Author: ninemilesperhour

24th JANUARY 2019

When I first made the decision to extend my Vietnamese visa, I thought that the ten day waiting period in Hanoi might be a chore. However, as the days have worn on I’ve started to develop a bit of a soft spot for the city. It’s noisy, busy, polluted and the traffic is crazy, but somehow there’s still a nice feel to the place. And, even though the essence of a cycle trip is to keep moving, I’ve not minded being stuck in the one location for so long. A big reason for this is that I’ve been able to keep myself amused and get a feel for the city by meeting some locals.

I catch up with Thuy for a second time a few days later. This time she pops round to my Homestay with a girl called Dinh, who, like Anh before, will now get to practice her English on a real live native speaker. We take a walk to West Lake, which is the largest lake in Hanoi and start to make our way along the waterside path. A full walking circle of the lake would be a tiring 17km long, which means we don’t get very far before deciding to turn back for coffee. After sampling Egg Coffee on my last outing, today I opt to try another Vietnamese favourite, Yoghurt Coffee. When I order I’m expecting to get yoghurt-flavoured coffee, or even coffee-flavoured yoghurt. But no, when my cup arrives it contains dark coffee with a few dollops of yoghurt thrown in. This combination sounds like it would never work, but once the two are stirred in together, the result is surprisingly good. I’m finding that Vietnamese coffee is so strong and bitter that virtually anything sweet can be added to smooth out the taste.

We walk back towards the Old Quarter, with Thuy asking me for some examples of idioms to help her with her English course. Bloody Hell, I don’t even know what an idiom is ! She explains that it’s something like ‘Raining Cats and Dogs’ where the words used are not actually related to the meaning of the phrase. In other words, cats and dogs really have nothing to do with rain. The irony of a Vietnamese girl having to spell this out to an English speaker is not lost on me. In actual fact Thuy is fairly Westernised in her outlook and not what you’d expect from a stereotypical Asian girl. She’s sarcastic, drops the odd swear word and she likes a beer, which is wonderfully refreshing to see.

In the evening we go for food at a restaurant that does Hot Pot, which I’m told is a popular food choice here as a winter warmer. I soon find out that the Vietnamese version has no similarities whatsoever to a traditional UK Hot Pot of stew or casserole. Essentially, each table in the restaurant has their own little hot plate stove and we cook the Hot Pot ourselves. First we are brought a large pot of ‘broth’ and bring it to the boil. Our broth is made from vegetables and stock and tastes a bit like a Thai Red Curry soup. Then we receive a tray of pre-sliced ingredients which include prawns, cockles, chicken, long mushrooms, tofu, octopus tentacles and what looks like beef strips. You simply drop the ingredients into the broth one by one until they are ready. I’m happy to let Thuy do all the cooking as I wouldn’t be sure how long to cook each ingredient for. Plus, she’s a lot better at handling chopsticks than I am. Most of the meats cook quickly as they’ve been sliced so thinly, but I’ve got no real idea when the seafood is ready. She does a grand job and the result is delicious, although I find it quite spicy. I think it might just be me not being used to the spiciness, but Dinh also says she finds it hot, which in turn makes me feel better.

We wash the meal down with some beer and keep asking for our broth to be topped up until we finish all the ingredients. Then it’s time to walk back to the Homestay and say Goodbye. The pair of them are rugged up in warm jackets and scarves, looking as if they are about to trek off into the Arctic. For them a Hanoi winter is cold, whereas for me it’s about ten degrees warmer than the UK. Dinh drives Thuy home on her tiny, girly scooter which still looks way too big for her. It’s been another good day and Thuy’s been excellent company once again.

The following day I go for a cycle right round West Lake. I want to buy a pair of more robust touring tyres, but also want to see how I fare on a bike in amongst the demented Hanoi traffic. I’ve watched how road behaviour works here as a passenger on a scooter, so I just need to get into that mindset. I try to go with the flow of traffic and not make any sudden manoeuvres and this allows me to reach the lake without incident.

There’s a bicycle shop about halfway round that can only kit me out with a single decent touring tyre, so I buy that and sling it over my shoulder before continuing. I find that large parts of the lakeside are pretty, bordered by trendy restaurants and large expensive houses, but there are some uglier parts too. A handful of guys are fishing from the lakeshore on the way round, despite the presence of dead, floating fish on the water’s surface. The lake must be so dirty and polluted being in the middle of a huge city, so I’m surprised to see they’re still willing to catch and eat fish from there. I ride back to the Homestay to discover I’ve made a monumental cock-up with tyre sizes, and that my recent purchase is too small for my bike’s wheel. The next day I make a repeat journey round the lake to exchange my tyre for one that actually fits. Ordinarily I’d have been a bit annoyed at my own stupidity, but it’s a pleasant cycle round the lake and it’s allowed me another practice ride through Hanoi traffic.

A couple of days before I’m due to leave Hanoi a remarkable piece of synchronicity occurs. When I’d set off on my European trip during the summer, my first Couchsurfing host was a Norwegian girl called Isabelle. I stayed with her family for three days in the small Arctic town of Honningsvåg, and made my way to and from North Cape via their house. Being able to use their warm, friendly home as a base was just the start I needed for my trip. Now, seven months later, she happens to be stopping in Hanoi for three days on her way to Australia. So, Isabelle was there in Norway for the start of my European trip and now she’s here in Hanoi for the start of my South East Asian trip. I even get to thinking that she might be some sort of lucky mascot or guardian angel and that meeting her again will ensure that this trip goes smoothly. Realistically, it’s just one of those incredibly freakish coincidences that sometimes happen in life. It’s still a bit spooky though.

The hostel she’s staying at is a two minute walk from my Homestay, so I wander round and say Hello. It’s good to catch up with her again. We walk into the Old Quarter for a bite to eat and a fruit drink. At one point she takes a selfie of us and sends it to her mother in Norway, with a question of ‘Guess who I’m having a drink with?’ Mother doesn’t recognise me though, as I’ve lost so much weight from cycling since I met her last June. Isabelle left Norway in July and has spent most of her time travelling in the USA and Korea. Her destinations are heavily influenced by whether or not the city has a West Coast Swing dancing scene, and she travels accordingly. She’s even found a dancing community in Hanoi and that’s where she’s heading after our catch up. We say Goodbye and I take the long way back to my Homestay through the bright and bustling Old Quarter.

After being told I’d definitely get my passport returned on the Friday, it duly arrives a day early. Inside is a lovely new Vietnamese visa that allows me to remain in the country until the 11th of March. Although my passport gets back earlier than expected, I still keep Saturday as my scheduled departure day. Normally on a cycle trip I try to avoid large cities, but now I find I’m in no hurry to leave. I spend my final day faffing with my bike and packing everything I require for three months travel into two pannier bags. I’ve enjoyed my extended stay in Hanoi, but tomorrow the time has come to finally hit the road.

 

 

 

22nd JANUARY 2019

My wait in Hanoi continues, although I do break the routine with a day trip to Ha Long Bay, which is probably Vietnam’s premier tourist attraction. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and features a scattering of over one thousand limestone islands jutting almost vertically from the sea. Myself, an Italian bloke and an Argentinean couple from the Homestay join a minibus for the four hour drive. First we pick up a handful more passengers from hostels in the Old Quarter, which mostly results in our driver causing havoc by performing U-turns in the maze of tight streets. Then the route out of Hanoi is busy, noisy and slow which is an ominous precursor to what I’ll be facing on a bicycle in a few days time. Once we escape the city our journey becomes uneventful, apart from a Malaysian girl sitting next to me who keeps falling asleep on my shoulder.

At Ha Long Bay the boat jetty is utter pandemonium. I knew it would be busy, but the sheer volume of tourists is mind-boggling. Three minibuses worth of people are crammed onto our boat. We chug out into a calm, silvery sea and make towards the islands. I’d seen pictures of the bay before which show dark green islands, dotted in an emerald sea under a sunny blue sky. Today, though, the colours have been muted under a humid, cloudy blanket, giving the place a more moody and atmospheric feel.

Our first stop is Ti Top island, where a warm, steep climb of four hundred steps gives you a cracking outlook back down to the beach below. A viewing platform allows for panoramic views of the surrounding bay and it’s crop of jagged islands that rise sharply from the sea. From up here I can see that the water is flat calm and has taken on more of a greeny-grey colour. Then it’s on to a second island and ‘Surprising Cave’ which was apparently discovered when some French soldiers had followed a monkey inside. The immense scope of the cave once you get inside the cliffs is indeed surprising, given that the entrance is so small. Almost as surprising is the amount of people in the cave traipsing along the man-made path in single file, like zombies following this one route through the chasm. Mind you, I can’t be too precious about the shuffling hordes. Today I’m one of them.

