Cua Lo Beach to Dong Hoi

First of all, a very happy birthday to my big sister, Kate!

Another long day on the bike started with getting out of the off-season resort ghost town of Cua Lo, backtracking to Vinh to head on down AH1. Having briefly spotted what looked like a small meat/produce market on the side of the road the day before, we pulled off in Vinh looking for some fruit. Turned out the market winded back through several block of alleys and expanded from food to clothes to sunglasses to just about anything your average Vinh resident might need day to day. We received a lot of big friendly smiles and just as many "Halloooo!"s from random directions - I don't think they see a lot of foreign visitors to their markets.

Clearly not designed for tall dudes.

Quail eggs, chicken eggs, duck eggs - not sure what the big red fruit is. Anyone?

We found a woman with a small stall in the center of the market surrounded by low benches and a handful of locals quietly slurping Phở and we immediately knew we had found breakfast. After exchanging a few smiles and hopeful looks with the purveyor, we squeezed ourselves onto the little benches (me more than Cindhu) and pointed to the plate of dices beef marinating with tons of fresh ginger in front of us and held up two fingers. We're getting a little better at communicating in the land of few foreigners - lots of pointing and pantomiming and occasionally pulling out a little notepad for a game of pictionary. Two bowls were piled with rice noodles and then she filled her ladle with the beef and submerged it gently in her enormous stock pot of simmering, fragrant broth, letting it poach until just cooked. Then topped with chopped scallions, a few more ladle of broth and dropped in front of us. We heartily accepetEasily the best breakfast here yet, and only a small part of that was the immersive experience, and all for 30,000 VND combined (about $1.45)

Our humble chef

We thanked her (Cám ơn), and headed back out to the bike, not before picking up a few snacks for the road.

The tiny oranges were delicious, and one bunch of tiny bananas = ~$0.25

Being back on the road in and around Vinh reminded me of what I had quickly learned the day before - the drivers here are terrible. Not to make a crass joke, but if Cua Lo was their New Jersey shore, these were their Jersey drivers. In Hanoi, things flowed in some beautiful amalgamation of quick, precise decisions - the volume of traffic was immense there, but if you stayed alert it felt safe. In Vinh, there were fewer drivers on the road (still a lot), but nobody seemed to have a clue of what they were doing. It was just as common to cut across traffic or make sudden changes of direction or simply drive the wrong way against traffic, but everyone seemed to do it slowly, unsurely, and just blindly hoping for the best. Not a good idea. When you read about how common daily traffic accidents are in this country, it's easy to guess that they're all concentrated around Vinh. We made it out of the city with a few too many near misses, with about 200km to go. 

The rest of the drive, despite being a bit cramped on our little bike, was quite nice. A beautiful sunny day, mid 70's, and a road that progressively yielded fewer menacing buses heading towards you while double over-taking into your shoulder, and more meandering cows. The cows are more easily forgiven. The drive took an unexpected course over a beautiful winding mountain road.

We upgraded to the surgical masks favored by Vietnamese riders - turned out Cindhu's fit me better, and mine fit her.  So much plaid

After descending from the mountains, the towns seemed a little quieter and relaxed. Scenery was a little more pristine. Travelling this way gives you a great appreciation for how diverse the geography of this country is. We rolled into Dong Hoi late afternoon and quickly found the hotel we had looked up the night before. We waited around a good 20 minutes in an empty lobby before someone came back (from picking up 4 adorable little kids from school) to help us check in. Big room with a great view of the town and nearby river. We got a good recommendation for a nearby restaurant and ended up enjoying a nice combination of rice, Vietnamese omelet (savory with scallions and soy) and pork braised with garlic and mustard greens. Delicious.

A little dessert - chosen in honor of my brother Luke's favorite movie. The cookies had neither chocolate nor panda faces, and I'm pretty sure they're not licensed to use that image.

Tomorrow we're on to Hue.