A Vietnam Adventure – “From child hood dream to the ramblings of an old solo biker"

And…whatever you do, don’t focus on the buffalo shit!

I’d been told that today’s ride from the coastal city of Quy Nhon to the small mountain village of Mang Dang was a beautiful one and, having been by the coast for a few days, I was really looking forward to getting back into the mountains.

After a quick coffee and croissant at Highlands Coffee Shop in Quy Nhon (making sure not to miss out my morning coffee – if you’ve read the Day 2 BLOG then you’ll know what I mean), I started what was hopefully only going to be a 4 to 5 hour trip.

Getting out of Quy Nhon was very quick and very easy…..a perfect start to this beautiful days ride. But unfrotunartloy that didn’t last much longer. Despite being told that this was going to be a beautiful ride, the next 90 minutes was awful! The road out of Quy Nhon must be a main route for industrial vehicles (I think going to a city in the West of Vietnam called Pleiku) and as a result, there was literally ‘nose to tail’ lorries for the next 60kms. To make matters worse, it was a single lane road and this meant that it was very difficult to overtake (or undertake, which is what motorbikes are supposed to do in Vietnam). Added to that was the poor quality of the road surface – pot holes, dust and loose stones. As a result, I spent the first 90 minutes of today’s trip sat behind one lorry after another, covered in dust, bombarded by small stones and eyes full of dust (which their huge wheels were kicking up into the air). This definitely wasn’t what I was expecting and there were many moments where I just felt like turning round and heading back to the city.

However, I’ve no idea why but the words form a good friend of mine can rushing into my head.

Shonette Bason is an Internationally recognised speaker on Early Years Education and is also a ‘Happiness Coach’ – if you’ve worked in Early Years Education you’ll underatdn the link between the two. Five minutes in Shonette’s company and you can’t help but find the happiness in your life (even when it sees lost) – she has that affect on people!.

Now, Shonette has this phrase that she uses to describe those people that spend too much of their time focussing on the negative, those people that if you spend too much time in their company, end up making you feel just like them…negative! She refers to these people as ‘Lemon Suckers’ due to the fact that they’re so miserable and negative that their face always looks as though they are sucking lemons. Do you know any lemon suckers? Even worse, are you a lemon sucker?

Anyway, as I’m driving along this horrible stretch of road, feeling disappointed and miserable, furious at the advice I’d been given and the promise off another beautiful days riding, I asked myself…..am I a turning into a lemon sucker? If Shonette could see me now, would she tell me to stop being a lemon sucker.

Fortunately, before I had a chance to answer my own question, my GPS was telling me to take the next right turn and head onto a different road. And, as if by magic, everything changed. All of the lorries continued down the road they were on and only myself and a few of the cars around me took the exit. From here until I reached Mang Dang, the road was amazing! It climbed higher and higher into the mountains, giving some beautiful views back down towards the coast. Then ,after leaving the mountains the road meandered its way through beautiful forests, rice fields and vineyards. The road surface was, in the main, perfect and there were very few vehicles around. Passing through small villages the residents would turn to look at the stranger passing through (made me feel like a character out of an old Western movie), and children playing in the streets would stop to wave and shout, “hello”. It was as if they were desperate to use the English they’d been learning at school – contextualised practice for those educators reading this (lol). I also heard the phrase, “what’s your name” being shouted several times, as I passed through one village after another. I don’t think they really wanted to know my name, they were just keen to use the basic English they’d been learning in school – again, contextualised practice.

The advice I’d been given was ‘spot-on’, apart from the first 90 minutes, the rest of today’s ride was outstanding. In fact, it reminded me of riding through Mid-Wales. The landscape was very similar, the road surface was similar and as I was now much higher up, the temperature was very similar. Dare I say, at times a little chilly! Yep, in that moment, I could have been riding the A470 from Builth Wells, in Mid-Wales, all the way up to Trawsfynydd in North Wales.

So, back to ‘Lemon Sucker Moments‘, Shonette would have been right…I had allowed the events in that that first 90-minutes to turn me into a lemon sucker. But now, as I was riding along enjoying myself with a totally different look on my face, I wondered what I would have been like had my GPS not taken me off that road. What if I had to stay between those lorries all the way to my destination? Would I have been so stuck in my lemon sucker moments that they would have consumed my whole day? You see, I think that’s what happens to some people. They allow those lemon sucker moments to affect their whole day and some times the next, the next and the next. It can happen so easily. And had I not turned off that road today, my whole day could have tuned into a horribly negative one.

And there in I arrived at my 1st lesson for today…don’t allow those ‘Lemon Sucker’ moments to consume your day. For sure, there’s always going to challenges, disappointments, upsets etc just like there’s always going to be lemon sucker people.

However, the difference is although you might be able to distance yourself from lemon suckers (unless they’re a family member and then you’ve got problems….lol), we’re all going to encounter lemon sucker moments in our life bit it’s how we deal with these that matters. Just remember….similar to the events of my morning, they don’t last for ever, so don’t allow them to consume you. Let them have their moment and then let them go! Wait for your opportunity to exit [the road] and then take it.

Now…..back to my days ride.

With only 20 minutes to go until I arrived at Mang Dang and the huge smile still plastered across my face, the 2nd lesson of the day, very quickly and totally unexpectedly smacked me across the face. All thanks to buffalo shit!

Now, when you learn to ride motorbikes, one of the things you’re taught is that the bike will always go where your eyes are looking. That might sound strange but it’s very similar to many sports. In basket ball, the ball will always go in the direction of the follow-through of your hand; in football it’s the same with your foot; and in golf, the ball will go in the direction of your eyes. When riding motorbikes you always look where you want to go and, as if by magic (and with a certain level of riding skill), the bike will follow. Today, I forgot that, let’s just call it a lapse in concentration. Passing through a beautiful area of farmland, I noticed that some of the buffalo (which I’d never really seen before – so maybe that was the cause of my lapse in concentration) had escaped the fields and were along the sides of the road munching on fresh grass. As I rounded a corner there in the middle of the road was a huge pile of buffalo shit. For some unanswerable reason, as far as stuck in a trance, I couldn’t take my eyes off it and before I knew it the inevitable happened…..I rode the bike straight through the middle of it. Now, I don’t want to get into too much detail but if you’ve been round cows, you’ll know that when they go to the toilet, they tend to leave a lot. Well, buffaloes are a lot bigger than cows and so the mess they leave is at least double that of a cow. I only say this because as I drove straight through it, it literally covered everything from the underneath of the bike to my shoes and even my trousers. I’m convinced that some even landed on my face!

And therein lies my 2nd lesson of the day…don’t allow yourself to focus on the shit, if you do, then the only certainty is that it will cover you! The opposite is just as true. If you focus on the positives, then they’re far more likely to happen. “Good luck”

A BIG thank you to Shonette for her inspiration in the writing of today’s BLOG.