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Published: January 29th 2008
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Marc from France
Tea break with Marc(or in his case beer and a smoke!!) Jan.24/08 Mong Cai>Tien Yen
88 km 15.9 km/hr
Really nice relaxed ride today along hwy 18. Although on the map it looks like a sort of coast road you never really see it that much and if you look closely you're actually probably anywhere from 1 >10km along the way. It was also a lot more hilly than we'd expected with lots of 10% grades but really fun as none of the hills are very long and you're usually rewarded with a fun downhill! Relatively early on in the ride it's tea country-really nice rolling hills of plantations! We came up over a hill into a little town that had all sorts of tea vendors/cafes and at one of them they were really waving and calling us over so we decided to pull in as it was nearing lunch and we were ready for a break and a place to munch on the vache qui rit cheese and baguettes we'd bought in the a.m-one of the nice remnants of French colonialism! We were having a great time having tea and taking pics(they were loving the camera!)with the super-friendly locals when another cyclist rode by! We hailed him over to join
Tea Break
Our tea hosts! us! What a character-this older Frenchman with long scraggly grey hair and beard and a torn shirt(no offence if you're reading this Marc-lol!)! He was riding around town looking for beer(bia)! He eventually found one and brought it over and had it along with a smoke and was quite content! We hung out for probably an hour and a half chatting with him and taking more pics with the locals-they really got a kick out of his long hair and ripped shirt! Marc is about 7 months into an 18 month trip-he started in Pakistan and worked his way to Vietnam and should be in China right about now and does't know where he'll go after that. Very inspiring guy! Biking is his thing-he doesn't even have a driver's license. After exchanging emails with Marc and trying to pay for our tea(they refused to let us but did accept a little gift of these really beautiful Cdn. stamps commemorating Chinese new year that G bought before leaving) we left with lots of waves and toots of the bike horn and the slight pang of regret that you feel when leaving such nice people after having just met. Eventually rolled into Tien Yen and found a place to stay above a boisterous restaurant/bar where they serve free peanuts to people! It sure has been nice being able to read the charcters on signs here-much easier travelling that way!! Jumped on the net but it was too slow to do much. I've been typing this blog up on my Palm-based phone(it has "mini-MS word") and saving to the SD card so that it can be popped into our card reader and into a usb port for upload. A small laptop would be pretty handy as in a lot of the bigger towns there is free wi-fi at a lot of the hotels and cafes. After an all you can eat feast of rice noodles and steamed veggies with garlic at a street stall(which cost 10 000 for both of us-one USD is around 15 000) we hit the hay.....
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