My brother was here for 2 weeks recently and we had a fantastic time.
One thing he did whilst he was here was hire a Russian-made Minsk motorbike and take off into the mountains.
James told us that as with many words, the final /s/ and consonant sounds are not pronounced - reducing Minsk to Min, which sounds kind of cute!
Anyway, this is the grunter that James took with him. More on his travels later!
LATER:
So my younger brother came to visit and of course, elder sis feels responsible for making sure he returns home to Australia - to our parents!! - alive and well.
Needless to say, when James (said brother) told me that he wanted to spend about a week crusing on a motorbike, on his own, around the lower Northern Highlands of Vietnam, I was a leeeettle stressed out!
But we went out to Cuong's Motorbike Shop in the Old Quarter and organised to rent him a bike - AND HELMET!! And this was the bike (see pic)
The funny thing was that neither James nor I could ride a geared bike, so we had to ask one of the mechanics to take the bike (and James) back to our house!
That afternoon James took the bike down to the lake behind our house to learn how to ride it. I went along to watch. About 100 Vietnamese people in the coffee shops and walking around the lake were also there as spectators!
James managed valiantly to get the bike started and simultaneously freak out all those watching - it's a really LOUD bike!
He spent about 30 mins in the hot, humid Hanoi afternoon going haltingly backwards and forwards along the side of the lake.
Plans for a next-day departure were delayed when he realised he would need to be more proficient at the bike.
A couple more practice sessions and a couple of days later, he was ready to go. James had the backpack full of equipment - water, clothes, VN-English dictionary, camera, whiskey, Panadol, wet weather poncho. Just like a Scout. He headed off at lunchtime after I pointed him to the right road which would become the highway he would follow.
By nightfall, I was thinking "where is he?", hoping that he was safe and warm and not huddled by his bike on the side of the road or worse! I know! Since when did I become "like his mother"!???
Anyway, after a few worried days, James arrived home later that week. He had ridden during the day, stopping for bia hoi and directions where necessary. He had stayed in a traditional montagnard (tribal) house and was the guest of a family one evening when he happened to stop and was invited for dinner. He rode on brand new highways and through rivers and along rickety dirt tracks.
Despite a pretty severe cut on his foot (which we treated by heading straight down to the France-VN Hospital for anti-biotics), he arrived home safe, well, sunburnt and happy to have had a real adventure, met and spoken to some lovely people, and generally had a whole lot of time to relax.
My initial expectations, when I heard that James was coming to stay, were: Sapa, Halong Bay, Hue, Hoi An! Gotta do them! James went to none of these places, but I know he definitely feels he experienced "real" Vietnam - not the "big" sights, but the way life is lived all along the path that he followed.
When James returned to Hanoi, we went to a bookshop so that he could buy VN-English dictionaries to send, along with photos, to his new friends in country Vietnam. The reason for this was so that they could continue to communicate by letter.
