Nhat Ky Xe Day 11: Bao Lac -> Na Phac Approx. Not many km

We left Bao Lac under a heavy downpour which kept up all day. An unauspicious start to what played out to be a challenging day.

The road was OK for the first 1/2 hour, and we remained hopeful that things would improve. Then the unpaved patches started coming. At first they were just short stretches of rocky mud, but soon enough the sealed parts disappeared entirely. The next 5 hours were miserable. Crawling along on the worst excuse for a road imaginable… We averaged 10km/hr, walking would have been faster. I wanted to throw myself off the cliff.

Then we hit the border with Bac Kan province and everything changed in a snap! In fact, the sign next to the road saying “Welcome to Bac Kan province” marked the spot (to the very inch!) where the sealed road began again. Michael and I stopped to laugh at the absurdity of it all and shake off the suicidal thoughts, thinking we’d made it through the worst of it. Ha!

While the roads are much better in Bac Kan, the deforestation along the steep hillsides has been causing massive mudslides during the rainy season. We came across a few small ones and mucked our way through without much trouble, but then we ran into a huge one.

Michael had been riding ahead and decided to ride directly into the mud without stopping, as we did to pass the last one. It was hard to tell from the approach how deep it was, but as soon his bike stopped he put out a leg to push it along. Knee-deep and thick as molasses. The mud covered the entire width of the road for a length of about 30 yards, the most shallow part right on the cliff’s edge. The rain was still coming down steadily; It was obvious that things were going to get worse yet, but we had to keep going.

I jumped in to help and we managed to struggle our way to the other side with his bike, lifting it from the mud with a great sucking sound and plopping it ahead a few inches at a time. A local woman passed by us while we were doing this (she was forced to walk through the nearly waist-deep part of the mud). She didn’t smile back, but apparently had a little sympathy for us because a few minutes later some road-workers arrived. At first we thought they were fellow travelers trying to pass the mudslide going the opposite direction, but we later figured out that the lady had sent them back to help. They pulled up just as we were discussing the best way to get my bike across. I suggested taking a slightly higher route over the mud where it seemed a bit firmer but they said I was crazy. Instead, on their advice, the four of us hoisted up the the bike and trudged across, hugging the cliffside. One little slip and I would have easily dropped right off the side to my death! And they thought my idea was crazy!

We washed up in a little waterfall nearby before continuing south, reaching some tiny village (I didn’t get the name, it wasn’t printed on any sign) near Ba Be. When we stopped for some warm soup we looked at the clock and realized that the sun would be setting soon; We hadn’t even yet completed a third of the distance we wanted to cover for the day. Our bikes were also suffering: mine would scream out in pain with a ‘clack-clack-clack’ if I accelerated too quickly, and Michael’s groaned and scraped full-time. With each incline the bikes sounded worse.

Since the little village offered no accomodation we decided to keep going until we found a place to stop for the night. When we hit Na Phac though, we knew the bikes were done. And lucky us, Na Phac didn’t have a single hotel or guesthouse either.

We asked around. Almost everyone said “30km that way, hotel.” I knew they were pointing us toward Bac Kan city, the provincial capitol, but our bikes just wouldn’t take us that far without some repairs first. Finally, someone took pity on us and offered the spare bed they had in their family-room. For only about $1 each it was a deal, but we had little choice in the matter anyway. We moved our things out of the rain and set out to get our bikes repaired.

The repair shop was easy to find and the guys there were glad to help us out. In less than an hour they had everything working again and even fixed some other small problems we had from having fallen off the bikes a couple times. For all the labor and parts, they wanted $1! I was expecting cheap, but that was riddiculous!

With everything sorted, we found a place to eat dinner, had a hilarious argument with the owner of the restaurant over the price of the meal (during which she shouted about how much she hated the French because she just knew we were French!) and then tried to get some sleep, but the sleep part was difficult. Everyone in the house woke up (At full volume, all the lights on, etc. This is Vietnam after all) at 3am. We had no choice but to get going early…

Nhat Ky Xe Day 10: Yen Minh -> Meo Vac -> Bao Lac Approx. ???km

Yen Minh was a quiet town when we arrived the previous night. We had walked around for a couple hours in the evening hunting for food and had seen only a few dozen people. The next morning, though, the place had undergone a complete transformation. I woke up to the steady noise of the bustling market that had materialized overnight, completely surrounding our hotel. I walked out on the balcony and watched as hundreds of montagnards from the surrounding villages bought and sold food, housewares, medicines, livestock, clothing, instruments and furniture.

