Is This The End of our Journey to China? (EP.22)
good morning everybody this is day 22 of cycling from bangok to Shanghai sorry I had a little bit of a dead brain there for a second and uh yeah we had to change our setup a little bit because it's uh raining like crazy we actually took four or 5 days off here in Vinh and it didn't stop raining once so today we are going to basically just bite into the sour apple and cycle regardless of the rain we were kind of trying to wait it out and see if it's gonna get any better but it doesn't seem like it's going to get any better whatsoever it's been an absolute nightmare quite literally for 5 days straight now nothing but rain 95 to 98% humidity so anything that gets wet stays wet it's a nightmare it's literally our worst nightmare in terms of this challenge yeah today we have about 70 75 km in this weather not looking forward to it yes so we had a look around North where it might be a little bit drier and it kind of looks like towards Hanoi it might get drier we're not 100% sure but we're going to try our best and just get as North as far north as possible right about 30 minutes or so in we made it out of the city at least and I'm happy to report that my feet and torso at least are dry also installed some like splatter protection the other day but yeah this is going to give us like full-blown hypothermia I think this it's like 14 celsius outside it's very wet and then of course while driving creating a lot of wind so yeah it's just not not a nice situation to be in right now I'm not I don't know not happy about it if I'm being honest all right this is probably going to be one of the shortest videos yet because well to be quite honest we can't really show you much because of how awful the weather is this is the worst weather that we've experienced in 3 years so like in 3 years straight of being in Asia and traveling all over Asia this has been an absolute nightmare like day after day 5 days straight I don't know how much longer this is supposed to continue but if it keeps going like this it's going to be incredibly challenging I'm very worried about a lot of things getting wet staying wet that means getting sick that means hypothermia that means a lot of other really horrible situations so it's not good I mean we have everything triple and quadruple packed into dry bags and plastic bags and so on but if we get really wet our laptops might get wet our camera equipment get wet and so on so I don't know you know we're not only running the risk of messing up our health we're also running the risk of losing like 6,000 €7,000 worth of equipment so I don't know why we're doing this but we're going to keep going either way we have a straight pretty much a straight line towards Hoang Mai so we're going to just keep moving and see what happens basically well we uh genuinely thought that the roads in Laos were bad but this here in Vietnam it uh takes it to a whole different category of absolute crap we just cycled through probably 750 m of factory um desolate basically empty Factory gigantic potholes it's literally ground that's like sunken into the ground and uh yeah this is bad right guys so we have been cycling for 1 hour and uh we made progress of a total of I think 15 km or 14.6 if even yeah I think about 13 and a half km in now yeah and uh it's freezing cold and wet and uh even though we are packed in plastic and all of that jazz we have like six layers of clothes on like and I am like shaking from shaking it's crazy it's freezing cold yeah so I don't know I kind of feel like we are to a certain extent I feel like we are being like weak like we have a weak mindset because we're not cuz we're not pushing to or whatever but at the same time I think it's also quite dangerous what we're doing because we have some friends that did similar things here in Vietnam but on a scooter and they actually got hypothermia and ended up in a Vietnamese Hospital uh not that long ago so um yeah I don't know we're currently contemplating just leaving the bicycles behind and getting on a bus or something I don't know our bicycles are just here everything is drenched the saddlebags are drenched and uh all of our stuff is like on the verge of being destroyed we have it in plastic bags and dry bags and dry bags the dry bag is doing a great job the one we actually bought a new dry bag it's this blue one here we bought it here in Vietnam when we arrived because we knew it was going to be a nightmare situation because everybody is telling us that this is just how the weather is here constantly um so we bought this one and this seems to be doing a great job but the packs on the back of our bikes are getting mud and wet and everything and I'm not sure if they're actually waterproof and we have a lot of like very valuable stuff in them we have them wrapped as well in dry bags on the inside but we don't know we don't know what's going to happen here yeah so now we're kind of standing um before a decision kind of of just calling it or continuing seeing if it gets better or not this like keep in mind like the weather forecast literally says it's not raining right now like and we were thinking to get to the next place because it says it's not raining there but it's raining here and it also says it's not raining here so I don't know and we see we have a lot of friends as well who are also creating content in different parts of Vietnam at the moment some are in the north some are in the South and on both ends it's the same weather so I don't know what it is currently trying to cancel our we're trying to cancel our hotel because we are pretty sure that we're not going to do 75 km or whatever it was when we started cuz it's going to take us all day and we're just going to be super wet all day and uh yeah just trying to come up with alternative Solutions uh I don't know I'm I'm upset I'm disappointed in us but