25 December, Tien Yen to Cam Pha, 51km
Son Thuy Hotel 300,000VND

Variation on a theme: we have had, not a white Xmas, but a black Xmas. Around 20km north of Cam Pha is a coal mine and a coal mining industry, the by-product of which is copious coal-dust that lies thick on the roads and verges. Mix coal-dust with a mist-gentle drizzle and you get slurry, a sticky black coal-dust mud. Cycle through this and you get plastered in black – bikes, bags, clothes, hair, faces. So disreputable did we look by the time we arrived in Cam Pha that a cheap guest house refused to accommodate us! The young man at the Son Thuy was less concerned about how we looked and gave us a room overlooking a section of Halong Bay. Here we washed clothes and shoes and panniers, then ourselves, then the blackened bathroom. We dined well across the road on beef and pork and greens and sticky rice served with three sauces, soy, chilli and peanut, and shared a bottle of red Vietnamese wine made in Dalat. So, a murry, meddy Xmas ... a muddy merry ... a slerry murry Xmas ... a slurry merry ... a very merry Xmas to you all.

Between Tien Yen and Cam Pha

Between Tien Yen and Cam Pha

Between Tien Yen and Cam Pha

Crusty old gent who replaced Charl's burst tyre

Between Tien Yen and Cam Pha

Between Tien Yen and Cam Pha

Cam Pha

Cam Pha

Cam Pha

Cam Pha