day 269, Kon Tum

Did not want to get up this morning, still felt rough and knackered though me and Michael dragged ourselves down to breakfast. Had a marvellous meal and plenty of pancakes, bid farewell to the daves’ and got on our bikes. It’s over 700kms to Da lat and we want to make it in two days. We found our way to Highway 1 which was busy and shit, lots of people walking out in front of you with planks of wood, before turning into 14e and then onto 14, the Ho Chi Minh Trail! Martha was running well, it was a pleasure to be out and about on the bike in the sun and the warm and the dry (incidentally I will never take being dry for granted from now on,  I was never aware how much I liked being dry.) 14e kept on going for what seemed like ages, before we reached 14 which was alright. We went through a national park which offered stunning scenery, then stopped off a waterfall by the side of the road where two other whitey’s were, they were Scottish and were on a Minsk. Stopped for lunch and had some Mi Quan, wasn’t as good as where it was in Danang. Carried on and it started raining so broke out the dashing yellow poncho, works a treat. It stopped raining and we hadn’t got as far as we thought we would, so set our sights on Kon Tum. We got off the bikes at six, having left at ten, only done 279kms, be a big day tomorrow. We checked into a hotel, did a bit of research for food and found out that here has two specialty, wild game which is now illegal from over hunting and Gio La, so we went off for that. It was a 3km walk and found our place. Gio La is a tray full of leaves, over 20 leaves and herbs, which you get a bit of each leaf and herbs into a big leaf, then add a prawn, some pork, some goat fat, salt, pepper, chilli and a sesame sauce and eat it in one. As Michael put it “we ate the rainforest”. It was decent, then walked back and past our hotel in search of a supermarket that we had seen. On the way walked past a few street cafes with inpromptu tele’s showing the spurs-arsenal game, got some water and some cakes at the supermarket and took a seat on the street to watch the football. Was a really good game and a good atmosphere, was about 50people at our street place watching and most were arsenal fans so all was good in the world. Finished watching that and went to bed knackered, struggling to write this. Also due to my tiredness-things I have missed;1, a man carrying a fucking slab of ice on his motorbike on the motorway, 2, a woman carrying a parrot on a bike with no cage, 3, a little toddler threw a rock at me when I was driving past.