Our final island has a round lagoon in it’s interior which can only be reached by kayaking through an arched tunnel in the rocky cliff face. This tunnel is about one hundred metres long, with echoes bouncing off the rocks just above our heads as we move slowly through. Once this opening has been negotiated we find ourselves floating on the lagoon, surrounded by a circle of high cliffs and cut off from the sea outside. This hidden location makes me think of the secret paradise in Alex Garland’s novel The Beach. We paddle round the lagoon’s edge, eyes cast upwards at the cliffs and jungle foliage that tower above us. A troop of monkeys makes their way down to the shore as we drift past, which provides an unexpected bonus sighting before we leave.

It has been overcast all day, but the sun manages to break through on our journey back to the pier. The final hour is tranquil and serene, with the gently droning engine lulling us as we cruise smoothly through the flat water. Almost everyone is above deck by this point, watching a low, orange sun set over a series of pointy islands to our left. These islands have now been turned into odd-shaped silhouettes, while the last of the sunlight casts a golden, shimmering glow on the sea before them. There’s next to no conversation, as if we’ve all be struck dumb by the sight. It’s a magical moment with which to end our boat trip, although it’s 10.00pm by the time we make it back to Hanoi and the Homestay.

18th JANUARY 2019

On Couchsurfing you can meet up with locals either by sending a personal message or by creating a ‘Public Trip’ for the location you’re travelling to. I wasn’t really sure which way to approach this in Hanoi, so I just decided to create a Public Trip and then sit back to see if any locals wanted to get in touch. I’d tried going down this route in Europe without much success, but in Hanoi the response turned out to be an awful lot better than I expected.

One of my responses was from a young lady named Thuy, who had suggested meeting up for an afternoon. I join her just outside the Old Quarter of Hanoi to find that she’s another tiny woman in her twenties who again looks younger than she is. She finds a place for lunch and orders me a big bowl of noodles, although declines to have any herself. It feels slightly awkward being the only person at the table eating, especially when I’m trying so hard to concentrate on correct chopstick use in front of a local. Thuy then asks if we can be joined by one of her friends, Anh, who would like to practice her English. It turns out that Thuy teaches at an English language school and quite often invites travellers to her school to speak with the students.

Anh’s English is not as good as Thuy’s, but I think this might be a confidence thing. She’s OK once she gets talking, although Thuy has to constantly prod her to speak to me. We walk round one side of Hoàn Kiếm Lake, an iconic Hanoi location where students learning English are encouraged to come and approach tourists in order to practice. There are two islands in the lake, one of which is tiny and unreachable, housing a 17th century stone tower with arches on all sides. The second is home to the small Ngoc Son Temple where we go for photos on a red wooden bridge that leads to the island. We don’t actually set foot on the island though, due to the temple having an entry fee.

Then it’s into the busy Old Quarter as Thuy wants me to try Egg Coffee, a drink she says Hanoi is famous for. We spend a while walking, with Thuy asking shopkeepers how to get to Giang Cafe, the home of Hanoi’s original Egg Coffee. Apparently this odd sounding beveridge was invented in the 1940’s, when fresh milk was scarce and replaced in coffee by whisked egg yolks. The cafe looks nothing more than an open doorway from the street, but opens up, Tardis-like, inside. We go upstairs to find a busy cafe, where every table seems to be filled by either Vietnamese students or tourists. Our table is the only one with both. When our coffee arrives it’s served in a white china cup that sits in a small dish of hot water to maintain its temperature. A creamy-coloured top half is the egg part and is so thick that I end up using a spoon to take only small measures. Ingredients that are predominantly egg yolks, sugar and condensed milk ensure that it is also extremely sweet. This is just as well as the Vietnamese coffee in the bottom of the cup is toe-curlingly bitter. However, once they are mixed, these extreme tastes of sweet and bitter cancel each other out to form a smooth, vanilla tasting coffee. I can just about understand what all the fuss is about now.

Thuy asks if I wouldn’t mind coming to their school and talking with some students to help them practice English. I’m not sure about this, but I can hardly decline after she has been showing me round all afternoon. She orders me a Grab Bike, which is basically a motorbike taxi where the driver speeds through Hanoi traffic and charges you an absurdly cheap fare. All you have to do is pop one of their green Grab Bike helmets on, sit on the back and you’re good to go.

When I reach the school I’m sat down at a table in reception, while Thuy captures students as they come in so they can chat with me before going upstairs to their lessons. A steady stream of kids walk through the door and are corralled into sitting at my table. We ask each other all the normal questions you would expect to hear during a language class. Some have a decent grasp of English, others aren’t so good. At one point I have half a dozen eager students crowded round my table while I ask them their ages and suchlike. With some of the more fluent ones I can have a better conversation and find out snippets about their lives, while they ask me all about living in the UK. It’s quite interesting, but I’m still relieved when the last of the students troops upstairs for their proper English lesson and we can finally go for a beer.

Me, Thuy and a young bloke named Dung go for drinks and snacks at a little bar just round from the college. The snacks come wrapped in banana leaves so, although I get told what I’m ordering, I’m never really sure what the food will be until I open the package. Most of them open up to reveal variations on sausages or pâté. I notice Thuy is watching me with interest as I eat, presumably to see if the Westerner is going to baulk at consuming these strange new foods. When I tell her the snacks tasted OK, she ups the stakes by asking if I would like to try a type of fertilised duck egg that Vietnamese call Balut. Like a fool I say ‘Yes’ and we arrive at a street food stall before I can change my mind. She orders and returns with two large boiled duck eggs. The difference with these eggs is that they have been fertilised and left to develop for just over two weeks. This means that the yolk inside has started it’s journey into becoming a chick. It’s quite a thought to be putting this in your mouth, especially when I can see where the yolk has begun to solidify and form what looks like veins. Nevertheless, I dip the egg in salt and give it a try. The texture is a lot more chewy than a standard egg, but thankfully it still tastes of nothing more than plain egg. I think I’ve passed the test. At the end of the evening Thuy phones me another Grab Bike and I’m taken back to my Homestay through the night time city traffic. Today has certainly been an education, and not just for Thuy’s students.

My days in Hanoi seem to morph seamlessly into each other as I wait for my visa extension. I try to meet up with locals from the Couchsurfing or Warmshowers websites as much as I can, but there are still days when I’m left to amuse myself. Fortunately, my Homestay is handily placed for a short wander to Hoàn Kiếm Lake or into the bustling Old Quarter. I’m also only 400 metres from the surreal spectacle that is the Hanoi Street Train.

This length of train track was really only known by locals until fairly recently, but has now become a surprise tourist attraction. What makes this section so unusual is that the train thunders through a tight corridor of shops and houses that sit within a few feet of the line. There are no safety barriers and locals go about their daily business as if the tracks didn’t exist. I see kitchen pots and pans being washed on the train line outside someone’s house and kids playing on the track right next to their front door. There are even little tourist cafes that have sprung up, where you can have a trackside coffee or beer while waiting for the train to pass. Only a handful of trains use this line per day though, so most visitors have to be content with taking train line selfies, minus the train. There can be a lot of waiting involved unless you know the timetable. Luckily I’ve come prepared as my Homestay has a list of the train times at reception.

I make my way down around half an hour before the train is due just so I can sit with a coffee and take in the whole event. By this time the tracks are swarming with tourists in anticipation of the upcoming extravaganza. There’s almost a carnival-like atmosphere. Groups of Asians are posing on the line and being snapped making that ‘V for Victory’ hand gesture that they always do in photographs. The first sign we have of the train’s imminent arrival is the sound of its horn tooting, followed by the sound of shop owners shouting ‘Train Coming!’ and ushering everyone from the track. It probably wouldn’t be in their best interest to have a tourist squashed outside their shop. The train itself is a big old square-fronted beast that takes up almost all of the available space between the buildings as it rumbles past. At my side there’s only about a one metre gap for me to stand in between wall and train. It’s so close I can feel the air moving and ground shaking as the giant locomotive and its ten carriages pass. I could reach out and touch it if I wanted. It’s only once the train passes and clatters off into the distance that I can see how perilously close it gets to the buildings. Health & Safety can kiss its arse on the way through.

That evening I’m heading out for some food when I hear a huge roar from a bar across the street. It appears that Vietnam have just equalised in their Asian Cup football match against Jordan. I carry on till I find a cafe with a television and settle down with some beef noodles and a Hanoi Beer to watch the rest of the game. It’s my good fortune that Hanoi Beer translates into Vietnamese as nothing more complicated than ‘Bia Hanoi’.