Michael and I paid the bill downstairs and wandered into the market to find some breakfast. I was already used to automatically being granted celebrity status just by being one of the only two foreigners in a small Vietnamese town, but here it was taken to a new level. We shuffled through the thick crowd of villagers - Tay, H’Mong, Dzao, Tai and others - each dressed up in their sunday best. The selection of prepared food and produce on sale at this market was similar to what I’d seen in Sa Pa. Fruits and vegetables found in cooler climates were available - plums, peaches, grapes - and the food stalls were serving only a few things that I recognized - raw pigs-blood soup, fried rice, some kind of simple noodle soup. Sorry to let down the weirdmeat fans, but I went for the noodle soup.

Michael and I sat down on a bench and ordered a bowl of soup each. All eyes were on us. I turned to see that a large audience had formed around us. The soup was nothing more than hot water, MSG, green onions, fish-sauce and fresh noodles, but we each finished our bowls to the last drop. A man sitting at the stall next to us whipped out his camera and recorded us pretending to be comfortable among the slack-jawed stares of the villagers around us. Every time I glanced over into his camera and smiled, the group of spectators that had assembled around him whooped with laughter. For a few minutes, we were fascinating, exotic animals in a crowded petting zoo, and everyone else was a tourist.

When we stood up to pay, they scrambled for a scrap of paper on which they could write out the price for us. When I waved a hand and said, in awkward Vietnamese, “No, Vietnamese please,” The food-stall lady’s eyes lit up and she spouted out a stream of questions, none of which I understood, of course. I smiled and said, “Only numbers. Sorry.” Bon ngin dong, she said with a smirk, expecting me to haggle her down from the foreigner price of $0.25 each. We gladly paid and walked out through the crowd, which parted for us as we went.

Everyone was as friendly as they were fascinated by us. Young boys approached us to shake hands and say Hello! Shop-owners were keen to win our business, knowing that a crowd of potential customers was sure to follow us to their stall. I bought some backup batteries for my camera before Michael and I decided it was time to get back on the bikes. We watched as old men staggered away to the road, barefoot, with 20kg sacks of rice strapped to their backs. The wealthier families crammed themselves and their purchases precariously onto overloaded motorbikes and putted off alongside us into the mountains.

The market had drawn hundreds of people from smaller villages of the surrounding countryside, and as we left many of them were already on their way back home. They walked along the road, most of them without shoes, carrying large bundles on their heads or in large woven baskets strapped to their backs; The roads were dotted with pedestrians all day long. We knew that today was going to bring some of the best scenery yet. It was 40km to Dong Van, which marks the start of the famous 20km stretch of road south to Meo Vac along the Chinese border. As I mentioned before, these are all “frontier areas,” and we spotted a few signs clearly announcing this in English, Vietnamese and Chinese. I noticed that the numbers on all of the milestones along the road in these areas have been erased (does anyone know why this is?)

I had mentally prepared myself to face some poor roads during this part of the ride, but we only hit a few short unpaved stretches. Sometimes the road would even mysteriously open up into a vast, smooth 4-lane highway for a stretch of only 500 meters and then switch back to normal as it snaked up the mountain. Eventually we passed through Dong Van and reached the climax of the trip: the last 20km to Meo Vac.

The road winds its way among towering karsts until it makes you a tiny dot overlooking an immense valley sprinkled with stilt-houses and terraced fields. The terrain, from the river far below up to the horizon, is a rough stack of purple layers dissapearing into the white mist. I stopped along the way often to stare out across the valley and shoot photos, but none of them do any justice to the view. I’m not sure, but I think that valley serves as part of the border between Vietnam and Yunnan, China.

During the last few minutes of the ride to Meo Vac, I saw some pretty weird things. A few times, we passed by men laying unconscious in the dirt along the road. Other villagers stepped over them nonchalantly, but I still have no idea what was going on with them. We also drove by a group of young girls (teenagers, I think) who were helping another girl walk. I slowed as we passed them and glanced at the girl who was having trouble walking. Her eyes were rolled back into her head and her body was flopping back and forth as she stumbled next to the other girls. One of her friends gave me an icy stare and waved me away. Michael and I agreed later that the unconscious men must have over-indulged in the opium that is produced all over the area, but we couldn’t come up with a story to explain that girl…

We stopped to discuss our next move in Meo Vac. From there our goal was to simply travel back to Hanoi and end the trip. We had two options: turn back and ride on the roads which we knew to be in good shape until we reached highway 3, which would take us easily back to Hanoi, or continue moving southeast, further away from beaten path, into Cao Bang province and connect with highway 4 to ride home. We chose Cao Bang. If I had known what we would have to endure over the next two days, I would have turned back without a second thought. But then the story would have ended here!

