As I was loading the bike, I met Ben from France who is on a motorbike trip through Vietnam for a month. It was great talking to him about our respective trips but it meant I was leaving later than expected. Today is meant to be 115kms.
I thought I’d stop for a coffee at a little place I’d ridden past a few times, but when I got there, it was full of chain smokers, so I left and went down to look at the beach.
Off again, and it wasn’t long before a small coffee shop appeared, And this time, they served me a drip filter Cafe Sua – the real deal. First one in over a week I think. Today is just getting later and later 😁
The first bit was quite easy but seemed to take ages. My muesli strategy works well but I wasn’t sure what I’d eat next. It’s funny, when you don’t know what’s ahead there’s some anxiety about whether there’ll be enough food or water along the way. On this trip, apart from a couple of days in Laos, it’s never been an issue. Today was no different with villages every few kms. It’s funny though – nicer villages have better Banh Mi stalls and better coffee shops so I’m always looking them. I grabbed a Banh Mi for the trip fairly early on but the filling was fairly sparse as I was pretty late getting one.
Two steep but thankfully short climbs got the blood pumping. They were only about a kilometre or so but a constant 10-12% gradient made them both pretty painful.
On the first descent, I was passed by a 4×4 who drove like a maniac to get in front of me and then (predictably) slowed down abruptly. It happens nearly every time. I hate being held up on the fun parts ☹️. The second descent was a bumpy concrete road, so not much fun at all.
There were plenty of long straight stretches beside the coast. These were full of fish farms operating, but there were also lots of old fish farms that had been removed – no idea why.
I found a nice coffee shop in the middle of the day, then a store for a cold drink and later some water as there were plenty of options along the way. With 20kms to go, I realised that I hadn’t booked any accomodation, so I stopped in yet another coffee shop – really, they’re only small cups – and scoured booking.com
I decided on the Thanh Thanh hotel (270k VND) near the beach for two nights. I checked Mr. Haycrafts blog just before booking the hotel, and sure enough, he’d gone to the same place.
The ride was nice the whole way. There were some undulations later on, but the tailwind got going at the perfect time, and I found myself idling down the road at 33km/hr.
Unfortunately that tailwind effect had to finish as I turned right and headed over the long bridge and into the suprisingly large city of Quy Nhon.
I also ticked over 10,000kms on the bike computer / GPS. I’d reset it on March 10 when I left Caloundra, so in effect, I’ve done 12,500km of touring since I started these journeys back in Nov 1, 2021. That was the first day that Sydney came out of lockdown in 2021. So 12,500 in a year and one week but that includes 3 months where not a lot happened. I house sat in Sydney over Xmas, went up to Qld and stayed with Pete and Marl, and bought an apartment in Cotton Tree, sold my car and packed the bike. Not a lot of cycling.
Sidebar – Part of me wants to settle down immediately in Cotton Tree, but this lifestyle I have now, is fantastic and I just don’t want it to stop – as long as I can regularly get home and see everyone 😁 then eventually, I’ll make it there permanently 😁.
By the time I found the hotel, it was nearly 4pm and I was still surprised at how large, busy and cosmopolitain this place was. When I arrived, the good people who ran the hotel told me that I had booked the wrong room and that the cost would be almost half (270 vs 406). Not everyone would have alerted a tourist to that, so I realised that I had come to the right place. Everything these people did was fantastic – and so was the room. I had a balcony to watch the world go by, as well.
After cleaning up, charging my phone and washing clothes, I was ready for some early dinner but it had just started to rain. The nearest option was a small Sports Bar at the corner, run by Australians apparently, that did craft beer an burgers. I was sold immediately and had one of my only burgers of this trip. Still hungry, I had more fries. I shouldn’t have ! After four and a half months of Asian food, the greasy western food was too much for my stomach. To that point, I thought I had an iron gut because chilli, spices and weird stuff like bamboo worms has no effect on me. Oh well. It just forced a sleep in the next morning.
