Russell Whyte
Second border crawl trip with Explore Indo China for me and Glenn kept this one very interesting, same same but different! This time accommodation was up a few levels = outstanding, food matched everybody in our group and plenty of coffee and beers or shots with rice wine seemed to be Glenns answer to support our comfort. We abused the little Minsks but they were “fit for purpose” and wouldn’t need to upgrade to any other option. Long (the Stig) was on to any minor mechanical issue as required and anyway he could rebuild a major on the side of the rode if that had actually happened. We went to places that only this style of tourism could access from Hanoi up to ~2,200m ASL lots of single tracks, many dusty and damaged roads plus good riding options on better roads were taken when needed to get to Hotel towns. The end result is we rode through other peoples lives in a completely different culture to home. Our tour catered for riders like our Kaumatua who at times rode like a possessed monkey,we raced each other in mud with our Mud King the winner and the other three bikes kept up including our 2 up Minsk which mostly kept itself at the front – great effort two up! One of us even kept record intact with their handlebars not touching the ground…. Mrs Thuy, Digby and Glenn made the organising of this trip so easy there was absolutely no stress and I highly recommend the Vietnam style of let it happen and all will be good mixed with a bit of No Wurries from the Aussies! The Explore Team went out of their way to make it all happen extremely well – even catching us with a replacement set of boots after big foot failure on day 2.