Lao Cai... Will leg 3 make it to the border today?

Well, we are in a hotel lobby about 200m away from the border. Leg 3 have about 130km's left to the border and still don't know if they will make it across with the cars.

We have only just got up, and everyone is still in a bit of a daize after the minibus trip yesterday. You wouldn't think that 300km or so would be quite so difficult. The mercedes sprinter van picked us up from hanoi at 3pm. We made good progress, ducking and diving in and out of the traffic. By 6pm we were going much slower up hills, where larger trucks had been carving up the mud road - although that was interspersed with tarmac sections. 8pm we stopped at a road side for some dinner. It took a while to figure out how to order, but with a lot of hand gestures (and the help of a local guy having some tea who spoke english).
I had beef and noddles, and others had the same or chicken rice. Tummy seems fine today, so all is well.

Back in the minibus, and everyone was drifting in and out of sleep past midnight, although the roads made it difficult to sleep. We came across a truck that had broken down, and drivers from the trucks further up the road were throwing rocks in to the mud ditch on the side of the road to make room to drive around it (it had stopped in the middle of the road, and had a load of rocks behind the rear wheels).
We squeezed past, but had to wait for the trucks coming the other way to negotiate their way round as they were two abreast up the road, with some drivers parked and asleep on the verge.

About 21km's from Lao Cai where we were aiming for, the driver fell asleep and drove in to the mud ditch at the side of the road. I was just on the edge of sleep but saw us going, and held on to the seat in front. A scraping sound and we came to a halt.
Everyone was awake - the driver was pretty quite (went out for a fag) and it didn't help that he didn't speak english, and we didn't speak vietnamese. The left hand side was at the top of the ditch, and the right was lent in to the ditch.
We all bailed out - had a look at the vehicle - tyres were good, clearance underneath, so we got the driver back in and signaled for him to drive forward with half the team rocking the back of the sprinter van. Unfortunately the driver was not particularly adept at off road driving and had full lock on and was flooring it (a mud mound under the front bumper stopped him and the front slid back in the the ditch.
After a few more goes, some wooden sticks at the side of the road came in handy to reprofile the mud at the front, and reversing up, and hand gestures to hold the van relatively straight rather than on full lock saw the van out of the mud.
Everyone bundled back in, a little more muddy than before. Malcolm's opinion was that the adrenaline would keep the driver awake for the last 21km and a few hundred meters down the road, the road became tarmac dual carriageway.

Will have to tell leg 3 to keep the driver awake on their trip back to Hanoi.

Arrived in Lao Cai at 4am, and crashed in to the rooms at Binh Wing. Finally got up after being told to vacate the room by 12.
Had a lolly pop for breakfast, and considering lunch now.

Leg 3 will be tight for getting to the border before it shuts (china are 1 hour ahead), so we will wait to see if they get there in time).
It would be nice to get some more shut eye tonight... the noises the room/traffic made last night didn't manage to keep me up, but I was pretty tired.