at the same time I don't know what the voice of reason is and when it should kick in you know back on the road and I just took my Poncho off for 2 minutes to go to the bathroom and uh I am wet all the way through through to my underwear so yeah this is not keeping us dry whatsoever so we're both really wet and really cold uh we cancelled the hotel that was 75 km away and we just quickly found one that is about 25 km away so we're just going to try and get to the next hotel that looked like it would have an AC with a drying function or a heating function hopefully and uh that's the plan for now I don't know not sure both of us are struggling with our pride because obviously we committed to this Challenge and we want to keep going but I don't know we came from 36° degrees and sunshine for the last 22 days of cycling or 21 days whatever and now we're in freezing cold weather completely drenched I don't know we'll have to see what what we will do because if we get sick like get hypothermia or pneumonia or just a fever really that will obviously take us out for a week or two at least all of the available options right now are very miserable so we're just kind of on the hard shoulder of this I suppose it might be a Motorway I don't know maybe an interstate or something like that and uh I don't know it's not getting any better the rain is very persistent we're both completely drenched I checked before there's a little bit of water standing in my saddle bag I packed everything in into a garbage bag bags before we left today but I don't know uh how good those garbage bags are let to say like that and uh we have like another 10 km or so to go I don't know if we continue this literally every time we stop we have to like stop for 3 or 4 days because obviously everything is wet and the humidity is 95% here so nothing dries it takes like 3 4 days for things to dry and uh of all of the things that I thought were going to stop us rain and cold was the last thing that I had in mind I thought maybe a heat stroke or a land border that doesn't let us pass or in Laos running out of money or whatever but uh rain and cold was not on my 2025 Bingo card we have arrived at the hotel I just took my Poncho off and um completely wet head to toe I think the only thing that is not wet are my feet with these little booties that we put on top but uh yeah as you can see it's everything is wet I know on the inside it's also wet and uh when we had arrived in Vinh we had clean our cleaned our bicycles top to bottom and uh now they're just reset to the same amount of dirt so and I had also cleaned these ones off and they're back to being completely dirty as well so yeah I don't know we are currently weighing up our options maybe we're just going to stay here for like two nights or so to see if the weather is going to get any better how it progresses and if it doesn't get any better maybe we have to Chuck the bikes on a bus or something and get to Hanoi I don't know we we're weighing up options it all depends on how the weather continues did she say something about where we can store our bikes she's currently trying to figure something out she feels really sorry for us so we'll see it's just not get getting any better I don't I don't know I don't understand it if you look like online what the best time for Northern parts of Vietnam is it literally says end of February beginning of March it's it's supposed to be like bone dry not a single day of rain and uh I don't know just seems very wrong what it says online but uh this is real life so we're not going to put cotton balls around it or make it sweet or look nice this is what it is and uh we're not going to change it we're honest about what is happening around us I just feel very sorry for the people of in Europe or in the western world for example that are booking flights to come to the Northern parts of Vietnam right now to escape the cold temperatures of Europe and uh then they arrive here in this weather uh I think we have a place to put our bicycles thank you yes amazing okay thank you so much oh yes warm tea so I don't know this was the the nicest option that was available but we didn't realized that we booked ourselves into like a four star hotel so we're really like grimy nasty wet muddy covered in mud covered in crap like I feel very like guilty for even showing up to this hotel with the way that we look right now and like head to toe just dirt the ponchos that we bought that are supposed to like keep us dry can you don't work can you hold the camera for a second I want is my back is it all wet or yeah yeah okay because on the front it looks relatively dry but I think it's wet too it's wet but uh they gave us some hot green te so that's good but we're very defeated right now let's put it that way we're probably going to do an update video uh maybe tomorrow or the day after or something like this just basically we'll let you guys know if we decide that we're going to continue but I'm like 80% done yeah with this just because I don't see the weather improving if it does if like if there's one dry day I'll keep going but for now I'm cooked I'm kind of wondering if we should just like cheat on our road put the bicycles on like a VIP bus or something and just get to Hanoi just to see if it's everywhere the case that with the weather but yeah if it continues like this uh I'm pretty sure we will have to call it if it's the same and it's I'm sorry but it's really stress me out and it's like [ __ ] a bit with my pride or with our pride cuz obviously we wanted to go all the way to Shanghai but if this is the case now I don't think that we can do it yeah shoes are destroyed we bought some Crocs that we can wear just kind of because of the water but the Crocs don't fit into the waterproof boots that we had and the waterproof boots that we had are already so bad and so dirty and so destroyed that we have