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street food. In hindsight, I should definitely have spent some more time getting to know the Vietnamese kitchen. Menu cards are rarely in English, and it is impossible to decipher what kind of dish is behind the Vietnamese description. Anyone making the effort to familiarise themselves with the Vietnamese kitchen, will have a feast.
After a short visit to the beach resort city of Nha Trang, I headed inland for the Lao border and the HCMR. There are actually three Ho
Chi Minh routes; the Ho Chi Minh trail which runs mainly in Laos, the Ho Chi Minh Road in Vietnam that I would be taking, and finally the busy Ho Chi Minh Highway( QL1) connecting Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
The meandering and twisty mountain roads of the HCMR took me through amazing mountain and jungle scenery. Riding this road, I experienced a type of“ isolation and remoteness” that I had never before felt on any of my many trips,
Africa included. One reason for this is the complete lack of traffic, and the resulting quietness. Stopping at one point to answer the call of nature, I parked the bike and took a couple of steps from the road into the jungle! I felt completely cut off from the world, hemmed in and surrounded by dense vegetation. My mind turned to the young American soldiers on duty in these jungles. No wonder many would take extreme measures to avoid being drafted to Vietnam. The Vietnamese call it the
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