We rode away from the town into cloud once again, which persisted as we descended down a dirt road. Near the top, we could barely see 20m ahead, but as we dropped down off the mountain the mist gradually cleared to reveal views of the terraces below. The road itself was great until we got to the part of it that was still being upgraded. The surface went abruptly from smooth, fast, hard-packed dirt to long sections covered with chunks of jagged stone. Ryan and I both managed to bump our way down without losing any skin, the Brit and our guide, however, elected to walk.
My teeth still hurt just thinking about it
We cruised along the rolling roads of the valley floor before stopping in a local town for lunch. Most of our meals consisted of an assortment of communal dishes which we all shared. There would usually be some kind of broth or spring rolls, a couple of vegetable dishes (like pumpkin-vine leaves, cabbage or grated kohlrabi), a tofu dish, a couple of meat dishes (most often beef or pork), loads of rice and little dishes of fish and chilli sauce for dipping. And usually nothing but chopsticks to eat it with. The highlight today was a plate of small fresh-water shrimp which had been fried and we ate whole (tasted like prawn chips).
We started the afternoon riding alongside the river (so nice and flat). All along the roadside were thin sheets of plywood laid out for drying, or stacked up ready to transport.
Unfortunately, the road eventually left the river and started to climb. I think we were being eased into the riding gently, because this climb was nice and gradual (although it did go on a long way)(which we were learning to be the nature of Vietnamese roads). The technicality of the ride was increased somewhat, though, by having to dodge the occasional buffalo and the not-so-occasional buffalo mine (lets just say that a buffalo's waste is proportionate to the animal's overall size and that riding through one of those things is a really bad idea). And then we were rewarded with a ripper downhill on the other side :-)
We finished by riding through a few small villages, which gave us our first real taste of how friendly the local people were - with everyone smiling and waving and calling out hello (there was very little English spoken in the areas we visited, but everyone still knew the word "hello"). After riding about 90km for the day we were reunited with the van and drove the rest of the way to the Pan Hou resort.
One last climb - you can see the road we came up on the mid-right of the picture
This place was seriously nice. It was accessed via a suspension bridge over the river and consisted of multiple thatched cottages nestled within beautiful terraced ponds and gardens. We were a little startled at one point, though, to come across a pony peacefully nibbling the grass along one of the walkways. We were also starting to get the hang of Vietnamese showers - usually a fairly "normal"-appearing bathroom otherwise with a shower-head attached randomly to one wall somewhere. Showering would therefore result in pretty much everything in the room getting wet. We soon learned to leave all clothes/towels/shoes outside and got in the habit of drying off the toilet once we were done. At least the water was hot.
The food at the resort was also excellent. We didn't know it at the time, but this would be the last place that we would have fresh fruit juice to drink - we were too busy enjoying banana pancakes to think about it :-) After the meal, our driver produced a questionable-looking unlabeled water-bottle (apparently the vessel of choice for home-brewed rice wine). We both declined, but the Brit crumbled under the pressure from the guide and driver (who both took tiny sips as he downed his shot). We were also learning that these home brews usually had some kind of "special" ingredient which would be soaked or infused into the wine and it was a fun game inquiring of its nature after the Brit had consumed the contents - this particular brew was laced with opium poppy.
Two maps from Endomondo - one from the morning and the other after lunch.
No comments:
Post a Comment