Day 3: Cuc Phuong National Park and Quan Loc

Today was a lovely ride. Mostly because we got to go straight through a major national park on a brand spanking new highway that the car drivers apparently haven’t discovered yet. The spanking new asphalt highway was appreciated all the more since our first hour or so this morning was on a rocky dirt road trying not to pop our tires. (Mission accomplished by the way, for all but one of us).

And the part of the park that we drove through was a huge valley, so we had a great downhill ride getting there. And once we were there there were mountains on all directions. Couldn’t have been more beautiful. Again, I didn’t take pictures but I know that others did, so I’ll share as soon as I can.

No bike mishaps today. Everyone’s still in the ride. Everyone’s feeling good for the most part. Our driver is fabulous and fabulously helpful (he can fix bikes and he knows Vietnam’s roads like the back of his hand). The roads and cars have been kind to us. I only get an incredibly loud horn in my ear like 3 times a day. We’ve had some good races with children on bikes and high fives from children on the side of the road. We’re about 215k into our trip and all is good.

So now we’re in the town of Quan Loc (in Thanh Hoa provice, if you’re taking this to google maps). Though it’s bigger than Vu Ban, I think its remoteness makes us even more of a novelty than we were there. I’ve had the same man staring over my shoulder ever since I sat 45 minutes ago. As we were walking here from our hotel, all the kids just stopped their bikes to stare at us. I felt like a car crash. Granted there were 10 of us in a row, but we weren’t even wearing spandex.

It’s lovely.