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@GideonPARANOID
Just about recovered from the dreadful lurgy I caught on the way back from Vietnam, so about time to write a bit of a report.
As before with Croatia, Turkiyë & Tenerife, the route was mainly down to me. Planning for Vietnam was pretty hard, as there wasn't much data at all on what the roads were like or what facilities there were. With that in mind, we agreed that a dynamic plan was the best approach, & to treat the planned route as a rough outline, making adjustments on the fly as & when we felt appropriate. The only non-negotiable was to ride the Ma Pi Leng pass.
The original route & what we ended up doing.
In the first few minutes of riding we realised that Komoot's tendency to prefer the smallest possible roads was going to be a bit of a hinderance. While originally intimidating, the main roads were fine to ride - ou quickly got used to million mopeds, odd truck & non-stop beeping. Plus the road surface was very good, much better than back home really.
On the beeping, it seems that the beep in Vietnam means here I come!. Nobody ever looked behind them when they made any sort of move on the road, guess they just listened out for the horn. Didn't see a single person shoulder-check on pulling out of a junction, & if turning across a lane they'll often ride on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic until they move across. It's a different sort of system if you can call it that, & no doubt it's been written (or filmed
) about to no end so while I could write about it for ages I won't bore any longer. The cliche of it's mad but it does work stands true though.
On our second day we diverged from our planned route to give ourselves the best change of finding somewhere to stay. It also meant pushing on a bit further than originally intended for two reasons:
We did almost a hundred miles on our third day to get the miles in the bank for when we hit the mountains. The flatlands were mainly taken up with rice paddies; in the hills - tea; & in the mountains - corn on every available bit of land. The terrain was either pan flat or egg-shaped mountains, which didn't seem to really form into identifiable valleys, the landscape was nothing like I've ever seen before.
We met the mountains proper at Ha Giang, which is apparently some sort of Mecca for gap-yah sorts. Had no idea this was a thing, & we later found out that a three-day, all-inclusive moped trip from Hanoi cost about 100USD, so no wonder it was so busy with tourists being shepherded around on the back of bikes. Have to admit, it took a bit out of the awe of the landscape, getting buzzed by such huge groups of bikes while climbing, but they did make for a good target on a descent. As much as I hate Sweet Caroline, I did take some amusement out of the sheer absurdity of it being screamed at me by a bunch of drunk Brits on the top of a mountain on the other side of the world.
We were lucky that our route didn't coincide with the tourist loop for all of the mountains, & when we reached Ma Pi Leng pass late on our fourth day, we had it all to ourselves. Our original research told us that it was the highest road in Vietnam (it wasn't), but that didn't matter, it was stunning. A vast limestone landscape with the road crazily cut into the side of the mountain, made the Verdon Gorge look small.
Tune in next week for chapter two!
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