The game finishes 1-1, so I move to a proper bar to watch the extra time. Thirty minutes later the game has gone to penalty kicks. I’ve started to get quite involved in the match by this point, although its nothing compared to the locals. They are tremendous fun to watch during the penalties as they get so endearingly happy and excited. At the end of penalties Vietnam have one kick to win the game, and when the ball goes in the place erupts ! Everyone in the bar is jumping, grinning and overjoyed. Then there’s almost a feeling of mass disbelief, like they can’t believe that they’ve actually won. For me, it’s just good to see such a happy throng of people. I walk back to the sound of multiple fireworks being set off to celebrate the country’s victory and I feel a warm glow of happiness for them. Although, to be fair, that happiness could just as easily be attributed to the Bia Hanoi.

 

16th JANUARY 2019

I settle into Hanoi life while waiting for my visa extension to come through. Breakfasts at the Homestay are the same every morning, although I notice that Bich starts to give me extra servings of toast as the days progress.

With ten days to kill, I try to make use of the Couchsurfing website, just so I can meet up with some Hanoi locals and see if they can show me their city. Often Couchsurfer locals can host travellers, but it seems that most Vietnamese stay in the family home until they get married or live in tiny flats that couldn’t really house extra guests. This effectively rules out being hosted here, which is a shame as it means missing out on that cultural aspect. It also rules out being able to save a bit of money on lodgings, although it won’t make a huge difference to my budget with Vietnamese accommodation being so ridiculously cheap.

A couple of days after my arrival I meet up with Couchsurfer Yen. She pops round to my Homestay on her scooter and picks me up for a day of sightseeing and getting to know Hanoi. From her Couchsurfing profile I know that she’s in her mid-twenties, but in typical Asian fashion looks younger than she is. And she is tiny! I jump on the back of her scooter and we plough through busy traffic for the short journey to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. I’m told this is a ‘must see’ for foreign visitors to Hanoi, but it’s also where Vietnamese will come to pay homage to their national hero.

Once inside the complex we come under the watchful eye of stern looking soldiers in brilliant white uniforms. Most of them don’t look much older than teenagers, but our movements through the grounds are strictly regulated by them. We have to stand in line outside the mausoleum as only a small amount of people are allowed entry at one time. When it’s our turn we file slowly into a dimly lit hall and round a glass case that contains the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh himself. Everyone adopts a hushed, reverential tone as we walk round the outside of the room, within a few feet of the casket in the centre. Photography is prohibited and no-one is allowed to stop on the way round. The soldiers in this hall look especially stern and are armed too, so we all stick by the regulations. Even Yen, who has been here a number of times, looks very solemn as we shuffle past the body. We are in and out of the building in thirty seconds.

Next it’s the museum, where I position myself before a large gold statue of Ho Chi Minh so that Yen can take my picture. As I’m standing there two Vietnamese ladies rush forward and link their arms through mine so they can have a photo of themselves with the tall Westerner. I feel like a minor celebrity for all of sixty seconds. Yen is surprised that I show an interest in Vietnamese history as other foreigners she has taken here just pass through quickly. She tells me that Ho Chi Minh’s army had helped end French rule in Vietnam, before he inspired the North Vietnamese to fight with such determination during the Vietnam War. Despite this hero status, he apparently led a very modest life. Instead of living in the ostentatious Presidential Palace, he chose to live nearby in a small wooden house beside a lake. He would receive overseas politicians in a simple ground floor room underneath his first floor living quarters. My history lesson continues as Yen explains how tough life was for ordinary people during the Vietnam War. She tells me how hard the country had to struggle through US bombings and food shortages, with the starving population reduced to eating anything that moved. When she’s finished she pauses, before looking me directly in the eye and proudly announcing ‘But WE won.’ In that moment I can almost see in Yen the defiance and tenacity of an entire nation. With that spirit I can understand how they won.

We go for lunch in a sort of Vietnamese street food cafe that has a wide, open entrance onto the pavement outside. Our food is cooked right in front of us by a hardy looking old woman, and I’m relieved to have a local with me as I have no real idea yet what I’m ordering from these places. Yen suggests Bun Cha, which is a traditional Hanoi dish, and I’m happy to go along with that. It’s like a noodle soup with veggies and what can only be described as ‘lumps’ of pork. It’s tasty and filling, although I feel like I’ve had my weekly intake of coriander in that one meal. We have salad and spring rolls as sides. For future reference I’m glad to find that the Vietnamese word for spring rolls is the easy to pronounce ‘nem’.

After lunch she takes me to the Museum of Ethnology, before we head over the Red River and out of Hanoi towards the ceramic pottery village at Bat Trang. We must look an odd sight on the scooter, with me at the rear sitting about a foot taller than her. It begins to rain lightly on the way to the village, so we end up a bit cold and wet by the time we get there. The village is basically just a big market that sells home-made pottery, which isn’t hugely interesting in itself. We only spend a short time looking round, but it’s so cold that we abandon the pottery and go for a coffee to heat ourselves up. For the return journey Yen wraps up well in waterproofs and offers me her father’s big jacket to keep warm. The sleeves only reach halfway down my forearms, which isn’t a great look, but at least my torso stays warm.

I get a very different perspective being on the back of a scooter and right in amongst the bedlam of Hanoi traffic. At first all I can take in is the noise and the chaos. It looks like traffic anarchy. Then after a few kilometres I begin to relax and realise that, somehow, it all seems to work. Plus, I haven’t witnessed any Road Rage here either. I can only begin to imagine the carnage that would follow if people drove this way in the angry UK. Here, it feels like everyone is constantly sounding their horns to announce they are coming through, but as long as we maintain our direction and make no sudden manoeuvres, then we are OK. Now I just need to transfer this mindset to my cycling.

I thank Yen for taking the time to show me around. It’s been really good of her and I doubt I’d have seen most of today’s sights without her help. As is often the case with Couchsurfer locals, I’m left wondering why someone would give up their whole day just to show a foreigner round their city. Maybe they are genuinely proud to show off their country ? Maybe they do enjoy meeting people from other cultures ? Or maybe they just want a chance to practice their English ? Whatever their reason, I’m glad that they do.

The following evening I meet up with some fellow cyclists from the Warmshowers website. My contact is a teacher from England called Hazel who has lived in Hanoi for the past six years. She wants me to meet her friend, Mick, who recently cycled 2,100km down Vietnam from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. This is more or less the same route I’ll be taking so it will be interesting to hear her stories and get some advice for the road.

Hazel has suggested meeting at their favourite roast chicken restaurant, which is within handy walking distance from my Homestay. It’s dark by the time I set off and I’m a little taken aback by how chilly it has become. It’s midwinter here, and although the temperature is about ten degrees warmer than Scotland, I’ve still got my long sleeved fleece on. The restaurant turns out to be more of a street food cafe, and our outside table, surrounded by tiny plastic chairs, is across the road on the opposite pavement. Hazel orders all our food in what sounds like flawless Vietnamese, and the owner begins the process of shuttling our meals over from his restautant across the street. We have chicken breast, chicken leg, salad and beer.

After half an hour or so, Hazel’s partner arrives by bicycle and joins us. He’s a New Zealander and is also a teacher, although he has no formal qualifications. While travelling he did a spot of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and just took it from there. Now he teaches for twenty-two hours per week in a posh private school, which apparently allows him to ‘live like a king’ in Hanoi. After the food is finished we carry on with more beers and I get the chance to talk cycling with Mick, who is Welsh, but not annoyingly so. She is a powerfully built lady, with quadriceps that put my skinny wee legs to shame. With a few little side trips, it took her two months to cycle from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. I’ll have just over six weeks to cover the same distance once my visa extension comes through.

It’s been an enjoyable evening, with a good solid feed, a few beers and a bit of a laugh. I could happily have sat there for longer talking shite and getting drunk, but the teachers have to be up early for work tomorrow. When we go to leave they won’t allow me to contribute at all to the bill, which is really very decent of them. I walk back to the Homestay, reflecting that having to wait in Hanoi for these ten days might not be such a chore after all.

 

14th JANUARY 2019

The omens aren’t particularly good on the day I’m due to fly out to Hanoi. I wake to find a text message from Emirates Airlines informing me that my flight has been delayed by ninety minutes, meaning we won’t leave now until 2.30pm. Then, as I’m waiting, a separate flight from Manchester to Iceland is diverted into Glasgow as some of their passengers had smelt smoke on board. This causes a bit of a commotion for a time, as the offending plane sits surrounded by emergency vehicles while it awaits the all clear. Finally, when a catering truck tries to deliver the on-board food for my flight, it is temporarily thwarted as its hydraulic platform can’t be raised high enough. All these delays mean we eventually take off at 4.00pm, having being scheduled to depart at 1.00pm.

