things you tell your parents after you've done them...

Apologies for the absence in updates, this one had to wait until it was over with for me to tell yall about it...

As I've gotten older and been able to explore different parts of the world on my own I have learned that there are certain things you do that your parents simply don't need to know about.  These are things that might make them question your judgment, might make them worry and might even make them a bit angry with you.  My tactic on dealing with these sorts of things involves kinda, sorta omitting part of the truth for as little time as possible and then coming clean as soon as I'd be done with it and safe.  While it is a rare occurrence, it's worked for a few things I've done in the past where my mom has later thanked me for not telling her beforehand.  Things like bungee-jumping (times 1 and 2), paragliding, shark cage-diving, etc... these are the things you tell your parents after you've done them.  And folks, we have a new one for the list: motorbiking through Vietnam.

You know you're up to something fun when even while you're doing it you know you're crazy.  It won't take years of retrospect and maturing to look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking.  We asked that question as we did it and are thrilled to be able to say we did, especially now that its over :)  We read about other travelers biking from south to north of Vietnam and figured we could sort it out on the way and be just fine...  Here's to being the age where I guess the right combination of curiosity, courage, and stupidity will amount to making such decisions :)

It started in Saigon where we set out to buy a motorbike.  Now for 2 girls who admittedly don't know anything about motorbikes, we knew we were in for a challenge.  We pretended to care about certain things as we asked people about the oil, the battery, the breaks, not understanding a damn word of the response.  But we were asking questions so if there was a problem we'd find it out quick.... right?  What we did know how to do was to make sure we got a good price and that as much free stuff was thrown in as possible. Speedometers broken? No problem, we get free ponchos then.  Odometers broken? No problem, give us free maps.  And we went so far as to demand a rack be put on the back for our bags, ropes to be included AND to get the bike with a full tank of gas.  We're nobody's fool.

We finally found a bike and took it for a test drive.  That's right a test drive in Ho Chi Minh City, the perfect place to learn how to drive a manual (yep, not an automatic!) motorbike while whizzing through people, cars and food carts that pay no mind to traffic laws or adhere to any sort of order.  I managed to not kill us so we took that as go-ahead for the rest of the trip.  We planned an aggressive itinerary of biking through the central highlands and then up the coast in a little over a week- Saigon to Hue...  And here we go!