A few minutes out of Meo Vac, the road turned to shit. It started to rain again. Our pace slowed to a crawl along the muddy path until we reached obstacle #1: a construction team was in the middle of creating the very muddy path we were traveling on. We pulled up to one of the workers and tried to figure out what to do. When I indicated that we needed to get to Cao Bang, he thrust his thumb out toward the construction with a grunt and a smile. “We drive there?” I asked him. Yes, you go! We approached the backhoe which was blocking the way and shouted to the workers that we wanted to get through. They just laughed at us and gave a “go right ahead!” gesture. They weren’t even going to stop digging for a moment to let us through. We had to approach the spot where they were working and time our passage to avoid being smashed by the swinging arm of the backhoe (just like in Super Mario Brothers 3 where you have to run past those angry smasher-block guys). The workers shrieked with laughter as we clumsily bounced our bikes over the jagged shards of stone they had torn from the mountain. All I could think of was the flat tire for which I was long overdue. Somehow we made it over the construction site unscathed and through the vast mud-pit on the other side and eventually reconnected with something resembling a road.

We kept riding, verifying with each person we passed that we were still headed towards Cao Bang. Then we came to obstacle #2: the first river-crossing. Our map had become useless at this point - it was dated 1999 and showed only a couple of roads throughout Cao Bang province, neither of which we were anywhere near. We slid ourselves carefully down to the bank and were greeted by a wild-eyed fellow who offered to carry us and our bikes across the river. When I asked him the price he held up four fingers and said “Bon.” Four. “Bon Ngin?” I verified. Four thousand? Yes. No problem.

Michael went first. Shouting crazily, the guy instructed Michael to drive his bike into the center of the tiny bamboo raft and keep it balanced there by standing over it. The river was about 60 feet wide and had a swift current. Wading or swimming across was completely out of the quesiton. The ferry guys had strung a wire across the water and held onto it as they slowly took the rafts across, hand over hand. Another guy with a raft ferried me over without incident, and on the other side they both demanded payment with a smile and open hand. Forty thousand dong each. In the big picture, that’s not a lot of money. But it angered me that they lied about the price upfront. We argued over the price and finally met halfway. Everyone lightened up and we were introduced to the group of ferrymen and their children. I took some photos.

Some other customers appeared on the other bank, and they rushed over to shuttle them across. In the middle of river, one of the ferrymen lost his grip on the wire and fell into the water. The others laughed hysterically as he scrambled back onto his raft and narrowly avoided being swept into the rapids downstream by paddling frantically with his tiny bamboo oar. We watched until the excitement died down and then continued riding. The guys had frowned and pointed at our bikes when we asked which way was Cao Bang city. I know now what they were trying to tell us…

The river we had just crossed forms part of the border between the provinces of Ha Giang and Cao Bang. Apparently each province is responsible for maintaining its own roads, and they don’t believe in roads in Cao Bang. At least not of the sort I’m used to. We rode further, taking a couple random guesses at mysterious forks in the road, until we came to obstacle #3: the second river-crossing. This time there was no bridge, no ferries, nothing. We stopped to discuss our options for a minute. Turning back would force us to waste what few hours we had left of the day going back over the first two treacherous obstacles, but we were unsure about being able to get our bikes safely across the river. It was much smaller than the last one - only about 15 feet across and knee-deep in the middle, but a problem with our wimpy city-loving bikes.

After a few minutes, a local guy (about our age) came out of nowhere and offered to help us. We pushed Mike’s bike into the water first, with the engine still running. As soon as we reached the middle, it died and wouldn’t start again on the other side. A light panic set in as we felt a heavy storm coming in (it had been raining lightly the whole time). For about 30 minutes we tried to bring it back to life - drying out the ignition parts, tilting the bike back to drain the water from the exhaust - until finally our friend got it running again. We were more careful with my bike and managed to start it up right away on the other side. After thanking our new friend with a large tip, we got back on the dirt road and continued.