Taking off three hours late is going to cause a problem as my lay-over in Dubai also happens to be exactly three hours long. Unless this plane makes up time, I’ll be landing in Dubai just as my Hanoi flight is departing. A missed connection really isn’t the way I want to start this trip, even though I realise the airline would look after me if they caused it. I also realise that there is nothing I can do to influence the outcome, yet I still spend most of the flight looking at the clock to see if we’re making up enough time. I’m totally wired by the time we land in Dubai, which I put down to playing non-stop Tetris as much as my constant clock-watching.

Somehow the plane makes up forty minutes in the air, so we now have that same amount of time to disembark, dash between gates, go through security screening once again and board the second flight. Luckily, a chap from Emirates ground staff is waiting for the Hanoi passengers. He manages to rush about a dozen stressed travellers through the airport and herds us all onto the next flight with minutes to spare.

Safely aboard the second plane, all my excitement and adrenaline starts to subside pretty quickly. This come-down leaves me feeling tired, and I spend most of the next flight drifting in and out of sleep. As we approach Hanoi, I gaze out my window to see predominantly green, jungly-looking countryside below, but then I see my first road and notice that traffic drives on the right hand side of the road in Vietnam. This comes as bit of a surprise to me as I honestly thought all of South East Asia drove on the left !

It’s about mid-day when we land, although in my head it could just as easily be evening. Customs is a formality, but I then spend ages waiting at the Oversize Goods door for my bicycle to appear. As I’m standing by, an assorted stream of pushchairs, golf clubs and various other hefty equipment is brought out to the arrivals hall by baggage handlers. I start to get a sinking feeling that my bike may still be in Dubai, waiting to be placed on the next available flight. This conclusion seems entirely possible, given that I nearly missed the connection myself. I’ve actually reached the stage of approaching the Lost Luggage counter when eventually my bike, shrouded in black bin bags, is dragged through the door.

As I walk out the main exit, I’m pushing my mummified-looking bike on an airport trolley past a throng of waiting taxi drivers, friends and relatives. To a casual onlooker, it’s not immediately apparent that it’s a bicycle I’m transporting under all this wrapping, so I’m treated to a few curious looks. I just smile in return. In amongst this scrum of people there is a guy holding a card with my name on it. We move to his car, where he lowers the rear seats and we manage to fit the bike inside for a forty minute drive to my Homestay accommodation. I could have cycled this, but I’m glad I took the easy option today when I see the sheer volume of traffic (especially scooters), hear the cacophony of horns and realise that Hanoi roads are truly and utterly chaotic.

After many twists, turns and a general disregard for road rules we arrive at The Hanoi Sweet Family Homestay. It’s situated down an alley which then opens out into a small, square courtyard enclosed by four storey townhouses. Because the surrounding buildings are so tall, it feels like this tiny square has been cut off from the outside world. It’s a quiet little oasis of calm in the midst of this bustling, noisy city.

The woman who runs the Homestay is a Vietnamese lady in her thirties called Bich (Bik), who turns out to be a great host. She gets me scissors and a knife to cut my bike from its wrapping and then allows me to chain it up outside her family home, just opposite the Homestay. It’s been a long journey, but I’m quietly happy that me and the bike have made it to Hanoi in one piece and at the same time. By 3.00pm jet-lag kicks in and I snooze for around three hours. I’m slightly disoriented when I wake and have no real idea what the time is. As it’s now dark outside, I’m not even sure what day it is.

The following morning I seem to have got my bearings again, and I’m up in plenty time for breakfast. It’s served downstairs by Bich and consists of omelette with a side of sliced tomatoes, toast with jam, mini bananas and watermelon slices. I wash this down with Vietnamese filter coffee, which is made fresh with the coffee dripping through a filter and into a glass below. I’d asked for milk with my coffee, but instead of fresh, it comes in the form of condensed milk. This is poured into the bottom of the glass first, before coffee slowly drips through to join it. This actually turns out to be a good thing as the sweet, condensed milk offsets the sharp bitterness of Vietnamese coffee.

My original plan had been to stay in Hanoi for only a couple of days, just long enough to explore the city before cycling South. Then I’d ride about halfway down Vietnam before crossing into Laos. However, I’d seen that one of the cycle tourers I follow on Instagram had tried to cross into Laos using an overland border, only to be refused entry because he was travelling by bicycle. I do some more on-line research and find a few more stories of a similar nature – there is a chance that Laos border officials won’t let tourists pass if they are travelling overland by bike. The common consensus seems to be that this may be for the cyclists’ own safety. If these stories are true, then there’s a chance I could be turned away from the border and back into Vietnam. This wouldn’t be too disastrous if I had a lengthy Vietnamese visa. Sadly, my visa is only valid for one month.

My plans quickly change to thinking I’ll just have to cycle right down Vietnam and straight into Cambodia so that I can avoid Laos. The problem is that Vietnam is a long, skinny country and I’d have to cycle almost 2,000km in just four weeks. Now, I could cover that distance in the timeframe if I had to, but I’d rather not. I didn’t come all this way just to cycle every day and to experience nothing but roads. I want to take time to see the country and also have the luxury of some touristy Rest Days as well. It seems that the best solution would be to try and get a visa extension so that I can stay in the country longer and not be stressed about having to make a deadline.

I speak to Bich about extending my visa as she has a travel agent friend who can organise it all for me. The downside is that I’ll have to hand over my passport for the ten days it takes to process. This might mean I’ll have to remain in Hanoi for the duration as any new Vietnamese accommodation would need to see my passport at check-in. Annoyingly, it’s also going to cost me 100 US Dollars for the privelege. The most frustrating part is that I could easily have applied for a three month visa before I left the UK, instead of the one month visa I ended up getting. Still, having to remain in Hanoi for ten days isn’t the end of the world. This way I’ll get a proper feel for the city and I’m sure I’ll find plenty to interest me in that time.

NEW YEAR 2019

I fly out of Athens in time to spend Christmas and New Year with my family in Scotland. However, my bike remains in the Greek capital as it didn’t make financial sense to bring the old thing back with me. The cost of putting the bike on two separate flights and then paying for it’s numerous repairs would cost about the same as buying a new one. I gift my old transport to the reception bloke at my final accommodation in Athens. He seems surprised, but well chuffed by this turn of events, shaking my hand and telling me ‘Thank-You, I have not had bicycle since ten years !’ I’m pretty chuffed too, as I’ll soon have a brand new bike to play with.

As dawn breaks on 2019, I know that in a few months time I’ll need to make a reluctant return to the hamster-cage grind of daily life. At some point I know I’m going to have to get another job, find somewhere to live and generally sort my shit out. Unfortunately, my motivation to go down this path is lacking somewhat. The usual career / property / relationship goals that seem to drive most people aren’t really a big factor in my thinking. Although there’s a chance that this may actually be a good thing. I’ve seen so many people stuck in jobs they hate, tied to mortgages or subconsciously trapped in relationships only because it’s become a habit and just more convenient than being single. So, maybe it’s me that’s the fortunate one ? I dont know. The bottom line is that I’ll still have to sort my shit out soon … But not before I escape normal society one more time and take off with my bike again.

In continuing my trip, the obvious solution would be to carry on from Athens and cycle towards Turkey and beyond. Or, now that I’ve finished Europe, I could fly across the Mediterranean to Cairo and start riding down Africa. I discount the Turkey option as I’d much rather be escaping winter and cycling somewhere warmer in January. Africa is a serious consideration but I discount that too, as I just don’t think I’m hardy enough for it. I tried in 2015, but had to abandon the trip ingloriously after getting very sick in Egypt. There’s still a feeling of ‘Unfinished Business’ with regards to Africa, but I’m not sure if that itch will ever be fully scratched.

In the end I choose to go off on a completely different tangent and head for South East Asia. The biggest factor in this decision is that I’m due to meet my kids in Thailand in April anyway, so by cycling towards them I now have a destination and a finish line. I decide to start the trip in Hanoi, Vietnam as I’ve not been to the Indochina part of South East Asia yet. Plus, it’ll be cool enough there in winter so that I can acclimatise gradually before moving southwards into the more oppressive heat.

So, by mid January I’m ready to go with a new bicycle and a brand new pair of waterproof pannier bags. My first new bags in twelve years. However, as per usual I don’t have an airline-recommended bike box for getting onto a flight. The day before departure I spend almost an hour in my sister’s garden on a cold, wintry Glasgow afternoon wrapping my bike with bin bags and packing tape. It looks a very messy and amateurish job, but it will protect my bike and, more importantly, the luggage of other passengers. As long as Emirates Airlines are happy with my efforts, then I’m off to Hanoi tomorrow !

