02/17/2026
Sometimes it really does take a village. At the end of our last day of riding before heading back to Hanoi we took a shortcut that quickly became the most slippery and clingy clay mud that completely stuck our wheels. After manually moving the bikes as far as we could for hours, we could see the lights of a town and walked in hoping to find some more water. Even though we came off a mountain in the pitch black night like mud covered aliens, the very first house insisted we come and sit around their kitchen fire while they proactively and gleefully solved our problems. The entire village showed up on scooters with straps and wellies and got all the bikes the rest of the way off the mountain. They boiled us countless pots of barley tea and continually offered us rice. We were several magnitudes of language barrier removed from what I expected - they mostly only spoke a local dialect, the son spoke a little Vietnamese, and they all assumed we were Chinese and kept translating Vietnamese - Mandarin and then got more confused when we changed it to English. The manager of the homestay we were supposed to stay at that night spoke with the family and texted us the whole time. Then the owner of the homestay drove 3 hours roundtrip to collect us, and arranged for trucks to go collect the bikes from the village in the morning, where they were returned pressure washed and magically fixed of any issues - one had to be push started all trip and suddenly electric started. When people tell you about the unbelievable kindness and strength of Vietnamese people, believe it.