D10: Móng Cái to Đầm Hà

February 13, 2018

Even though the basics of the underlying architecture are the same, Vietnam is a much more colorful country than China is

Some people would say given what I've recently put my body through I should take a day or three and rest. Those people don't know me very well. I once disconnected my own morphine drip while in Intensive Care since I couldn't figure out any way to push the wheelchair I was escaping in and also take my pole with me. I only got about 10 or 15 feet before I was caught, but the point is, boredom was a sufficient enough cause for me to disconnect my own morphine drip with the intent of escaping from Intensive Care. Taking a day or three and conscientiously making an effort to rest is quite possibly the least restful way I can think of recuperating. Besides which, it's not like I had invasive surgery or anything like that.

I feel that Ho Chi Minh would not approve of the number of things randomly decorated with American flags

It's been so long since I've had any kind of schedule that required me to wake up at a specific time that I'm utter crap when it comes to waking up at a specific time. When I'm biking, my wake up time tends to trend earlier (though not really early); when I'm working, my wake up time tends to trend later. Generally, I sleep when I'm tired and I wake up when I'm not. It was probably 9:30 or so when I left the hotel though that's a bit disingenuous since I just gained an hour due to the change in time zones.

After a breakfast of french bread and sunny side up eggs, I went back to the hospital intending to 1) pay them for my sonogram 2) see about getting a follow-up sonogram and 3) thank them. Neither really happened though I did manage to leave a large bag of pistachios on the desk in the one office with helpful people so I guess my visit wasn't a total failure. Besides which, in countries where you can't walk in and get sonogram 10 minutes later, the follow-up is usually a done about a week later and a week from now I'll be in Hanoi. I'm sure there are English speaking doctors in Hanoi.

There are quite a lot of Catholics in Vietnam

I thought Vietnamese generally went with a more French influenced style of decoration

My memories of my 2006 trip to Vietnam are scrambled and patchy. I started a journal but I didn't have a laptop with me or good access to internet bars and I never finished it. Most of my rolls of film were destroyed by the developing place in Hanoi so I never had pictures of the Vietnam portion of the biking. And the digtal pictures from the new camera brought to me in Hanoi were lost two years later. Without any of these markers to look back on, the bits that do remain aren't necessarily very clear.

I'm absolutely positive I didn't spend my first night in Móng Cái but there is hardly anything on the road between Móng Cái and Đầm Hà and just about none of it is places with the English word "hotel". (I wouldn't have known to look for "Nhà Nghỉ").
I'm also very certain that there was a decent amount of riding with 10% uphills and mountain-y bits. While properly low gears and the mind boggling amount of road regrading which is going on certainly accounts for some of the lack of hills, these roads are quite nearly flat.

An example of the regrading and recurving of the roads

An example of the ongoing regrading of the roads

Then there's the wrong turn I made which took me 8 or 10 kilometers down to the end of a peninsula with dreadful sharp uphills and downhills and uphills and downhills. The topo maps don't seem to show any peninsulas on this stretch of road that meet that description.

The road is pleasantly flat. The traffic isn't too crazy. The sky is still dull and gray but at least it's warm enough for me to wear shorts along with my double jerseys and my thermal vest. I would hardly go so far as to call this a truly enjoyable stretch of road but considering much of what I was biking on in China, even the large number of people who feel that garbage is best disposed of in small random piles and lit on fire are not enough to make this road bad.

Probably no longer lived in building from 1990 complete with the locally ubiquitous smoldering pile of garbage

She's striding across the road so purposefully

Sometimes I think I learned Chinese solely because of the frustration of not being able to read

It's too early to break when I get to Quang Ha so, after a detour to check out their big temple, I get lunch and keep biking. The landscape kind of reminds me of southern China only relentlessly flat and with more brightly colored buildings.

Frustratingly familiar but very different

That much gaudy red and gold along with that scholar's cap, he has to be the God of Wealth

He reminds me a little of my favorite Lohan (the skinny guy who usually has his finger in his ear)

When I get into Đầm Hà, I'm starting to get hungry and I know it's time to stop. I circle a few times before checking the GPS for Nhà Nghỉ. First one isn't taking guests the day before New Year's Eve. Second one is a lovely little place that lets me use their washing machine.

For dinner I have a large pineapple and two Banh Mi sandwiches. For all the bad things that can be said about European colonialism in Indochina and Africa, at least they left behind a culture that understands baguettes as a critical part of your daily diet!

I have this strange desire to own a cyclo

Today's ride: 71 km (44 miles)
Total: 365 km (227 miles)

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