Good morning SE Asia!: 28/10/13

What goes up must come down, and today we were headed back down the same steep climb we made up to Bac Ha. Of course it doesn’t last too long, and 50 minutes later we were back on the flat.

We had been warned off following the QL70 as too many trucks use it to get to China, so we crossed over it and followed smaller roads into Lao Cai. Well, it was a bad choice in hindsight. We don't know how bad the QL70 was, but for the sections we rode the other day, they were not as dangerous as we anticipated. The worst thing was that the other road we choose was unmade for almost the whole way, so either very dusty or very muddy. Today the rain poured down, so it was the latter. Also quite slippery in places, and there were still many trucks using the road, just not the huge Freightliner ones coming out of China. To be fair, we didn't feel unsafe, we are pretty confident with traffic now, but the main disappointment was choosing this road in the first place and having the unsealed surface.

The sandy dusty gritty stuff gets in everywhere, making braking sound awful, chains go crunchy and gearshifting hit-and-miss (my bike better but the stuff still gets into the cable change mechanism for the hub). Johanna was struggling to get good gearchanges and also running low on both brake pads, and at one point her rear became loose enough for the cable to pop out at the lever end. Need to change pads, but a quick roadside repair in the mud and rain sorted it for the meantime.

We arrived in Lao Cai through wide 4 lane newly built streets, sparsely decorated with the odd government building, and even hotel along the way, the posy grandeur and wide spacing aping Washington D.C., I thought. We didn't stop to take pics by this point though! The huge station (Ga - from the French Gare?) has overnight trains to Hanoi and beyond so the is on the tourist artery between Hanoi and Sa Pa and the rest of the North - Including China. The main town is as busy with tourists as expected. We were hassled to buy tat on the street for the first time today. There were a few in Bac Ha, but only selling handmade stuff, here it was cigarettes, playing cards, maps, lighters and toys.

We had reserved a room at a cheap Nha Nghi by texting the phone number that we found online. We couldn't find the place when we arrived but the guy came over to the Cafe we waited at after I gave him a quick call. I asked him if he knew where there was a Rua Xe (Jet Wash) around and he just said to come over to the restaurant, as he had one. So he fired up the hosepipe, in the rain at the front of the restaurant and I started washing the bikes down. They are fully waterproof - luggage etc so you can basically just squirt the lot. Then I did a bit of Johanna's legs and her shoes, and then the guy (Huan) wanted to help me do my shoes and stuff. He got a bit carried away (think he was enjoying it) and we ended up with very wet feet at the end of it, but clean nonetheless.

We had to stop in Lao Cai to buy our train tickets back to Hanoi, which must be done a few days in advance. We had decided to take the train after much deliberation as the 3 days it would take to cycle the 700km back would have been very dull cycles, just trying to make km's on straight flat main roads. We don't like to do it, but considering the North Loop we had made was in a circle anyway, we didn't feel too bad. We got a high class sleeper cabin, and the bikes on for 700,000d each (£21). Probably steeper than we could have got, but we don't see that as expensive, especially when it was such a pain to try to organise it any cheaper (which we did try).

We had some dinner in his restaurant which had a good selection of Western stuff, but we should have stuck to Vietnamese, they don't always get the Western stuff totally right, it wasn't bad, but not worth the premium.