ZANE Australia is very proud to announce that our very own board member, Mark Johnson, affectionately known as “Jonno” will be riding with Eric in the proposed Vietnam / Zimbabwe tour to take place in October and November this year. Please support Mark and, through him, ZANE, as we go about our life-saving work with the elderly and vulnerable in Zimbabwe.
The Third World as Seen from the Saddle
Happy Christmas, Happy New Year and now also Happy Easter. True story, Christmas happened just yesterday, but already it is a distant memory, but for the gloop. Thank God for gloop.
For those who don’t know, gloop has the consistency of snot, but kids can’t eat it because it sets hard like cement in seconds and can permanently adhere to any surface, including ceilings. I know this to be true because it has permanently adhered to my lounge ceiling after some idiot gifted my shortest grandchildren a bumper pack of Dayglo pink red purple gloop for Christmas. In my defence, they weren’t supposed to open the gloop until they got home. Alas, within minutes of the packet being ripped open, our ceiling looked like a blood- splattered crime scene.
My grandson Colton cheerfully brought the crime scene to my attention. I think he had a bet going on with his younger sister Teagan to see who could make my face turn the colour of gloop. As per his plan, my face went pink red as soon as I saw the splattered gloop, then quickly upgraded to purple when I failed to wash it off.
I accused Colton of the crime and threatened retribution upon his bottom. He stoutly defended his innocence with a poker face and a cast iron alibi. He was only six and too short to reach the ceiling, and if I didn’t believe him, just ask Teagan, she was with him the whole time. The prosecution turned its attention to Teagan.
Teagan has the biggest, most beautiful bluest eyes, and she teared them up quicker than I can say Grinch, and her bottom lip wobbled alarmingly. My prosecutor’s stern resolve wobbled even more alarmingly, and I quickly withdrew all charges.
Onto the cycling part of the blog. Thank God for my next Have Fun, Do Good, Do Epic bucket list adventure.
My bucket list is arranged alphabetically, and next up is V. So please be invited to join me and Jenny and some other Old Legs friends on the Friendship Bench Tour 2026, Vietnam to Victoria Falls.
The plan is we start riding on the 15th of October in Ha Giang, a tiny village some few hundred kilometres north of Hanoi on the Vietnam China border, then we follow the coast south towards Danang and Hoi An, dodging inland to avoid typhoon season and to ride the Ho Chi Minh Trail, hopefully arriving in Ho Chi Minh City a.k.a. old Saigon 2100 km later.
When and if we arrive in Saigon as per the plan on November 7, we will uplift to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to start the final 600 km leg on November 21, routing through Nyamandhlovu, Tsholotsho and hopefully permissions permitting Hwange National Park, to arrive in Victoria Falls November 26.
Because Jenny can get lost driving in Gweru, we’ve recruited a local driver guide by the name of Phuc Binh for the Vietnam Leg. Because I can relate to Christopher Columbus sailing to India and ending up in Jamaica, I am thinking to ask Phuc if he can meet us in Harare, instead of Hanoi. One of my top priorities before then though is to learn how to pronounce Phuc’s first name without offending. Or I’ll just call him Mr Binh.
I have started training for Vietnam in earnest, but because I can’t find any Vietnamese restaurants, mostly I’m training in Thai restaurants and Sushi bars, which might look like rice and raw fish but tastes pretty good.
With help from Google Translate and Claude, I’ve also started learning fluent Vietnamese, but I’ve hit a speed hump in the form of 10 different accents or diacritics, a.k.a. various different little squiggles above the letters of the Vietnamese alphabet, which FYI has 29 letters. These accents allow one to pronounce the same 2-letter words 10 different ways with 10 different meanings, apparently. For instance, the Vietnamese have an acute accent with a high rising pitch, and a grave accent with a low, falling pitch, or a mid-low dipping one with a rising pitch, or one with a glottal break, and so on, and so on. Because I am really crap at accents, and also because I have no idea what a glottal break is, I’ve asked Jenny to take charge of translation.
And that’s the plan. What could possibly go wrong.
In closing, here with How to Speak Vietnamese 101.
Hallo. Is this the road to Saigon? –
Chào. Đây có phải là đường đến Sài Gòn không
Sorry, that was politically insensitive of me. I mean Ho Chi Minh City-
Xin lỗi, tôi đã nói điều đó thiếu tế nhị về mặt chính trị. Ý tôi là Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh.
Until my next blog, have fun, do good, do epic
Eric Chicken Legs de Jong!
PS For the record, the culprit who flung the gloop was Teagan, not Colton. And Jenny and I hope that the colour of this year’s gloop doesn’t clash with last year’s.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
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