Category: Biking South East Asia

With a snore score of 18% and above mild intensity I think Sally’s idea of a low snore score been due to the adrenaline from yesterday’s excitement wins over my hard mattress theory. I remember reading once you should aim to be scared at least once a day 🙂

The breakfast offered by the Sao Mai is the same stuff as dinner, I’m sure the Vietnamese eat the same whatever the time of day. They fried up a couple of eggs for me with some bread to make it more Western I added noodles 🙂

The weather was diabolical raining and really quite cold. I supposed I looked a bit silly in my shorts with everyone else wrapped up. I eventually left at 9.14, although if the hotel had been nicer I would probably have stayed.

I started, like Dave, on the much maligned Highway 1, which to begin with was really quite good and with a tail wind I was wondering what all the fuss was about as I bombed along. Matters quickly got worse with dreadful road surfaces ,excavations for new carriageways etc etc The buses as always charging along  heading straight for you as they overtake cars plus people travelling really slowly on mopeds and even school kids two on a bike, making it a real challenge.

When I arrived at the junction where Dave turned of for the hills I stopped to warm myself up with a cup of tea. & ponder.  The old lady kept pointing to my knees and shivering. I finally decided to stick with Highway 1 due to the weather and especially the rear wind.  This would  also mean I should see the coast and also cover the distance quicker.

The road was awful, narrow, potholed surface & incredibly busy in places but I made good time and it was flat. An interesting thing I noticed as my gears were complaining about lack of oil is that all the little bike shops have disappeared in the villages, replaced by new bike/moped shops. Eventually I scrounged some oil from a 5 litre can in a garage workshop.

For lunch I found a cafe and discovered a new technique for ordering food. I walked around the tables with the waitress pointing to the stuff on unfinished plates that I liked  🙂 when it came to pay the waitress pulled her wad of cash out and showed me the note she wanted,

I decided after 64 miles I had enough so pulled into the very grandiose Muong Thanh hotel in Dien Chau which after some negotiation came down to a respectable price.

The Strava report is here (click the image for all the stats):

Not to many pics today due to the weather 🙁 but they are here

Today with a lot of trepidation I set off at 9.15am  from the Hanoi Moment Hotel to start my bike ride to Singapore 🙂 The hotel was in fact not as good as their new Hotel Moment 2, but the difference is marginal, basically the mattress was worn and there was no breakfast buffet, everything has to be ordered and the pastries are missing 🙁

My big concern, as always, was could I find anywhere to sleep, especially as I wanted to deviate from Daves route by taking the Ho Chi Minh road.  I navigated easily out of Hanoi using the route I had loaded into the Gaia app, the weather was wet and very overcast but plenty warm enough for me. Traffic wasn’t to bad to begin with although later in the day it became fast with heavy trucks near the quarries & brickworks. The express buses are a pain too 🙁

At Xula Mai I took the plunge ,after an awful cup of tea (she let me have it for free) and I disappeared down the Ho Chi Minh road  with it’s fast heavy traffic but fantastic views of karst mountains (and even places selling huge chunks of naturally sculpted rock), rice fields & a few very old houses. I tried another cafe, this time it was  a thick Italian style bitter coffee ugh! A couple of drunks in the cafe accosted me but I pretended not to understand their begging motions.

Later I found a very friendly roadside place selling sesame doughy balls & fresh bread yummy and I stuck to a Sprite! whilst Facetiming Sally to show her the country delights.

At the start of the first 10% hill I stopped to check the map, a guy on his scooter stopped & seemed friendly at first. However, he then pointed to the rear seat of his scooter I shook my head & rode off, on the hill he came alongside and once again pointed to the seat, I rode on. He zoomed up the road stopped and when I arrived reached out to grab me, I swerved & engaged full power swearing at him. He once again zoomed off, this time he walked out into the road wielding a large metal object, I pointed the bike at him and cursed him VERY LOUDLY he leapt out of the way! Fortunately by this time I was near the top and he obviously gave up. In 5000+ miles of biking abroad the worst experience yet. Even beating the snarling Romanian dogs chasing me.

I finally worked out the magic Vietnamese word is Na Nghi (well it looks like night to a dyslexic) for a guest house, so for 250,000 dong (£7.22) I have a lovely room & hard bed in the Hoa Lu on the outskirts of  Hang Tram, which Dave passed on his third day. After discussion using Google translate I found the restaurant was in the village a 5 minute bike ride away, in the rain. On the way back my left pedal dropped off 🙁 now here is the  really nice bit about Vietnam, within one minute I was been escorted by a woman and her kid across the road to a guys house with a workshop in his front room! 2 minutes later I was on my way with a crowd of folks shaking hands & waving.

So a good ending to the day. Strava says I’ve done 65 miles at an average of 12mph which is really good considering the traffic and the headwind for most of the day.

All the photos are here a weird thing about the Wifi is that I cannot get on Twitter or Facebook but the 3G signal allows it..