This was the day Zach would get his Passport back with hopefully his Chinese Visa, well as you can tell from the title no Visa, there was some problem with his Vietnam extension and so the Chinese would not give him a Visa, the fellowship was coming apart. He was going to see if he could get over to Lao and get his Visa there. So there would be 3 heading west into the setting sun. I felt sorry for Zach, what a pain in the proverbial backside for him. We left Zach heading out to organize his escape from Vietnam, hopefully he would be able to sort everything out and meet up with Katrina and Mike in China, only time would tell.
As we were about to leave the heavens opened up and the rain came down, we waited till the worst was over then headed out of town. It took us a hour or so to negotiate the roads and traffic and we finally ended up on the correct road. The road was pretty bad to start with, pot holes full of water that you could lose a small child in and the traffic was pretty crazy, the further out of town we got the better the road and traffic became, we had made the right choice to take the smaller back roads and this would only improve over the next few days.
On the way through one small town we came across someone de-furring a dog getting it ready for dinner, it was quite a site, I had seen dogs in Hanoi which had already been de-furred but they were just small dogs this was a bigger dog. Kat took some photo’s and then we headed down the road a bit for a drink before we carried on.
We managed a few more miles with the blacken clouds chasing us down the only good thing about this was the tail wind propelling us forward, we were dashing towards the unknown, well that’s just because this was the first time on this road. The blacked clouds swept over us and lashed at our backs with flashes of lightning and thunder, you could smell the rain in the air and then all of a sudden we could feel the first hints on our faces. We tried to stay in front but in the race we were the slower and in the end it was inevitable that we would get caught.
The rain fit like a hammer blow, thundering down and covering the road in a torrent of water, the tires of the bike were soon slicing through inches of water covering the road, but we were not done and would not stop for any amount of rain. It did not take long before I was soaked to the bone, the only way was forward and not look back, when I did finally look back I had left Mike and Katrina behind. I pulled off to the side of the road to ring some of the water out of my clothes out and wait for them to catch up. The rain was still lashing down as Kat and Mike caught up and I pulled out from under my shelter and pulled in behind them. After an hour or so the rain finally started to slow we had maybe another 20km to go before we could get out of the wet cloths and into dry gear.
After checking out one hotel which was not that great we headed another 15km down the road to the next one, it was starting to get late as we had not left Hanoi till after 11am. We found a little place down a back alley with the help of a local, the rooms seemed cleaner then the last place and the people were really nice. Once dry and clean we headed out for dinner, we had thought that we had ordered a meal of Chicken with rice, but in the end only the chicken came out and it was pretty stringy but I was starved so finished mine off and what was left of Kat and Mikes. We paid and headed back for noodles at the hotel and then sleep, we had more kms the next day.
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