Alilles on Tour

This last ride with Simon (in)to Hanoi deserves a special post because we’ve never had such a fun awful day. It all started well, we had a passable breakfast at the Tam Coc lake and finished up packing to start our ride. Coming out of the bungalow to load our packs onto Babette, Ignazius and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Simons bike) it started POURING - well, not that of a big deal as we are well equipped and had some experience with driving in the rain (even it will be the first time riding in that kind of downpour). So we loaded our bikes and tadaaa, we noticed that one of Babettes back mirrow has vanished and was nowhere to be found 🙃 (sidenote: certainly not a good idea to drive without a back mirror in Viernam). So we located a mechanics as a first stop, I got a new mirror for double the usual price and we were once again ready to ride through the storm.
All went quite well until that one highway where my (metal!) phoneholder MID-DRIVE decided that it has had enough and wants to break free - including my phone, of course. A full break, a run to the accidents side and several mindful cars steering around my phone later I arrive at the site just in time to see a frikking SUV happily running over my phone with such precision it is hard to believe that it was not intentional (thank you for that, asshole). Well, good-bye brand new iPhone 13, now I‘m again dependent on my friends for navigation, and this when riding into Hanoi. FUN.
But it was what it was and we kept moving and the closer we came to Hanoi the crazier the traffic became - and not only in terms of numbers of participants. Imagine you’re riding a normal bidirectional street with two lanes - and everyone just completely ignores that the second lane is actually for going the other direction. Like not giving any Fs at all! 😂 Of course we’re on the lane which was apparently not existent. After that, driving in Hanoi city itself, which we thought we will never ever dare at the beginning of our trip, was all peace and love 😂 Well deserved days of not riding a bike in Hanoi ahead!Read more