & Long for a fantastic adventure.