25/02: Bike (& Run) to the hills (+63; 3739km)

Route with pics
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First of all maybe correct the feeling described yesterday that Dong Ha is still a bordertown dump...when heading more west actually there was a bit of town that looked fairly nice & enjoyable. As usual the bit closer to the Hw1 doesn't do the town a lot of justice.

So today we biked into the hills. Our last good day of riding in Vietnam, heading west of Hw9 (of which parts used to be in the original Ho Chi Min trail) to Laos. The scenery quickly turns into green fields amongst the upcoming mountains. First bit of the route is ups&downs but nothing to seriously. After about 50km the mountains really kick in & the road goes up & up for the remaining 15km, slowly meandering upwards, deeper into the jungle towards Laos. It's hard work with the blistering hot sun & long 6-8% climbs, but you get rewarding views if you stop from time-to-time (which you need to anyway ;-))

Suddenly Line also had to run to the hills next to the road & camp there for about 20min due to a sudden rush of serious crapper activity. First we tried asking a couple locals if they had a toilet...without succes cause they just laughed and waved at something, somewhere...or if you ask us nothing & nowhere...?? Saved from problems until now, our last vietnamese morning noodle soup certainly won't be a kill-joy? Luckily after feeling pretty bad for 30min Line felt better again & we could continue our climb to Khe San.

Khe San checks all the boxes of a crappy bordertown, although Lao Bao is the real last bordertown that we will pass tomorrow & will probably also score a 100% on the bordertown examination. 1) It has a dodgy market where they don't want to give you back money when you buy something (if you do not have exact change) but they just keep wanting to give you shit you don't need instead so you can spend it all...?? 2) Everybody starts by charging 2x the already inflated white guy price. 3) No bank wants to exchange dongs to usd or Lao kip (other way around is not a problem though). Their pitch is to go to the market and exchange dongs to usd at a rate about 50% down the official rate...pure theft. So it is spending, keeping or burning the money ;-)

Bit of a problem cause we have to get some usd or lao kip to make it west through Laos to the first big city where we can get a visa cash advance...we hoped to exchange our remaining dongs...but that seems to be out of the window...our usd supply is low & some left over thai bahts are maybe only usefull once we get more west, closer to the thai border...mmm, hoping for some white guys leaving Laos with kips at the border so we can change dongs with them...otherwise we'll have to be winging it 'till Savannaket...fingers crossed!

Khe San is a former US base town, famous due to a big assault on it from the VC...although it was only a diversion attack to draw away attention to preperation of the Tet offensive. For this they where smugling big loads of goods down the Hcmn trail running through this area. I can only imagine how challenging the old jungle trail had to have been looking into the surroundings from the road. Anyway, Line now feels really happy we followed the coast instead of the Hcmn highway, all this up & down is just too hard biking :-) So we spend the afternoon napping, tucked away into the shade of our room.

Anyway, we think Laos will be underconnected to the web vs the other countries we've been too (but we hope to be proven mistaken) so maybe news will be bit more slow for the month to come.