day 69 - Yên Cát to Tân Ky

Wednesday, 1 January 2014

The first day of 2014 turned out to be a warm, sunny day for us. It was a perfect day for riding and we covered the undulating 90km to Tan Ky by mid afternoon. 

We are definitely in a more rural part of Vietnam here, passing through small sleepy towns with children playing barefoot, although the homes and towns are a lot more developed than the poorer parts of Laos that we passed through. We even saw a couple of small skate parks with teenagers roller blading! We had some great interactions with a few of the children - two boys cycled alongside us and practised their English, asking us how we are and telling us their names and ages. Another couple of young boys gave us a push up a hill, laughing all the way; although at times we may have been pulling them up. 

(Another very large Church set back off the road)

(Uphill, downhill, uphill...)

We passed dozens of stalls selling oranges, often with handfuls of stalls lined up next to each other. As we experienced in Hanoi, people selling goods don’t see the need to diversify or differentiate themselves from the people next door who are selling the exact same thing. Rather than see them as competition, they simply agree together what the set price will be so as not to out-do each other. 

We stopped to buy a bag of oranges from two women and as soon as we pulled up they started laughing and offered us to sit on a couple of seats next to them. The more outgoing of the two walked forward and leaned right up against Nicky to measure her height - she was very amused at the difference. She then helped Nicky pack the oranges into one of her panniers and was delighted to see Nicky’s hat, pointing to her own hat on her head too and laughing. 

(The lovely women from whom we bought the oranges.)

We stopped at a small restaurant for lunch where the owner’s daughter, who spoke good English, helped us order a simple but filling meal. As we've often seen, there appeared to be three generations living in the back of the building while the front was used for business. The grandmother, whose mouth was stained bright red from chewing a particular type of leaf, tried to have a little conversation with us. We gathered she wanted to know where our coats were and we fanned our faces to indicate we were too hot. She had a good laugh at that. 

(Rice, chicken, greens and soup. Watched over by the owner as we tucked in)

(Rice paddies at different stages of use)

(Approaching a small mountain pass)

We arrived at Tân Ky around 3pm and decided to call it a day. We have the luxury of three hotels to choose from in the town so after inspecting one, we settled on the second which is a small but comfortable hotel called Volga Hotel. Maybe named after the river in Russia? Tomorrow we will continue further south to a large town called Dúc Tho which will take us around 80km. The forecast is for a sunny 24 degrees so it should be another good day's riding.