Day 3 - Tho Phu to Tan Ky
The alarm was set for 7.20am but we woke just after 6.30. After checking emails etc Donald from the Bikers Rest Cafe who we met on day two WhatsApp to say he read our post regarding our evenings dining experience and the signs we have to look for outside restaurants say "Bun thit cho" which means dog meat. We checked our bikes over which we are going to start doing every morning as a couple of bolts needed tightening on our back racks and my left crank arm too, we also lubricated the chain and front and rear mech. This would save us major issues if we lost components through failing to check properly. While doing this and loading the bikes me and Alex discussed just riding up the road to the restaurant to look at the sign. In the end we didn't so we will never know and will just put it down to experience.
We hit the road nice and early at 7.45 without any breakfast or decent sleep and after 10 minutes had to stop to put our overshoes on as the heavens opened. We cracked on for an hour and half down the HCM trail and to be honest there wasn't a lot to see because it was raining with low cloud around the hills but it was definitely getting more remote as the towns were further spaced and traffic was low. We eventually arrived in to Yen Cat which should of been today's evening stop over point, but because we put in extra kilometres yesterday we planned to go further today also. We stopped to buy water in the town and headed back to the HCM trail through some small streets were local people lived and sold there products, the butchers shop was certainly interesting.
We pushed on to the 60k mark and we stopped for coffee at someone's house with a sign outside, The lady made us coffee while the small kids stared at us and laughed. We had the coffee with a few dates and nuts and got back on the bike. Literally the next coffee shop up one minute down the road a western guy with his loaded bike was outside. We stopped and ended up riding the next 30ks with Jos from Holland who was cycling from Hanoi to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, really interesting guy who had a lot of cycling touring experience. Jos said his good buys and turned off to take a different route.
Shortly after Jos left us loads of children on oversized bicycles started coming out of the side streets and headed down the HCM in our direction, all shouting Hellooooow and laughing, then more kids turned up, we ended up with a huge gang of kids running us out of town and they took a lot of energy to outrun them.
About 7ks from our final destination of Tan Ky, we met four Australian guys who were doing the same route as us but on Motorcycle, funnily enough they set off from Hanoi the same day as us on Thursday 8th Nov, they said they were doing it in a month and we have planned 24 days and after 3 days we are already one day ahead of our schedule. Rolling into Tan Kyh our bikes were a real state with all the rain and dirty roads so we ended up pulling over outside a place which looked like a motorbike repair place and an house. We got the bikes washed and the chain oiled ready for tomorrow. The guys and lady were a real laugh in this place, they had been drinking ( late Saturday afternoon) after they washed Alex's bike one of the guys jumped on his bike and gunned it up the road while the others were just laughing, he soon came back though and we said our goodbyes and checked into the hotel in Tan Ky. Another 124.6km less to do.
We hit the road nice and early at 7.45 without any breakfast or decent sleep and after 10 minutes had to stop to put our overshoes on as the heavens opened. We cracked on for an hour and half down the HCM trail and to be honest there wasn't a lot to see because it was raining with low cloud around the hills but it was definitely getting more remote as the towns were further spaced and traffic was low. We eventually arrived in to Yen Cat which should of been today's evening stop over point, but because we put in extra kilometres yesterday we planned to go further today also. We stopped to buy water in the town and headed back to the HCM trail through some small streets were local people lived and sold there products, the butchers shop was certainly interesting.
We pushed on to the 60k mark and we stopped for coffee at someone's house with a sign outside, The lady made us coffee while the small kids stared at us and laughed. We had the coffee with a few dates and nuts and got back on the bike. Literally the next coffee shop up one minute down the road a western guy with his loaded bike was outside. We stopped and ended up riding the next 30ks with Jos from Holland who was cycling from Hanoi to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, really interesting guy who had a lot of cycling touring experience. Jos said his good buys and turned off to take a different route.
Shortly after Jos left us loads of children on oversized bicycles started coming out of the side streets and headed down the HCM in our direction, all shouting Hellooooow and laughing, then more kids turned up, we ended up with a huge gang of kids running us out of town and they took a lot of energy to outrun them.
About 7ks from our final destination of Tan Ky, we met four Australian guys who were doing the same route as us but on Motorcycle, funnily enough they set off from Hanoi the same day as us on Thursday 8th Nov, they said they were doing it in a month and we have planned 24 days and after 3 days we are already one day ahead of our schedule. Rolling into Tan Kyh our bikes were a real state with all the rain and dirty roads so we ended up pulling over outside a place which looked like a motorbike repair place and an house. We got the bikes washed and the chain oiled ready for tomorrow. The guys and lady were a real laugh in this place, they had been drinking ( late Saturday afternoon) after they washed Alex's bike one of the guys jumped on his bike and gunned it up the road while the others were just laughing, he soon came back though and we said our goodbyes and checked into the hotel in Tan Ky. Another 124.6km less to do.
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