Day 14: Hanoi

Last day...

Unfortunately, after spending two weeks in remote villages eating all sorts of local food without any problems, it seemed that a fancy dinner in Hanoi was too much for us and we both woke up a bit unwell. Which was doubly disappointing because we had been looking forward to taking advantage of the extensive buffet breakfast at the hotel.

Our hotel room view by day

We spent the morning walking down to the Old Quarter. The shops lining the streets seemed to follow a common theme - there was a street of toys and stuffed animals, a street of sunglasses and even a street that seemed to predominantly sell stationary. All the shops were tiny, with their displays spilling out onto the footpath (which was also crammed with parked scooters and people eating at food stalls). It was often easier to brave the traffic and walk on the road.

We visited Ngoc Son Temple, perched in the middle of the lake and dedicated to the giant turtles apparently living in the water. Inside were multiple alters, heavily decorated and crammed with offerings.

The weather was still pretty miserable (same constant, misty rain that had been falling for three weeks straight), so we decided to visit the Women's Museum (as suggested by the Brit). This was actually pretty good (partly due to the fact that it had very good English translations) and had displays covering everything from clothing, to women's role in war, to marriage and childbirth. It was interesting to now learn the background behind some of the things we had seen while biking.

I was still feeling the effects of last night's dinner, though, so we decided to make our way back to the hotel and pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon reading and resting. And instead of enjoying one last cultural experience in finding a food stall for dinner, we stayed put and ordered room service.

And that was pretty much the end of our holiday. We shared a shuttle to the airport the next morning with the Brit, then flew back home via Singapore.

Reflecting back on it all now, we both had an amazing experience. Biking is an excellent way to see a place - we really got to immerse ourselves in the landscape, and also interact much more closely with the local people. I think my highlight was the massive limestone mountains around Dong Van. I'm pretty sure Ryan's highlight is still that home-stay orange :-)

Day 13: Quan Lan to Hanoi

So much for sleeping-in - we had to set the alarm for 05:30 to meet our boat, which was scheduled to leave at 07:00. We enjoyed another slippery Tuktuk ride through the mud to get back to the dock and boarded our boat (which happened to have a large, dead stingray tied to the back deck).

Our tuktuk

Not our boat

Our boat - note the stingray hanging off the back

We were reunited with the van back on the mainland (and our luggage - which we had left behind after our guide told us that it was likely to be tied on the roof of the boat if there wasn't much space inside). Then it was a long drive back to Hanoi. The road was quite busy, and lined with houses (no more spectacular mountain scenery). Every road-side stall seemed to be selling pineapples, and we also passed quite a lot of beautiful bonsai trees. We had seen a few of these already - they tended to be quite large (around 1m high), but always beautifully sculptured (bonsais, not pineapples...)

We stopped for lunch at an art centre. The garden outside was filled with sculpted stone statues, and the inside with all sorts of art and crafts. Most of these were embroidered pictures which were made by disabled women - they were copies of paintings, and made of panels of solid silk-thread stitching (hard to describe, but imagine a lot of time and work). The larger ones took almost a year to complete. I chose a small one as a memento of our trip.

I think he's ticklish

Eventually, we made it back to Hanoi (still shrouded by misty rain). We stayed in the same hotel as our very first night, but this time in a much nicer room (which became promptly festooned with all our muddy biking gear which we had washed in the bathtub)(yes - an actual bathtub!).

Then went for a walk, primarily on a mission to satisfy a week-long craving for dairy products. We found a cafe that had menus in English and enjoyed a mango smoothie for Ryan, and an iced coffee with real, actual cream on top for me. It was only after we passed the cafe again walking back to the hotel that we discovered it was called "Tit Coffee"... And then also managed to walk right by the entrance to the hotel without realizing and got temporarily very confused and lost.

Our guide took us out for one last dinner. This time at quite a fancy restaurant in an old French-colonial-looking building. Not only did we enjoy dishes that included soft-shell crab and creme brulee, we also got to satisfy another craving for fresh fruit juice (which we hadn't seen since leaving the Eco Village at Pan Hou).

