After a while on Highway 1 I turn off to the Ho Chi Minh Highway and immediately notice the difference. The road surface is 100x better and there's barely any traffic. I see maybe 15 cars/lorries every hour and the road runs through some pretty nice countryside.
After a while I start to feel something I'd not felt whilst driving before, I realise soon that it's boredom. The road is great but there's nothing to keep you on your toes, you basically decide what speed to travel at, hold the throttle there and go. I guess in a lot of ways this is a good thing and I can see why so many people prefer to travel on this road, but I kind of miss the traffic on Highway 1.
After a while the road starts to climb some hills and gets a bit twistier and the scenery becomes more dramatic so the boredom fades a bit. After quite a bit of driving I arrive at Phong Nha and stop for some lunch. Phong Nha is nice, on the edge of Ke Bang park with some caves to explore, etc. but something in me decides that I ought to get through some more of the miles between me and hanoi so I decide to continue on.
Shortly after leaving Phong Nha the heavens open and it pours with rain. I decide to press on though as the road is good and I can see bright skies ahead. After putting on my rain coat and making sure my bags are covered I continue on and get absolutely soaked, pretty fun though. Shortly I'm out the other side and continuing on as normal except for being very wet.
The scenery on this section of road is fantastic. The Karst mountains jutting out of the ground are awe inspiringly pretty.
After a few hours I realised I had no idea how long I'd been riding for so look at my watch and see it's almost 6pm. Despite the fact the road is good and there's not much traffic it doesn't make sense to keep driving in the dark so I pull off to the nearest town and hope there's a hotel. It turned out to be a dusty little town called Pho Chau and there was a fairly nice hotel in the middle of town that I managed to book a room in.
After checking in I headed out to the market. I guess they don't get many western tourists here as absolutely everyone wanted to say hello and burst into laughter when I replied. At the market they didn't even try to rip me off with tourist prices. I'd been wanting an orange for ages but whenever I ask at a market they tell me they are around $4 per KG which I refuse to pay, however this time I really wanted some and would be willing to pay even that much. So after miming my way through ordering a kilo I pull out the equivalent of $5 expecting to get a little change when the stall owner shakes her head and holds up 2 fingers. At first I assume she's asking for 200,000 which is ~$10 and am about to walk off when I realise she actually only wants 20,000 or around $1.
As I leave the market the rain catches up with me and it absolutely throws it down so I dive into the first restaurant that looks open. The owner looks incredibly happy to have me here, sits me down and pours me a cup of ice tea. I order chicken rice, one of the few things I know how to say in Vietnamese and a few minutes later I have a massive plate full of the best chicken rice I've had so far. We try to have a conversation, but with no common language other than mime, it's pretty difficult but regardless he and his wife seem happy to be having it. Again a reasonable price is asked and I head back to my hotel to get some sleep before another early morning.
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