Day 5:
The mattresses in Vietnam is not really what you are use to. They are indeed as thick as those thin camping mattresses you get here. So after a long day in the saddle your aching body doesn’t get a lot of rest in the evening. You wake up with sore shoulder blades and hips, just to turn around and punish your other side for a while. Anyway, we were awake at about 6:30am or so and decided to hit the road as we now understood the task that lay ahead.
Camp checking one more time if he can find his mobile at the cafe across the street.
While camp was packing his bike I took a couple of pictures in front of our hotel.
This shows you how big this village is.
Just as we were about to leave, the owner and the guys from the previous night invited us for breakfast. When I saw the breakfast I was afraid my stomach would be able to handle it, but purely out of respect we decided to sit down and join them. This is the leftovers from their Tet dinner (much like the leftovers from your family Christmas dinner).
I struggled with it and just chowed as many noodles as I could to get a lining for the day, this while the host is trying to put the weird stuff in my bowl. They only meant well, but I didn’t want to be disrespectful so ate what I could, or bits of it. Then the boys broke out the Rice Wine again, which I just had to decline. Camp had one or two after a lot of protest just to get the guys to calm down and let us off. We weren’t really sure how far we had to ride for the day, but thought to just hit it and see how far we can get.
Quick break at a river somewhere along the road.
It is seriously peaceful here in the country side...
The road got worst at first, but then a lot better.
We started climbing at quite a rapid pace and the turns started to follow shortly after each other. What a great pass!! Spot Camp in this photo
Twisties and Turnies heaven I tell you!!! And the Minsks were really behaving themselves well. At some stages you had to drop all the way down to 1st gear, but there was nothing that these beasts couldn’t tackle head on!
We kept on climbing and climbing up the pass and just as you thought you have hit the summit there would be another climb around the corner waiting for you. We realised the people coming from the opposite direction had rain gear on and were rather wet. A couple of turns later and we hit the cloud that was resting against the mountain. Time to stop and get the rain gear out.
Still climbing up the at the speed of smell, dodging bikes and the odd car coming straight for you as there isn’t really a right and left lane in the country side, especially not on the passes.
We reached the summit eventually and started descending quickly. Immediately the weather changed for the better on the other side of the mountain and you could see the faces of the people coming from the opposite direction, wondering why we have got rain gear on...they will soon find out.
After about another 45min or so descending, we stumbled upon this little restaurant in the middle of nowhere. I am serious if I say this was in the middle of nowhere as we didn’t see any other building for about 90min before or after we saw this one. What luck, just in time for coffee time and to answer nature’s call.
After our 20min rest we were back on the road and what splendid scenery was about to be discovered!!
Women doing the washing in the river
We were greeted by this mud slide around the next corner and had to make use of the detour that was created by the locals.
Seriously some of the best riding that I have done in my live, without a doubt!!
We crossed this seriously high bridge and on the other side the road split in two. I wasn’t expecting this, so realised we were actually lost and had no clue where we were. I checked out the only road sign nearby and it was blank. When Camp arrived we had a look at the map and thought of only one place where we could be... The truck that approached us from the direction that we came from confirmed our position for us. We were 5km away from the Chinese border!! Brilliant!! Definitely time to take a break and take in the view from the river bank.
And those mountains that you see there is part of a little country they call China
We had a proper laugh at ourselves and got back onto the bikes to push on. This picture was taken in one of the villages that we passed through. You do get a sense of Communism in Vietnam. The people live in small little huts (outside the villages) and small brick houses inside the village. Every time you see a huge building it belongs to government.
Just cruising along and enjoying the ride
Now this was fascinating... What these guys are doing is generating electricity! By forcing the water down the bamboo, onto the small wheel that rotates at the speed of hell, the cable you see here transfers the electricity that is being generated across the street to a hut. Now that is what I can innovation!!
We were now travelling on the opposite side of the valley and could see the road that we came with. Some more nice twisties and turnies.
Photos don’t really do justice to this beautiful country
I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when I saw this sign, so I stopped to get a photo with it. Something told me things might get a bit tougher going forward...
One of the many Tet decorations hanging in a village that we briefly passed through. From here on out we were climbing again.
By now we where use to our bikes and knew exactly how they handled. There was much less traffic on the roads seeing as we were a bit in the middle of nowhere. Camp was leading for a while and as he was taking a corner a scooter from the other side was cutting the corner and the result was a head on head accident. The scooter had three girls on it (without helmets) and after we picked up their bike I quickly took out the camera.
The one girl kept lying in the road and we could see she struggled to get up, so naturally we started worrying a bit. After getting everyone out of the middle of the road we assessed the damage. It was only then that we saw the one girl was a physical disabled person, which made Camp feel like a total twatwaffle. I saw the whole thing happened and kept on telling Camp that it wasn’t his fault, but a piece of their scooter had broken off so Camp started negotiating before we drew a crowd. We confirmed that everyone was ok, including this girl, so Camp gave them some cash for the bike and we carried on.
It was only about 5km later that I could catch up with Camp next to a river as he was rattled after the incident. Quick smoke break next to the road while we were going through the whole event again. The weather was starting to turn for the worst, so it was time to hit the road again.
The next 2 hours was in such rain that we didn’t stop once, needless to say no photos were taken. We arrived in this very small village where there was a lady with a fire burning outside her house. We pulled over like drowning rats dripping from our jocks, asking her if she had some coffee for us. Two coffees later and a bit defrosted from sitting next to the fire we carried on.
Roughly an hour or more later we rode into a one horse town just before the sun was setting. Decided we should get some fuel somewhere, some food as we haven’t eaten all day and hopefully a place to stay for the night. We stopped next to some locals next to the road asking where we can find some fuel or accommodation. Out of nowhere one of the guys said “sprechen Sie Deutsch?”. I couldn’t believe our luck as both Camp and I had German in school. This guy sorted us out with fuel, accommodation, dinner and directions for the next day. He told us that he worked in Germany for 30 years as a mechanic and was now back in Vietnam. His german was a bit broken, but no more than ours. This is the room we got for the night where we decided to open the bottle of bourbon that Camp brought along from Ho Chi Ming city. Hopefully our clothes will be a bit drier by tomorrow morning... Our bodies took some strain today and I think we were out cold around 8pm that evening seeing as the whole town was closed for Tet.
Topic: Vietnam on a Russian Minsk (Read 10709 times)
