Leaving early for a
325 km trip to Mai Chau. It doesn't sound that far, but in Vietnam
you need two days for it. You can not really leave the island in a
rush 'cause the ferry only goes when there are enough people to make
a profit. Waiting a little bit less than an hour for the first one
and about half that time for the second we made it to the mainland in
three hours. Heading for Ninh Binh, where we plan to stay for the
night. We took the smaller roads to see more of the country side,
which is really nice in this area. The roads here are all paved (read
as: easy to drive) and the only real obstacle was a floating pontoon
bridge which was fun to drive. We made it there in the afternoon.
The next day we
discovered the fun of driving on unpaved roads. In Europe these roads
would be designated as “off road” but here they're the only
connection between the villages. It's good that we got more
comfortable on the bike on these roads, well only the driving skills
our asses still don't like the seat. We spent hours driving over
sand, mud and gravel till Betsy gave up. We were really beaten her,
even when all the oil came out of the front suspension we kept on
going, but finally she made us stop.
Our luggage was
sitting a full 10 cm lower than before. The luggage rack was bend
down and resting on the taillight. Jeff's attempt to bent it back
broke it :( Helpful locals pointed us the way to a welding shop.
Happy to have customers three guys started to fix the bike right
away. An hour later and only 50000 dong lighter (which is 1,75
euro)we hit the road again. What a wonderful country.
At the end of the
day we reached our goal, Mai Chau. Mai Chau is a lovely little
village surrounded by mountains and paddy fields. We gave Betsy a day
off and let the suspension fix and went ourselves for a hike around
the fields guided by a local dog.
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