The Vietnamese Leg has ended. And everything went faster than expected. And wetter. Besides that one scorching hot day on which we already complained in an older post, it rained every day. Hard. This had the effect that we started to skate faster and faster, to get faster to a dry spot. We pushed our daily distance to around 65km a day.
So after our last post, having spent a night in this seedy roadside hotel, we skated another day in the rain and found another cheap hotel to spend the night dry. Nothing spectacular happened. Our bearings were completely rusted at that point, although having been cleaned two days ago. Another round of cleaning and greasing the bearings up, and we were ready to power through the next stretch, fueled by eight baguettes before lunch. Tasty stuff those baguettes, a leftover of the french occupation. This allowed us to do around 70km. Maybe also the inglorious help of a bastard on a motorbike played a role. That guy showed up in late afternoon, and harassed us while driving next to us. Sometimes pretending to hit us with his bike. We stopped, he stopped. We speeded up, he kept pace. This lead to us trying to outskate him for a while, which unfortunately didn't work. At one point we had a Swissgerman/Vietnamese argument and tried to make him leave us alone. Nope, he instead tried to get at my pocket. Fortuna came to help us by blowing the guys fuel line on his motorbike, which allowed us to escape him. For two minutes. I absolutely didn't want to camp with that guy close to us, and luckily in exactly that moment we passed a hotel. Finally we got rid of that guy!
A good night of sleep, then we started skating through the Phong Nha Khe Bang national park, beautiful karst mountains covered with dense rainforest. And the only serious pass in our Vietnamese leg, called Deo da Deo. Took us at least two hours to cross it. On the other side slowly the villages started again, where we met a kid with a self made skateboard. Basically a plank of wood, with two sticks as trucks and some old bearings as wheels. At the south end of the park, we checked in to a hostel, to have a day of rest and visit the famous caves in the national park. Amazing! We only saw one, called paradise cave, apparently the biggest dry cave in the world. That was really impressive. And empty of tourists. Aaand it had an absolutely stunning stalagmite, shaped like a giant open pinecone, which made music. Like a gargantuam xylophone of stone, that was played by drops of water falling from the ceiling. One had to be very quiet to hear this beautiful, fragile concert, which even added to the atmosphere.
Back in the hostel: the shock. When having a look at our skateboards to make them ready for the last days, I recognized that my board is broken. It must have happened just before we arrived! It has three big delaminations, meaning that the different layers of wood that make up the skateboard, have separated, leading to some gaping cracks that leave the wood completely unprotected. If I would skate it in this condition, it would suck up water like a sponge, and possibly delaminate further, making it completely unskatable. Now I know why the board started creaking like an old plank during the last days.
Well, this means that the Vietnamese leg is over and we have a forced break until I find a way to fix this thing.
Its not to bad though, as we were very close to our destination anyway. Summed up we skated almost five hundred kilometers, 487 to be precise. We saw jungle, water buffaloes, crazy Vietnamese on scooters, countless karaoke joints, several weddings, ate mediocre food, drank Vietnamese moonshine, smiled and waved like the pope when we passed villages, let about thousand people try our skateboards, pushed until our legs bled. One crazy experience.
Now we have this break, will fix the board and the camera, do some touristy stuff in the meantime, and probably continue skating in Laos soon.
Cheers
So after our last post, having spent a night in this seedy roadside hotel, we skated another day in the rain and found another cheap hotel to spend the night dry. Nothing spectacular happened. Our bearings were completely rusted at that point, although having been cleaned two days ago. Another round of cleaning and greasing the bearings up, and we were ready to power through the next stretch, fueled by eight baguettes before lunch. Tasty stuff those baguettes, a leftover of the french occupation. This allowed us to do around 70km. Maybe also the inglorious help of a bastard on a motorbike played a role. That guy showed up in late afternoon, and harassed us while driving next to us. Sometimes pretending to hit us with his bike. We stopped, he stopped. We speeded up, he kept pace. This lead to us trying to outskate him for a while, which unfortunately didn't work. At one point we had a Swissgerman/Vietnamese argument and tried to make him leave us alone. Nope, he instead tried to get at my pocket. Fortuna came to help us by blowing the guys fuel line on his motorbike, which allowed us to escape him. For two minutes. I absolutely didn't want to camp with that guy close to us, and luckily in exactly that moment we passed a hotel. Finally we got rid of that guy!
A good night of sleep, then we started skating through the Phong Nha Khe Bang national park, beautiful karst mountains covered with dense rainforest. And the only serious pass in our Vietnamese leg, called Deo da Deo. Took us at least two hours to cross it. On the other side slowly the villages started again, where we met a kid with a self made skateboard. Basically a plank of wood, with two sticks as trucks and some old bearings as wheels. At the south end of the park, we checked in to a hostel, to have a day of rest and visit the famous caves in the national park. Amazing! We only saw one, called paradise cave, apparently the biggest dry cave in the world. That was really impressive. And empty of tourists. Aaand it had an absolutely stunning stalagmite, shaped like a giant open pinecone, which made music. Like a gargantuam xylophone of stone, that was played by drops of water falling from the ceiling. One had to be very quiet to hear this beautiful, fragile concert, which even added to the atmosphere.
Back in the hostel: the shock. When having a look at our skateboards to make them ready for the last days, I recognized that my board is broken. It must have happened just before we arrived! It has three big delaminations, meaning that the different layers of wood that make up the skateboard, have separated, leading to some gaping cracks that leave the wood completely unprotected. If I would skate it in this condition, it would suck up water like a sponge, and possibly delaminate further, making it completely unskatable. Now I know why the board started creaking like an old plank during the last days.
Well, this means that the Vietnamese leg is over and we have a forced break until I find a way to fix this thing.
Its not to bad though, as we were very close to our destination anyway. Summed up we skated almost five hundred kilometers, 487 to be precise. We saw jungle, water buffaloes, crazy Vietnamese on scooters, countless karaoke joints, several weddings, ate mediocre food, drank Vietnamese moonshine, smiled and waved like the pope when we passed villages, let about thousand people try our skateboards, pushed until our legs bled. One crazy experience.
Now we have this break, will fix the board and the camera, do some touristy stuff in the meantime, and probably continue skating in Laos soon.
Cheers
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