16th DECEMBER 2018

Breakfast in my Victorian hotel is served in a big dining area on the ground floor, surrounded by a handful of Greek families who are all travelling together in a mini bus. I stuff myself with cereal, bread, ham, cheese, yoghurt, peaches, cake and coffee. Naughtily, I think about pinching some extra fruit to take with me for the road, but there’s so many people milling around that I don’t. Then, when I go to check out the guy at reception asks ‘You like to take some froo-it with you for cycling ?’ Two apples and two bananas duly make their way into my panniers.

After last night’s storm has passed, I’m pleased to find the wind direction has moved round 180 degrees. What was a strong, persistent headwind yesterday has turned into a benign, helpful tailwind today. Sun is beating down gloriously too, with the Gulf of Corinth flat and blue, conditions that make cycling an absolute joy. I’m blown along quiet, coastal roads and through small, out-of-season tourist towns as I make my way towards the end of the Gulf. Soon I’ll be leaving the Pelopponese peninsula and returning to mainland Greece. To do this I have to cross the Corinth Canal.

The town of Corinth itself proves surprisingly awkward to negotiate, and I make a couple of wrong turns before I find my way through. My final obstacle when leaving town is a slow, steady hill, which I’m plodding up quite happily. I pass a roadside cafe when yet another barking dog comes flying out from between parked cars. It takes me completely by surprise, and I just bellow ‘FUCK OFF !’ at the top of my voice. Some diners sitting outside the cafe look suitably shocked, as that particular phrase is universal and doesn’t need any translation. The dog seems to understand too, and looks just about as shocked as the cafe-goers.

The canal itself is quite a sight. Completed in the 1890’s, it is four miles long, ninety metres deep and eighty metres wide. From one road bridge high above the waterway, I can see the all the way through to the Gulf of Corinth at the north end of the canal. Then, if I turn and look behind me I can see right through to the Mediterranean Sea in the opposite direction. However, the canal is not wide enough now to cope with huge, modern shipping and functions more as a tourist attraction. Nowadays people are more likely to bungy jump from a canal bridge rather than sail through it’s passage. The canal is still a marvel though, and I’m glad I got to see it.

In the afternoon I’m approaching a petrol station and see two cyclists standing outside with their bikes. At first I think it might be two-thirds of the Swiss / Belgian trio, but as I get closer I realise that this is a new pair altogether. As I slow down to say Hello the girl says ‘Hi, are you from Scotland ?’ Whoah ! How the Hell did she know that ? It turns out they know the Swiss girls as they have been constantly meeting on the road since Croatia. The Swiss had told them they met a Scottish cyclist, but found him difficult to understand ! The bloke says not to be offended as they couldn’t understand his accent either.

Jess and Jamie, it turns out, are from Buxton in Derbyshire and are also heading to Athens. Although they are a couple and are cycling together they began their trips separately – he started in Buxton and she joined him at Strasbourg in France. Jamie’s on his first big cycle trip so wanted to break himself in and get a bit of practice on his own before cycling with Jess. Plus she didn’t fancy cycling through England. We chat for a while, compare our trips and arrange to meet up in Athens for a beer when we all get there, before they carry on.

After crossing the canal at Corinth, I’ve moved on to a south-facing coast, which means that sunset tonight will be over the sea instead of behind mountains. The wind continues to push me onwards nicely until I get to my accommodation on the coast at Hotel Cokkinis. I’ve gone a bit upmarket tonight (by my standards) as it’s my final accommodation before Athens and there weren’t many other options without leaving a huge ride tomorrow. When I check in the owner asks if I’m alone, and I immediately suspect that I’m not the only cyclist to be staying here tonight. My thoughts are confirmed when I put my bike in the outside store and see Jess and Jamie’s bikes, festooned with tinsel, already standing there.

My room is on the second floor with a bakcony and a view over the sea. I step outside to take in the panorama and find that Jess and Jamie are in the room next door. We both make lame excuses for staying in such plush accommodation, as it’s not really the done thing for cycle tourers. I find you get much more street cred for roughing it in a tent. Still, it’s a beautiful view and it’s nice to have a bit of luxury on occasion. We resume our chat and look out over the sea, with me deciding that I’d like to go for a swim in the Mediterranean before the sun sets. I’ve not had a sea swim since early September, and I doubt I’ll get another chance any time soon. In fact, it’s such a good idea that I’m joined by the other two.

The beach is made up of round, dark stones, about the size of golf balls, which are quite uncomfortable on the soles of your feet when getting into the sea. Predictably, the water itself is slightly cool to begin with, but becomes bearable after a couple of minutes. I find myself floating on my back and watching the sun set behind hills on the horizon. I’m swimming in the Mediterranean on the 16th of December ! Jess is sporting the most ridiculous cycling tan, with her legs white near the top and brown from mid-thigh downwards. Jamie, on the other hand, has possibly the skinniest legs I’ve ever seen on a human. This is deceptive though, as he’s one of those wiry, sinewy guys who can run for mile after mile like a Duracell Bunny.

We arrange to meet later for dinner, where I have seafood linguine and a beer while we chat. I discover that they’ve had more dramas on this trip than I’ve had on almost all my trips put together. I hear stories of pannier racks shearing off, root canal surgery and trekking to Tirana by bus to replace a broken derailleur. On the day they arrived in Albania, the wind was blowing so strongly that they had to get off their bikes and push. It also seems like they’ve had an awful lot of soakings compared to me. Listening to these tales just reinforces how lucky I’ve been on this trip. They are good company though, and we sit and chat for a while before calling it a night.

The next morning I’m awake fairly early for my final day’s cycling and the last 50km into Athens. Although it’s not a huge distance, I’m not particularly looking forward to negotiating my way into the massive, sprawling metropolis by bike. Jess and Jamie still haven’t surfaced by the time I’m downstairs filling myself with enough breakfast to hopefully last me till tea-time. The food on offer is almost a carbon copy of yesterday’s fare, only today isn’t All You Can Eat, much to my displeasure. I look out over the Mediterranean as I’m eating, and I realise the two most important factors when I choose accommodation are location and breakfast. I really am a very simple creature.

By the time I finish breakfast and get packed, Jess and Jamie are only just making their way downstairs. We wish each other Good Luck and arrange to meet for a beer later. At check out the hotel owner hears that I’m cycling into Athens, draws his breath in sharply and urges me to be careful. As a contrast to Athens, the first section of today’s cycle is on a quiet road that rises, falls and zig-zags its way along the coast. I crawl slowly up the small hills, with my pedals squeaking and grinding noisily for the duration. To compound matters, my chain now pops off every time I freewheel on a downhill slope. After a while I realise that if I take my feet off the pedals they will rotate freely on their own, which then reattaches the chain. This is fine in the short term, but there’s no getting away from it – my bike is dying.

At the top of one headland I stop for some munchies, finishing off the last of yesterday’s fruit, and cast a gaze at what lies ahead of me. Looking over some ugly refineries in the foreground, I can now see Athens looming in the distance. The majority of buildings look to be light coloured and low-rise, but the area that they cover is immense. As I’m standing there contemplating the task ahead, Jess and Jamie pass me and wave.

When I carry on, a long descent from the headland takes me on to wider, busier roads. Before long there are four lanes of traffic, although Greek drivers all seem to favour the fast lane, meaning I get the slow lane almost to myself. Just as I’m crossing a bridge I see Jess and Jamie pushing their bikes along a side road and about to join the main carriageway. I reach them and Jess says she was hoping I would catch up so we can all cycle in together. Employing a ‘safety in numbers’ theory, we get into a convoy of three and move steadily along the noisy, traffic-laden road. After a few kilometres the road leaves the coast, turning inland and uphill. It’s one of those climbs where I would have quite happily stopped for a breather halfway up, but we all seem to egg each other on subconsciously, no-one wanting to be the person to give up first. By the time we reach the top I am sweating.

We pull off the main road and are guided onto a quieter route towards the city by Jamie’s GPS app. This is handy for me as, left to my own devices, I’d have blindly carried on following the busier road. The next few kilometres are a glorious downhill through traffic, with my chain coming off and popping back on with regularity. Closer to the city the road begins to level out, and it does get slightly busier, but not too much. I’d been building myself up for such an awful, stressful cycle into Athens, that the resulting easy ride is almost a disappointing anticlimax.

