Viet Road Trip Day 23

Viet Road Trip is a blog series about my solo scooter trip through Viet Nam. This is day 23. Day 22 can be found here.

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ay 23 started out with my favorite stretch of road on the planet. The "highway" was a tiny little single-lane road that wound along the side of a beautiful mountain. The temperature was perfect and there were only a few other people on the road, as I set out.

The first few hours of riding were pure joy. The road meandered along the side of an emerald green mountain, sculpted with rice terraces. The day's route wasn't too long, so I didn't feel any pressure to speed through the area. I felt free to take my time, stop for coffee, and stop for photos when I felt the need.

Just watch a few seconds of this. How lucky am I to have had the opportunity to ride that road? Absolutely gorgeous! (2:00)

Beautiful little farm on the valley floor.

"Be Stiff" an appropriate song for this stretch of road. (1:26)

More riding. Trying to "Get it up" the hill. (3:13)

It's like they sculpted the whole mountain.

he road out of Coc Pai was the most enjoyable road that I've ever been on. I'm pretty sure that I could spend 10 days just riding back and forth on DT178 and never get bored. It should be given an award for being such an amazing road to ride on.

A rough patch of road. (1:18)

Going down. (1:22)

Mellow downhill ride. The only thing missing is the herb. (3:13)

Riding with myself (1:56)

n my last post, I mentioned a near miss that made my life flash before my eyes. I was pretty sure that the near accident happened on day 23, but now that I've reviewed my footage from this day, I think it happened on day 24. I just didn't go very fast on day 23. The videos of day 24 show me going way too fast through villages, and I'm confident that the near miss happened on that day. Sorry for my mistake. I'll write about that incident in my post about Day 24 soon.

"Ever Fallen in Love"? A ride through a town. (3:10)

The charm of Vietnam would melt even a "Heart of Glass". (3:15)

went to Ha Giang for a reason other than just needing a place to sleep. My visa only had a few more days left on it and I was hoping that I could extend my visa at the immigration office in town. Unfortunately, the immigration office was unable to help. They said that I could only get my visa extended at the place where I got my passport stamped. That place happened to be located on the other side of Vietnam.

This meant that I had to cut the northern part of the trip short. Instead of a leisurely tour through some of Vietnams most scenic areas, I now had to dash to the border with Laos and decide what to do next. It was my fault for not being better at budgeting time and planning.

My original plan was to return to Cambodia on a motorbike (Cambodia was the country I was in before I went to Vietnam). I loved Cambodia and the Cambodians, and I really wanted to explore the country by bike instead of by bus. Those plans would never materialize for several reasons, but the primary reason was that I had fallen in love with Vietnam.

n Ha Giang, I found a donor kebab place! Two different kebab places, actually. When I traveled through Europe, I did a Donor Kebab World Cup to see which country had the best Kebab. It should come as no surprise that the country that introduced the donor kebab to the world won the contest. Germany was and is, the Donor Kebab World Champion (especially their "donor box" variation, glorious!).

I was happy to include a new country in the contest. Unfortunately, the Vietnamese donor kebabs placed last in the contest. I thought Poland would win Last place, but Vietnam took it. The sauce was just mayo, the meat was sketchy, and the restaurants didn't have access to some of the necessary ingredients and spices. The portions were also small compared to European donors. Even with such a poor showing in the Donor Kebab World Cup, I was happy to have a taste of home.

For some reason, I had a really hard time finding food in Ha Giang. There must have been a holiday or event happening because most places were closed.

After the first kebab, I wanted some fried rice or meat on a stick or something, but I couldn't find any open restaurants that looked appealing. I found one place with cartoons of insects on the walls. Turns out they only sold insects to eat (really wish I had taken a picture). I walked around for about an hour, trying to find another place to eat. Finally, I decided to go to another donor place which was of similar quality as the first donor place. The guy who worked there was nice and took a selfie with me.

his is the point in my trip when I finally had to ride with some urgency. I think I had 4 or 5 days left on my visa, and I still didn't know which border crossing to use. This is kind of the unofficial end of my scooter trip. From this point on, I was riding to get to places instead of just riding to ride.

I've still got a few more posts left in this series, and I'm most likely going to start posting about other parts of my 2-year trip soon. I hope you'll stick around for the next post. Until then, ride safe!

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Viet Road Trip is a blog series about my solo scooter trip through Vietnam. Read about days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7.1, 8, 8.1, 9, 9.1, 10, 11,12, 13, 14, 15-17, 18, 19, 20-21 and 22 here.