Vietnam – day 6
Tuesday 17.12.2024
Ban Gioc–Detian Falls – Nguyen Binh
We get up before 7am, pack our things, brush our teeth and set off at 7:15am. Nobody’s around at the whole place, everything’s unlocked. We continue on past the waterfalls. We’re not hungry yet, so we leave breakfast for the next village. We ride along the Vietnam-China border. It’s more deserted here than yesterday. We stop in the village of Bang Ca and look for a breakfast spot.
At one place there are just some strange heads and feet, so we head to the market instead. One lady is making these little rolls with an egg fried on a pan, which she then puts into soup, plus pâté with it.
Probably not many tourists come through here, since everyone’s watching us eat. The soup was great, though we don’t know what it’s called. Then I go buy some cookies at a shop, so I’ve got something for emergencies. We continue and wander through small villages, where you need to watch out not to hit a rooster.
Large sheets of sliced cassava dry along the road for pigs. About an hour on we stop in the town of Thanh Nhat. We go for coffee. We find a place with about 10 men, drinking beer and rice wine at 9am. Some of them are already pretty drunk, so we just quickly finish our coffee and continue. It’s still cloudy, but starting to get a bit warmer. We ride between green hills and fields.
We finish the loop and we’re back in Quang Uyen. We have a baguette each and continue toward Cao Bang. We’ve still got a long way ahead, so we bypass the town. Past it, by the road, we stop for lunch, worried there won’t be much else further on. It’s a buffet-style restaurant, so I take rice, tofu and some vegetables, Jozef adds pork belly. I’m not that hungry, so it takes me a while to finish. We continue on, higher into the mountains.
Our destination is the mountain village of Nguyen Binh, which isunder construction right now. New paths are being built and a lot of trucks pass through, so there’s dust absolutely everywhere. We want to find accommodation here, so we go from hotel to hotel. We find one for 200000 dong. We drop our things and go look for some fruit at the market. Not much selection, so we buy a melon for 66000 dong. Then we look for a place to have tea, since it’s grown here too, but everywhere we go they only have mixed syrupy stuff, and we couldn’t explain that we just wanted plain green tea. In the end we have coffee, but explaining we wanted it plain, with nothing added, was also a struggle. We’ve still got about two hours of daylight, so we go check out Phja Oac – Phja Den National Park.
The number of landslides along the road increases after Typhoon Yagi, which hit here in September.
Repairs are still ongoing on some stretches. We climb to a pass at 1400 m elevation. The temperature drops noticeably. From there you can ride the scooter all the way up Nui Phja Oac hill, so we figure since we’re here, we’ll just push through the cold somehow. We climb 500 meters over 5 km, it takes us about 20 minutes. Jozef can’t feel his hands at the top. We quickly take some photos and head back.
The way down is a bit worse than going up and it’s slowly starting to get dark. We ride the last 15 minutes in the dark, which isn’t pleasant at all. We covered a total of 200 km today. It was prettier than yesterday, more hills and remote roads, and it seemed a bit warmer too. At the hotel we shower, warm up a bit and go look for something for dinner. We’re probably going too late, since we can’t find any place open. Eventually we find one spot where there’s some kind of celebration going on, and the lady makes us fried rice with egg. There’s a family celebration or dinner going on in the back, from which Nam wanders over to us. He’s fairly drunk and has no sense of personal space, Jozef’s personal space specifically. He asks where we’re from, our names, whether we’re married and if we have kids. Then he takes photos with us and toasts with beer. He wants rice wine too, but I decline that. Soon they leave, and the others laugh at him for being so drunk. He then invites us to a karaoke bar, those are genuinely popular here. Once they leave, we can finally eat in peace while watching Paw Patrol, which a little boy there’s watching.
Along with the rice we get some fermented vegetables, and bananas and sweet potato for dessert. Not many tourists probably come through here, since children peek at us from around the corner and are thrilled when we greet them. We’ve had quite enough for today, so we go to sleep, we’d left the heater on so it’s relatively warm. The bed’s hard as a board, but that’s standard here. I’d wanted to publish the blog too, but I just don’t have the energy, so I sleep for an hour and then post it.