The Buxton pair want to mark their arrival in Athens by going straight to The Acropolis and, as it’s close to my accommodation, I decide to join them. Jamie’s GPS leads us through a market, up little cobbled side streets and closer to the top of The Acropolis hill. We get to the entrance gates but they won’t let us take our bikes in, although this is probably a blessing with the number of steps inside. In the end we simply take some photographs with The Acropolis as a backdrop and toast our arrival. Even though getting into Athens proved to be much easier than anticipated, I’m still glad I got to cycle in with them and celebrate together.

We stay there for an hour or so chatting before we go back down the hill and go our separate ways. My accommodation is about ten minutes away, with a balcony view that looks up to The Parthenon and the Acropolis hill I’ve just descended from. This iconic spot, some 2,500 years old, seems a fitting destination to bring my European cycle to an end. When I reached the Mediterranean in Albania, I didn’t feel like I’d cycled right across Europe. But, now, having made it to Athens, I feel justified in saying that I truly have cycled across the continent !

 

13th DECEMBER 2018

I’ve been incredibly lucky with avoiding rain on this trip as most times it has arrived overnight. Today though, the downpour has lingered on into the morning, and I’m glad of my decision to take a Rain Day. I go downstairs for breakfast to find the hotel owner is a Greek bloke who spent twenty years living ‘Oop North’ in the UK. He takes me next door to a cafe he’s got an arrangement with and talks about how much he enjoyed the UK’s ‘Poobs and Cloobs’. I have a long, lazy breakfast while watching the world go by in the rainy town square outside.

By afternoon the rain has eased, so I go for a wander round town, stocking up on road food and marvelling at the amount of orange trees that are planted along the town’s pavements. I’ve found that the three most common sights in Greece are graffiti, orange trees and stray dogs. When I return I check on my bike downstairs to find it has a flat back tyre. I upend it and take the rear wheel upstairs to replace yet another inner tube. There’s such a tear at the valve join that I’m surprised I managed to make it here yesterday. I patch up the rest of my spare inner tubes, which means that all four have now been punctured and repaired at some point.

The following morning I return to the same cafe on the square for breakfast, before trundling slowly out of Missolonghi. Climbing a small hill not far from town I’m caught in a rainshower and stop to put on my kagoule. I’m trying to cover my sleeping bag and panniers when I notice three figures on bikes plodding up the same hill towards me. It’s strange to see how slowly cyclists move. They wave, and I wait at the roadside to be joined by two Swiss girls and a Belgian guy, all in their late twenties. Like me, they are heading to Athens but are obviously travelling a little more quickly. One of the Swiss girls says that we’ll probably all meet again on the ferry over the Gulf of Corinth. This confuses me. All I can do is frown and ask ‘Ferry ?’ She tells me that cyclists are forbidden from riding over the bridge, which is news to me. Left to my own devices I would just have cycled straight up to the bridge. I let them ride ahead, thinking I’ll catch up with them on the ferry.

I’m cycling through the outskirts of a village, about 15km from the bridge, when a massive, bulky, light coloured dog comes racing out from a driveway on the opposite side of the road. It’s barking, snarling and looks alarmimgly hostile as it chases alongside. And, Shitting Hell ! –  there’s a large red patch of what appears to be blood on the left hand side of its neck and shoulder. It looks similar to a nature documentary predator, where the polar bear has just devoured a seal and now has a horrific covering of red blood on its white coat. I don’t think that it’s the dog’s own blood, so there’s a chance it might have killed and eaten one of the Swiss or Belgian cyclists. I’ve got the Dog Stones out by now, arm above my head and shouting at the beast. Bloody Hell, I might actually have to use the stones here ! Just as I think this confrontation will come to a head, another dog charges out from my side of the road and barrels into the hound that’s chasing me. They have a growling face-off and, while they are distracting each other, I ride off and leave them to it.

A hill then takes me up to higher, scrubby terrain and round a coastal headland. On the side I’ve just cycled up I get a good view back down to some beaches and coves below me, while on the other side I get my first glimpse of the the Gulf of Corinth and the two mile bridge that spans its mouth. This vast sea inlet is over eighty miles long and cuts the Pelopponese peninsula off from mainland Greece. The bridge is still 10km away, and luckily it’s mostly downhill as a strong headwind is being funneled between the mountains on either side of the Gulf. When I reach the bridge between Rio and Antirrio I investigate the crossing options half-heartedly, but find only barriers, tolls and no mention of cyclists. I decide just to get the ferry after all.

There’s no sign of the Swiss or Belgian, so they’ve either caught an earlier ferry or fallen victim to the devil hound. I’m delighted to find that the crossing is free for bikes, takes only thirty minutes, and runs parallel to the huge, long bridge. It is a spectacular sight with its four massive pylons and hundreds of supporting cables contrasting brilliantly white against the blue sky. Once I get off the ferry it feels noticeably colder on the other side, probably due to my own inactivity cooling me down during the crossing. The headwind has definitely become stronger though, which slows me down for the last 25km. The Swiss girls and Belgian bloke must have stopped somewhere to eat as they catch up with me in the late afternoon. We cycle together and chat for a while this time, before they eventually pull ahead once again.

My accommodation for tonight is in the coastal village of Selianitika, whose seafront looks a bit sad and deserted in winter. I could well be the only guest at my hotel as the guy on reception goes home once he checks me in. Over dinner I do a bit of research on the massive Rio-Antirrio bridge that crosses the Gulf. It turns out to be quite a feat of engineering as it’s built on a deep, unstable sea bed and between two shorelines that are moving apart by a centimetre every year. I’m also gutted to find that there’s a pedestrian walkway on the bridge that I could easily have cycled across.

The next day I spend cycling into a horrendous headwind and cover 65km to the seaside town of Xylokastro. With avoiding the motorway I’ve had to take a road that hugs the coast for long periods and I’m riding straight into a strong wind blowing off the Gulf. I cycle through some charming, traditional seaside towns that would be lovely in summer or at least without a gale blowing. Today, sadly, they are a struggle.

I catch the Swiss girls and Belgian guy again at a petrol station and stop to chat. One of the girls goes to a roadside fruit stand and returns with oranges, grapefruit and kumquats. She offers them round and I suddenly realise that I have never once eaten a kumquat ! They look like tiny oranges, so I start to peel it’s skin only to be told that you are meant to eat the entire fruit. I pop a whole one into my mouth and am pleasantly surprised by how juicy and sweet it is. I’m a fan within five seconds and a little disappointed that I’ve missed out for so many years.

I cycle along with the poor Swiss girl who has been playing ‘Third Wheel’ while her friend and the Belgian guy cycle off together in front every day. Understandably, she’s getting a bit pissed off with her friend, which makes for an awkward dynamic between the trio. When we catch up with the pair, the Swiss girls weave all over the road like drunkards when they are talking to me. They are also dressed from head to toe in black, and I’m left amazed that they haven’t been hit by a car yet. However, the ultra-sensible Belgian guy wears a luminous yellow top which is probably bright enough for a convoy of twenty. They plan to carry on cycling after Athens, but probably not together. The girls are talking about Crete, while the guy wants to visit Lebanon and Jordan.

Happily, the wind has dropped slightly by the time I reach Xylokastro. I check into an old-style hotel that looks almost Victorian and incongruously out of place on the main street of a Greek seaside town. For the next hour I’m to be found luxuriating in my first bath for a month, while the remainder of the evening is spent indoors due to a thunder and lightning storm outside. Rain teems down relentlessly and at times it feels like the building is physically shaking due to the giant rumbles of thunder. If this storm had arrived a few hours earlier I’d have been soaked without question, and quite possibly fried by lightning. I’m thankful for my uncanny good fortune in managing to dodge the rain yet again. I just need to be lucky for two more days till I get to Athens.

9th DECEMBER 2018

I wake around 7.00am to the dull murmur of the German father reading a story to his kids. Amazingly, this means that his kids (and consequently me) have slept right through the night. The heavy rain has stopped too, so things are looking a lot more promising than they were yesterday. I say Goodbye to Anna and Kostas, and thank them both sincerely for hosting me. They really are the most open, helpful couple and I’m so glad I made a slight detour into the mountains to meet them. As I leave, Kostas gives me more left-over bread and another pizza slice to send me on my way.

Kostas had already shown me the best route by which to leave Zitsa, involving only 100 metres of climbing then mostly downhills as far as the large city of Ioannina. I follow his instructions on what is a quiet, still Sunday morning with dew on the ground and a shrouding grey mist hanging over the countryside. The peace is shattered by the sound of someone out shooting, so I glide off down the hillside in case the gun owner mistakes me for a wild pig or suchlike.

