day 260, Yen Cat

Had a marvellous sleep before I was alarmed and up for a last breakfast, pack my bags and leave the hostel to get on the bike by eight thirty. We found our way out of Hanoi pretty easily this time thanks to some more in depth planning, and were on our way! We elected to go down the Ho Chi Minh highway as it has just been newly laid, less trafficy and better scenery, though first we had to get there. We missed our turning but it didn’t really matter (we thought) and just kept on going and meet the HCMH (Ho Chi Minh Highway) later. All was going to plan till we reached the road 12b, and again it just disintegrated, had to drop it down into second gear and just coast through playing buckaroo which was a pain in the arse, plus got wet and muddy. We stopped for lunch and to get a few things tightened and adjusted on our bikes, then carried on. We at last joined HCMH and it was bliss, big wide road going through valleys and amazing scenery, if you took the bit where Neo first see what’s earth is like from the Matrix, but replace all the human eggs with green rice paddies and the sentinels with huge karsts that’s pretty much it, the scale is massive and it’s soo easy on the eye. We were cruising around 80, nothing much around and was enjoying myself so much. Then it started pissing it down and things got miserable. Soon was soaked through, really cold and that road had held us up. We were aiming to get as far south as possible to Hue, which is 757kms away from Hanoi, we didn’t even make it to Vinh for fucks sake. We ended up in Yen Cat, it was half five and we were really cold and wet. For dinner we went wandering around, there wasn’t a lot around and it was raining, though we found this place with four businessman in eating some squid dish which looked really good so we pointed to that and it was pretty damn good, before retiring to our damp room (with the most elaborate tree trunk carved out as a desk you've ever seen!)  and reading, started on the Tiger’s Wife, then bed early for a six o’clock start and ambitious target of Hue.