D41: Thạch An to Đức Long

March 16, 2018

This morning I did something I've never ever done before. At least I don't think I've ever done this before. If I have done this before, I must have been very young. My mom taught me well and, except for that one time I took someone else's big stuffed animal at King's Dominion from the place you were supposed to leave your prizes to pick up after riding one of the water rides when I was like 10 (and the fact that I even remember this gives you a good idea of how long I felt guilty about it) I've just never been the kind of person who takes things from other people.
It's not nice.

This is definitely the first time I've ever shoplifted. And by shoplifted I mean "actually on purpose shoplifted" not "took something because I was a bratty kid" or "accidentally walked out of a store without noticing I hadn't paid for something".

Last night the hotel gave me VND 300,000 per CNY 100 which, as previously noticed, is a shockingly atrocious rate. However, since I didn't know if there was a bank (which may or may not have had an ATM) nearby, it wasn't like I had much choice in the matter. They even said that the reason they were giving me such a bad rate was because I had no choice. I had to pay my pig transporting saviors and I had to pay for my hotel room so I had to accept their exchange rate.

This morning when I went to pay for my room and last night's dinner, I watched her tally things up in her notebook. I wasn't deliberately checking her math or anything like that. It's just that it was within my field of vision and I could read it, so I did.

The border crossing did not look this. Well, it did. Just with less photoshop and a narrower road and more dust and a few extra buildings. Okay, it didn't look anything like this.

My near unconscious ability to read everything within my field of vision is one of the many reasons being in a foreign country where I'm illiterate makes me so uncomfortable. It's not just that I can't find out the history behind historical markers or read funny advertisements. It's like having an entire sense just cut off.

VND 150,000 + VND 20,000 + VND 20,000 = VND 200,000.

This is not actually how math works and it was on top of them already taking a cool VND 100,000 extra by deliberately giving me a bad exchange rate because I had no choice.

So I shoplifted a VND 10,000 can of Pepsi when I filled up my water bottles.

At least at the beginning the road appears to have been smoothed and graded in preparation for being re(?)paved

Oh look, another person who just dumped a pile of dirty diapers by the side of the road

And you know, I can sort of kind of see now why and how kleptomaniacs and people with shoplifting problems would do this. I was taking something that I knew cost the exact amount which I had been shortchanged and it was still a skip a heartbeat thrilling buzz that, like riding a loop the loop roller coaster, I can't see myself ever doing again.

In town I had two banh mi sandwiches for breakfast and two packets of sweet dried tofu. I was eating across the street from what appears to have been the local high school and two students, who were probably sent by their teacher, came over and nicely asked me in English if I wanted to come speak to their class. My first three years in Asia I was a teacher. A year and a half of that was spent as a high school teacher. I have an active imagination so I can think of a lot of things that would be more unpleasant than randomly going into a classroom and speaking English but I can also think of a lot of things that would be more pleasant, like continuing to bike.
So I continued to bike.

The DT208 which finishes going over the mountain range I didn't want to cross yesterday before descending to the QL3 is my new candidate for the worst road I have ever ridden. It certainly appeared in places to have once been paved but that was either a very very long time ago or it was done with incredibly sub par materials. I particularly enjoyed the way most of the potholes had been filled in with a mix of heavy clay type soil and rocks. There were still a few biggies that, if I had hit them going at speed, I would have had a good foot and a half drop from the edge to the bottom but mostly it was just a lumpy mess of semi-compressed rocks and occasional patches that, if you squinted just right, looked like asphalt, maybe.

On slightly more paved spots, like this, you can see how the potholes started to form

While on less paved, but still uphill, sections you can see how big they are

Furthermore, this road went up, and then down, with Vietnam's usual 10% and 10%+ grades. And there was traffic. Both the four legged kind in slow moving herds and, about once every 15 to 20 minutes a full sized tractor trailer.

And did I mention that it was raining?
Or at least fogging heavily?

Be that as it may, I actually enjoyed myself. Sure I had to constantly zig and zag and swerve to avoid holes or sharp stones that were randomly sticking up at an angle but the wheeled traffic was all very respectful in understanding that this was not a road where one chose to be on the left or the right, on the shoulder or in the lane; but rather that it was a road for picking the smoothest path. I stopped for them. They stopped for me. Everyone was happy. No one got hurt.

