Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 92 - Vinh Even in the most nihilistic recesses of a life lived under a 'light-touch' regulation of desire I struggle to justify the decision to ride with a steepling hangover. Not only because it increases the likelihood of death but also because it makes the time leading up to that death also feel like death. Not for me the rat-a-tat of Bonnie and Clyde's defiant end nor the Thelma and Louise weightlessness of being beyond reach. I haven't named the bike so I can't even meet my surely imminent demise was a plus one. Not that the bike would die of course, just look at the speedo. They'd pick it up, the police perhaps if they could spare a second from grift but more likely the locals, and it would be dusted off and back on the road in a day or two. Me they'd sluice into the gutter like they were shopkeepers cleaning their shopfronts, which they could be. To die on day two of this epic journey would make it look like a foolish idea and I can't have pe

Day 91 - Hanoi "Of course I want to take it for a test ride". I don't want to take it for a test ride. I want to give this man $600 and quietly crash my new bike around the corner where he can't see me. But that wouldn't be proper so I gingerly take the bike down the unnecessarily steep ramp from the warehouse to the road. I say 'new' bike but it's got over 500,000km on the clock. Is that a lot for a bike? It sounds like a lot. Too much? I don't know. The ignition only started with extreme reluctance I know that much. It's been sitting there for a while the man explains. Is that a bad sign? I don't know. If I stall it during my test ride I'm walking back to the warehouse I know that much. Can you stall a bike? I think so. Well the thing goes forward and all the gears work and so, eventually, do both of the brakes. It has a wide comfortable seat and has luggage racks and a mobile phone holder for the navigation and is $600 too much for

Day 86 - Ha Long Bay If you're in Northern Vietnam then you certainly have to or at least ought to or possibly shouldn't visit Ha Long Bay. With this sort of conviction Rory (my Dutch friend from the Ha Giang Loop) and I find ourselves on a minibus to the bay and our path unavoidably intersecting with *shudder* a tour. The bus driver has a drop-off itinerary for the passengers and virtually no English. We stop to let off some other passengers and, noticing that we're only six minutes walk from our own hostel, we hop out. But the bus driver knows that this isn't our scheduled stop and enthusiastically waves us back onboard. Well alright we could get a bit closer and save our legs so we comply. My spidey sense is tingling though. And reader, sometimes you must trust these instincts when travelling. Because the driver then drives us back in the opposite direction with any logical hopes of looping back to our hostel rapidly diminishing. We end up miles away and on the phon

Day 85 - Hanoi The bus back to Hanoi deposits me at 3AM and I stagger, dead-eyed, into bed. When was the last time I got eight hours sleep? Not for a while. But I've had four days of indisputable joy. Looking upon monuments to the meaning of life and swaying on tightropes where there was only forward, no turning back. To ride for hours along sheer drops and over unmade roads was surely beyond me. Until it wasn't, until I did. One of the best things I have ever done. It seems like a worthy trade even though my brain in its deprivation pulls low speed turns like an over-cautious Thai driver (but only on turns mind). One of the problems with dorms...one of the several problems with dorms is that sleeping in requires the hibernation ability of a bear or an industrial quantity of alcohol. Lights flick on, ladders creak, people chat and zips move endlessly back and forth, I wake not entirely refreshed. Back in the city I feel that welcome anonymity after four of enjoyable but relent

Day 80 - Ha Giang We speed along our narrow path cutting through the great waves of history. They crash around us, breaking surf tumbles down inclines into oblivion and timelessness. Monolithic yet fragile. We sweep along the grand banks of time. These great waves of rock seem frozen in their act of creation and destruction but they move, as all things do, to the unwavering beat of the world. We specks of dust twirl with furious energy and burn brightly, briefly. This stone will see many more of us before it too is gone. But we see something it cannot. We see the beauty of it all. There is no intrinsic beauty here, it only exists because we perceive it. The only meaning this place has is the one we give it. Whatever destruction we wreak, and that is plenty, we are also the only things that create meaning. There is no beauty without us. I could say I was humbled by this landscape, by this nature, but really we are nature. Sprung from the same well as the simplest amoeba, the biggest mo

