Vietnam Bike Tour: Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Day 2)
DAY: 02
Distance: ~65km. Not so much.
Origin: Mai Chao
Endpoint: Somewhere on highway 217
Today's Author: Zach
Given that we had to wait for the wheel to show up, we decided to take it a bit easier today. We woke up as late as our bodies would let us, which was about 10AM. I stayed in bed until 11:30AM working on these blog entries, barely made any progress. Writing and editing blogs via "Wordpress for Android" is a miserable, miserable experience. I'll spare you the details for now, needless to say many hours today were spent going through past days.
The homestay place made us lunch, and again there was a massive amount of food. The second picture below is when we had finished eating -- it looks as if we hadn't even started! Such a waste!
We took a walk around the village that we were in afterwards. The walk itself was fairly miserable given how hot it is outside, but we're starting to get used to simply being hot and sticky all day. We stopped on a bench after maybe half a KM. We were walking through this town of sorts with lots of "stilted" buildings (no first floor). We posit they're all built on stilts for the raining/flooding season. We're not sure if it's a town either, because it was completely empty in the middle of the day. Perhaps the locals are simply smarter than us and chose not to be outside at noon on a massively hot day. The locals also have this habit of burning things -- we're not sure if it's their trash or something else. Either way, from certain vantage points you can see how the fire smoke literally blankets the valley. Despite how picturesque some of the photos were, the whole valley had the slight smell of burning and the air didn't feel so wonderful.
We took a walk around the village that we were in afterwards. The walk itself was fairly miserable given how hot it is outside, but we're starting to get used to simply being hot and sticky all day. We stopped on a bench after maybe half a KM. We were walking through this town of sorts with lots of "stilted" buildings (no first floor). We posit they're all built on stilts for the raining/flooding season. We're not sure if it's a town either, because it was completely empty in the middle of the day. Perhaps the locals are simply smarter than us and chose not to be outside at noon on a massively hot day. The locals also have this habit of burning things -- we're not sure if it's their trash or something else. Either way, from certain vantage points you can see how the fire smoke literally blankets the valley. Despite how picturesque some of the photos were, the whole valley had the slight smell of burning and the air didn't feel so wonderful.
Needless to say we happily paid the man whatever amount of money he wanted without negotiating (a whopping $10 for both of us together), took quick showers, congratulated each-other on being alive and passed out. Â Whew!