February 2, 2007
To Kham Ouc: playing games with the locals
It's a noisy night, there are some guys playing cards in one of the adjacent rooms. We get up at six, half an hour later we're ready to go. We retrieve the passports ride back into town for fresh bread, then North again. Highway 14, we follow Ho Chi Minh trail.
Today we'll start with a climb according to the notes we read in Qui Nhon. It's pretty steep in sections, the sky is cloudy, and it looks as if it might rain. As we climb higher, we see shacks constructed from rough planks, plastic sheeting and corrugated steel. People are dressed in rags, a boy running down the road with one pantleg torn up to his knee; Friendly people, they smile and wave on our Xin Chao! greetings. We get to a highpoint at about 850 meters altitude and have a steep descent back down to a river at 700 meters. Then another steep 10% climb to the pass at 1050 meters. More very poor villages, people walking around wrapped in blankets. We have been eating very regularly and feel-good cycling.
The descent is steep, cold and a little wet. Dark clouds and fog threaten rain but it only drizzles on and off. We put on our fleece jackets under our raincoats though. We're not quite sure how far it is to Kham Duc, the notes indicated 70km, but the mileage was off by 15km yesterday too...We get to a trucker's motel, the guy insists this is the right town, but we're not convinced and ride on another 5 km there is the "real" town, now bypassed by the new road.
We find a sign and follow it to the Kham Duc hotel. A nice room with very nice hot showers. A cold beer and we watch how the rain is really starting to come down now. At about 4pm we have a mediocre dinner of rice, vegetables and chicken (chunks of it, hacked with bone, neck and even the head on a plate, but not much meat to be found...)
Patrick plays some badminton in the street with the waitresses. A little later Rachel plays hacky sack like game with a couple of guys. The rain gets more serious in the evening, but the wind that howled last night has totally calmed down now. Patrick cleans the bike chains and all the pedals.
A guy next door is an environmental engineer from Hanoi who works for a Canadian run gold mine nearby. He has a computer with a high speed cable connection and Patrick shows him some of our pictures.
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Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 5,055 km (3,139 miles)
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