Once I reach flat ground, I find I’m cycling through farmland and hearing the constant sound of barking dogs. On one straight section I see a dog walking out from a field and into the road up ahead. It’s soon joined by a second dog, and then a third. I get the Dog Stones out my back pocket and continue slowly. I’m hoping they might disperse before I get there, but they don’t. By the time I reach them, there are eight stray dogs milling around in the middle of the road. Some of the pack are barking and snarling aggressively at me and are clearly not happy with my presence. I raise one arm above my head, ready to throw the Dog Stones if I have to, and move steadily through them. As I’m passing I stop rotating my pedals because movement seems to be a trigger for them, sending them into a frenzy. I freewheel slowly past, trying to affect an air of calm but in reality I’m just about shitting myself. There’s a few more barks and growls, but none of them actually tries to bite me, which is an enormous relief let me tell you. If eight dogs decided to have a go at me I’d be in a spot of bother. This is far from the pleasant Sunday morning cycle I was expecting.

I have to stay on these minor roads, running the gauntlet of further dog encounters, until I reach the main road to Ioannina. By the time I reach the city my shredded nerves and stress levels have just about returned to normal. Once I’m through Ioannina I keep waiting for the big downhill that will take me back down to (nearly) sea-level at my destination of Arta. However, after a few tantalising kilometres of climbing I start to wonder when this promised descent will arrive. I’m actually getting pissed off at the absence of a downhill, so stop for lunch and a breather, little realising the summit is literally round the next corner.

When I do reach the top there’s a poor bloke cycling in the opposite direction who looks exhausted after all his climbing. I wave cheerily, as I know I’m just about to enjoy a long downhill, but he barely even responds. Fuck him. The eventual freewheel is absolutely joyous, through steep, towering cliffs and past layers of brown roadside leaf litter. Even when the road seems to level out, I know that I’m still descending because I’m following a river downstream. Darkness begins to fall as I get closer to Arta, so I stay in a high gear and pedal strongly until I reach the glow of streetlights about 5km from town.

Arta seems to be built on a hill on the inside edge of a tight riverbend, and I’m staying at a hotel near the town centre. A receptionist takes me down to their basement in a transport lift designed for cars, and I leave my bike safely underground. I have a nice, chilled evening and am drifting off to sleep when I hear a noisy couple returning to the room next door. They’ve come back drunk and laughing and I hope they’ll just pass out quietly. However, ten minutes later I hear noises that suggest they’re not too interested in sleeping yet. Oh, that’s just great. It’s weird to hear other people shagging, and these two are particularly strange as they are making an awful lot of squeaking noises. I even start to wonder if they might have one of those squeaky dog toys in the room. It sounds like a whole colony of mice have taken up residence next door. I’m guessing the squeaks are coming from her, but it could just as easily be him. Who knows ? I wouldn’t even be trying to work it out if it didn’t sound so bloody strange. Thankfully, the mouse chorus doesn’t last too long and a few short grunts signal the end of their activity. I really hope their performance is a one-off.

The night passes without any more squeaky sex noises, so I head downstairs for breakfast feeling rested. There’s an All You Can Eat buffet in the corner of a conference room which I get stuck into wholeheartedly, culminating with me devouring five pan au chocolats. Goodness knows how I always manage to lose weight on cycle trips with the amount of calories I consume. I retrieve my bike from the downstairs car park and head out of Arta round the big riverside hill that the town stands on.

My road zig-zags alongside the motorway for around 20km until it hits the coast, in the shape of the enormous Gulf of Arta. There’s a narrow opening where the huge inlet joins the Mediterranean some 40km away, but from where I stand this body of water looks vast enough to be the sea itself. Today it is the flattest light blue, with an almost cloudless sky above to match. I follow this tranquil coastline for around 15km, winding and twisting round a series of wooded headlands. The only thing that spoils the peacefulness is the noise coming from my bottom bracket with each turn of the pedals. It’s making an awful squeaking sound, but it’s still quieter than the woman in the hotel room next to me last night.

The road then leads me back inland for a few bumpy kilometres, before depositing me back on the coast once again. A steady downhill takes me into Amfilochia, a quiet little town with about 4,000 inhabitants which sits on a horseshoe shaped bay surrounded by hills. It’s a beautiful spot, with the only drawback being that the town is North-facing. This means in winter the morning sun takes ages to rise above the hills behind town. Then, by mid-afternoon, it has already begun to dip behind the mountains on the opposite side of the bay. So, even on bright winter days the town doesn’t receive much sunshine. Nonetheless, I spend two relaxing days here.

On the morning I leave Amfilochia, my phone tells me that the temperature outside is zero degrees. It’s one of those crisp winter mornings, cold with a brilliantly clear blue sky. I ride along the seafront, past locals who are going about their day rugged up in scarves, jeans and bulky winter coats. Most of them look at me in either astonishment or pity as I cycle past in shorts and t-shirt. A hill takes me out of town and away from sea-level, but the extra pedalling also does a grand job of warming me up.

I’m aiming for a town called Missolonghi today, which is only about 60km away via the motorway. For me, this figure will increase to an 80km cycle with all my motorway-avoiding detours. The extra kilometres are pleasant enough though, with wall-to-wall winter sunshine and no breeze to speak of. I ride past lakes, mountains and farms, then turn inland and through the large town of Agrinio. A four hundred metre hill takes me up to a pass through the mountains, before a speedy downhill drops me back down to the coast for a flat run all the way to Missolonghi.

I’m passing a roadside farm when I see an old Greek Mama, all dressed in black, who’s out picking oranges from her orchard. I smile and wave as I pass and she calls me over. She doesn’t speak a word of English but makes it clear she wants to give me a couple of oranges for the journey. I really don’t have much extra space, but I open a pannier bag and try to fit them both inside. She then keeps giving me more and gets me to cram as many oranges as I can possibly fit into the top of my pannier. To share her own food with a passing stranger is a lovely gesture on her part, and this brief little kindness has made my afternoon. I eat one at my next stop, and I swear they are the freshest, juiciest, tastiest oranges I’ve ever had.

I get to Missolonghi to find a port town with a bustling centre of grid pattern streets. I’m staying in an old hotel that sits right on one corner of the town square. The whole area is looking very festive, under the bright lights of a Christmas tree, fun fair and Christmas markets. I finish what remains of my road food and check the weather forecast, which for a few days has been predicting heavy rain for tomorrow. This grim forecast hasn’t changed so I decide that I’m going to stay dry and remain in Missolonghi tomorrow. I figure I’m allowed one more Rest Day before the final push into Athens.

 

 

 

6th DECEMBER 2018

My final full day in Albania starts with breakfast in Hotel Veli’s basement restaurant. It’s much the same fare as yesterday, only today I’m given two shots of home-made Raki for the road. I’m not quite sure how consuming straight alcohol for breakfast will help my cycling, but I don’t want to appear rude by refusing, and both shots duly disappear. As I’m leaving, the same guy who checked me in shakes my hand with an iron grip and wishes me ‘Good Road’.

Today I’ll be riding the same route I took into Sarandë on my last day of cycling in September, but in reverse this time. Unfortunately, this prior knowledge means I know to expect a steep road over a mountain pass before I can descend to the Greek border. A steep uphill / downhill combination gets me out of town, before I climb very gradually for the next 20km. All the time I’m following the course of an amazingly clear stream, which is flowing slowly down towards Sarandë as I head upstream. When I look back I can see the outline of Lëkurësi Castle’s ruins in the distance, standing on the hill that overlooks town.

My road is about to climb sharply, so I decide to stop for lunch and a breather before tackling the slope. I’m standing at the side of the road, about to happily munch into a chocolate-filled croissant, when I’m spotted by a huge dog that’s roaming around outside a farmhouse. To my dismay, it’s not tied up and comes bounding out of the property barking and snapping like a maniac. The thing is alongside me in seconds, looking almost like a lion with its sandy-coloured coat. Bloody Hell, it’s nearly the same size as a lion too ! This creature is big ! There’s not even time to put my lunch back in my panniers. I position my bike between me and the beast and walk away very slowly, trying to look as calm as possible, which isn’t easy with a croissant still clamped between my teeth. Thankfully, the dog loses interest as I move away from its territory, but I continue to push my bike until I’m round the next corner and out of sight.

After being harassed by a monster dog, the climb itself is a bit of an anticlimax. The ascent is mostly through woodland and nowhere near as exhausting as the Llogara Pass, but then it is only half the height. Nevertheless, there are still plenty of steep sections, hairpin bends and also a few rest stops to allow me to catch breath. I’ve even got sweat trickling down my forehead and dripping from the end of my nose again, which feels oddly satisfying. At one point I’ve stopped at the roadside when a guy going downhill in an old cream Mercedes pulls over. His car looks like it’s from a seventies cop show, and he looks to be from the same decade with his thick moustache and aviator sunglasses. He must think I’m in some sort of trouble as he simply enquires ‘Problem ?’ I put a hand on my chest and mime a rapidly beating heart. He seems to understand as he just nods and drives off.

