Day 6: Thanh An Tea Hills – Bai Duc

Distance: 71.26

Time: 5:40

Average Speed: 12.6

I awoke with a start, at half past 3 in the morning. There appeared to be a strange whooshing noise coming from the air conditioning unit, so I quickly turned it off, and without the glow of its control panel, was now in complete darkness. The incessant, ferocious noise continued and seemed to be getting louder and louder, to an almost apocalyptic extent. Suddenly, I realised what it was, a huge rain storm on a glass tile roof. I worried about my bike which was leaning against a post outside, but I wasn’t going to check on it. The storm raged on for hours, so I didn’t get much sleep. Trust it to rain when I was stuck half a mile along a dirt track.

After trudging back along the sodden track, I started pedalling along the Highway at 10 o’clock. The storm had abated, but the rain was an ever-present. A few miles in, I carried on at a junction and the road started to climb through the forest. The road had narrowed and it looked like it would be climbing for some time, when, all of a sudden, a woman and child on a moped stopped beside me and pointed back down the road. She said a few words of which the last one was unmistakably ‘Laos’, I’d gone the wrong way. Relieved of the kindly advice, I turned to retrace my steps, straight into a fierce biting wind, and soaked as I was, I started to get very cold.

Returning to the junction, I realised that I’d missed it because my GPS data was as up to date as ever. It hadn’t bleeped to tell me to go left, because it didn’t know the Laos road existed. After a couple of miles, my waterproof trousers were getting caught in the gears, and by this point I was freezing, so I stopped at a cafe, to look out my trouser clips, and put on the one item of clothing I didn’t think I’d be using until the way home, my fleece.

Back on the bike, I noticed that the change in the wind that had brought the bad weather from the North, was also providing a fantastic tail wind. Although I was soaked through, I was warm enough and because the roads were generally kind gradients, I wasn’t overheating. I had been considering cutting the day short at Pho Chau, after only 24 km, but by the time I got there, it was just after 12 and I was flying along. So I figured, seeing as I couldn’t get any wetter anyway I might as well commit to another 52 km to Huong Khe.

Shortly after, the road ramped up and I was thinking I’d made a mistake.

Of course, just as I stopped to take the picture, an American cyclist in full Lycra appeared behind me to ask if I was ok. I managed a startled ‘fine, thanks’ as he punched on up the hill.

Fortunately, the hill wasn’t long and soon I was back up to speed on several long flat stretches. Sometimes time seems to stand still when you’ve got a particularly good tailwind, and I couldn’t quite believe it was only quarter past 3 when I reached Thuong Khe. I was at a pleasant lake in the centre of a very busy little town, I knew where a recommended hotel was and it seemed like a good place to spend the night.

But, I was making such good time that I knew I should carry on, and if I could make it to the guest house in Bai Duc, 12 miles further on, it would mean the difference between 68 or 80 miles tomorrow…