The daylight was beginning to fade and the rain was thickening, so we agreed to stop at the next town. After crossing some rickety, old, rotting bridges, we arrived in Bao Lac. Bao Lac has only one hotel, so the price was steep, but we were too tired to protest. After one of the longest, most exhausting and most exciting days of my life, I slept well. And then woke up to do it all over again the next day…

Nhat Ky Xe Day 9: Huang Su Phi -> Ha Giang -> Yen Minh Approx. 120km?

Thanks to the better-than-expected road conditions, we easily made it through Ha Giang city and started on the final journey northward. Lonely Planet’s guide to Vietnam mentions in the detail-free page dedicated to Ha Giang province that one must obtain a “special permit” from local police to be allowed into the districts north of Ha Giang city. What does that mean? Local police in Ha Giang or local police in those special districts? Whatever. They wouldn’t send us all the way back to Ha Giang city just to buy a permit, right?

We stopped again for coffee in Quan Ba just long enough for a violent storm to start up. By the time we got back on the bikes, the rain was so thick I could hardly see and the lightning was striking steadily closer. I wanted to stop for the day there, but Michael insisted we keep on. Five minutes later I watched a bolt of lightning strike the road (or very near it, hard to tell) about 3 km’s ahead, but we kept riding. It ended up being a good call - the weather lightened up and we had a pleasant ride through the pine forests to end the day. We stopped just short of Dong Van in another small town called Yen Minh. It seemed to be a nice, quiet place; We found a decent, but slightly expensive, hotel for the night.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 8: Sa Pa -> Huang Su Phi Approx. ???km

Long, long day. Maybe if we had a proper map and proper bikes things would have been easier, but where’s the adventure in that?

We left Sa Pa at 7am after early-morning pho bo. We set a seriously idealistic goal of driving straight through to the city of Ha Giang before dark, and at first it was looking like we would actually make it. In no time at all, we flew through Lao Cai and then hit Bac Ha. We studied the map over lunch and decided how to cross over into Ha Giang province. A faint, squiggly line was chosen that would take us along the Chinese border before dipping south to connect with highway 3, which we would take up to Ha Giang city.

We started off strong by missing a very missable turn and ending up in the lovely little village of Si Ma Cai. We tried to get info from some of the wow-you’re-definitely-not-from-around-here H’Mong people on the street, but they were more interested in trying to get us to marry their daughters (no joke) so we turned around and went back to Bac Ha. Some more asking around earned us the sympathy of a nice local guy who guided us to the turn we had missed. He pointed with a big smile towards “Ha Zang!” and sped off.

The road into Ha Giang is a nice little dusty gravel number with enough unmarked detours to keep the adventurous foreigner entertained for a lifetime. At first I found this all fun and exciting. Then I launched myself off my bike onto a bed of sharp rocks after flying into a turn with a little too much gusto… No major damage, luckily. A little blood, some bent thingies and a sore ankle was all, but it did drain some of the “fun and excitement” from the rest of the ride. I also smunched the brake pedal in such a way that my rear brake stayed slightly on for the rest of day. I was getting to know the limits of my abilities and my bike, which was, naturally, wearing thin my confidence in both.

After a few more km’s of crawling along this @#!$ road, things improved. The crap-road connected us with a nice sealed one which we took for the next couple hours. We ended up walking the last 3 km’s of the day into the village of Huang Su Phi after Michael scored his second flat tire of the trip. Huang Su Phi turned out to be full of very friendly people who were as happy to see us as were them. A new tire for Michael’s bike, some bending of thingies for mine, a hotel room, dinner, some (unexpectedly fast) internet, and then sleep.

We didn’t make it to Ha Giang, but by our reckoning we weren’t far off so we set our sights on Dong Van for the next day.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 7: Sa Pa -> Lao Cai -> Sa Pa Approx. 70km

While Michael leisurely wandered about Sa Pa for the day, I rose early and took off for Lao Cai. It was a beautiful and easy 35km drive, but once I arrived I realized that it is a far larger city than I had expected. Since it lies directly on the border with China (Hekkou on the Chinese side), its a major business hub. I immediately got lost. As I always do.

Lao Cai is not exactly a tourist destination. I had a hard time finding anyone who could understand my attempts at pronouncing the Vietnamese word for “police”. Finally, I located a police station and with much difficulty communicated that I would like a visa extension. One of the friendly police officers walked into the street, ordered a random citizen to stop, and commanded him to direct me to the immigration office. I followed on my bike through a maze of tiny streets until my guide stopped in front of an even more secret-underground-HQ-looking building than the one in Sa Pa and told me to wait until 2pm when the officers would go back on duty (after their daily 2-hour+ lunch break). He failed to point out that the office I wanted was actually across the street from where he took me.