The view from our hotel room 

Ryan basking in the glow of the internet

Day 12: Quan Lan Island

Today was a planned rest day at the island resort. Most riding days we'd been getting up at 06:30 so we could start riding early, so today's sleep-in was a definite treat. We had bread and eggs for breakfast. When I requested condensed milk for my coffee, a man was promptly dispatched off to the village on his scooter to fetch some (I tried telling them that I didn't really need any, to no avail). In fact, the night before, requests for bottled water and beer at dinner time had the same effect (with our drinks materialising from off the back of a scooter 10 or 15min later).

It was another day of foggy/misty/cloudy weather but at least is wasn't raining. We spent the morning wandering along the island roads. At one point we passed a couple of old women walking the other way. They stopped and holding their hands out to Ryan, started talking excitedly in Vietnamese. We had no idea what they wanted, and it was only when Ryan (thinking they might be begging) put his hand out to make a gesture of refusal, that they grabbed his hands and it suddenly became clear that all they were after was a handshake.

We passed through a couple of small villages and ended up on the coast at an old loading dock. Some men sitting outside a nearby house invited us to sit with them (with calls of "I love you"), but we carried on to walk around the stony beach of the adjacent headland. The sea was completely obscured by mist, but the water was crystal clear, and I could imagine (with blue skies) why it would be a popular place to stay.

We returned to the resort for lunch. Afterwards, we were relaxing in a couple of swinging chairs in the garden, when a few locals turned up, then a few more and all of a sudden (after someone was sent off to turn on the generator) we found ourselves being serenaded (?!) with very loud and extremely bad karaoke. And it only deteriorated with each subsequent scooter-load of beer.

The noise eventually subsided, making it possible to head up to our room for a rest (unfortunately situated directly above the karaoke machine). Ryan went for another walk on the beach, accompanied by one of the resort dogs that faithfully followed him all the way out to the headland and back again. Then we rounded out the afternoon by watching the local boys and young men playing soccer on the beach (cheering on our guide who had decided to join in).

Day 11: Lang Son to Quan Lan Island

No more riding - instead today we started with a 4 hour van-ride to the coast. The misty rain continued and despite the interest of the ever-changing scenery, I couldn't help dozing off. I do remember passing a giant coal power plant with its chimney stacks disappearing into the clouds, and driving through the nearby city which was coated in muddy coal-dust.

We reached a small port town on the coast and went for a bit of a wander before lunch. The scenery was similar to the famous Halong Bay (which was a bit further south of us) - imagine limestone crags jutting out of clear green water under a bright blue sky. Or at least, it would have been if everything wasn't shrouded in grey mist...

The dock - our boat was similar to the second one back

Ryan had been looking forward to what had been advertised as a "jet boat" ride out to the island where we would spend the night. Maybe our guide had never seen a jet boat?? We instead boarded a long, low-roofed boat with a noisy diesel engine mounted on the back. I have no idea how the driver managed to safely negotiate the multitude of other craft and islands in the bay - at times the mist was so thick that the windows became covered in moisture and he had to stick his head out the front door to see.

On the "jet" boat

We dropped various other passengers and supplies at a few other island stops before alighting at Quan Lan. We then enjoyed a rather hairy Tuktuk ride along a very rutted, muddy, slippery road to the resort.

The island was quite a popular tourist destination with our resort and several other hotels clustered nearby to a white sandy beach. Except that tourist season was still another month away, and we turned out to be the only foreigners on the island and stayed in an otherwise deserted resort.

The beach was covered in drifts of seaweed and rubbish and the buildings along the shore (which I guess serve as bars and restaurants) were all but derelict. I suppose they have a massive cleanup prior to the influx of tourists. At least it was peaceful.

The beach

Apparently there has been an increasing demand from China for jellyfish, so more and more factories were sprouting up on nearby islands to catch and sell them. We saw a few jellyfish washed up on the beach - they were massive (1m across) and covered in brown spots. Apparently they can get much bigger than this. I'm not at all sure I would like to encounter one while swimming (yet another way that I'm convinced the ocean is out to kill me).

It may have been empty, but at least the resort was nice

  

Day 10: Cao Bang to Lang Son

Our itinerary for today started with "after breakfast we shuttle 15km out of town to avoid traffic". Our guide had other ideas, and after a breakfast of warm, crusty bread rolls with jam, we braved the streets on our bikes. It was certainly busy, but we all made it out of town without any fatalities.

