They can’t all be sunny days. That’s what I tell myself when the weather is less than perfect. For my third day on this slow ride to Hanoi, I was dodging rain clouds as well as trucks.

I exhausted! I got up at 6am this morning after using super-human powers to overcome the urge to hit the snooze button on my oh-so-annoying alarm. I wanted to do some decent distance today and so the only way to enjoy the back-roads, as well as covering a respectable amount of kilometers, was to get up at the crack of dawn.

As it happens, dawn must indeed be on crack because by 6am the world outside my hotel window was already in full swing. Chinese tourists from my hotel were walking across the road to the beach as if it might attempt an escape if they didn’t get over there at first light.

Breakfast was included in the price of my hotel room, but I don’t want to eat Pho Bo (beef noodle soup) for breakfast. I’m an omelet kind of guy, that or cereals. Better yet, bring me a ‘full English!’ Alas though, this was a very Asian breakfast and my request for an omelet was just met bewildered expressions on the faces of the non-English speaking hotel staff. In the end, fried eggs is what I got, but that was fuel enough for the long morning ahead.

I could see from the cloud that the early morning sun would soon be pulling a blanket of clouds over itself. Frankly, I don’t blame him for that, if I had to get up this early every day I think I’d make up an excuse now and then and spend a day under the blankets too.

It wasn’t long until I took a back road that wound its way around the rice fields of the foothills. Yesterday I saw the crooked skyline of the mountains reaching for the clouds, but today, despite being much closer to them, they were invisible behind the heavy mist and the preview of the weather that was to come.

I didn’t do a whole lot of stopping today. Instead, I just sat back, leaning on my luggage and enjoyed a slow winding way through the villages. I felt more like a passenger today, just enjoying the ride along the back roads that always seem to untangle their way back to the highway in the end.

I’d tell you a tale or two if I had one to share, but really today was a quiet day just gently going north. After nine hours on the bike, I got to the town of Hà Tinh and decided to call it a day. I checked and rejected a couple of hotels that had grand entrances but pig awful rooms, then eventually found one that had flashing neon love hearts on the outside.

“How long you stay?” Snapped the charmless person at the check-in desk. “Just one person for one night, thank you,” I said. He paused and looked at the keys laid out on the counter in front of him. “All night?” He asked. Clearly, I was on the seedy side of town, but I was tired and I just want to get some food and crawl into bed.

“Yes, the whole night, all night. Thank you.”

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Slow Road to Hanoi – Day 4
Read my tips about touring Vietnam on a motorbike

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