So I waited. And waited. I had a cold drink nearby. Then waited more.

It was well past 2pm; I decided I was at the wrong place. I walked around, passport in hand, trying to ask random people about the immigration office. I almost gave up, but at last a nice gentleman understood my question and pointed me to the unmarked door of a building directly across the street. Inside I found a set-up similar to the one in Sa Pa: a couple of guys in a very plain room behind a very plain desk. It took them all of 2 minutes to look at my passport and tell me “No.” I tried everything I possibly could. I even jokingly got on my knees and begged, but nothing worked. No extension. “Try Hanoi” they told me, but that wasn’t really an option. I decided to give up when they started to get suspicious about my employment status in Vietnam. I did manage to get out of them that I would incur only a small penalty, if any at all, for overstaying my visa by a week or less.

Oh well, a complete waste of a day! Back to Sa Pa in time for dinner and a good night’s rest, for the next day we’d be driving right off the map into Ha Giang. Valid visa or not, I decided against turning back.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 6: Tam Duong -> Sa Pa Approx. 80km

Every day the scenery gets more amazing. The mountain roads on the way into Sa Pa are incredible! Tam Duong pass is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been (photos below). It’s the final stretch before you arrive at the town of Sa Pa. Since its the barrier between one of the coldest regions of Vietnam and one of the warmest, the wind is always strong and the weather unpredictable. We were lucky to cross it on an especially mild and clear day.

Since Sa Pa was only (re)opened for foreign tourists at the end of 1994, I was amazed at how developed it’s become. There are hotels and guesthouses everywhere, plenty of restaurants with high prices and English menus and most of the villagers from the nearby hills who do business here speak some English and/or French. At least with so much competition good deals on accomodation can be found! Michael and I politely haggled our way into a nice room with a great view of Mt. Fansipan (the tallest mountain in Vietnam) for 70,000d/night. We also had a quick visit with a mechanic for some minor repairs.

Our plan was to take a day off from the full-time moto-madness and explore Sa Pa, but first I had some important business to take care of: my visa was to expire in a few days. We had decided that we wanted to continue the journey all the way up into the frontier areas in the northern tip of Ha Giang province, but to do it we would need at least another week to make the full circuit back to Hanoi. When we moved into the hotel I asked the owners about getting a visa extension, and they suggested I speak with the local police about it. One of them would be making their daily visit to the station at 9pm so I went along that night.

Every time I check into a hotel or guesthouse in Vietnam (with only a couple exceptions) I am required to hand over my passport. At first it made me nervous to often see it casually tossed into an unlocked drawer, but I got used to it and always got it back upon checking out. I was told that it’s because all foreign guests are required to be registered with the local police everywhere they go. Until my visit with the police in Sa Pa I only half-believed this, but, sure enough, I witnessed the careful inspection of dozens of passports at the station.

The hotel owner’s daughter gave me a ride to the “station.” I say “station” because it was more like the secret HQ of some underground syndicate. The small generic-looking building is enclosed along with an older french-colonial building by a tall cement barrier. Upon walking in I was greeted by the awkward what-do-you-want stares of 4 policemen sitting behind a long desk. There was not much in the room, basically just 4 guys in normal clothes behind a desk waiting for me to explain myself. So I showed them my passport with my about-to-expire visa (which had already been extended once - I was warned that 30-day tourist visas can only be extended once) and indicated that I would like another 30-day renewal. They discussed it for a while and finally told me, very politely, that I’ll have to visit the immigration office in Lao Cai, the provincial capitol, to get another stamp. No trouble, I thought, Lao Cai is only 35km away from Sa Pa. I thanked them and left with plans to sacrifice my “rest day” to take care of business in Lao Cai.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 5: Dien Bien Phu -> Tam Duong Approx. 250km or something

This was a really long day. I think we ended up in Tam Duong as planned, but I can’t be sure. We couldn’t have been far from it, anyway.

We checked out early. After a breakfast of pho, we were on the road by 9:30. The first few hours of the ride were in solid heavy rain and it was considerably colder out. The muddy stretches of road grew more frequent and we hit some rougher rocky bits, but nothing too bad. Most of the time we were on the “new road” aka highway 12, which is a huge improvement over the “old road” aka highway 6, so I hear. To take a break from the rain, we stopped to eat some warm food and play cards (in Pa Tan maybe?) for an hour.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that Michael is incurably addicted to chocolate. He strives for “at least 100 grams a day.” Good chocolate is hard to find when traveling through southeast asia, especially when your only hope is the occasional dusty Vietnamese convience-store-shack. Every time we passed by one his eyes would light up.

