Digital Wanderer |

Vietnam — 1, departure and arrival in Warsaw

2011-05-10

I think we took off at 6:20 AM. First, we had to get to the airport with the bike; here my friend Yura helped me out with his Audi hearse — everything fit perfectly. At 5 AM the LOT ticket counter opened and we could pay for the bike. Generally, a bike on LOT counts as sports equipment weighing over 15 kg and under 30, and carrying it costs 80 euros one way. But Anna sweet-talked the cashier, and he agreed that if we packed the bikes so they weighed under 15 kg, they’d only charge us 40 euros each, like for light sports equipment.

A night scene with two people next to large cardboard boxes and a white car. Yellow-blue bicycle bags are lying on one of the boxes. — The bikes in boxes arrived at "Riga" airport

In a brightly lit airport hall, a woman with a backpack walks past large luggage spread out on the floor, including several backpacks, a sleeping bag, and two large cardboard boxes, presumably for bicycles. In the background, three men are sitting by a panoramic window, one of them with a bright headlamp on his chest. — Our stuff, people are staring at us spellbound

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Vietnam — 0, Prologue

2011-05-07

A narrative this grandiose is hard even to begin. I have 1,500 photos, about 30 voice memos, around a grand in lats spent on the entire enterprise, and as for the kilometers covered, it's impossible to count if you include the flight to Hanoi, over 7,000 km long.

Right off the bat, please don't take the story literally, because my tall tales are more like myth-making, as I always warn people. Prices and other reference points are given approximately: they'll change a hundred times anyway, and plus I didn't write them down. As for the events and their evaluation, it's all given through the prism of my imperfect consciousness. Usually, what people care about in trip reports anyway are emotions and impressions, not mathematical precision in the details.

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