Give me money: Tan Ap to Badon

December 20, 2016

WE weren't sparkling this morning. In French it's a jour sans, an empty day, and that's how it felt. And it wasn't helped by drizzle.

Well, we rode away, following the rail line until the first hill sent it scurrying away. We passed an army checkpoint where bored soldiers played cards and hoped they wouldn't have to go out in the rain. We passed villages with schools that looked on houses one way and cliffs in the other.

If it doesn't sound fun so far, I suppose you're right. The first long hill didn't make it better either. We got to the top, at our junction to the left through the trees, observed with gratitude that it was downhill and set off. Only to go up a still longer hill.

The fields had rows of these. But what are they?

It's at this point that a more thoughtful nation would have furnished a neon-lit café offering beans on toast, coffee and sticky buns. But, no. Biscuits retrieved from our bonk rations and eaten under a grey sky were as good as it got. We had taken more than an hour to ride 12km.

Things did get better. The road lost its frown and ambled silently past more immaculate churches - making Steph cross aboout the money spent there while people all about were little better than subsistence farmers - and on to a wet crossroads where we (i.e. I) debated whether we could be bothered to carry on.

In time the road settled down and we whispered through beautiful valleys

And then, to complete my dismay, lines of children cycling out of school yelled "Money! Give me money!" one after the other. Then two girls on a scooter, the one on the back well practised at winning smiles: "Money... dollar..."

She rubbed her fingers together. We shook our heads together. She persisted but got nowhere. In the end she nudged her friend and they rode off to find more westerners elsewhere.

And why suddenly this begging? We don't know but the clue may have been in the next town, where an office on the left bore the logos of western charities such as Oxfam. We weren't the first Europeans in the area.

The day went on like that, pleasure and disillusion in pursuit. One moment we were sighing along a beautiful valley lined by lakes. We gazed at the edge of the national park that brings thousands to the Ho Chi Minh trail which passes me through it.

And then? The horrifying sight of vast, yellow mechanical grabs demolishing the strange geological cones that make the area unique. Vietnam is destroying itself, destroying the very thing that makes it beautiful. All to feed the concrete factories that lined the road and generated the traffic that made our last hour miserable.

The strange conical peaks on the road to Badon - but Vietnam is grinding them away for concrete

An odd day, really.

Today's ride: 85 km (53 miles)
Total: 906 km (563 miles)

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