Bản Vay

Our day started off with S taking us to a nearby modern cafe, with the usual coffee and light fruit breakfast. A young boy was quite captivated by the fact we were tourists and kept trying to come over, but his group tried to keep him from pestering us. His tenacity eventually won out, and he repeatedly came over and asked a question in english, then run back and talk to one of the adults who was helping him translate the questions and our responses.

There was definitely a lot of energy out on the streets as the shop owners put out there wares, and the setup for the upcoming celebrations. Leaving the city was a bit chaotic 🙃

We spent most of the day on asphalt or concrete roads, only veering onto a dirt path once. The local communities were doing some repairs, so avoided a couple sections of freshly poured concrete. The wooded section of trail was quite steep and wet mud, so took a lot of concentration to get up. A carefully laid his bike down when his back tire kicked out on slippery mud. J came to assist lifting it up 💪. It was also very hot and muggy out, so we worked up a sweat. A section of road went right under some houses! About 4.5ft clearance. It caught S unprepared and he dropped his bike on the concrete, but both were fine! Thankfully S found a place to stop for a cold beverage not much farther down the road as we needed to take a rest from the busy morning.

Our route took us through a couple low passes, but a fair bit of haze hung in the valleys despite the apparent clear skies far above. Around 1pm S found a place to stop for lunch as the town we fuelled up in didn’t seem to offer much.

By late afternoon we once again found a narrow concrete path, taking us along a section of the Nang River, through a limestone canyon. The river flowed through a large cavern called Puong Cave. Unfortunately the water level was too low to be picked up by the boat near the suspension bridged, as previously arranged. A quick u-turn and we were back to other side of the cave to catch our ferry boat. The narrow flate bottomed boat navigated down a short section of Nang river before crossing Ba Be lake, and into the Ba Be National Park! Such a fun experience to have a private water taxi like this 🚕💦

Our accommodations for the evening was another home stay, but a little upgrade as we requested a private room instead of the big-room similar to our first night. The bungalow we enjoyed was perched on the steep hillside over looking a narrow arm of the lake. It's the most enjoyable stay so far! The beds are comfortable too! Dinner was delicious and reminded us of home cooking! The smoked pork dish was delicious 🐖😋Read more