Cowabunga! Adventure in Cao Bằng Day 1

This last Monday and Tuesday, Bryn and I got work off for "Giỗ tổ Hùng Vương," the holiday for celebrating the Hùng Kings. Therefore, we decided to take this opportunity to go on a trip to the Northern Vietnamese province of Cao Bằng. Cao Bằng is located on the Chinese border.  Famous attractions here include the Bản Giốc waterfalls and Pac Bo Cave where Ho Chi Minh, after returning from China in 1941, established a revolutionary force.

 
We had decided earlier to take the trip by motorbike and prayed that the weather would be favorable. On Saturday at 7:00am we left Hanoi. The weather was good. It was a little hazy but there was no rain. Each of us had our own motorbike. Interestingly enough, our backpacks matched our bikes.

We took Highway 3. Getting out of Hanoi was kind of awful. There was tons of traffic and the roads were super dusty. The worst was when would get stuck behind a truck, which would happen a lot. Trucks kicked up lots of dust so by the time we reached Thai Nguyen around three hours later our faces were covered in dirt.

(Click for larger view)

We reached Thai Nguyen around 10:30am. We both needed a break so we decided to stop for coffee. We pulled into a cafe at the edge of town. Like a lot of cafes in Vietnam, it was simply the ground floor of a house with table and chairs set around. The lady working there was very friendly. Once she realized I could speak some Vietnamese she began chatting away. She seemed impressed that were taking a motorbike trip to Cao Bằng instead of going by bus or car.  I asked her if she had ever been there and she said that she hadn't but she heard it was very beautiful and the girls there were very lovely. When we finished our coffee, she told us to stop by on our way back. We promised her we would.

Our trip got a lot better after that. That coffee stop was a wonderful prelude to our real journey. The roads were suddenly a lot less crowded, a lot more scenic, and a lot more curvy--in other words: a lot more fun.

We stopped for lunch in Bắc Kạn, which like all towns since Thai Nguyen was very small. We found a small phở noodle shop. And man was the phở there good! It was really spicy and tasted different than any phở I had ever eaten. When we paid for our meal, the man working there asked in Vietnamese where we were going. I answered him and he asked if I spoke Vietnamese. I replied that I spoke a little. Suddenly everyone in the phở place became much more friendly. One kid there even gave Bryn a bag of bread. The man told us to come back to the shop when we returned from our trip. We told him we would.

The scenery just got better and better. We made a few stops for gas and to take pictures.

However, around 3:30pm we were both getting kind of tired of driving. It was becoming less fun and more of a chore. We stopped for a bathroom break and it took a lot of motivation to get back on our bikes. Our butts and legs were soar and out faces were filthy. I think it was around this time that I looked at Bryn's face and simply busted out laughing. The way the dirt had become indented in the lines in his face made him like a badly drawn caricature of himself.  My face was just as dirty but since I have a slightly darker complexion and a beard, it was less noticeable.  

Around 4:30 we finally made it to our destination. Well, not quite. Cao Bằng was a bigger city than most we had passed, so we got kind of lost in trying to find our hotel. We had to stop and ask directions quite a few times. So it wasn't until around 5:15 that we actually made it to our hotel. Including the small stops, it had been around a nine-hour trip.  Probably around six to seven of those hours were spent driving.

A friend of ours had suggested a nice hotel here, so I had made a reservation the day before. The hotel clerk laughed at how dirty we were. And we were extremely dirty. But after taking our showers and checking out the view from the balcony...

..we headed out for dinner. We found a nice spot where we ate beef, frog, and fried rice. Then we came back and crashed, re-energizing for the rest of the trip ahead of us.