Viet Road Trip Day 22

Viet Road Trip is a blog series about my solo scooter trip through Viet Nam. This is day 22. Days 20-21 can be found here.

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ay 22 started out with a minor hiccup. The rear tire on my scooter was flat. Luckily there was a tire repair place close by. I was able to get my tire patched within half an hour. After that was taken care of, I started my ride.

I had been worried about the weather remaining cold, wet and foggy. Luckily, the weather cleared up as soon as I left Sapa. There was some light traffic on the highway, but after a few miles, I had the road mostly to myself.

Leaving Sapa (1:45)

Nice flat area (1:56)

After leaving the mountain on which Sapa is located, the road went down into a flat valley. The area was surrounded by jagged mountains, and it was a pleasure to ride through. The sun even began to peek out through the clouds.

More nice roads (0:54).

Climbing up another mountain (2:10).

he flat part of Day 22 was short lived. Before I knew it, I was climbing another mountain. Little did I know that this was going to be the worst mountain climbing that I would experience in Vietnam.

Mountain climbing with the Godfather (1:33).

The roads keep getting smaller and smaller (1:04).

As I climbed the hill, the road kept getting more and more narrow, at the same time I was feeling more and more isolated. I was really feeling like I was way out in the back of nowhere.

The road ends, apologies for the music (1:30).

o there I was, riding along, minding my own business, when Google decided to route me onto this nightmare of a path. The path wasn't a gravel path, but more like a rock path. At first, I thought "OK, I'll get to a normal road soon." I was wrong. I would end up spending about 2 hours on this road, never getting out of 2nd gear or going faster than a few miles per hour.

The road was just too rough to ride on with any speed. I was worried that my bike would just shake itself to pieces. The road was also treacherous, so I had to keep the bike in gear on downhills to keep from slipping off the side of the mountain.

Making friends on the road!

A sketchy part of the path (0:22).

When I stopped for photos and a break, a scooter with 2 men on it came up the road. One of them gave me my raincoat. Apparently, it had shaken loose and fell off my bike. At the time I was only focused on the road and didn't care about my rain gear. Later I would be grateful for those guys who returned it to me as they passed.

One nasty road to ride on.

Some sort of meeting happening on the mountainside. I had to stop and check my map at the fork in the road (1:09).

Screenshot showing the road going off into the horizon.

his screenshot is a good illustration of why I was so nervous on this road. It wasn't that the riding was difficult, anyone can endure that. The problem was that I had no idea how far I had to ride on this little road. Not only did the road stretch off into the horizon, but I could also see a similar path on the mountains on the other side of the valley. I thought I had to ride all the way to the other mountains. My route said that I still had about 40 kilometers to go, and I didn't know if I would be driving at 5 kph for the entire way. Would it be safe to ride on this road after sundown? I didn't think my bike could survive 40 kilometers of abuse.

Thankfully, the road went back to pavement and gravel after about 2 hours on the small path.

Back on a normal road, on the mountain top (1:40).

I'm pretty sure that's China in the background.

Photo stop (0:40).

Getting close to town (01:32).

he ride into town was fun. The route was all downhill and included about a thousand switchbacks. Most of it was paved, and I could see my destination further down the hill.

The town of Coc Pai was pretty small, but there were no problems finding a hotel room. After I parked my bike and got freshened up, I went out for some food and beer.

I ended up spending the evening at this restaurant (which was also hanging a new sign). A few groups of cute girls were there and the lady running the place was friendly. They also had cold beer and a BBQ grill in front of the restaurant.

What I really loved about this place was the hot sauce that they had. This place had some awesome home-made chili sauce that I loved. All of the tables had old plastic water bottles full of bright red hot sauce on them. I kept ordering food just to have something to put the sauce on.

I thought about asking the lady if I could buy a bottle, but I made a big mistake. My mistake was in assuming that the hot sauce was common for the region. I assumed that I could buy some hot sauce from the market in the morning. Unfortunately, I never saw anyone selling home made hot sauce at the market, or anywhere else in Vietnam.

ay 22 would be one of my worst days of riding, but it wasn't the worst (that's coming up in a few days). This day would also be one of my best days for photography. I would love to ride this route again. Knowing that the rough part of the path is only 2 hours long would have taken a lot of the stress and uncertainty out of the ride. You can see from the photos that the area is absolutely stunning.

I returned to my hotel room and fell asleep after spending some time on the internet. My next post will be about the ride to Ha Giang and the near miss that made my life flash before my eyes. 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 and 20-21 here.