Last night, I spent a decent amount of time online tweaking my route in an attempt to make best use of side roads over the mountains I would have shortly before Cò Nòi. Given how steep the primary road was two days ago, I figured that the farm roads couldn't be any worse. In addition to the major pass on the QL6/AH13, there are two minor passes; one at the village Bó Hạc and one at the village of Bó Phương. It looked like both of them crossed the mountains a little bit lower than the major pass and although neither of them had the big looping switchbacks the main road did, the Bó Phương road seemed to do a great deal more wiggling back and forth.
OpenTopoMaps has a slightly better degree of granularity than GoogleMaps Terrain Layer which allows me to see (after the fact) that the pass I took was actually about 40m higher than the main road. The most frustrating thing with trying to find out information from the various available topo maps is that zooming in enough to actually read the numbers also means zooming in far enough that the software blanks the maps because they don't have that level of fine detail available. You really have to screenshot the portion you want to look at and then resize it if you have any hope of reading the tiny tiny numbers.
I also spent some time online looking up what there might be to see and do in Sơn La. Verdict in that case was "not very much" other than a hot springs complex recommended by Fodor's but given with an address that doesn't exist. I would eventually find the complex (in Vietnamese) on the Sơn La Tourism Board website and, after much back and forthing with Google Translate would find the location in English.
I'm sure her hair is very well protected by the helmet
The road up to Bó Phương was brilliant. And, for the most part, since I'm traveling low on luggage, I was able to bike it. The first time I got off and pushed was because a truck coming down the hill had priority and once I'd come to a stop, the hill was too steep to get started again. Later on I would get off and walk because I wanted to stop and take a picture or because I was an idiot who hadn't refilled her water before taking a rural mountain pass in hot weather. There were a few times where the hill honestly was too steep to pedal and, since the road builders had prioritized effective drainage, I couldn't zigzag back and forth creating my own mini switchbacks. (There were a few times when I was walking that my inability to zigzag was sorely felt.)
Once I was in danger of running out of water, I should have stopped at one of the houses—when there were still houses—and attempted to refill. I didn't. Once I had run out of water, I found myself seriously contemplating whether or not I wanted to find out if the two or three rotten looking citrus fruit abandoned in the drainage ditch actually were too rotten to eat. Luckily, I got to Bó Phương and the top before I had to find out if I really was that thirsty.
After I had to get off the road for this guy, I had to start walking as I couldn't get up sufficient momentum to not fall over when I tried to get the bike to move forward
The more rural I got, the more traditional and fancy the clothing got. When it wasn't traditional, it was definitely fancy. There were three women buying stuff at the corner store in Bó Phương who were absolutely dressed to the nines for the task of going to the store on the back of a motorcycle (all three of them on the same motorcycle). The driver of the motorcycle was wearing pants underneath her ankle length skirt but that seemed the only concession to practicality. I also couldn't help but noticing that none of them had very naturally shaped falsies. Speaking as someone who once was a 13 year old with socks stuffed in my training bra... socks would have looked more natural.
There's an amazing sense of accomplishment when you look down at a distant valley and realize "I came from down there"
Not that's it such a big deal in Vietnam with the general lack of four wheeled traffic, but I think the best thing about the small roads is that the large vehicles can't fit on them
As someone who sometimes has shoulder length hair, the amount of work that has to go into keeping that pile of hair clean is really impressive... especially considering that it's mostly going to be hidden
There was a short bit of downhill after Bó Phương after which I merged on to the DT104. Being as the road was basically one lane with rideable sand shoulders, I could have done with a few less trucks deciding that since I had a wide sand shoulder it was perfectly fine to overtake in my lane but it wasn't unmanageable and it was enough downhill most of the time I was on it that I was just happy not to be going uphill any more.
It's a good hard shoulder that's perfectly rideable but I wish the various small trucks would stop assuming that I'll just jump off onto the shoulder as they overtake and pass and perform otherwise uncomfortable manuevers
Got back on to the QL6/AH13 at Cò Nòi and stayed on it almost the whole way to Sơn La. It went down. It went up. It had traffic. It didn't have traffic. It went through small towns. Big towns. Passed a sugar refinery. It was a nice enough road but after the scenery and exhaustion of the farm road mountain pass, it was mostly just a blur.
Got lunch in Nà Sản. Two big banh mi sandwiches with fried eggs and pâté. Also four jars of yogurt from their fridge. I'd had coffee at the cafe next to my hotel and I'd been noshing on a handlebar bag full of breaded fried bananas all morning, but it was basically my first meal of the day. Food in this region is super crazy ridiculous cheap. When I bought my breaded bananas, I thought maybe I'd handed her the wrong note because she gave me like 30 pieces but my lunch was only 60,000 dong and the last time I got a banh mi sandwich that had a fried egg and pâté, it was 40,000 for one sandwich. This was two sandwiches and a bunch of jars of yogurt.
About 2km before downtown Sơn La at the village of Quyết Tâm, Googlemaps indicated I should turn left if I wanted to head for the hot springs I'd eventually managed to find a location for. This started out as a very promising side road that turned into a very promising concrete farm road that turned into something not very promising at all.
First it got so steep that I had to walk the bike down the hill. Not only because of the unbarriered drop off with plenty of rocks and cactuses and people's houses for me to hurt myself on if I fell off but also because of the motorbikes sporadically coming up the hill and the sand and dirt on the road surface limiting my possible stopping power. Then, the road turned to dirt. It didn't stay that way for very long because the road went away entirely and was replaced by a single track path that really made me stop and wonder "how the hell did this get mapped and online?"
So happy to make it back to pavement. Crossed a scary suspension bridge with dodgy wooden decking and made it up what might possibly be the steepest bit of pavement I have ever seen in my life and, only 5 minutes after the sun officially set, I was on the road to the hot springs! It was a dreadfully torn up potholed road and when I got to the hot springs, I 1) couldn't find any communal hot pool, 2) couldn't find any lodging, and 3) couldn't get anyone to pay attention to me long enough that I could attempt to order food.
It would have been a much worse ride the 5 or 6km to Sơn La but for that I was already in the streetlight zone. Headed towards the lodging on the map, stopped to get food, changed my mind about immediately heading towards lodging and looked for massage instead. The fancy looking spa I found was practically across the street from a hotel so I decided I'd be nice and park my bike, take a shower, and change into less stinky clothes first. I was leaving my laptop and my camera in the room so I did what anyone would do, I locked the door of my room.
Only for no key that the hotel owner could find being able to open my room when I came back one full body massage and a one chocolate frozen yogurt later. She would go up and down the stairs umpety many times looking for additional keys to try before eventually breaking out the glass with a shovel.
Bag of assorted keys on the floor in the hopes that one of them might work. None of them do.