to throw them out basically after one use so in terms of like spending wise this is another this is another thing as well is we actually have to the most expensive places because if you stay and the first hotel that we stayed in when we arrived in Vinh here in Vietnam we we booked a place that was very affordable and it was very clean and in general actually we were very happy with the room the only issue was we had an AC that we had no control over so you just literally had a switch similar to the ACs that we had when we were in laos so you switch the AC on from from the wall but you have no control over the temperature it's just set to 28 and cold so it just blows cold air into an already very humid room so all that that all that that did was it just made sure that everything we had stayed cold and we also asked the hotel could they do our laundry they did our laundry but the problem was is that they hung our laundry up outside in 95% humidity in rain and then we had our laundry hanging there for three straight days and they just kept saying to us your laundry is not ready yet it's not dry and I was like it's never going to dry so can you just give us our laundry back we ended up getting our laundry back a bundle of wet clothes and that's basically what we've been wearing today so yeah there's no winning in this situation guess we can go to a laundromat and that's kind of the plan of what we're going to do here we might go to a laundromat here where they have a dryer because that's the only thing that makes sense maybe we can get clothes cleaned that way and then for the foreseeable we're going to be here and I just hope that we have control over an AC so we can set it on a dry function because I don't care if it's wet and the air is dry like the air is the dry climate if it's raining and it the air is dry it's fine because your stuff will dry but the way it is here it's uh it's impossible to keep anything dry basically like even the I'm even worried about the cameras that we're using because the humidity is going to creep into the cameras it's going to creep into our laptops it's going to basically infest everything and uh yeah it's a big big risk yes it's there made it into the room we had to wait a little bit for them to actually finish up cleaning that's okay we're inside now it's a very nice room so just like your typical Hotel bathroom I suppose and then for now we have two single beds but that's also okay and a nice floofy carpet uh I'm actually starting I was starting to film because I wanted to see together with you guys what exactly is wet and and what isn't wet in this pack um okay just opening the first layer here and I can already tell my trash bag is like proper drenched there's not much important things in here other than maybe my headphones and my glasses to work oh my clothes oh no they are uh the bag is wet oh no and the things inside seem to be now the things inside seem to be dry okay would you mind holding the camera for a second so I can look for the laptops yeah the laptops are the scariest one oh yeah there's proper water is standing inside I don't know if you can see that oh yeah there's water in there there's water standing in it my yellow trash bags yep thank God we bought those lemon scented lemon scented cuz that's important but that's the repair kit I don't care if our tools are getting wet okay it's proper wet on the outside yep I think it's okay on the inside please God I put it into like my dad wrapped it properly my dad told me to put it into two trash bags one from each side I think it's dry yeah it's just I think it's just cold yeah it's just very very cold so for a second I was like oh no that's super super super wet but I think it's just cold bags are yeah they're basically not usable they're like actual packs unfortunately let's have a look for your laptop yeah we have another laptop to look for as well room is uh extremely nice I have to say it's 30 Euro per night yeah I think our Bible is wet yeah our Bible is completely wet I don't think that we're going to be continuing this way if the weather stays the same unfortunately here's there's a swimming pool out there I don't know who needs to use that in this country the dry bag inside your pack was the exact same it's also wet yeah from the outside oo second laptop it's fine yeah but only fine because of the trash bags I think even the dry bags didn't even the dry bags didn't do their job because of how what it was and how humid it is so yeah like I said running the probably the riskiest uh cycle so far of the journey today I don't think that we will be cycling any further from where we are right now until the weather gets better so everything in uh this bag though we had just bought this one new when we were in Vinh because it's all dry inside so these packs are the actually the biggest issue that we have we can't keep them clean and we can't keep them dry either so all in all pretty horrific day oh your uh electric razors might have done electric razors are wet now yeah so we're going to leave it at that if you have any words of encouragement please send them our way because right now it's not looking too good we're going to enjoy this really weird kind of like dystopian view of the swimming pool and the gray stuff I think the swimming pool is part of this Condo building maybe I think it's not part of our hotel yeah but uh yeah just going to take a hot shower now and then we got to get out of our clothes because we're quite literally running the risk now of getting incredibly sick so we've got to just have a hot shower and then hopefully we can control this AC cuz I just tried to change the setting on it and it doesn't let me um so we'll see we have a hair dryer as well so maybe we can use a hair dryer to dry our stuff might take us a few hours but we'll see see you guys in the next one bye byebye
2025-03-04 10:59
