Good morning SE Asia!: 21/10/13 - Tam Son to Ha Giang

So off to Ha Giang. Of course it was uphill in the morning, but not too bad - 250m or so, and then ALL downhill from there until it gets flat! These are the days that makes it seem so easy.

We passed through one quite big town just as the school was emptying for lunchtime, the hello's were deafening! You can tell how big and prosperous the town is as you reach the boundary. If it's a big and well funded one, the road is about 4 lanes wide with kerbs and perfect tarmac, lots of government built yellow buildings with gates sporting the red background and yellow text reserved for the communist font.

Whilst cycling through, we stopped to take a few photos, with the school-kids all around. One group of kids you can see in the photos came over shyly (they are never so brave when up close) and one girl stretched right up to Johanna's front bag on her tiptoes and presented her lunchtime sweet packet to Johanna as a wee gift. At first Johanna couldnt accept it of course but the little girl was adamant and trying to post them like a letter into Johanna's open front bag. She wasn't looking for any money, just wanted to be nice. I got the feeling her friends wondered why she gave her precious sweets away. That just sums up the friendliness of the people here. Could bring a tear to a glass eye so it could.

Before the road flattened out and twisted through the valley floor it was steep and snaked across the sides of the hills in well-sighted twisty sections that provided smooth free-wheeling at any speed you dared. I couldn't resist the lure of gravity - it's free acceleration AND it saves on brake pads ;) What a road, great tarmac, hardly any traffic to slow me down and it just went on and on. The Cube Hyde bike I have, on the Schwalbe Marathon tyres is really a comfy and subtle weapon. I am sure the extra weight I am carrying low down helps stabilise and damp the ride also. I really fell in love with the handling on that long downhill, biasing the rear disc and getting low down and back to tuck in the front end before using both brakes through the corner with some nice lean. The bike feeding back full confidence in the brakes and tyres. The disc brakes are awesome never needing much lever pressure but loads of lever travel so they are nicely progressive if you go in too hot and need to adjust. They never fade at all. But they are going through a set of pads (front and rear) every 1000km or so which is not great as I can't get them over here.

The last flatter section into Ha Giang was a breeze, and one of the most beautiful bits on the whole trip so far. It was picture-book river and jungle with rice steps and tidy little villages. With much more affluent looking stilt houses all along the way the whole area reminded us of the Switzerland of the North of Vietnam. It gave a great impression of Ha Giang to come.

We stayed in a bungalow resort just outside of Ha Giang, much more touristy than we have been used to, but as it was the first time we had a choice to spoil ourselves for a while we went for it for a couple of days.