D34: Gia Khánh to Tuyên Quang

March 9, 2018

I decided to try the back roads instead of the main roads. If only because it was the direction I was pointed once I headed to breakfast. Dinner last night, in the "downtown" part of town was sure to have many multiple breakfast options while the main road was less certain. And now that I'd headed back into the town instead of towards the main road, it was only natural to try back roads instead of the main road.

The sheer number of turns, the requirement that I regularly check my phone's GPS to see where I'm going, and the habit of Vietnamese side roads turning into dirt makes side road exploration a risky proposition over taking the main road. On the other hand, side road exploration means not riding on the main road which is always a win in my books.

Breakfast was yet another banh mi sandwich that, like most of the banh mi sandwiches I've had, was completely unlike any other previous sandwich. It was accompanied by a bag of Cheetos which claimed to be cheese flavor rather than the more common (at least in China) ketchup flavor. Even if they had Chester the Cheetah on the front, they most definitely were not the same as what we get in the US.
I'm cycling. They're technically food. I ate them anyway.

I was generally on the DT302 which is generally a small blacktop road that is generally in nice condition. Sometimes it's a bizarrely empty half developed dual carriageway that stops and starts with packed dirt ramps. Other times it's a ratty tatty road in need of maintenance. But it's mostly neither of those things. It's mostly a pleasant road and a pleasant ride with rice paddies on either side and a great mucking huge mountain range off to my right.

Some Vietnamese words are very easy to figure out

There were a few times I deviated from the DT302 but I mostly stuck to it as Google Maps Vietnam has rather over enthusiastically mapped single track dirt paths through the rice paddies and I just wasn't up for great explorations versus the alternative "actually making it somewhere by sunset". Maybe if I could talk to people or read signs telling me more useful information than TV repair or pharmacy.

Complete with rather overgrown sidewalks

This place makes paper offerings for temples. They will be burnt.

At the village of Tân Tiến the DT302 turns southwest but the road which formerly bore that number continues straight paralleling the QL2B on the opposite side of the Phó Đáy River. For a while the road quality got worse then it got better again then it got worse again. It was obviously once a relatively main road at some point in it's history given that I passed a prison (complete with a bunch of men in white and black striped pajamas out on a work detail) and regular petrol stations.

Big temple complex (that I didn't visit) right after lunch break

Maybe Nepalese? Anyways, definitely the wrong place

Some ten or fifteen kilometers into no longer being a DT road but still having milemarkers that were counting down to Sơn Dương the road stopped being nice-ish concrete and went full-on dirt road mountain bike heaven. I've got nice wide tires and a sprung saddle but.... I'm not riding a mountain bike.

I got to say, Vietnamese traffic is wonderful

As in China, you can tell that this road is older because the trees along the road are older

I'm allergic to making u-turns simply because I happened to have made a bad decision so I kept going anyways. Only another 6 or 8 kilometers however as there was a turnoff (which turned out to be a single track) that would take me over a bridge (which turned out to be a pontoon toll bridge) and put me on the QL2C.

It was actually kind of nice being on the main road.

Got to the intersection with plenty of time to spare before sunset even after I stopped to drink a coconut so I continued onwards to Tuyên Quang. This road, although also a QL and not one that's been modified by A, B, or C to indicate that it's a spur of one of the national roads, it's a bit narrow for the amount of traffic it gets. There'd be moments, sometimes entire minutes long where there was no traffic at all. Not even any bicycles or motor scooters. Then, in a great big whoosh of honking and jockeying for position and exhaust vehicles would start to pass whatever slower moving bus or truck or water buffalo who had been holding things up. If I was lucky the whoosh only happened one direction at a time.

Little fish farms and floating restaurants

I'm really kind of amazed that I've only seen two traffic accidents so far in Vietnam. One at 4:30am in Hanoi appeared to be a single vehicle accident where the overloaded vegetable baskets on their way to market caused the motorcycle to topple as it went round a roundabout, and the other while drinking a coffee in the backpacker tourist ghetto as someone swerved to avoid someone else and ran off the road into a row of parked motorcycles.

In Tuyên Quang I had a number of small meals of varying quality. The fried spring rolls by one of the gates of one of the mostly missing city walls were the best; the mozzarella sticks on a stick were easily the oddest; the cafeteria style pick some food and rice looked tasty but was sufficiently untasty that I left more than half of it on my plate; the passionfruit smoothie was a nice enough surprise I'll probably attempt to get another one as part of breakfast.

Speaking of nice surprises, my VND 160,000 hotel room has a soft mattress. Like soft soft. I'm sinking into the foam. It's glorious.

Today's ride: 89 km (55 miles)
Total: 1,673 km (1,039 miles)

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