D25: Lac Village

February 28, 2018

Technically I did a lot more than 2km today but it wasn't by muscle power and it was fueled by exploding dinosaurs instead of last year's milkshakes so it doesn't count. Mark the Israeli came to where I was staying and, after some coffee, we headed off on his motorcycle to Chiều Cave. This was somewhere that I had visited in 2006 with Mike and it was only because we had lost our photos that I was visiting again. Otherwise, it is very unlikely that I would have found the energy or the interest in hiking up 1190 crumbling once concrete stairs to a poorly signposted something.

I'm not saying the cave isn't pretty cool. It's definitely pretty cool. Maybe not as cool as it was when it was a surprise at the end of a bunch of randomly followed stairs, but still pretty cool. I'm just saying that I wouldn't have gone to the cave if I wasn't specifically sent there on a quest from my boyfriend.

The stairs were nowhere near this bad in 2006

Lots of little shrines in the cave with moldy offerings like flowers and fruit, burnt incense, and all sorts of 500, 1000, and 2000 dong notes

After the cave, we got back on Mark's motorcycle and drove to Go Lao Waterfall. It was a nice but not spectacular waterfall and I'm really really glad I went on Mark's motorcycle. Not because I knew about the waterfall (cause I didn't, and I wouldn't if not for the xerox map my guesthouse gave us) but because I'd tentatively been considering the side road up to the waterfall as a potential Not The Main Road route and, having done the first part of it on the motorcycle, I can definitively say it's not really a bicycling road for someone who doesn't have a tent / doesn't speak Vietnamese.

I'd face roads much much worse than this before the trip was over

Woven bamboo stilt houses with thatched roofs

Back to the guesthouse where I grabbed a hammock, worked on uploading pictures to this journal (see, it happens sometimes Andy) and drank beer with two Americans who were on the last day of their motorcycle trip around Vietnam. Later, Mark and I would join them in going out to dinner together.

In talking with one of the family members with better English, I found out that my memory of many of the buildings being shorter was accurate. Most of them have been lifted with concrete posts added underneath the stilts. The place we were staying did this two years ago at the same time that they paved the ground underneath.

Compared to places like Cat Ba, Tam Coc, or the old quarter in Hanoi, Lac Village feels like it's doing tourism right. It's comfortable. No one seems pissed off because tourists went next door instead of to their place. And even though the shops are full of kitsch, it's mostly locally appropriate kitsch instead of cookie cutter buy it anywhere in the world kitsch.

Today's ride: 2 km (1 miles)
Total: 1,203 km (747 miles)

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