Every guide book to Vietnam says that Route Six north out of Sonla till Lai Chau is one of the most beautiful roads in the world. This is the kind of description that has always made me laugh since beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Once we were on another one of those mythical roads, the Black Sea road in Turkey and it was so foggy that we could barely see the asphalt! An entire day driving in pea soup until at one moment the fog cleared out to sea and we were able to get a glimpse of the spontaneous mountain-scape.

But we got lucky while on Route Six and the sun shone with fierce life, becoming an important actor in our pleasure.

For lovers of history we must admit that we did not turn left at Tuan Giao and so we did not visit Dien Bien Phu, site of the French defeat against Uncle Ho’s forces in 1954. Instead we continued up the mountain and down it again.

Here is where you can see that I was born in a flat land. Ontario has no mountains and even though I have driven East of Eden half way around the world, I am still a Toronto driver at heart. Coming down the mountain side and overly concerned with the economy of petrol I slide East of Eden into neutral and let her glide down using only the brakes to slow us down. I must admit I never liked using the motor as a brake, but this time it almost got us killed. The Range Rover has a hydraulic braking system which does heat up if you abuse it. Strangely enough, this has never happened to us and our brakes have never failed. But coming down that mountain side and bending into a curve I pushed my foot down on the brakes and nothing happened. Well, something did happen: we picked up speed! I looked down to make sure I had my foot on the right pedal and sure enough – I was braking into emptiness!

The situation then: going down a mountain in North West Vietnam. Three people in the car. The road turns like a jack-knife and we are going faster all the time. The truth of the matter is, I had no time to panic because just then the miracle happened and the road lifted just a little. Not much, but just enough to slow the car down so I could apply the hand brake and down shift to bring her to a halt.

All was well that ended well. We let the whole system cool down for an hour and Marco screamed at me and called me all kinds of names for not using the motor as a brake and we were on our way.