“Maybe they have chocolate!” “Uh, sure. Maybe they have chocolate…”

We only found good chocolate once, but thats later in the story. Today we found two packages of really promising-looking “pure cacao” that turned out to be compressed, dry, buttery-floury-sugary bricks of nastiness. Michael was not satisfied.

On the way out, we got a bit lost but some helpful locals pointed in the right direction and we ended up in Tam Duong (I think) just as the sun was going down. Same old: hotel, food, sleep.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 4: Son La -> Dien Bien Phu Approx. 150km

After a good sleep, we left early. The rain began falling soon after, although it wasn’t heavy. We hit some muddy bits of road early in the day but the conditions were generally good. In the late afternoon the rain let up, the sun came out and the roads began to dry.

We were feeling good and started taking the turns a bit faster. Just as I was pulling out of a particularly sharp one, I heard that gut-wrenching sound of plastic smashing againt asphalt and turned to see that Michael had dumped his bike in the middle of the turn. He tumbled a little bit but he and the bike got right back up with only minor injuries (scraped up leg and arms, sore hip, bent pegs, crooked handlebars, cracked thingy). Since we were only a couple km’s past the last town, we decided to go back briefly to borrow some tools and bend a few things back to normal.

A few hours later, we hit a temporary road-block due to some construction going on. Several dozen people were waiting with their vehicles (trucks, motorbikes and some fellow tourists in a land rover) to be let through. After 15 minutes or so, they let all the motorbikes go, causing a wild, honking, mad-dash down the hill. In the chaos, Michael scored a flat tire.

He waited by the road while I went ahead to find some kind of solution. Luckily, only a couple km’s up the road I spotted a moto-repair shack. It took a few minutes of skillful pantomime and highly technical diagrams to explain that my friend up the road had a flat tire. They kept looking at the tires on my bike and shrugging. Finally I got the point across and the mechanic climbed onto the back my bike with a new innertube and some tools. 15 minutes and $2 later we were back on the road for the last 8km to Dien Bien Phu.

Dien Bien Phu (a small city just minutes from the Laos border) is a historically important spot as it is the site of a crucial battle against the French which marked a turning point in Vietnam’s history as an independent nation. Wikipedia has got the details. There are plenty of monuments, a couple cemetaries (one of which Hiep designed!), and a museum, but we were too tired to visit any of them. Instead, we found a hotel and food and slept. The next day was to be our longest leg yet.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 3: Mai Chau -> Son La Approx. 185km

Hiep left us in the morning on our way out to return to Hanoi and we continued west on highway 6 (He is preparing to move to London and had an appointment at the British embassy). Michael and I enjoyed the scenery on the way, stopping in Moc Chau for lunch. The roads were great, the weather was nice; It was a pleasant drive. Nothing extraordinary to comment on. When we arrived in Son La, we found a decent hotel at a good price and turned in early.

Nhat Ky Xe Day 2: Muong Village -> Mai Chau Approx. 75km

I had a nice, slow morning, stewing in my hangover. I washed a couple shirts then walked through the village with Hiep and a gaggle of excited kids, which took all of 10 minutes - its not a big place. We returned to the house and Hiep payed two of the kids to give a massage which was great entertainment for all. I took some videos: one, two and three.

We left the village around noon and started off on the next leg: about 75km on highway 6 to Mai Chau. Mai Chau is more of a collection of villages than a proper town and is home to many White Tais, who sell all sorts of traditional garments and handicrafts around their homes. The villages are spread out inside a large valley filled with rice paddies, of which there are spectacular views when approaching from the highway. We rode in and explored some backroads before finding a stilt-house where we could spend the night.

We lazily walked around the village, checking out all the random stuff for sale. Crossbows, slingshots, hill-tribe clothing, etc. When night fell, we returned to the house for a fantastic meal of traditional White Tai food. Then we ended the evening with a marathon karaoke session at a very strange little place in the middle of the fields. The speakers were cranked up too loud causing the mics to feed back constantly when we stopped singing, so we just didn’t stop singing. The best thing about singing Vietnamese karaoke is that unlike most other asian languages, it uses roman letters so english-speakers can sort-of see the words and make the sounds. Sort-of. It was great fun trying, anyway. I woke up hoarse the next morning.