Day 75, 76, 77, etc.. I'm sat in the café in the hostel where I'm staying in the Laotian capital. There's a gramophone playing records from the 1920s. I feel like I've been here since the 1920s. The gramophone is set to the wrong speed, too slow, so the music is stretched and the vocals have a bassy, interminable groan. The gramophone is on all day and the sound makes time viscous and motionless. If I don't hear another saxophone for the rest of the trip that will be fine. Maybe I should get out and explore the city. But there's nothing to do in Vientiane except wait for your Vietnamese visa to come through. That's not quite true I suppose, there'd been some diversions in the evenings. I'd been having a quiet beer in a bar a couple of nights ago, studiously avoided the attention of an Australian bore who said things like "I've got nothing against aborigines right, but abos...", when I was co-opted into an odd social group of expats and

Day 74 - Phonsavan Phonsavan has the plain of jars. Thousands of jar-shaped vessels up to three metres in height and up to 3000 years old are scattered around the town. They were constructed by giants to store rice wine, at least according to local legend. The plains are also littered with unexploded bombs dropped by the Americans in the sixties to eliminate the giants whom they probably thought were communists. After my relatively successful time on a bike in Thailand I feel emboldened to get another one to tour the jars. Thus far the bikes had been automatics with nothing more to worry about than faster and slower. But this one was semi-automatic with controllable gears thrown into the mix. My confidence evaporated as I stuttered down the road with the engine howling. Flight was preferable to fight as I contemplated turning around, throwing back the keys and, shamefaced, leaving town. But I didn't. I learned. I learned my response to adversity is automatic and it is limiting. In

Day 73 - Luang Prabang Muang Ngoy suddenly feels empty. Or emptier. A hot, dry breeze sends baked leaves scuttling along the dirt road. The dogs sleep, unable to rouse themselves to bicker or stare longingly at my lunch. Places like this lull you with the ease of existence, the lack of decisions to make. The simplicity becomes compelling and you are always leaving tomorrow. Mañana. It's an antidote when travel of this sort becomes a grind of decision making. Where to go? What to see? Where to stay? What to eat? Where to go next? Repeat. It's first-world problems 101 but the novelty of infinite possibilities and the freedom to choose them does get tiring. To be teleported back to my flat, my bed, my favourite pub for a night would be as wondrous as a cold beer on a hot beach. Alternatively make me do a hard day's work and I may change my tune. But leave Muang Ngoy I eventually do, trickling down the river to the metropolises beyond. "Do you recognise me?" I say.

Day 65 - Muang Ngoy I have breakfast with another German, Moritz, they get everywhere these Teutons. I'm in a small town called Nong Kieuw in northern Laos. I'd intended to pass straight through it but met Moritz on the bus and he mentioned a viewpoint here that was worth the climb. We'd done it the previous day in stifling heat and the sweat I produced could have filled a swimming pool. If there had been a swimming pool at the top I would have jumped in it. Unless it was filled with sweat. Still, the view over the town at sunset was beautiful. After eating breakfast we say farewell and I catch the boat upriver to an even smaller town called Muang Ngoy. There's even less to do here than in Nong Kieuw but that suits me fine after all my recent socialising and activity. Swinging in my hammock in a wooden bungalow looking down onto the Nam Ou river is a tonic. Until war breaks out on the opposite bank. A pack of feral dogs begin loudly barking at one another, or some tree

Day 59 - The Mekong River Having bid farewell to the rest of the tour group the previous evening Lieke and I were getting the slow boat to Luang Prabang. Sat on the boat at 9:30am awaiting an uncertain departure time we observed a few of our fellow passengers already on the beers. Funny how once an idea takes root it can swiftly become all-consuming. And the idea was to consume all the beers. We put on our shoes with furious haste and dashed up the concrete steps to the road above the pier. Grabbing a polystyrene cool box and bags of ice we filled it with all the beers we could, threw indecipherable banknotes at the shopkeeper until she nodded that the bill was covered and hared it back to the boat before it left. We were hot, sweaty and reeking of alcoholism but we had our essential supplies. A swift bond was formed with three English lads who shared our intention to make this a party boat. Lieke produced a ludicrously oversized bluetooth speaker and the die was cast. From this - T