My final push to the summit involves a straight, steady climb with mountains rising on either side of me and a headwind being funneled straight into my face. This slows me down, but I still make the top fairly easily, and there’s no getting off to push the bike this time either. I put on my kagoule for the descent and freewheel down the other side, which looks barren and rocky compared to the climb I’ve just ridden up. I’m transported down to a flat, wide valley floor, where I turn right and join the main road towards Greece.

I’m then expecting a leisurely ten minute cycle to my accommodation but, annoyingly, it turns out to be much further and sits almost on the Greek border. It’s the old Albanian favourite of ‘Petrol Station with Rooms’ again, which seems quite fitting for my final night here. An older lady greets me, but defers to her son as he speaks better English. He shows me to an upstairs room and then tells me to just bring the bike in with me. The first appliances I’m made aware of are the wall heater and an electric blanket, which suggests he’s expecting a cold night. Both are quickly utilised, giving my room such a warm, cosy feel that I’m fast asleep before 9.00pm.

When I turn on my phone the following morning, I’m surprised to see a chilly -1C displayed as the temperature for my location. I go downstairs to the petrol station restaurant to see cars outside with frost covering their windows. I know that it’s December and I know I’m about a thousand feet above sea-level, but that still doesn’t stop me feeling surprised. Breakfast is served by the lady who greeted me and consists of three giant, thick slabs of bread and a feta cheese omelette. There’s no butter and no coffee. I portion the omelette on to the bread chunks and attempt to get my mouth over the tallest open sandwich that I’ve ever encountered.

To start my ride there’s a steady climb up to the Border Post, which helps to warm me up if nothing else. I join the queue of cars as normal and get through the passport check without any problems. My final obstacle before departing Albania is a border guard who seems to be checking the contents of almost every car leaving the country. Beside him there’s a long table, strewn with bags and cases which have been pulled from the car in front of me. When he sees me he stops searching through the luggage and waves me forward. He asks where I’m from and if I’m travelling alone. I tell him ‘Scotsi’ and look around me to indicate that I am definitely alone. It looks like he’s warming to me now and asks ‘Drugs, Weapons ?’ while trying to suppress a smile. Even if I was carrying them, I’m hardly likely to admit it, so I just laugh and say ‘No, No, No !’ He waves me through with a grin and without checking my bags.

I have about 200 metres of ‘No Man’s Land’ till the Greek checkpoint, before I join the slow-moving car queue once again. The lead vehicle looks to be Albanian, with the occupants presenting a raft of messy documents to the Greek officials in an effort to gain entry. This looks like it could take a while, so I stand there looking bored but still polite. A burly bloke in an army uniform approaches me and tells me to go to the front of the queue. I show my passport and am through in seconds while the poor Albanians in the first car are still fumbling around with their mountain of paperwork. It gets me thinking about how people are treated differently due to the lottery of which country they happen to be born in. My UK passport is working in my favour today, but that wouldn’t be the case in every country.

There’s a long, steady uphill from the Greek border, with snow on the higher mountain tops further inland. Again, this takes me a little bit by surprise as I didn’t really expect to see snow in Greece. It’s a plodding climb, but brilliantly quiet due to traffic trickling through slowly from the border post behind me. I’m also delighted to find that the Greek road surface resembles smooth marble when compared to Albania. A sweeping downhill then speeds me towards a small, picturesque lake, surrounded by mountains and rust-coloured autumnal foliage. It’s a scene that wouldn’t look out of place in the Scottish Highlands.

I’ve arranged to stay with a Warmshowers host family tonight in a mountain village called Zitsa. I leave the main road and start heading further into the hills. These country roads climb and descend like a rollercoaster and are home to more dogs than I’ve ever seen in my life. Most of them are farm dogs protecting their property, but there are a huge amount of strays as well. This is a worrying development, so I take to stuffing a couple of decent sized stones into the back pocket of my cycling top in case one tries to take a bite. I’m hoping my ‘Dog Stones’ will only need to be used as a threat and never actually thrown.

A further 15km of winding, twisty roads gets me to Zitsa by late afternoon. I wasn’t given a street address for my hosts, but was told to just find the village bakery or ask for Kostas and Anna because everybody knows them. The bakery proves easy enough to find as the village is tiny, with a population of only four hundred. My instructions were to stand outside and shout to let them know I’ve arrived, so I do just that. Anna pops her head out of the flat above the bakery and invites me in.

Anna is an American woman in her early forties who met her Greek husband when she stayed with him as a Couchsurfing guest. They kept in touch, visited a couple of times, and eventually she left her high-powered legal career in Boston to be the wife of a baker in the Greek mountains. She’s lived here for six years now and seems wonderfully content leading a much simpler life than previously. I’m treated to a bowl of lentil soup and a meal of broad beans in Mediterranean vegetables, home-made by Kostas’ mother. The broad bean dish is from an old Greek Mama recipe, filling me with the tastiest, healthiest food I’ve had for a week.

After I’ve eaten, Anna shows me to where I’ll be sleeping, which is actually two shops away from the bakery. I’m directed down a flight of stairs to a large basement with high ceilings and, bizarrely, a library running along the back wall. Anna says the books are because she wanted to provide a resource for the village while also trying to involve herself in the local community. I’ll be sleeping on a fold-out bed between two fully stacked bookshelves in Zitsa’s public library. If that’s not the weirdest place I’ve slept, it will certainly be in my Top Ten.

After showering and sorting out my gear I pop back up to chat with my hosts. Anna is putting their three year old to bed, so suggests I go back downstairs to meet Kostas in the bakery. He’s busy preparing mixes for tomorrow, but invites me in, gives me a square pizza slice and tells me to take a cold drink from the fridge. It transpires that he has been hosting travellers for about ten years and I’m his 974th guest ! Any time he sees a cycle tourer on the road, or if a foreigner comes into the bakery he will offer them a bed for the night. He’s an amazingly generous human being. I stay for a couple of hours before leaving him to his work and heading back downstairs to my basement room. It’s become chilly now in the big, bare room so I drag a fan heater over beside my bed and get into my sleeping bag. I drift off to sleep under a shelf of Greek encyclopedias.

I end up staying two nights at Anna and Kostas’ place, heeding Anna’s advice about not getting to see much of the village if I only stay for one day. For part of my sightseeing, I’m taken for a Saturday afternoon drive, and intuitively go to walk round to the driver’s side of the car again, even though I’m the passenger. By now I’m accustomed to cycling on the right, but I still can’t get used to drivers sitting on the left. I’m taken halfway up a steep lane towards Zitsa monastery, where we park and then walk the remaining distance. We stroll through tall, mature woodland where tree leaves are only now turning to yellows, reds, browns and beginning to fall. It looks like autumn in the UK, but the process is happening two months later. Zitsa monastery is famous because the poet Byron stayed there as a guest when he visited the area. Nowadays, the place is home to just one monk who the villagers haven’t entirely taken to. It seems he’s not quite religious enough for the locals and keeps a very messy, unclean monastery. In my head I’m picturing him as an old Father Jack, the drunken, lecherous priest from Father Ted.

We drive back for a late lunch of spaghetti with veg, leftover bean mix, chicken pie and yet more bakery bread. We also drink some white wine that is coloured pink, but apparently isn’t a rosé. In the early evening we’re joined by a German family who have just arrived in their campervan. They stayed with Kostas eight years ago when they were just a young couple, and now they have returned with their children in tow all these years later. They’ll be joining me downstairs in the basement, which means that a quiet night is unlikely.  Their kids are five months and three years old.

Once the Germans have showered and sort themselves out in the basement, they join us upstairs for dinner. The main dish is a pasta-based soup that we crumble feta cheese into, along with further massive helpings of bread. I’ve been eating like a horse since I arrived in Zitsa yesterday and I can’t thank my hosts enough. Anna had told me they were so used to cyclists having huge appetites that they always fed them more than normal Couchsurfing guests ! I head back downstairs a little while after the Germans to find they have sectioned off part of the basement with a curtain to give themselves almost a private room. I have a little night light illuminating my bookshelf den, which remains on until the German family have settled down for the night. Heavy rainfall is battering noisily off the windows outside while, inside, I’m sharing a room with a family that includes a toddler and a baby. How much sleep I’ll get in the next few hours is anyone’s guess.