Three men and a coffin, a refrigerator and a 100 kg pig in a bamboo cage

are but a few of the things spotted on the backs of motorcycles during a 4 day motorcycle tour we took through the central highlands of Vietnam on the backs of the rides of a couple of Nha Trang 'Easyriders.'

In country where there are 30 motorcycles for every car (Saigon alone has 5 million motorcycles), two wheels is the way everything gets moved. Other freight spotted on the backs of 'motos': a dozen live ducks hanging from their feet, 10 boxes of Budweiser beer totalling 240 bottles, a queen sized mattress folded in half, 60 litres of water (I know because I drew 30 litres out of a well for the driver), two dozen durian fruits, several hundred bananas, a 50 litre bottle of compressed natural gas (yikes!) and even worse, 50 litres of petrol, a couple of dozen coconuts in massive panniers, a 4-inch wide giant bandsaw blade slung across a rider's shoulder, various families of five with two kids wedged between the parents and the baby holding the handle bars, two sheets of plate glass 1.5 metres by half a metre held by a passenger, a freshly born calf in a wire cage, a half dozen five metre long pieces of rebar over a driver's shoulder, a cage crammed with piglets, 10 metres of air conditioner duct, bundles of giant bamboo, 200 pairs of trousers folded and stacked, a cubic metre of firewood and a glass-fronted wood credenza.

Ok, to be fair the motorcycle with the coffin and undertakers did have three wheels and the credenza driver was pedalling...

2.9 metres is the high water mark

on the walls of the riverside cafes of the UNESCO World Heritage city of Hoi An http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoi_An in central Vietnam from the tidal surge of the 30 Sept 2009 typhoon. Possibly the highest ever recorded. A beautiful place and once the most important trading port in Vietnam and known for its historic Chinese trade association halls, these days this town is in trouble. Only 4 km up river from the South China Sea and with minor street flooding at every high tide, it reminds me of Chiswick on the Thames in west London. Except unlike London there's no flood barrier in Hoi An and given the vast flat estuary surrounding it, little likelihood of one being possible if even remotely affordable. With polar cap ice melt and thermal expansion of the oceans, by IPCC www.ipcc.ch/ reckoning on a good day diners will be up to their knees by 2050. When the ever more volatile typhoons of a warmer era start rolling in this historic town could well be resigned to history.

With a golden statue of 'Uncle Ho' looking on, the guide slid back the display case cover and handed me an AK-47

Safety first. I popped out the magazine and slid back the bolt to make sure it's unloaded before handing it to Karen. Why don't they let you do this at the British Museum?

A few days ago were were in the so-called 'Demilitarized Zone' or DMZ which was the heavily fortified border between North and South Vietnam from 1954 until 1975 along the Ben Hai River. Its now a rice growing area strewn with Vietnamese war graves and the odd burned out shell of a US tank. This was a US 'Free Fire Zone' so everything standing is post-1975. There aren't many sights here, simply locations of death and destruction including Khe Sanh Combat Base, the Rock Pile and the human meat grinder known as Hamburger Hill.

Buried beneath the overgrown jumble of bomb craters from B52 heavy ordinance is Vinh Moc, the only remaining tunnel complex beneath the DMZ of the many dozens built by villagers and the Viet Cong. Twenty-three metres underground in the low unsupported earth tunnels, where several hundreds lived, dozens of babies were born and uncounted surguries executed in the makeshift hospital as napalm and 500 lb bombs rained down, is a sobering experience.

She said take 1000mg of Amoxicillin twice daily and and the juice of two coconuts

So the other night I was laying in a Lao hospital bed on a Sunday night watching a lizard eat insects off the wall near the light and waiting for the results of a bood test for Malaria and Dengue Fever. As luck would have it I had neither and my 8 day headache and 2 day fever were chalked up to a random infection and the muscle spasms in my legs to dehydration [partially from the aftermath of a dodgy tuna sandwich] and low potassium from sweating while hiking. 270,000 kip ($40 US) later [it being Sunday night and all so double the regular rate] and the solution was evident - a prescription for Amoxicillan, 5 packets of World Health Organization hydration salts and direction from the doctor to drink the juice of two coconuts every day as cocunuts are high in potassium. Problem solved.

Laos and the World Food Programme

A few weeks ago we were in in Luang Namtha in Northern Laos, a town strangely familiar with its dusty, empty main road, reminicent of say Vulcan, Alberta yet completely alien. The people here are wee in the sense that they are exactly that - 5 feet tall and 50 kilos for the men. Tucked away on a side street is a small World Food Programme (WFP) compound. A week later we were in Luang Prabang, a few hundred kilometres to the south and as we stepped out of our guest house there was a WFP truck as parked out front. A quick chat with the two WFP staff revealed that they are surveying the food security of Laos in the aftermath of the fifth typhoon to sweep in from Vietnam and the South China Sea in 7 weeks.

This country is poor with 80 percent of people living in rural areas in bamboo or wood huts and only a failed rice harvest away from severe hunger and the need for WFP food distribution. Two thirds of the population lives under the threat of food insecurity and half of children under 5 are malnurished. To cap it off a sizeable part of eastern Laos is unfarmable because of an estimated 30 million cluster bombs and other bits of unexploded ordinance (UXOs) strewn across the countryside courtesy of 2 millions tonnes of bombs dropped in 580,000 bombing raids by the US over a 9 year period during the Vietnam War. Shame Laos was 'neutral.'

Check out the WFP and the situation in Laos

http://www.wfp.org/countries/laos