Riding the Ghost Road: Part Two
Ups and Downs in the Vietnamese Jungle
The itinerary for day one of our short cycling adventure is gruelling: one hundred-and-sixty-five kilometres with four thousand metres of climbing. To finish the ride in daylight, we need to set off at first light, around five-thirty. Unfortunately, we still have the small matter of our bike cases to resolve before we can hit the road.
At six-fifteen we breakfast on some of Mường Xén’s finest beef noodles, washed down with cups of steaming Earl Grey tea—another signature flourish from the sophisticated hand of Monsieur Punty. Then at seven o’clock sharp we head over to the courier company to deposit our cases and be on our way!
To our dismay the courier shop is shuttered. Maybe the little man yesterday was a burglar after all! An old woman, walking a dog the size of a large frankfurter, sees us slumped on the steps of the shop. “Eight o’clock,” she calls out, as the frankfurter casually urinates over a parked motorcycle. "At this rate, we’ll be here ’til Christmas,” I mutter to Monsieur Punty.
Just at this moment, Monsieur Punty spots a post office a little further down the road. It appears to be open. We glance at each other: Eureka! We leap onto our bikes and scoot over to investigate this shining beacon of hope.
As we enter the post office, two visibly underemployed ladies are lounging behind the counter. They are shocked at the impending avalanche of business. With great enthusiasm, they scurry about, giggling excitedly, weighing our cases and finding the relevant paperwork for Monsieur Punty—the designated responsible adult—to sign.
With all formalities completed, I ask the slightly less hysterical of the two ladies for the delivery time of the cases at our final location. “Five days,” she replies, beaming with pride. “Excusez moi?” stutters Monsieur Punty. “Catastrophe!” he cries, with Gallic panache. Our non-changeable, non-refundable, non-transferable flight will leave for Saigon in three days. Catastrophe indeed. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, the day is growing old, Christmas is fast approaching and we still haven’t started our journey.
Suddenly, I have an ingenious idea. We can ship the cases back to Saigon, set off on our trip and somehow sort everything out later on. Monsieur Punty considers my plan ill-conceived and manifestly foolish but for want of a better alternative, agrees to it immediately. The ladies start giggling again and leap into action. We abandon our cases, mount our bikes and head off into the sunrise!
The first climb of the day hits us like a lover’s slap after just five kilometres and continues to ascend for the next thirty kilometres. The sun is now high in the sky. The smouldering heat assails us from above and below, reflecting off the melting asphalt beneath our wheels. As we climb higher, the jungle canopy slowly closes in around us, like a pythons’s embrace, until we can barely breathe. The temperature edges up to forty degrees and the humidity passes ninety percent.
I grind and sweat and curse until finally I crest the peak of the never-ending stairway to heaven. I shudder to an exhausted halt in the dappled shade of a nearby tree. Moments later Monsieur Punty appears out of the haze like a shimmering mirage. He collapses onto the floor, his face etched in pain. He is, he informs me, suffering from ‘mild heatstroke’, although from where I am standing it doesn’t look so mild. We shelter for a while in the cool shade of the tree; Monsieur Punty shivering like an abandoned puppy, while I pant and salivate like a rabid dog.
And what joy we feel in this moment. The ineffable pleasure of pain suffered and endured. A cyclist’s rapture!
And so goes the day. Climb after climb, kilometre after kilometre, pedal stroke after pedal stroke. Up and down, beneath the merciless sun, cocooned within a web of asphyxiating humidity. Whenever we run out of water, or willpower, we seek shelter at one of the infrequent roadside stalls, where we gulp down bottles of iced drinks and sugary snacks. We encounter little traffic and see few people on the road, save for a few hardy, weathered labourers, trudging along the roadside, ferrying their various wares from jungle to village. So much suffering: ours by choice and theirs by fate.
Ten-and-half hours after bidding farewell to the giggling girls in the post office, we roll wearily into Que Phong, our destination for the night. Darkness is closing in so we head straight to our hostel where we are greeted by the plump, bare-chested owner. Resting on a table to the side is a small cardboard box containing Monsieur Punty’s pasta and pesto: I gaze at it tenderly and for a brief moment feel like a missionary bringing the word of God to lost tribes in the Amazon.
Our first order of business upon arrival is to ask the owner if he can wash our clothes. He cannot, he tells us. Perhaps then, he has a washing machine we can use. He does not, he says. No matter. Perhaps he would then just show us to the kitchen where we might cook the pasta. He can not, he declares. Monsieur Punty, a man who takes matters of sartorial hygiene and glycogenic nutrition very seriously, appears deeply unimpressed.
I return to my room and begin washing my fast-fermenting cycling kit, using tiny sachets of shampoo that I can only open with my teeth, filling my mouth with laundry detergent. Meanwhile, Monsieur Punty, a man who rarely sweats in public spaces, sets off in search of a kitchen in which to prepare his renowned pasta-and-pesto dinner.
Happily, the shop next door, which appears to be in the business of selling mobile phones to people with no signal, allows Monsieur Punty unlimited use of it’s expansive catering facilities; comprising a gas stove, a metal sink and a damp rag. Good enough, however, for Monsieur Punty to rustle up an end-of-day epicurean extravaganza of pasta-and-pesto.
Refueled, replenished and revitalised, we thank our gracious hosts and retire next door for a night of deep and restorative slumber.
And sleep well we must, for tomorrow will be another hard day in the saddle.