Good morning SE Asia!: 16/10/13 - Pac Nam to Bao Lac

So we set off heading for the end of the road on the map, then off into a big white space on the GPS. I had marked a couple of waypoints (just pinpoint coordinates to aim for). It turned out to be fine, the road was actually pretty straightforward, and started out alot better surfaced than yesterday! It didn't last long though and the tough bits were really tough. Johanna did very well and took it in her stride, albeit punctuated regularly with ooof's and uuuggghh's as she dropped heavily into another unavoidable and cavernous pothole. We did worry about the tyres and wheels often today, but true testament to the Mavic A319/A719's and Schwalbe Marathon plus tyre combination on each bike - we remained unbreakable.

We followed the river for the first part of the journey, passing 12ft high waterwheels that lift water from the river to the level of the rice paddies alongside, where is is channelled back down through the various levels. Simple mechanical engineering at it's finest! The angle of the 'buckets' was critical and relative to the speed of the wheel so that they didn’t drop the water too soon, or miss the 'collection trough', must take some tweaking to get it spot on.

The amount of dust on the route again today on the broken sections eventually started to take its toll however, with my SPD pedals failing to release a couple of times as they were packed full of dry dust and small stones. When this happens it looks like I have just decided to give up, falling slowly over to one side at a very low speed, but keeping my feet on the pedals whilst swearing loudly. Bit like Del Boy dissapearing behind the bar when the hatch is lifted, can be funny - but not usually for me! I landed my hip on a jutting rock in the dusty road one time, bloody sore, but more embarassing, especially as I was covered in dust for the rest of the day, with the girls in the guesthouse at the end having a good laugh about it.

The unknown section that we had no elevation for was easy enough to follow, but was the steepest climb yet, with Johanna opting to employ some different muscles for a while and pushed up a few of the steepest bits, or bits with no tarmac. It was tought, but we were kept going with our new cyclists superfood: a bar of some sort of nut paste sweetened and formed into slabs with the consistency of Gyproc. Tasted pretty good, and at 60g carbohydrate/100g product are just what we need.

We missed our booked guesthouse, as the address was wrong that we had. It was 3km back the way we came when we stopped at a big and well signposted hotel on the way back out of Bao Lac, after having searched and doubled back once already. The one we found seemed fine, but no WiFi, and no restaurant nearby. Also, they were still building the third floor, but we were too tired to turn round again and they were really friendly (also it was only £4.50 for the night). It had started raining by then. We went to a nearby shop and bought some food - noodles and stuff, and got a kettle of hot water from the staff. We went to bed pretty early, aiming for an early start so we could tackle the ever increasing hills as we entered the 'real' section of this Extreme North Loop!