Day 15 - Ea Drang to Buon Ma Thout

After our ordeal of not finding any suitable food last night after the days long ride, combined with a poor hotel and sleep we woke extremely early and decided to get out on the road and to also find some food. We set off riding to Buon Ma Thout at 06.31 and for the first kilometre was a short stretch downhill. Scattered all over Vietnam  and particular the more south you get are little roadside glass fronted trolleys with bread loafs in and the ladies tending them warm the loafs up and you can add pork, herbs, fried eggs, greens and a selection of spicy sauces. These have been our lifeline over the last few weeks and this morning was no exception. We pulled in to the first one and ate two fully loaded sandwiches each - we were really hungry after last night famine.

After we ate we started riding again and the road had a gradual climb but nothing too strenuous, but a steady 4/5% for probably about ten kilometre. Like yesterday,  initially the landscape wasn't to spectacular and we cut through small towns and villages time and time again with pretty boring scenery except for distant tree covered mountains. We had to stop after half an hour to put on over shoes and rain jackets as the heavens opened and it absolutely lashed us with rain that stung our eyes. The temperature was also very low from previous days at 21C, but as we are now in the major coffee growing region of Dak Lak in the Central Highlands this cooler temperature is quite common. We wasn't bothered as this was better for cycling than the last ten days were we have been baked by red hot sunshine. Coffee growing was first introduced by the French to Vietnam in 1857 and is a major economic force of revenue stream. Vietnam is the second largest producer in the world behind Brazil for export of Robusta coffee beans with about 1.7 million tons. The more prized Arabica beans are also cultivated in Vietnam but the yield is very low at around  50,000 tons annually. Arabica coffee grows at minimum 1000mtr above sea level and the cultivation process can be more demanding as the coffee cherry plants are usually on steep hillsides which need to be harvested by manual labour.

Eventually we did stop for a coffee after a couple of hours and we pulled up in the town of Buon Ho at a coffee place with a nice garden out the back. We ordered our drinks and sat down noticing a very playful monkey in a cage at the side. Alex went over and probably started to torment it and he got his IPhone out and started to film it. The Monkey showed its displeasure and bolted to the front of the cage nearly snatching the phone with his arm attached at the same time - it was definatly a close shave and I tried not to laugh - Honest. After the coffees we continued and I decided to pull in to the "Cat Toc" which is the hairdressers and beauty parlour. In every village there are hundreds of these and this one had a picture of David Beckham on the front wall so it must of been genuine. I do this all the time I go to less developed countries, whether it's an hairdresser, dentist for a tooth polish or whatever, I like to go to see what it's like and if they do a good or better job than the UK and to see also how much it costs. The lady did a superb job, haircut, cut throat shave even though I had a shave earlier that morning, guybrows done, ears & nose de haired. I bet I was in there an hour - 40.000vnd ( £ 1.30 )

Feeling all brand new we jumped on the bikes and continued cycling and what we did notice today which was more apparent than previous days was there were a lot of bird trapping buildings. A building with a parapet and smaller building on top with a gap in the masonry would have a set of speakers / siren on top blurring out really high pitched bird squeaking noises to entice the birds into the gap. We haven't a clue how they managed to trap them once they flew in but judging by the birds we had seen on the markets and stalls for sale it clearly works. I did try a Google search on this and there were some articles on Google Vietnam just saying they need to do more to investigate the actual bird population, but there was a listing on there under BBC news and cruel bird trapping in Vietnam, on trying to open the page it went straight to say the page wasn't available - clearly like China, Vietnam also sensors information they don't want you to read.


After another hour we entered the city of Buon Ma Thout were we stopped at the large monument with the tank on in the centre and took some photos. Next port of call was the "Cafe Bike Palme" which is owned by keen cyclist Nguyen who I had made contact with two days earlier regarding my bottom bracket which was now howling with every pedal stroke. We entered the shop and ordered some coffees and got talking to Nguyen whose English was very good and he was very interested in our bicycle tour of his country. After chatting away for the best part of an hour Nguyen opened his Parktool fully loaded workshop and fitted me a new bottom bracket in no time. 126.000vnd including the coffees £ 4.20 the lot! A good test of the bike up and down the street and everything seamed fine. Nguyen invited us to join the club for a ride tomorow ( Sunday ) which sounded like a great idea until he told us the meeting time would be 5am! I think we may give this one a miss.

Yesterday's ride we blitzed two days into one so this now leaves us with another rest day or we may decide to go somewhere else, but for now we have booked into a nice four star hotel in Buon Ma Thout were we will be kicking our feet up and resting and touring the city for the next day or so.