Soggy soggy bottom!
Today we woke up to rain. Overnight rain and morning rain. Also a power cut. Which happened throughout the night several times, twice setting off the doorbell to the room. Most inconvenient, and not condusive to a solid nights sleep.Still, I got about 8 hours in total, on a more comfortable bed than previous nights.
Accommodation on the whole is pretty basic, with electric cables taped together or just hanging out of holes in the wall, fridges dirty, fixtures and fittings mildly falling apart and bathrooms in need of a good bleach! Luckily we aren't spending much time in them, so as long as we sleep, its all fine!
It seems that many of the places we are visiting haven't seen foreign tourists for over two years, understandably, so we are definately an attraction, and hopefully the start of a gradual return to tourism for some of these places. However like many places, local, i.e. Vietnamese tourists have flourished.
Anyway, breakfast was in a dark room (still no power) with no-one else there, and the staff somehow made us a couple of fried eggs each and a bread roll, (apparently called a banh mi) and quite delicous coffee made by our guide, with milk that wasn't condensed milk.
We also realised we left our Twinings Everyday tea at yesterdays hotel. The tea saga clearly had a long-lasting impact, and will have a detrimental effect on the rest of the trip! Utter distaster 😊
We left the hotel at 10am, in drizzle. Cycled the entire day on the Ho Chi Minh highway, stopping every 33k or so for food & drink. It rained. And it rained. And then it rained a bit heavier, and a bit lighter, and a bit heavier. It stopped for perhaps 20% of the day. We were totally and utterly soaked right through. We were also covered in sand and dirt. My poor bike .........😢
The scenery was stunning jungle and villages.
After the first pretty flat 2.5 hours the road started to climb into the mountains and into the cloudes for the remaining 3.5 hours..Undulating hills at first then a steady upwards incline for about 40k, before a final 10k push to the top. IN fact that last 10k was 6K gentle incline then 4k of very very steep incline, which after 146K was an effort!
It was mostly my back that was killing me after such a long time on the bike. Except, don't get me started on the nappy rash!! I can't remember the last time I rode for 6 hours and I was grateful for the breaks every 30k to stretch out and ease it off.
The scenery was breathtaking - basically hills, jungle, vast lush greenery. We passed lots of cows in and around the road, chickens, dogs (who were incredibly quiet and non-barking) grapefruit and tea plantations, and more random drivers.
There is clearly a system to the roads here, which is like nothing in the Western world, but is completely chaotic. It mostly involves honking your horn to let others know of your presence. So scooters coming from a side road don't bother waiting, they just go ahead and wait to be honked at. And every single driver passing us honked at us to let us know they were coming. This gave some comfort to know they were there - they passed very quickly and close, but the thing with the scooters and joining a lane increased our biking stress levels no end. Luckily the roads in the last 2 days have been pretty quiet, with small amounts of traffic.
We got back to the hotel for 630pm, to check in, get a laundry wash sent to the hotel and have a shower before dinner.
It's the longest shower I have ever had. I just couldnt get the dirt and grime off my legs!
No comments:
Post a Comment