What's a Carburetor? Day 1

Outside the rental place, armed with our Barbie masks. =)

Me and our cook for lunch. I feel tall!

Tiffers at our first lunch spot. They were so friendly!

Tiff with the guys who fixed our bike =)

Riding in the fog.


Nam (the guy we rented our minsk from) and I as we bid farewell in Hanoi. Tiffany: the adventure is ours!

My alarm went off at 7:00am. Today’s the big day! We started out by eating a hearty breakfast and two cups of coffee each at this little café called the Good Earth Café just down the street from our hotel. About 8:30am we ventured down the bike rental place with a smiling Nam to greet us. He gave us our tool kit and fix-it manual and showed us the choke and sparkplug and a few more things that is all a little hazy at this point… Seriously! Tiffany and I have NO business riding this bike! We both looked at each other with glazed over looks. Ah well. If something happens we’ll figure it out in a pinch.

Next Nam leads us out of Hanoi on his bike. I’m on the back of his bike and Tiffany is following Nam. Hanoi is a HUGE city! I’m so proud of Tiffany for maneuvering through the crazy crazy traffic on such a big bike! I would look behind me ever so often to see how she was doing and I would laugh every time. Here is this cute little blonde hair blue eyed girl on this bad ass bike driving though a busy Asian city. This girl has guts!

When we got to the outskirts of town Tiff and I bid farewell to Nam and I hopped on the back of Tiff’s bike. I was not quite as confident as when I was on the back of Nam’s bike, but whatever, we were on our way!

Within the first 5 minutes of being on a bike together we seriously nearly took out this girl on her bicycle. Well actually she was crossing the street pushing her bicycle. Tiff and I drove behind her (as she should have) but was just a tad too close and our saddle bags caught her bike and knocked it around. The girl was fine so we kept driving. This is a great start!

A couple hours later we stopped for lunch at this little town called Hoa Binh and they were so happy to see us. I really don’t think many foreigners come through here and they spoke no English. Finally we’re off the very well beaten tourist trail in SE Asia. FINALLY!!

After lunch we started going up into the mountains. We were traveling in the fog on these mountain passes with these big trucks dominating the road. Thankfully the road seems pretty good thus far. I’ve got to hand it to Tiffany though. She’s a good driver! I’m so glad I didn’t drive though. I would have been in tears for sure! So I’m the designated team photographer. It was really cold in the mountains and I had to hug Tiffany to keep us warm. We laughed a lot. We are so dumb and dumber!

Oh wait. Back it up a bit. About an hour into this trip up a mountain road our bike started to make some strange noises. We stopped to check it out and discovered our fuel was leaking. So… we got out our trusty tool kit and manual and sat by the side of the road to read it. Tiff asked, (more hypothetically than anything) “what do you think that tube is called?” I said, “I don’t know. The fuel tube?” Then Tiff said, “I think it’s the carburetor.” I said, “Isn’t that in the engine?” I said it before and I’ll say it again. Tiff and I have NO business riding this bike!

We sat there for awhile brainstorming and finally decided the best bet was to put the bike in neutral and coast to the nearest town to have it looked at. Just as we were about to leave this friendly Vietnamese guy pulled over to see what was wrong. We showed him the leaky tube and he knew what was wrong. He acted it out with a piece of grass by mock tying it around the tube. Oh. There must have been a screw or something there holding it in place. OK. Cool. Then another guy comes to help and he brings out a piece of metal and pliers and uses that to jimmy rig it. Works for me =) we’re set to go. Thanks gentlemen!

We roll into Moc Chai where we are staying tonight around 5:30pm. What a cute little town. Everyone is so friendly. We go for dinner and basically ask them to bring us whatever. They brought us this lovely meal consisting of tofu, tomatoes, some unknown green little vegetable. Then we had some homemade yogurt for desert. We walked around for a bit and everything pretty much shut down around 7:00pm. It’s quite a change from the hustle and bustle of city life. I’m so stoked to be doing this trip. This is finally our chance to get off the beaten path. What a good day to begin our trip.