When I woke up in the morning, I found that my hand was swollen, there was a distinct white spot where I had been bitten, luckily it was not sore or itchy so just squeezed it into my glove and headed off. From now till the 80km mark it was all about climbing, those long slow never ending climbs, the miles ticked away as I eat up the distance to my next stop.
Breakfast was had and again back on the bike, my legs were feeling it a bit from the day before, not that it was a hard day, it’s just I had not done much riding for a week. It is amazing how much I week off can affect you, saying that it does not take too long to get back into it. The ride was pretty easy going till I hit a small town of Da Mri, it was my second breakfast stop and I am glad I did, as after breakfast it was reminiscent of the climbs in Lao. 1st gear kranking up the hill, it was about 14km of 1st gear kranking.
Some locals had stopped at one point and invited me to have some fruit and a chat, it was a good time to have a break so I pulled over. I eat there fruit and we chatted about pretty much anything and everything, after about ½ an hour it was time to move on up the hill I still had a long way to go. After another hour of kranking I stopped at a place of worship, a shrine to what looked to me like Merry. It seems this whole area is christen, lots of massive churches everywhere, which to my mind is a bit stupid when you still see people living in run down houses, but that seems to be the way of a lot of religions.
Before I go on, I have mentioned in the past about me losing weight, well my bike has gained weight, I rode on to a truck scale the other day when leaving Ho Chi Min, me and the bike were 110kg, I’m 64kg with my water bag, so the bike is near 45kg now fully loaded, when I left New Zealand me and the bike were 100kg, might have to put the bike on a weight loss program.
Back to the kranking, I finally made it to the top after 2 and a bit hours of up, which is about 10kms, I was feeling pretty warmed up by now but the temperature had drop a lot, I estimate that I had climbed about 500 vertical meters, not bad for a mornings ride. After I crested the top of the hill I looked out onto a plateau, I called it the Vietnamese plateau, just like the Tibetan plateau but lower in altitude and with less mountains and lots of green, so really nothing like the Tibetan plateau besides being in the hills and flat-Ish that is a fairly big ish in fact as I was to find out.
Boc Loc was my lunch time port of call, it is a pretty big city really, that stretches for a good 15kms. At lunch had a sign language conversation with some Vietnamese tourists about my bike, they seemed fairly fascinated by my cleats on my shoes. So after lunch I would have 44kms to my stop point, I only had 2 hundred thousand dong left so had to find a bank, which in a big city you would think was easy, I had found a couple of ATMs but non would accept my card, luckily found one on the way out so I was safe for money again.
My nights stop was in a place called Di Linh, which I was glad to get to after 44kms of rolling hills, I did pass people picking tea leaves with their bamboo sacks on their backs it makes a beautiful sight. The hills and flats have tea and coffee plants everywhere, it took me a few Kms to work out it was coffee trees I was passing through.
When I pulled into my hotel, which is to say it was one of 3, and looked the nicest I notice two bikes were I parked my bike, 2 Americans were staying there as well, so I found out which room they were in and after a bit of shopping and dinner I introduced myself. They have been through NZ, Australia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam heading towards India. We talked for a while and I will meet up with them in Dalat, as they were going to be taking 2 days to get there. They are also meeting up with some other riders there so could be heading to Nha Trang in a group, will be something different.
They have a story about a guy who has been riding for 7 years and has a bike seat made out of tire tubes, I think he is one of those fantasy stories, he is a myth. They say he can speak twelve languages backwards, and only stops riding for 1 hour a day. Last sighting of this man was somewhere in India, or was it Thailand, no one knows…
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