December 17, 2016
At last: a cyclist!: Dien Chau to Vinh
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ONE thing we'd expected was other cyclists. Vietnam, as I mentioned, pulls in its stomach in the middle. All the touring cyclists in the land should be crowded into this one small space.
But no.
It has taken until today to see the familiar shape of a rider coming the other way. And Philippe, from Spain, said we were his first as well.
"Two thousand kilometres and there's been no one," he said. He laughed.
I'd put him in his 30s, lean and with black hair cropped to whiskers. He was on his first tour. He'd started in Saigon and explored there before heading north.
"I ride at weekends at home and I tried touring by motorcycle. And then I met a girl who toured on a bicycle. I thought 'That's not possible.'"
He bought a middling mountain bike in Saigon, tied his bag to the back and set off. He'll go as far as Halong bay, just before Hanoi, and then sell the bike for whatever he can.
"I haven't looked after it, so if I get €10..."
His was the second happy encounter of the day. The first was with the sea. We set off with it on our left this morning, riding a broad boulevard in a half-closed coastal resort. Soon we were on narrow, concrete roads raised from the surrounding fields and from the artificial lakes of fish farmers.
The soil here is light and fertile and we could have spent half a day trying to identify the crops. They were nothing we recognised. We watched men, and sometimes women in blue dresses and still more conical hats, crouched in concentration in the centre of fields.
Repeatedly, we rode past fish farms. Well, to be honest, there were no signs to advertise what they were, and few buildings and no workers. Just the fish, presumably, in dark pools the size of an ice rink, rotating propellers splashing their edge to push air into the water.
The delight of the sea came after that. We are again between the empty coast to the left and Highway 1 to our right. We can hear the traffic at moments but never see it.
We took a rural crossroads and arrived to our unhidden delight at a rocky and sparkling bay. Our road ran at its edge, occasionally surfaced, more often rock and mud puddled by a day and night of rain.
Long-abandoned shells of concrete buildings stood to our right one moment, the spectre of cliff quarrying long ended. It was quarry lorries, we guessed, which had churned our road and there'd been no reason to repair the damage since. Nobody came down here but the occasional local struggling to keep his motorbike upright and, now, two western tourists on bikes.
The bay was beautiful, with a handful of coastal fishing boats in the distance. But it was also a reminder of how badly Vietnam deals with its rubbish. Plastic bottles and bags and every kind of other litter lined the tide line. It is a sad aspect of such wonderful people that they throw whatever they like wherever they like. It's a rare length of any road that they don't disfigure.
Rubbish collection is the privilege of rich societies. But Vietnam isn't poor. There is some recycling, it's true, in the sense that enterprising individuals collect plastic bottles, cardboard and more to sell again from bicycles pushed through the streets. And there is a haphazard refuse collection system in that sacks and even loose trash is scattered along a hundred metres of roadside and collected at intervals by women, usually, pushing metal handcarts. But they are rare and you know you're getting to one by the smell of decay.
Well, the bumpy road along the coast did little for Steph's arm and because of that we are opting for a short day. Right now, we are enjoying soft drinks in the unaccustomed surroundings of a bar 34 storeys above Vinh - a town that looks little better from this height than on the ground.
Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 675 km (419 miles)
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