As seen above, a lovely start to the day. Up and mostly packed and down for breakfast at 08.00.
A fried egg and some sticky rice of some sort cooked in a piece of bamboo. I managed half of it but gave up.

We duly paid for the rooms, food and drink but by this time it had started raining.
Waterproofs on. The road back out was very wet and muddy all the way out. Sliding all over the place. 35 mins to do 12 Kms again.

We then set off north over the mountains.
There were a few breaks in the weather here and there and there were some wonderful views of the mountains with the layer of low cloud far below us.
There were many many remnants of last year's landslides that are still not fully repaired.
A couple of times in the clouds the visibility was very near zero. Quite scary.
We pushed on regardless. Refueled at a fuel station in the middle of nowhere so at least we knew we now had enough for the day. It really is quite isolated up in this region. We stopped for a bit of lunch for the other 2 at a small rural snack place. They got a good meal for a couple of pounds.
I don't tend to eat much in the daytime. It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable whilst riding so I just had a couple of light snacks from my stash.
It was actually quite bright at this point so waterproofs off.
And on we went.
But it did start raining again soon so I put them on again.
I stopped quite a few times to snap a few pics of the stunning mountains and valleys all along this route.
There was one particularly long downhill part that was a very wide concrete road with some good hairpins and many more landslides .
Very slippery in places.
It's a common theme again methinks.
We started to ascend again over another fantastic pass. With more lovely views. I rode this in the other direction last year early morning in the clouds and did practically the whole pass at less than 10kph. I didn't get to see any of the spectacular views then, so it was nice to finally see them. We descended the other side into a huge valley with hundreds of beautiful terraced tea plantations. Astonishing.
After reaching the town, I was looking for a homestay and accidentally went to the same one I stayed at last year.
Only 2 rooms available though.
Tried next door and the guy thought he had 3 rooms. But on inspection I was a bit dubious as the room he showed me had 2 double beds with polythene covers. He then struggled to find keys for the other 2 rooms.
I graciously turned it down.
He then took me on the back of his moped a km down the road to show me another place which was actually ok. So I accepted the offer of the rooms.
He then took me back to my bike and the others.
They were laughing their heads off at me at 6'4" sitting on this old man's pillion seat on his moped.
We then headed to our stop for the night. Had a little wander into town. On return we were served a lovely dinner.
Fried tofu
Chicken and vegetables.
And egg soup.
Some braised fish.
Minced and spiced pork.
Some more vegetables.
And rice of course.
It was quite lovely.
There appears to be an awful lot of music noise coming from where the other homestay was so I'm glad we didn't stay there now.
Anyway. A great days riding. Not a huge amount of Kms. About 190 I think but it took 7 hours. It's slow going in those twisty back roads,
And the twisty main roads as well come to think of it.
Let's see what tomorrow brings.