First day so far no problem with the bikes, Willem's started fine first thing so all good! After breakfast, hit the road to a waterfall on Ba Be National Park and it was awesome got some quality pics and videos. Then we ventured to a cave, THEN the adventure for the day started! The roads were HIDEOUS, cracks everywhere stones that could rip tyres we were going over when going uphill at a stupid angle. Guus' bike wasn't enjoying it and at one point just had to turn round with the help from a couple of locals and Google Translate which is a necessity app for travelling when in these rural areas. All headed back, then my bike f***ed up again. Nothing from the ignition whatsoever. Ended up walking a good few kilometres with it up and down hill then Bas had turned round to see where I was and somehow we got it going but kept cutting out. Eventually made it back into the park and the bike suddenly sprung into life so took the risk and headed out on the main road without seeing the mechanic in the park. Worked out a route then headed towards the main town up north we wanted to go to. After say around 20km we were heading nowhere it was all small local villages, no towns at all. Then, the heavens opened we all took cover in a random house as you do and stayed there for about half hour put our rain jackets on and covered our bags then headed off. Was getting on to about half 5-6 and getting dark so there was no stopping basically. Got to about 7 and literally heading nowhere pissing down with rain like a monsoon, high up in the mountains so basically in the clouds and then thunder and lightning right above us was pretty wreck less to be doing what we were doing and a big lesson from now on as it was really bad, couldn't get any worse! Stopped off high up just debating what to do and decided to just keep going. Locals kept saying 'hotel 7km' then around 10-15km later still nothing at all. Rain was so bad I hit a stone and how I didn't fall off I don't know my bike took a pounding and both my hands came off the bike! On this corner we seen some bright lights and all headed up this ramp to a house we were just like f*** it let's check it out. 2 old women were in and let us in to change clothes, get warm as we were all drenched right through and freezing our b******s off. They made us some tea, spoke NO English whatsoever and with no signal we couldn't use Google Translate so the situation we were in was hilarious now. A guy came in which we presume was the son we think he had some special needs as he wasn't all there and we couldn't work out if they were Vietnamese or Chinese as we are close to the Chinese border now but no translation when we got brief Internet they could not understand! They started showing actions of eating so as we were starving after only having a pancake and an egg with a banana for breakfast we were like hell yeah. They ended up making us a ton of rice, warm egg with some salad and water it was amazing such an experience. We will definitely give them some good money tomorrow the fact the language barrier couldn't be further, 4 random western guys turning up on their doorstep drenched and desperate really for a place to crash and how friendly they were. Seriously cool story and a big highlight to our travelling without a doubt!