Some bastard stole my bicycle computer! (Moc Chau to Son La)

Mon 2 Dec 2013, approx 115km.

Awoken this morning at 4.55AM to the sound of counting coming from the town loud speakers, presumably for some sort of calisthenics. Vaguely 1984ish.

When I finally awoke and made it downstairs to find some breakfast the first thing I noticed was the bike computer wasn't on my bike. The second thing I noticed was that the mount for it wasn't. Nor were the magnet and sensor... some sod had nicked them in the night! Went round the corner to reception and spoke to the girl there about it. Unfortunately, although her English is much better than my Vietnamese communication was still a problem.

Bare in mind this is a large(ish) government hotel. To attempt to cut a long story short. There was much consternation. There were people called. There was disbelief. There was a check of my room in case I'd just lost it there. There was me drawing a knife to show it must have been used to cut the cable ties. There was me doing a cost benefit analysis of calling the police (likelihood of them finding it on the night watchman who I'm pretty damn sure took it vs losing a day pissing about with no result). There was half an hour using Google Translate on my phone (it rocks). There was Bill getting poetical ("This has made me very sad but also has made my heart like a stone of anger"). There were almost tears at that point.

Eventually, after an hour or so, I left. Still think it was the security guard as however did it had to see the computer but also check online to see the other bits that needed to be swiped as well.

The loss isn't a big thing in itself: if it was in the UK it'd be mildly annoying and whatever. Here, however, it's a pain as it's a navigational aid. If my map tells me I've got a turning in 20km then around the 18km mark I can start looking for it. If there's a hotel 5km down the road and another 45km further on then knowing my speed means I know if I'm likely to make the second hotel before dark.

The other annoying thing about it was it was really annoying which distracted me from another days stunning cycling! For the first 60km or so the road followed a river downstream. At first this meant being some 500 or 600 meters above a valley, then dropping down to meet it. After the end of the valley there was a pass over a mountain (about a kilometer after I'd had lunch) and a slightly more settled landscape. Lots of corn drying by the side of the road today also some sort of beans.

As I finally came into Son La, or rather about 10km from it the road suddenly widened from two lanes into six plus hard shoulders. The traffic stayed the same... quite bizarre really.

Anyway, made a quick phone call to my friends at Keep Pedalling and with any luck a new computer should be couriered out to me in Dien Bien Phu for Friday, which coincidentally is my birthday.