BBC Top Gear Vietnam
Special - Season 12 Episode 8
The
journey began at the heart of Saigon where the three presenters
were each given shoeboxes full of 15 million Vietnamese
dong to buy vehicles. At first ecstatic about the seemingly
vast amount of money they were given by the producers
this time, they soon realised that it was not enough to
buy a car (James May discovered that a standard Fiat 500
cost VND560 million or GB£22,000 / US$31,700, their
15 million only equalled GB£600 / US$1,000). As
a last resort, all three, much to Clarkson's dismay, decided
to buy motorbikes. Hammond bought a Russian-built 125cc
two-stroke Minsk, May a 50cc four-stroke Honda Cub and
Clarkson, who claimed to have never ridden before and
knew little about motorbikes, purchased a green Piaggio
Vespa.[2] (Clarkson had in fact been filmed riding a moped
in Vietnam for an episode of Jeremy Clarkson's Motorworld,
1995.)[4] Their route first took them to the mountain
town of Ðà Lat where they spent the night drinking
Vietnamese beer (Bia Saigon Export), eating local cuisine
made from snake meat and taking shots of vodka mixed with
the snake's blood and bile.
The next morning, Hammond was shown his
flattened motorcycle helmet, which had been crushed by
May and Clarkson as a result of the previous evening's
libations and replaced with a new pink one. Shortly after,
they set off for their next stop, the city of Nha Trang.
Along the way, the trio encountered freezing torrential
rain and other calamities, with May running out of fuel
and Hammond's clutch cable snapping.
Constant
breakdowns caused a problem for the two-stroke pair of
machines and, due to Hammond's clutch cable and an earlier
breakdown of Clarkson's Vespa, the producers were prompted
to stop footing the bill for their mounting repairs and
punish the presenters instead by making them complete
the voyage in a vehicle they all despised, should they
break down (a function served by the Volkswagen Beetle
in the Botswana Special in season 10). The vehicle was
a Honda Chaly (powered by a Cub engine) that had been
modified to look like an American chopper bike, painted
and flanked in a Stars and Stripes livery (similar to
the bike seen in the film Easy Rider) and fitted with
an iPod audio system continuously playing Bruce Springsteen's
"Born in the USA". The presenters contended
that riding the bike would be inappropriate because memories
of the Vietnam War were still ripe among the local populace.
In
Nha Trang, Clarkson unveiled a scale model of a Spanish
galleon: a present to Hammond in an effort to make his
co-presenter's journey as unpleasant and cumbersome as
his own. They resumed the road trip by taking a day-and-a-half
passing through Tuy Hòa, Qui Nhon, Quang Ngãi,
Tam Ka and Ðà Nang to stop for an overnight
stay in Hoi An (described by Clarkson as "Vietnam's
Savile Row"). During this stay they purchased bespoke
new clothes, relaxed on the beach and enjoyed a short
break from their various problems. In the morning, they
continued their journey to Hue through the Hai Vân
Mountain Pass, which Clarkson praised as "...a deserted
ribbon of perfection — one of the best coast roads in
the world". Beforehand, Hammond and Clarkson stopped
at a marble sculptor to procure May's gift: a small, but
heavy, statue of a ballet dancer.
Mid-way through the pass, Hammond and May
exacted their revenge by unveiling to Clarkson his souvenir:
a bulky painting. In Hue, Clarkson and May spent the evening
vandalising Hammond's Minsk by spray-painting it bright
pink as he repaired his model ship, which had already
suffered heavy abuse, in the hotel's business centre.
The next day, they entered North Vietnam through Ðông
Hà after spending the morning completing the challenge
of securing licences, destroying May's gift, and briefly
visiting the bullet-torn Citadel of Hue (one of the major
casualties during the conflict). However, around lunch
it was decided that the team needed to "cheat"
after Clarkson calculated that they would not be able
to make it to their final destination in the allotted
time.
So
by nightfall, the trio boarded an overnight train to Ha
Long, a 13-hour journey, bypassing Vinh, Thanh Hóa
and Nam Ðinh all together. To kill time in the train
each presenter tried to "fix" the damage accumulated
by the other's gift. Hammond, with his fine arts background,
tried to refurbish Clarkson's, which had been ripped by
the Vespa's spare wheel; Clarkson in turn tried to superglue
May's sculpture back together while May transformed the
galleon into a Chinese junk. The team arrived two days
early but, as it turned out, they had boarded the wrong
train and had disembarked in Hanoi (Hà Noi), 79.49
mi (127.93 km) to the west of their intended destination.
Yet again they made a final push to Ha Long,
getting confused and lost along the way. The Minsk broke
down again and the boat's prow snapped when the bike fell
over as Hammond tried to mend his vehicle. Clarkson, meanwhile,
rode on, proclaiming, "I am now boldly going where
no American has been before," before falling over
and scraping his right arm and elbow against the road.
He finally concluded of two-wheel motoring, "I've
always said to my children that if they buy a bike I will
burn it and if they replace it with another one I shall
burn that too. Now, however, if they buy a bike I will
completely understand — and then I'll burn it." By
dusk, however, they had covered the distance and entered
the city, only to discover that their ordeal wasn't over
and that they had yet another challenge: to navigate the
maze of 1,969 limestone islets in Ha Long Bay and get
to Ba Hàng Bar, located in a cove somewhere in
the waters.
After converting their bikes to be seaworthy,
they crossed the bay. May capsized early, having to be
pulled back to shore to repair. Hammond and Clarkson,
meanwhile, got lost and found themselves stuck at the
mouth of a cave. Eventually, Clarkson reached the Bar
first, Hammond second (after his steering had failed),
and May joined them by swimming from where his "bike-ski"
had disintegrated and capsized for the second time.
Both Jeremy's Vespa and the Stars and Stripes
Honda Chaly are on display at Saigon Scooter Centre
Additional Links :
Jeremy Clarkson Looks Awkward on a Vespa
- http://www.autoevolution.com/news/jeremy-clarkson-looks-awkward-on-a-vespa-1500.html
Mopeds in Vietnam - Jeremy Clarkson's Motorworld 10/1/1995
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaP353v8JWY
Top Gear to shift down a gear - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1102498/Top-Gear-shift-gear-Clarkson-hit-credit-crunch.html
