March 18 - Getting Dirty

So, after the drizzle of the prior day, I had my first rain day (yeah, I've had a rain "experience" on the third night, but not during riding) of my trip.

After a good breakfast, I went for a walk in town, trying to desperately find someone that spoke English. Not even in the Royal Palace was the reception able to answer the question if there was a smaller road leading towards Halong Bay, so I tried the reception of a few other hotels - without much luck. At a small hotel, a big mapbook of Vietnam appeared, I tried to buy it, but it wasn't for sale. Yeah, so much for my preparation for this trip, I had no map. As of then, I had not realized that Google Maps had an offline functionality - you can download about 100 MB of a certain area - this came a few days later.

It wasn't raining too hard, but rather steady. You see, as I failed to find minor roads, I was on major ones, these being shared with buses, trucks, cars, motorbikes - so it wasn't all too tidy. In fact, there was a lot of sludge, filth and dirt that had gotten wet, especially on the side of the road, where I was riding. Soon the frame, the wheels and my bags were covered with a thick layer of mud - it wasn't all too pleasant. Even less pleasant was the urban sprawl - this part of Vietnam had houses, offices, shops and stores, car dealerships for miles and miles and miles - reaching far outside the towns, so that there was hardly any nature to be seen. What I did see was plenty of weddings - large tents set up in front of restaurants or homes, with people celebrating away.

A pretty young wife

She looks a bit unhappy

The nature that did show up between the urban sprawl was pretty, as usual, there were flooded rice fields.

Rice for my dinner

...and then some more...

The rain did stop at one time and now I was riding through Thai Nguyen, the town where I stayed on my first biking day. In fact, I rode past Tommy's house (who walked me that evening and helped me with the bike mechanics in Ha Giang), he was unfortunately not at home. On my first visit there, I thought the town was rather small, this time I had realized it is a large city, with over 300,000 inhabitants, it took me close to thirty minutes to ride through it.

It was getting dark - but I went on and did not stop till reaching Bac Giang, having ridden some 140 kilometers that day. The first sight was a dentist, right next to the road, you could see the patient being worked on.

Dentist

I then smelt some delicious: it was BBQ restaurant on the side of the road, full with young folks. I guess in Europe we would call this a "Mongolian grill", in Vietnam it is referred to as "Korean grill" - you get a basket full of charcoal, a grill plate and then you pick the types of meat you'd like. No one spoke English, so I had no idea about the size of the portion (neither the price), so I picked a beef, a chicken and a port dish. It was plenty for a small army - but having done close to 300 kilometers in the past two days, I succeeded at finishing close to everything - I gave some of my leftovers to some young girls sitting next to me. Next to the meat, they also serve different kinds of vegetables and garlic bread. Yummy!

Food for a smaller village...

Why did I eat this much...?

Happy life of Vietnamese youngsters

After pampering myself with food, I again decided to stay at a nice place, the Muong Thanh Grand Hotel, one of the finest places in town, they had a deluxe room for about Eur 27. I was so dirty, that the watchman shouted at me as I rolled into the property and ran after me. He was a bit surprised to hear that I had a reservation there. The fine guests in the lobby looked suspiciously, too, but I could not care less. Soon, I was in my spacious room, cleaning up and getting ready for a good night's sleep.