As road users go, these guys were super chill

I was so happy to get to real pavement at the town of Hòa Thuận. From there I turned to the big big border crossing at Tà Lùng/Shuikou. I spent a while sitting there drinking my last cup of real drip coffee, talking on the phone, and finding creative ways to try to spend the last of my Vietnamese money. And then, I went to the border crossing.

Where I was told that even if the last border crossing made a point of specifically telling me to come here, I couldn't cross here. I needed to go to Đồng Đăng in Lạng Sơn, to the major crossing south of the one where I had been yesterday. I wish I could say that when I broke out in tears it was "I'm a girl" crocodile tears because those work so well in Asia at getting what I want but I actually was crying in frustration. I've enjoyed Vietnam, I really have, but I really really want to go back to where I can speak to people and order food other than by the random point and smile method.

As I approach the border, I find myself back in karst territory

Also, while it might have been enjoyable to do this morning's big mountain once, coming on the heels of yesterday's trails, I couldn't imagine doing that mountain a second time. And once the tears had started, there was a little bit of me that really hoped that maybe just maybe they'd work.
They didn't work.

Changed back in the SIM card I'd just changed out and went to the bank to get money only to find out they don't have an ATM and the closest ATM is about 10km away! One of the patrons took pity on me and took my last CNY 300 and gave me VND 1,000,000 which is only USD 1 or so more than what I'd have paid in transaction fees if they'd had an ATM.

New plan. I'm not doing that road again. I'm just not. And I'm not sure that heading north and trying any of the other many border crossings both large and small is such a great idea. I'll have to go to Đồng Đăng/Youyiguan and if Đồng Đăng doesn't work I'll have to go all the way to Móng Cái/Dongxing where I entered Vietnam. But I'm not going back over that mountain.

Instead, I'm going to start by taking the flattish road through the karst that I wasn't allowed to take yesterday. When you take into consideration the combined factors of how much of yesterday's singletrack is clearly visible on satellite view, and that much of this road that I'm intending to take is only on satellite view (and not map view) this was a fairly dangerous proposition on my part. Be that as it may, it should be less than 10km to the Nhà Nghỉ just this side of the small border crossing between here and the one I was trying for yesterday, and if the road turns shitty at any point, I can always turn around, go back to the Tà Lùng/Shuikou crossing, spend the night at a hotel in Tà Lùng and figure out my next steps from the comfort of a hotel room.

The road doesn't turn shitty. In fact, it's beautiful. It's not paved but it's well packed dirt and stone and the passes between karst have been very thoroughly blasted into something almost pleasant to bike up. If it weren't drizzly, the views would be gorgeous.

Standing at the intersection near Crossing #3, perhaps about 200 meters away from the border, I'm actually messing around on my phone not because I'm checking maps but because I'm answering work related messages. A guard comes over to talk to me. His Chinese is excellent. Better even than the lone person who could/would talk to me at Tà Lùng.

Nice gentle slopes up to the passes between the karst valleys

And then they blasted down quite a bit to make a good flat road

This is infinitely better than the paving I was on this morning

The guard figures I've just come up the road from yesterday's crossing to the south of us cause thinking they would let me through is an easy mistake for me to make and I'm obviously on my way to Tà Lùng. Only reason he can think of for me to be on this road at all would be for me to have come from Pò Mã Crossing just south of us on my way to Tà Lùng Crossing just north of us.

"It's getting dark soon. You should stay at the hotel here and go to Tà Lùng in the morning. It's not safe to bike a road like that at night. You can't cross here but crossing there will be no problem. That's a big border crossing."

"Yeahhh, about that... I was at Pò Mã yesterday. I'm actually on my way from Tà Lùng now heading down to Đồng Đăng. Because Pò Mã also thought that Tà Lùng would let me cross (and Pò Mã wouldn't let me take this road because, I don't know, reasons...)."

I accidentally bargain the hotel down from VND 250,000 to VND 200,00 by trying to ask if they had any food for me to eat. Then, after telling me there were no restaurants around, they made me some noodles for dinner. Based on my previous interactions with nice people, they probably won't accept money for the extras they've thrown in.

A truly bizarre kids program that was playing on the TV in the lobby/living room

Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 2,017 km (1,253 miles)

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