It was, however, our last day of riding (and sixth day straight of pretty big rides) and none of us really felt like being in the saddle again. It didn't help that it was also raining - not very heavily, but enough to make the roads wet, muddy and slippery. Ryan was lucky that the muddy spray from his front tyre hit him in the chest, for (slightly shorter) me the muddy water hit me directly in the face. Needless to say, we very quickly became very muddy, and even more of a novelty to the locals we passed.

At our lunch stop, we got our bikes hosed down by a lady with a corner house that appeared to be set up as a car wash. I don't speak Vietnamese, but I'm pretty sure she wanted to hose me down as well. I managed to escape with an impromptu bath from a basin of cold water instead.

The last 20km of riding was rolling and fast (and thankfully a lot less muddy). We finished on an arbitrary hill once we had covered the planned 80km for the day. The Brit was the last to arrive and appeared down the road with an entourage of teenage girls pacing him on local bikes.

Done :-)

The Brit and his schoolgirl escort (who are all beating him up the hill at this point)

We loaded up into the van and drove the rest of the way into the city. This was the biggest city in the province and we stayed in the biggest hotel in the city. I can't imagine what the receptionists were thinking as our muddy and disheveled group tramped into their pristine white marble foyer. What I do remember, though, was how amazing the hot shower was that night :-)

One of the nicer hotels we stayed in

But the view out the window was typical Vietnam...

Day 9: Ba Be to Cao Bang

We were treated to pancakes for breakfast again today which we ate with bananas that our guide had hoarded away in the van. The guide and driver had a more traditional meal of fried rice with the host family. I think we got the better deal :-)

The riding started through jungle-covered mountains, which was different scenery to what we had encountered so far. I held a slim hope of seeing some interesting wildlife (monkeys), but no luck. Our guide told us that most of the wild animals have been killed over the years, although apparently there were still elephants and tigers in the central part of the country. Considering how deadly the buffalo mines were, I'd hate to ride through one from an elephant...

We gradually left the mountains behind and emerged into open farmland. Lots of people were out planting rice seedlings. The seedlings were first grown densely in little "nursery" patches, then planted out by hand into neat rows in the water-filled paddies. All the workers were women, and I don't know how they could manage to work bent over like that for hours on end. It was surprising that there weren't more hunch-backed old women around (although we certainly saw a few).

My back hurts just looking at them

Harvesting a "rice nursery" (actually a picture from a different day, but you get the idea)

 We stopped for lunch in a small town. Lunch stops were often the only part of the day where I could easily go to the bathroom - stopping by the side of the road was usually challenging because there always seemed to be people working within sight. The lunch stop facilities, however, weren't always very "appealing". Once I was directed to just squat in the open garden at the back of a house. Today I remember the particular challenge of trying to use a squat toilet while wearing tight bike shorts and slippery bike shoes and with protests from aching quads. The boys definitely had an advantage.

Our guide had started the day warning us of the 7km climb we would face after lunch. Even though every climb now felt measly compared the the 20km slog from a few days ago, this one still hurt. Partway up, we  encountered the scariest dogs of the trip. Pretty much every household we passed would have a dog, and most were pretty disinterested in us. Some seemed to be able to tell Westerner from local and would have a bit of a bark, but it was rare for us to be the targets of any real aggression. These dogs (about four of them), though, definitely objected to us riding past their house and pursued us with frenzied snarls and barking. Tired legs miraculously found another gear and, luckily, as they reached the imaginary boundary of their turf, they fell away.

It may not be steep, but it definitely goes up (and up, and up...)

We also had to contend with a few big trucks. Most of them were actually slower than us on the climbs as they would literally crawl along. The trick was not to get stuck behind one because passing on the downhill was always fun, but on the uphill? Not so much. It was also not uncommon to have big trucks come up behind us and start madly (and very loudly) honking. To begin with, we thought they were trying to tell us to get out of the way (on narrow roads where there often wasn't any further towards the edge that we could ride) - we soon realized, though, that most of the time they just wanted to say hello and the honking was to incite us to wave. Sigh.

The day ended with a ripper descent. We were faster than every other vehicle on the downhills and it was always fun to zip past a scooter and see the rider's astonished faces as they realized what they'd just been overtaken by. When the roads were a bit more level, we would sometimes keep pace with them and even had a few pseudo-conversations in broken English.

