Woke up this morning and, joy of joys, there was a small patch of blue sky in the distance. Hoping to take advantage of the break in the weather I loaded the bike after a quick breakfast, said goodbye to the very friendly staff at the "Sunrise" and headed up the rough road out of time towards Tuan Cio, the turn off to my next stop, Dien Bien Phu. Exactly 2km from the hotel, I rounded a bend and my spirits dropped a notch. Another line of traffic and humanity stopped by...something. Slinking my way to front of the pack, I was met with a huge yellow sloppy mess of a landslide that had buried about 200 yards of road the night before. A backhoe and bulldozer were busy clearing the wet cement-like gunk, so I joined the crowd and waited. At one point I was joined by the only foreigner I had seen in a couple of days - a French guy about my age riding an ancient, and heavily used, Minsk motorcycle. We chatted about the previous days storm for a few minutes - turns out he had been stuck in Mai-Chau with me, we just hadn't crossed paths. But he was now three days late, the bike had to be returned to Hanoi in three days, and he needed to get back come hell or high water. The last I saw of him, he had recruited a small army of kids to push his bike through the muck. When I lost sight of him around the bend he was making progress but it didn't look pretty.
After an hour or so of waiting in the sun (SUN!!), I retreated back to town, figuring I could do something more productive than watching heavy equipment sling mud around. Returning a couple of hours later, found that the road was opened and, spirits suddenly raised again, I took off down the far side of the ridge. So far so good - until about a half hour into the journy when I was met by another road block. This time a bridge was out and although there were dozens men working like ants to repair it, I realized it would take hours. The gods were not looking favorably upon my efforts to leave Son La so I gave in. Returning to town for the evening, I settled into a lazy day of praying the sun would stay out long enough for all the roads ahead of me to be repaired.
While Son La is a pretty little town set in a beautiful valley, its only real claim to "fame" (or infamy) is that it was routinely targeted for "off loading" of ammunition by American warplanes returning to their bases in Thailand after bombing runs across northern Vietnam. Apparently it made more twisted sense to drop unspent bombs on a town than bring them back home. The main target was an old French colonial prison - which, I guess if you're going to bomb something, is as fitting as anything. I walked around town, hiked up a nearby hill to a radio tower, avoided rabid, obviously communist dogs protecting said radio tower, chatted up a couple of english-speaking college students who ran the front desk of the Sunrise, and read a bit. A mellow day and in the end the time was well spent - repairs on the road were made and I was off early the next morning.
After an hour or so of waiting in the sun (SUN!!), I retreated back to town, figuring I could do something more productive than watching heavy equipment sling mud around. Returning a couple of hours later, found that the road was opened and, spirits suddenly raised again, I took off down the far side of the ridge. So far so good - until about a half hour into the journy when I was met by another road block. This time a bridge was out and although there were dozens men working like ants to repair it, I realized it would take hours. The gods were not looking favorably upon my efforts to leave Son La so I gave in. Returning to town for the evening, I settled into a lazy day of praying the sun would stay out long enough for all the roads ahead of me to be repaired.
While Son La is a pretty little town set in a beautiful valley, its only real claim to "fame" (or infamy) is that it was routinely targeted for "off loading" of ammunition by American warplanes returning to their bases in Thailand after bombing runs across northern Vietnam. Apparently it made more twisted sense to drop unspent bombs on a town than bring them back home. The main target was an old French colonial prison - which, I guess if you're going to bomb something, is as fitting as anything. I walked around town, hiked up a nearby hill to a radio tower, avoided rabid, obviously communist dogs protecting said radio tower, chatted up a couple of english-speaking college students who ran the front desk of the Sunrise, and read a bit. A mellow day and in the end the time was well spent - repairs on the road were made and I was off early the next morning.
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