Tien Yen to Ha Long Bay Jan.25/08

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Jan.25/08 Tien Yen>Ha Long Bay
103km 14km/hr

Long ride today through pouring rain most of the day on good roads which cont'd to be rolling hills for about the first 3/4 of the day. It was a good test of our rain preparedness and we faired reasonably well with a few tweaks needed for the next rain ride to keep everything dry. G had a tough day as she inherited my cold and had her rain pants tucked into her rain booties instead of over so rain found it's way in and soaked her shoes 😞. We were glad to finally make it to Bai Chay in Halong Bay and the views of the thousands of limestone karst formations jutting out of the Tonkinese Gulf were awesome-even in the rain! Note: There is a new bridge(2006) connecting Halong city to Bai Chay so following the map in the current LP guide will lead you astray. If you go to where the old bridge was you'll be under the old bridge and there was no ferry service as shown! Follow the road that doesn't really look like a through road under the bridge and up the hill for a couple of km and you'll be back on course. We checked into the Hoang Lan hotel, hung up our wet stuff, and had very welcome hot showers! The restaurant in the hotel had good food--I finally got my Nem Rau(the springrolls!) and we now know the correct pronunciation! We were still a little hungry so we hit up Asia restaurant in the LP for some more tasty Nem Rau (and banana pancakes for G!) before heading to bed!!

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