Sunday 12th December, 2010
Distance: 94km (Total: 9,033)
With another Pho breakfast inside us we set off on the HCM Highway again with legs still tired from yesterday. The going was a bit less hilly today though which was a relief as we passed through more of the same beautiful Vietnamese countryside on traffic-free roads. It’s odd that hardly any traffic uses this road as it’s much better quality than HW#1 and runs in the same direction.
We stopped to ask for directions at a junction and were invited to sit with a family who gave us strong, sweet Vietnamese coffee and some sweet, purple baked potato. We took the turning back towards HW#1 and the road suddenly became much hillier, narrower and dustier. We stopped for lunch at a crossroads where all they had to offer was….Pho!
After lunch the road got really bad as we approached Ha Trinh with long sections of dusty roadworks and lots of passing lorries. When we finally made it onto HW#1 we were filthy, but relieved to find that this section of the road was reasonably quiet and in good condition. A quick 20 min blast and we were in Caua Xuyen where we found a nice hotel for 250,000 Dong. Everything was a little bit strange with the hotel seemingly newly built and nobody being sure what to do with the foreigners. We were eventually shown to a really nice room and were cooked a great dinner of rice, meat and veg all washed down with iced tea. We’re seeing more and more of this pale yellow tea that’s drunk with ice and is very refreshing and must come from all the tea plantations we’ve cycled through the last few days. After dinner we settled down with the hotel staff to watch this weird planet of the apes type show on TV. We’d watched it last night too and the Vietnamese seem to love it. Lots of monkey-gods fighting and jumping up into the clouds and trying to annoy the human gods. Very weird. Mr. Bean is also very popular here.
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