I really enjoyed the day off in Tay Son, and it was nice to be here during the Tet Festival, but things will be easier when everything opens up again on Feb 23.
I didn’t do much, just the usual washing and sleeping. I did reacquaint myself with Vietnamese coffee culture though. I like the coffee, just not the cigarette smoke that comes with it. They’ll smoke inside and outside and not care. It turns out that lung cancer is the second most common cancer and leading cause of cancer deaths here. Surely those facts would make people think twice about it.
We left Tay Son on Saturday morning after a coffee in the centre of town at the “less smokey” cafe. It was obvious that more businesses had opened up again as the Tet Holiday was about to end. Looks like we timed our run into Vietnam very well indeed.
Out of town, we were immediately into lush farmland and small villages. The morning was a great ride. We stopped for some rice, veggies and eggs. It was nice even though the lady in charge was completely disinterested. Back to work blues ?
We continued on to the place we booked, but it was pretty disappointing so we decided to continue riding another 30kms to a cluster of hotels at Do Lurong and finally found some accommodation there. The first two places were full though.
It’s a strange place. The road is about eight lanes wide, there’s obviously plenty of people about, but not much open. There are weddings though. And they all seem to come with the loudest karaoke I’ve ever heard.
We walked into the main part of town, grabbed some chips and beer then sat in the main square and reflected on a big day. The chips turned out to be a strange mix of salty and mango flavours but luckily two of the local kids are them all. Their mother had brought them over to say hello to these two strange people and practices her English a little. Very nice of them.
On the way back, we searched for anything but noodle soup but had to settle for it anyway. I had the most disappointing Bun Bo Hue of my life and that summed up my impression of Do Lurong. Underwhelmed !