Good morning SE Asia!: 19/10/13 - Meo Vac to Yen Minh

We had been looking forward to today's cycle for a while, since Alex first suggested the Northern route, our perceptions of just how good it was had been confirmed and bolstered by the people we have met coming the other way over the last couple of days. The remote mountain pass between Meo Vac and Dong Van is the clear blue Karst-pinnacled roof of the country - and the pictures we have seen have always been the centrefold of any Vietnam brochure. Just twenty odd kilometres separate the two mountain towns, but the views go on for thousands ;)

Its always a gamble with the weather though and as we set off into thick clouds and heavy drizzle, we thought we wouldn’t actually see any of it. It turned out that as we got up into the pass, the clouds cleared just enough to see what all the fuss was about. Disintegrating spikes of dark volcanic rock reaching infeasible sharpness above several hundred metre drops into the abyss of clouds, the winding (but well surfaced) road clinging with hands and feet around the waist of the cliffs, heading off into the distance like a rope bridge. And the best bit is that the local bus takes it all at 45 degrees lean angle and about 40 miles an hour!

We stopped and took photos almost every 50m.

After the pass we went through Dong Van and stopped at the cash machine, considered stopping for the day but as we knew the place was packed out with no rooms available due to something happening. The football/hockey field was full of people, the streets too, a big local political rally or convention. We didn't find out and decided to press on to Yen Minh. Alex was researching a route for the bike tour in the area, so we arranged to meet him in Yen Minh for some dinner and a chin-wag. Whilst I was in the cash machine (little glass room on the street outside a bank usually), Johanna was approached and extensively photographed by an overly interested Chinese tourist!

The road between Dong van and Yen Minh was no less breathtaking - but slightly less sheer.

We were stopped in our tracks at one point by the screams of a pig as we dropped into a little village. We could hear it before we came round a corner and then stopped as we could see some sort of commotion on the road ahead. The noise a pig can make is blood-curdling, more like the screams of a tortured person than an animal, it gets you somehow. After a minute or so, and seeing the bemused expressions of a couple of people also checking what the noise was, we went up the hill and past the commotion. It was an absolutely huge sow pig, maybe 180kg's that 5 or 6 guys were trying their best to truss up but it was having none of it - kicking and bucking and biting for it's life. What a noise! We were too embarrassed to take a photo, but I guess more adventurous tourists would have had a field day. This was the first time we had seen such a big pig in Vietnam, they are normally a much smaller breed, not counting the tiny pot-bellied ones.

Twenty minutes later the same massive slab of ribs, chops, cutlets, steaks and various other delicious cuts came grinding past us, on its side on a wooden stretcher strapped to the back of a Honda Wave II moped which was squashed onto the bump stops. This whilst climbing up a 10% grade with the now-tired swine still giving its best shot at escape. Great stuff! We have seen pictures of a full grown Buffalo on a moped also, so we reserve our topscore for something even more extreme.

Arriving in Tam Son, we used Johannas unnaturally accurate hotel spotting skills to find our lodgings yet again. Nice hotel but very busy, something going on in town again, just like Dong Van. We showered and met up with Alex and his buddy Mii who had been researching a new tour route and homestay in the area, renting motorbikes from Ha Giang. We let the guys get washed also and then met them for dinner having the best part of a duck between us plus many other dishes such as omelette, chicken and pork that is the reward for eating with guys who speak the lingo. It is great in Vietnam as Mii just brought in the duck from another restaurant to our table, no problem!