Day 3 - Quang Uyen to Ban Gioc, to Cao Bang

Today was an epic day. No other way of putting it.

We were staying at the homestay in Quang Uyen, were we'd had some great food the night before but called it a night around 9pm.  Apparently there were a load of fireworks that went off late in the night, no doubt part of Tet celebrations, but I'd slept right through that.  Woke up early though and got the bike loaded up.  Packing and unpacking every day is a necessary evil. You never know what you'll need on a trip like this so you end up bring stuff that probably won't get used.  If you take one pair of jeans it's guaranteed they'll get soaked somewhere or you'll spill some food on them.  If you bring one pair of gloves they'll get soaked and you'll have to wear them anyway.  Waterproofs? Hot dry weather all week.  So half the stuff we've got with us is surplus most of time and in all likelihood won't be used.  Doesn't stop it taking up valuable luggage space though! The other thing with having to repack every day is you inevitably get those 'where have I put it, have I left it at the last hotel/cafe' moments.

To begin with we rode (according to our guide Pinky) 60km further down the road we'd ended on yesterday.  It continued the theme of a single road that cut through the lowland while all around were paddy fields then huge mountainous karsts. We encountered many wayward water buffalo wandering along and across the road, usually with their owner frantically trying to round them up and keep them in line but not always.  There were also plenty of these tiny tractors which the farmers use.  They ride them to their field along the road, then in some cases remove the wheels and fit paddle wheels which I assumed were so they could work the paddy fields.

After 48km we arrived at the Nguom Ngao caves. Well, the carpark nearby anyway.  Dotted around the carpark were girls with stalls selling the usual random stuff, handcarved this or jewellery that. We trekked over a few hundred steps that ran over a steep hillside and at the top it opened out onto a vast flatland surrounded by hills and mountains.  It looked very Lord of the Rings.  There was a path leading about 1/2 mile through it that then led into a cave opening.  

Once inside, the caves alternated between vast, intricate and in some cases shallow.  There are two sections we went through where you had to duck to get under a rocky ceiling.  It wasn't one for claustrophobes. It took about 30 minutes to make our way through the caves and out the far side. 

The Silver Tree.  So-called because it sparkles and glimmers like silver.

The Silver tree up close

After trekking back to the carpark we sat down in the shade near the stall girls for a drink and cool down. Enough steps for one day. One of the stalls was cooking spicy sausages on a charcoal griddle, and sweet potatoes.  We tried each and they were surprisingly good.

Next stop was to ride 5km down the road to the Ban Gioc waterfalls, a definite highlight of the trip. You'd think not much could happen in just 5km, but it was enough for Phil to get misled into some woman's driveway when she waved him in.  You occasionally get people with cafe's and stalls waving thru-traffic over and trying to get them into their shop.  Looks like this one almost worked.

Ban Gioc sits in no-mans land between Vietnam and China. Each side of the river is in a different country, and you need your passport to get a permit to visit the waterfalls.

Again we trekked down a long path that eventually led to the river that the waterfall feeds. We boarded a bamboo raft lashed together crudely and a couple of lads set us off towards the waterfall using long poles on the riverbed.  There were Vietnamese and Japanese tourists crammed onto the raft with us, and we each got photos taken with them, a lovely friendly bunch. We got close enough to the waterfall that we were in the spray, and it was quite a breathtaking place.  As I mentioned earlier, the other riverbank is in China, so because we were only about 20 feet off it at one point we were definitely in Chinese waters.  Therefore I can now say I've been to China!

When the raft put back in to shore we walked along the bank getting more photos and watching the water buffalo in the lakes cooling off.  On the way back we were amused to see a girl riding her scooter across the ricketiest narrowest footbridge you ever saw.

Once we were back on the bikes we stopped briefly for lunch then rode back along the route we'd taken eastwards earlier in the day, past where we'd stayed last night and through to Cao Bang.  Along the way we stopped at a garage where the young chaps were generally busy repairing all manner of electronics.  Within 10 minutes they had welded Del's rack back onto the subframe. While that was being done, Pinky got to work trying to figure out why Bryan's bike had started to misfire and cut out at altitude. For the most part it seemed to involve holding it on the rev limiter for a minute at a time.  Once that was sorted we carried on down the scenic route to Cao Bang.

Cao Bang is a reasonable sized city so it was a sudden change from the empty rural areas we'd been in for the last day or so. We stayed at the Thanh Loan hotel which was very nice, and just what we needed after two days in basic homestay accommodation.