We took to the refuge of the van to negotiate the increasing traffic as we approached the city we were staying in that night. The hotel was relatively luxurious (by the standards of the last few days) - the foyer was tiled in marble and adorned with stuffed animals (the taxidermy kind v's the teenage-girl's-bedroom kind). We were also treated to a "soft" bed. Mattresses in Vietnam were made of either dense foam or compacted cotton and were universally hard (entering a hotel room and flopping gratefully onto the bed would result in a hard thud and possible bruising). We were getting used to it, but it was nice to sleep on something that had a little give for a change.

We filled in the time before dinner by going for a wander through the local market. This one was indoors, and despite being crowded and with narrow walkways, we found ourselves frequently dodging scooters. In fact a lot of business in Vietnam seemed heavily dependent on the ability to serve people on scooters (literally - as in they would ride up and make their purchase from the roadside without getting off). We should have tried it on our mountain bikes...

Meat market (nowhere on the trip did we see meat being refrigerated - I guess they eat it straight away??)

Selling sugar cane

These two cheeky monkeys just wanted their photo taken :-)

Day 8: Bac Me to Ba Be

We hitched a lift in the van out of town (avoiding a couple of big climbs), and took to our bikes in thick, misty cloud. This first descent of the day was pretty hairy - poor visibility, wet, slippery road and the temptation to ride fast. We were both now a bit wary of slippery descents after Ryan's fall a few days back, so we rode the brakes until we bottomed out of the cloud and the road gradually became drier.

It was another rolling ride today with lots of ups and downs, but only for a "short" 50km. One memorable climb was quite a steep pitch (surprisingly so for Vietnam) out of one town which we rode just as all the kids were finishing school (at midday). The crowds of kids all wanted waves and hellos as we puffed and panted our way to the top, trying to smile back and wave without falling off.

This one was shyer than most

Mum was watching closely from across the rice paddies

The reason the ride today was short was that we would spend the afternoon travelling by long boat to Ba Be lake. We boarded our first boat at the edge of a small village and chugged (slowly and very noisily) about 40 minutes to our lunch stop with our bikes on board. A couple of local kids also hitched a ride.

Not our boat...

Lunch was in a guesthouse by the riverside and featured home-made pork sausages (which I declined - the memory of fermented pork still strong...) and hot chips of all things. The host also produced another questionable-looking bottle of rice wine, this one containing some kind of leaves (can't remember what our guide said they were).

Dried fish for sale at our lunch stop

The one Vietnamese meal I take a photo of and there's a big bowl of chips front and centre...

After lunch, we took another longboat further up (?) the river to reach the lake. Our view was once again obscured a bit by misty cloud - we got vague impressions of steep-sided islands and jungle-covered mountains along the shore. Maybe it wasn't the iconic view of blue-green water studded with lush islands, but I liked the moodiness of the mist all the same.

The only other craft on the water that we were "fast" enough to overtake

We spent the night in another homestay. In fact, most houses in the town were set up as homestays. This was another stilted house which we shared with the host family. They had built an extension off their main living area for their guests which consisted of one large room with curtained-off alcoves built all around the sides (similar to the previous homestay but with walls between the alcoves).

The outside of our homestay

Kitchen inside

There was no electricity - apparently Vietnam depends mainly on hydro-electricity which becomes a bit unreliable towards the end of the dry season, so the small villages would take turns having their power cut to maintain the supply to the bigger cities. Once it got dark, our hosts started up their generator, and then (to our surprise) switched on their WiFi. Vietnam was a bit funny like that - the houses often looked quite run-down or ramshackle and it was easy to assume the people must be living in relative poverty. But every house, down to the tiniest shack, had a satellite dish somewhere on the exterior for television, most people had mobile phones and they were always clean and well-dressed.

As we wandered the village that afternoon, we came across large groups of French tourists (the first time we had seen other tourists for a while). The Brit took it as a challenge to see whether he could engage any of them in conversation (being of the opinion that they were too stuck up to talk to him). He had about a 50:50 success rate.

Local servo

Rice paddies built on the silted up backwaters of the lake

Despite our accommodation being very comfortable, I suffered through a sleepless night thanks to a mixed-up rooster next door that crowed continuously from midnight to dawn. Ryan, however, slept right through. Sigh.