■ VIETNAM: After a VERY long but extremely successful day riding through mountains of Northern Vietnam, I faced a somewhat serious dilemma. The sun was a bout to set and Google Maps said I was still hours away from my final destination. Not that I truly had one as I was winging it taking random roads this day but I had a tentative goal where I at least knew there were hotels.

Reaching that city now seemed impossible. I thus decided to stop at a cafe overlooking some incredible rice fields. This set of a chain reaction of curious events...