Lucky Bastard Adventures: Buon Ma Thuot

Today was another day on the bikes, 7 hours to cover 170k, including stops. The legal limit here for motorbikes is 60kph, but our bike tour leader, Mr Binh, rarely achieves 60, most often we are only at 40kph. It makes for slow, hot travelling.

The place we are at tonight is Buon Ma Thuot, a bit off the main tourist track, but a big town with lots of coffee grown around here. Like everywhere in Vietnam at the moment, lots of street decorations and activities associated with the 40th war anniversary. Nice Hotel, has a pool which was a welcome relief this afternoon when we arrived.

We had a few stops on the way after leaving the coast this morning, one place had hammocks, which were popular with some, my problem all these little roadside place have tiny little tables and plastic seats, suitable in my view only for small children. Hence, I have to look around for somewhere to sit as these little chairs are no good for me. The popular drink is iced local coffee, with or without condensed milk. I prefer without. I did not get a picture, which is a regret now, but the placed we stopped with the hammocks had a tree with pretty yellow and pink flowers, however on closer inspection, the pink flowers were fakes and were wired on to the tree. Nothing, it would appear, is at it first seems.

For lunch, we stopped at a roadside cafe where fresh corn was sold, boiled up in big pots. Eat as much as you like. It was nice, but not as sweet as the corn we are used to, a bit more starchy.

The same place also had a collection of colourful birds in cages. Most moved around too much for me to get a get photo of them.

Tomorrow is a ride rest day and we go elephant riding (not sure about me) and then we have 3 days riding in succession before another break. Sounds like hard work given how slow we are forced to travel.

Big meal for dinner tonight, worked out to be less than $5 per head.

Signing out LB