Originally we wanted to follow parts of the Borders and Back-Roads tour from the excellent Vietnam Coracle. After some discussion yesterday we decided to take the road to Lao Cai and decide where exactly we’d want to go from there.
The road was a pretty good driving road for the most part with some excellent turns. The traffic was okay-ish but with the occasional truck or bus blocking our way. It was over pretty quickly though and we arrived at Lao Cai.
After some discussion over our breakfast Pho, we decided to ride to Viet Quang. Since we don’t have enough fresh clothes with us we can’t do the full tour. Also, doing the full tour would cost us at least 5 days from now on which would destroy any plans for Ha Long Bay.
We took a small detour over a bridge and through some local villages. In total it only cost us about 20 minutes of additional travel time and was worth every second of it. Narrow roads with local farmers and hundreds of small houses. A lot of them are growing cinnamon up here. The smell when they put the bark on the road side to dry is absolutely delicious.
I’d love to write something about the unexpectedly high quality roads in Vietnam at this point. However… Exactly at the border of the Ha Giang province, the road became an absolute catastrophe. Potholes Craters about 20 - 30 centimeters deep and over the full width of the street. For kilometers. After taking the first 30 minutes at slow speeds we realized that it’s not going to get any better. Thus we did the only reasonable thing. We gunned it. Driving over those roads at 40 is loads of fun - at least as long as it’s not your bike.
We arrived in Viet Quang in the early afternoon. After going back to check out the city (which was obviously dead because of the time) we went back into the hotel room. We left again for dinner at 7, which turned out to be too late. All the street food vendors were already gone and we had to eat just something we could still get… We should actually know this already, but it was never a problem yet. Most cities seem to still have some options at this time.
