Surly They Won't Make It

1/5/25

After replacing the plastic sheet on the bed we rode straight up the QL1. It went uphill. We were inexplicably tired. We’d had a couple of days rest but it hadn’t touched the sides. Woe is us. It wasn’t any cooler, not down in the town, we were besieged by hot and heavy air. Our clothes hadn’t even dried overnight. 

Once over the hill we took a caffeine addiction break. It was hard to ask for a hot black coffee. They brought us something milky first and we had to send it back. We were stuck on the QL1 for the first 10 miles. Just before we turned off we were treated to a view of Bàu Sen, a large lake.

We were on a lovely back road. It climbed up through plantations and then down through rice fields. People passed by on scooters with cheery greetings. At the bottom there was a little shop. The bemused woman let us top up our bottles with ice and dug out a little bag of salt for us. We prepared an orange electrolyte solution again. 

The route took us down narrow concrete roads. We crossed rice paddies on a causeway. The route managed to deteriorate further and further. First into gravel. Then into dirt. It was odd that there were still big houses being built along the tracks. We persevered as far as possible. But eventually the route became more rutted than we had the patience for. We made our way back to the nearest tarmac. 

The road led into a town, where judging by the large puddles it had evidentially just rained. There was a unique Buddhist temple. Two towers with Buddha images that looked like they were porcelain. We sat on a bench and shared a dragonfruit. As well as one of the seaweed wrapped, popped rice bars we’d bought from Quay Sen in Dong Ha. After we’d explored a bedraggled man kept bugging us. We presumed for money. A man dressed in brown robes who was manning the temple noticed. He came over and tried to insist the man come in with him.

We crossed a bridge over the Sông Kiến Giang and followed the river north. The road got quieter as we left the town. Apart from an occasional karaoke party of course. As we passed the rice paddies we noticed the brown water that they sat in for the first time. It was hard to see that they were flooded. To our west there were many hills and mountains. Some had been carved out by some kind of mining. They all appeared to be covered in hazy air pollution.

The road was quite poor for much of the way. In many places the concrete slabs had annoying drops between them. When we returned west, towards the mountains, the concrete slabs were joined by bitumen. That made the ride a little easier. We were travelling through an extremely flat basin full of rivers and rice. Pumping stations lifted torrents of water. Completely submerged cows surfaced like submarines in the river. 

On the other side of the basin was a narrow tarmac road. Made even narrower by piles of stones and grit mounded up on each side. After crossing another bridge we ended up on a quiet, well surfaced, heading north. After a few miles we were back on another concrete road back across the basin to the QL1. We were grateful to be have been off the main road all day. Some young people passed us on scooters. Most said “hello”. this time one of them  put their middle finger up with a grin. They clearly don’t know it means. 

There was some roadworks to negotiate which slowed us down a little bit. They were completely rebuilding the road. After a tiresome 5km more, we reached the QL1. We passed one guest house on our way towards another. It took us a minute to realise we were being stupid. We didn’t want to be more than a mile from the amenities.

The room was a little more expensive than usual, but it was clean as well as a fridge and television. When we went out hunting for food we knew better than to visit the first stall we saw. We walked up the main road and then saw an alley with a couple of stalls at the end. As we got closer we saw that it was actually quite a large market. We always do a lap first to let people get used to us. A couple of vendors were impatient when we tried to ask them about their goods. We just moved on. We ended up with a peeled pineapple, mango, bananas and tofu. Jonathan dropped the pineapple on a woman’s salad leaves, sending them everywhere, so we had to buy those too.

We started three new TV series. Mo, Happy Face and The Four Seasons before watching the usual two episodes of Shield. We spent a lot of time flustering over which hotel we could stay at the next couple of nights. Everything was excessively booked up. We assumed it was all to do with Reunification Day.