Vietnam Day 7: Out the Mountains

Fresh, clean clothes were what welcomed me the morning of our seventh day. Prices vary a bit in each town, but most places will do your laundry for about 1.50/kg. You drop them off in the evening and in the morning, all your stinky motorcycle clothes are ready to get dirty all over again!

Lunch break stop, in a region famous for it's marble

Today, we left SaPa. We could have taken a route straight down the mountain again, but our guide, Huan did what a good guide does and detoured us through villages and off-road dirt tracks all the way down. This is where having a guide really shone through for us: we could have used google maps to set our course for this trip, but to have someone knowledgeable in the side paths and intersecting village roads was well worth the price.

Quick break at the lakes edge

During our descent, we cross paths with locals, more dogs, and even crossed a few small bridges. I was also happy to feel the air begin to warm as we reached lower altitudes, and set off south towards Huan's family home.

One of several bridges crossed

I could sugar-coat this and say this was a glorious day of riding but the truth is it was a tough one for me. Km-wise it would be our longest day at about 220km, which at our speed meant were riding for close to 6 hours. My ass was sore from the vibrations of the bike, I was a bit tired from the sharing of family rice-wine the night before and I constantly felt like I had to pee (which I did - thanks to too much delicious Vietnamese coffee).

Alone with your thoughts on the bike you can get into your head about things and I started getting pissy with Huan (even though it really was my fault for not letting him know how I was feeling). So, when he checked in at lunch I told him as much: that I wanted to go slower so I could see things, that I needed a few more breaks, and that I was still a bit gun-shy about corners after my fall.

He responded as good as I could hope for and said there were some nice scenic areas to stop at for pictures in the second half of the day as we would be following the Thac Ba Lake until we reached our next homestay - at his home. He explained on one of these stops that the lake was man-made in the 1970's, and his family had had to relocated when the hydroelectric dam installation flooded the area. Now, as we travelled the road, the lake-side and innumerable islands are dotted with cinnamon, eucalyptus, and fruit orchards (bearing huge pomelos).

That night we stayed at Huan's family home (and homestay). He is of the Dao people, known for their traditional stilt houses. The entire first floor is open, traditionally for the living quarters of animals (such as buffalo, chicken and pig) but is now a beautiful place to gather and eat, talk and share stories.

The homestay is simply wonderful. it is quiet and our room is separate from the house with floor to ceiling glass that overlooks the nearby water. Other rooms for rent sat perched over the families 4 rice fields, a sugarcane patch and a karp pond. Again, I hope the pictures below will do it some justice.

We spent the night talking and eating and were introduced to his children who are 7 (I forgot the boys name) and 9 (his daughter Cho) and his lovely wife Sam Sung (I probably butchered the spelling of that). His daughter in particular liked when I would try and say certain words in Vietnamese and we had fun while I tried to parrot her, learning a few phrases like "good morning" (phonetically something like chow bouy-ee sang) or milk coffee with ice (cafe sue-ah da-ahh). Huan's wife also taught me how to say one more cup of rice wine, but I had had too many rice wine cups at that point to remember the phrase.

It was a really nice way to spend our last night on the motorycle trip, and we went to bed with promises of a boat ride the next morning after breakfast.