Day Two had inauspicious beginnings. My bike failed me as I attempted to get over the first bridge. Right crank. Rear derailleur. Who knows. Under any kind of strain, I was spinning in thin air. I was gutted, as I was keen for action shots of Kylie traversing the footbridge that took us out of the lodgings. It was narrow, long and uninviting broken concrete, requiring precision to avoid an early swim. Fun was to be had, but nursing my bike took priority over any capturing of the moment. Additionally, typhoon rains had settled in which meant a delayed start to the ride proper. 60 kms was replanned to 45 whilst we sat in an abandoned service station, to the untrained eye at least, waiting for the intensity of the rain to ease. The bonus of local guides is that such unappealing locations become hidden gems. This one served the best Vietnamese coffee that I had for the whole trip. After an hour and half, a bike change and procurement of Teletubby level protection, we headed off, deciding that a better moment wasn’t going to materialize. Come rain or come shine, we were doing this!
Today had a different flavour than yesterday. Rice fields and banana trees were abundant. We learnt that where there are rice fields, there are banana trees (or maybe it’s where there are bananas, there is rice! Hmmm. Ponder that). It was cooler as we meandered the village roads, feeling more in tune with the locals as they went about their way. Everyone is friendly. No exaggeration. Everyone swaps a “hello” as we pass through their lives. Greetings start at one end of a village and continue until we pass to the next. It draws a constant smile to your face, creating a tangible, unexpected bonus to this experience. We learnt that frogs are more expensive than chicken and some farmers are swapping the the real estate of rice for the farming of frogs as it is more profitable. No surprise that it tastes like chicken. If your wondering, we couldn’t bring ourselves to savour that preference personally.
After 27 odd km’s, a break in the wet coincided with a top up of the local coffee and fruits before transferring to our lunch stop and the second half of the day’s ride. As the day cleared and the humidity increased, the crops seemed to bloom. Rice fields were more mature. Dragon fruit and guava trees more productive and my new bike much more a joy to ride.
The last 18 kms after lunch were pretty uneventful. I say…pretty uneventful. We just took in the sights and blindly followed our guide. Peace and joy. Peace and joy! Vietnam is a developing, organic, everchanging bubble of organised choas. Bridges come and go and somewhere in the vicinity, new ones take their place. With 10 k’s left, our guide was determined not to let an incomplete bridge get in the way of our progress. Kylie’s cousin has shared many a vision of OH&S in South Asia over the years and I feel like we hit upon one of those situations ourselves. You wouldn’t be allowed within 50 metres of this in Australia, but stepping in between the exposed steels rods, bags of concrete and doubling down on our newly found cyclocross skills negotiating stacks of reo, we successfully continued along our way.
Checking out the altitude experienced during the day, you could be forgiven thinking we were under water the whole day. This ride was dead flat; 47 metres over 45 kms. Pancake like. We finished the day at a 4 star resort. Tomorrow is market day. Particularly, floating markets. Not quite sure how we ride those, but that’s tomorrow’s story to tell. Time for a 333!