Muong Khen

Arrived 4/07/2011

The road out of the hills. A bit of everything
with a little bit of seal every now and then

Well I’m slowly making progress out of the hills and towards the flats (hopefully) of Ha Noi.  So far I have found Vietnam a bit confusing.  This may be due to crossing over into the middle of nowhere where no English is spoken, money exchange and finding somewhere to get cash out not yet discovered, oh and it’s really hot - that just gets to me after a while. 

I thought my route out to Ha Noi was going to be generally descending down a valley towards the coast but I was very, very wrong in this assumption.  I have climbed over a multitude of hill and mountain passes throughout the past two days and still think I have one or two to come before Ha Noi.  I’m looking forward to some flat riding for once!

A nice big 10km descent into Muong Khen.

Amongst all this rather negative commenting the people are generally very friendly and have offered me into their ‘houses’ for some food or drink.  However, they think that I am fluent in Vietnamese which isn’t true so it’s just a bit of an awkward silence or they talk and I smile which confuses the situation more sometimes.  The last big hill i climbed (right) before dropping into Muong Khen I stopped about halfway up for some refreshments.  Had a bottle of coke, bottle of lemon green tea and a water.  Sat inside the persons house on a mat with their baby and kid.  I just smiled, drank and probably dripped sweat all over their mat trying to cool down.

The awesome view from my room