Across the Northern Frontier Words by Sonder rider Emma Pooley
CHINA
V IE T NA M
MYA N MA R
L AOS
T HAIL AND
CAMBODIA
It’s classic advice: never take a brand new bike on a trip, without at least a few test rides to set it up. Classic and very sound advice. Which, for my first trip on my Camino, I totally ignored. I’m not proud of my incompetence, arriving in Hanoi with the bike still in its original delivery box from Sonder (I’d opened it, to squeeze in a well-padded bundle of helmet, saddle, pedals and some spares, but the bike had literally never left the box before it got to Vietnam) but what can I say? It had been a busy time with work and travel, and I was pushing the limits of holiday and overtime to be able to fit in this threeweek bike trip at all. So it was the finer details of packing and preparation that took a hit. Therefore when we rolled out of Hanoi I had no idea of the route or itinerary. Luckily that didn’t matter because we had Ashley from Velo Vietnam guiding us. In fact, we were his guinea-pig-guests to test ride a new ‘dirt’ tour for gravel bikes. I was a little surprised when we pulled into a side road before even escaping the city to detour to a café. Surprised but delighted, because the coffee was fantastic. Happily, such refreshment breaks 06
and delicious coffee became a very frequent feature of our rides – some days I lost count. I should have had a ‘caution: sudden coffee breaks’ sticker on my backside. We were not in a hurry. An extra benefit of all these stops was that I could incrementally adjust my bike setup without holding the others back too much. Part of my poor preparation was not researching the climate: I expected tropical heat but for the first week as we rode west through mountains towards Laos it was mostly cold, rain, and unbelievable amounts of orange-red mud. I love mud, but there are limits to how much of it I want to swallow. The stunning scenery made up for
“ We dried our kit hung around the fire – my rain jacket has smelled of wood smoke ever since, which makes me smile every time I put it on.”
it though, and there’s grim satisfaction in pushing on through those conditions. As we approached the border there was even a 5km section of road on the mountainside that had been entirely destroyed by a mudslide; hike-a-bike skills required. On the coldest, wettest, filthiest day, our accommodation was a homestay in a traditional stilt house. Unbelievably, the family had a washing machine which they kindly let us use (despite seeing the state of us). We dried our kit hung around the fire – my rain jacket has smelled of wood smoke ever since, which makes me smile every time I put it on. Double-Ashley, as he will forever be known to me (because he’s so strong he always pulled double turns on the front, and also he could somehow knock back double beers in the evening and still be fresh in the morning!) is not your average bike tour guide. He’s an anthropologist who’s spent years researching in Vietnam, and speaks fluent Vietnamese and Lao. Thanks to Ashley we could communicate wherever we were and always found a warm, dry bed (ranging from stilt hut to 3* hotel). I’m sure the wonderful people would have been friendly in any case, but there’s definitely an extra smile for someone who can speak the language and knows the social norms.
