About a dentist and an old axe

Question: say your great grandfather bought a new axe in the year 1900 and it was handed down and you now owned it, you would have a 115 year old axe. But if you father replaced the handle in 1965 and you replaced the head in 1992, how old would the axe be? Hmmm...

After arriving in Hanoi at 5 Am it was a pleasure to walk to our place of accommodation and stretch the legs. The friendly manager opened up for us and told us that the rooms would be ready in a few hours. By 7 am we had sat up our "office" near the front door and started working through all the contacts I had acquired over the last week. These contacts were people who advertised their motorcycles. There are several websites which are used for this –One of the world's better sites is Craigslist. and there are Expat Vietnam and Travelswop for example; plus nearly every hostel has a notice board with " bikes for sale" signs.

It was still early but as the saying goes “The early bird catches the worm” .I started to text and ring and invited people to come to us instead of we going to them. There were plenty of bikes on offer; the only problem I was now facing was dealing with people who most likely did not have a clue about the workings or condition of their own bike. They came around with loose or worn bearings, one bike had about an inch of play in the rear swinging arm which was met by “I hadn’t noticed that”. It is obvious that some just get a bike which could be dangerous or a death trap without realising it. The first purchase was a bike for Paul B. We bought the bike of a German guy who had lived here for some months doing research- it looked ok but to me that is not all that important. I checked out the bike and passed the test. After checking out some others a dealer arrived with a French girl named Anna. She wanted to sell the bike to the dealer but was told about our interest. I checked out these two bikes and both where ok. The dealer (called Stone) said that he had never met anyone who checked out a bike like I did as he noticed that I paid little attention to the looks but more to the mechanical part. Well thanks for the compliment, I could have added “hey Stone- you rock!” but that would have gone over his head or would slowed down the process. Anna’s bike was not perfect but ok. Needed a little bit of work like new rear tyre.

Now as for dealers- I can honestly say that “99% are liars” They lie when you sell and lie when they want to buy. Anna said that there was something wrong with the clutch- I figured that “Stone” would have told her that to get the price down. So let’s check this out. I got on the bike, pulled the front brake, shifted to first gear and let the clutch out. They bike wanted to get away with the front wheel locked! Nothing wrong with that clutch!

Technically speaking you can’t own a motorcycle in Vietnam so this is how it works. With the bike comes a laminated blue card the size of a credit card. It stated Engine number, Frame number and the registration Plate number. The card is in the name of the first owner who ever bought it. As long as you have this card and the number plate matches the number on the card you are ok. Names are not changed.

Now as to the age of the bike. The engine number on bike number 1 did not match, neither did the frame number. So perhaps it has had several different engines (these Honda Win's are copies of older original 100-110 cc Japanese Honda’s) and these engines would have been rebuild dozens of times with new but more likely, used parts. Then they get a can of black spray paint and suddenly we have a bike which looks only a few years old. Hanoi has a street were several shops selling dozens of the bikes and advertise “Honda Win all reconditioned “ ha-ha.

Anyway back to the numbers on the blue card. The blue card of Anna’s bike had the right Plate number and showed the same engine and frame number. Well didn’t even start looking for the numbers under the layers of paint because that would be a waste of time. Apparently this French girl had some good times with her bike as I noticed she was rather sad to part with it. Well Anna you can read here where this bike is going now.

Now back to the Axe at the top of the pages. The blue cards showed the first registration date as 1988 so that makes this bike 27 years old. Most foreigners have a 1 month visa, so figure this; if these bikes move from traveller to traveller it could be that they are used for 8-10 Hanoi-Saigon trips (1900km ) a year. Say 2000 km per owner x 10 per year for 20 years = 400.000 km. Some do round trips through Laos and Cambodia. Being of early Chinese standard the quality is comparably to an Indian copy of an Omega watch. So no wonder they had several engine and possibly frame changes. Now ...how old are these bikes if they had several engine changes and possible other changes of the last 27 years. So buyer beware is the message. The cost of these bikes range between 200-300 US dollars. Prices are lower in Hanoi. Selling them in Saigon would be easy and possibly for a higher price; however even if you decided to ride to the airport and park it against the fence and walk away it only would have cost about $8 to $10 per day.

Meanwhile....Yesterday (24/4) Paul and Paul have left for Sapa in the north. As I write these words they are heading for Lao Cai at the Chinese border and on to Sapa and Tavan. Meanwhile I am on a bus going on a new road in the same direction- my bike is still at my friend Eddie’s place.

It is only from there that our real adventure into new territories (for me that is) begins.

Dentist

Consider this- If you live in Europe, US or Australia, the next time you need major dental work get some quotes from several dentist. Then price a trip to Vietnam where you can stay at a nice place and have good food for midrange $60 per day or low range $25 per day. Then go to Peace Dental Clinic in Hanoi and get treated in pleasant surroundings in a very modern facility .

You could say this is a US dental surgery picked up and shipped to Hanoi. Operating costs are less than quarter of costs in the West which is reflected in the final bill. I only had one day so I spent 5 hours in the chair. Frederick Abel (From the USA) the owner/dentist, put me in a separate room and treated me in turns between his other patients. At ones stage while an assistant kept my mouth from closing during a long drilling and other interesting "in my mouth activities" I suddenly became aware that Fred had gone. I then realised that I had fallen asleep. We had started at 1 pm and finished at 5.30 pm. It was almost a pleasure...almost I said.