Day 41, To Hue

We woke at 6, keen to get to the bike stand in the market for when it opened at seven. Setting off with our bikes, we were approached by a woman on a motorbike asking us if we needed help. In my dazed and half-asleep state, I thought she was the kind woman from the hotel we were staying at and I accepted her offer, despite Nico's warning looks and admonitions. We followed her a short distance to a man who had a sign outside his house saying "Motorbikes, Bikes". He looked at my bike, agreed that I needed a new chain and set off to get one from the market on his scooter. 

The woman led us to sit down and have a coffee. By this time I had realised my mistake and was already regretting it. We didn't know the real price of the chain, we didn't really know anything about this man and we didn't know the agenda of this woman and why she had decided to try and help us. It's horrible feeling that you can't trust anybody, but we are so aware of being tourists here and that people see us as easily exploitable. It's tiring and frustrating, especially at 7am.      

Returning with a chain, it quickly became apparent that this man was not at all familiar with modern, western bikes. Most bikes in Vietnam have a maximum of three gears. It was painful to watch him sweat trying to work out how to put the chain on, we had to show him how to do it and he didn't have the right tools. Eventually we discovered that it wasn't even the right type of chain. Nico and him repaired the old one together and put it back on the bike, but it was by now too short to use all the gears properly, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it was going to break again. We gave the man some money, paid for the coffee and cursed ourselves for not just having gone to the market ourselves in the first place. 

Nico in the amazing bus

We went back to our hotel and thought about our options. We didn't want to stay another night in Lang Co. We eventually decided to take the bus to the next town, Hue, and try and a western bike shop, or at least a new chain there. We flagged down a long-distance bus, quickly shoved our bikes underneath and were away - well until it stopped for a half-hour breakfast break five minutes later! We didn't care, the stress was temporarily forgotten and we marvelled instead at the inside of this bus, which was made up of two levels of reclining beds and sleepy backpackers.

Hue is a pretty place

We arrived in Hue to be greeted by many hotel touts and successfully ignored them all, making our way to a hotel we had researched on the internet the night before. The constant hassle and haggling of Vietnam is starting to get to us. There were no western bike shops in Hue, but we walked for a long time until we came to a shop with a western racing bike hanging from the tin roof - at last, someone who may be able to understand my bike! He fixed it :-)