February 9, 2017

A surprisingly good nights sleep on a somewhat comfy mattress. Vietnamese mattresses are very hard, even at the nicer hotels we have stayed at the mattresses are hard. Last night’s mattress was a little softer and consequently a better nights sleep.

We headed out at about 8:30, the forecast was for showers later in the day. The first 25 kms on the A1 was absolutely idiocy. As Ralf puts it a “Special Kind of Stupid”. The road was reduced to two-lanes in part as they were working on the expansion to four-lanes. This did not make a blind bit of difference to the bus drivers who figured they could drive wherever the heck they wanted and at the same speed as if they had four-lanes to choose from. How there wasn’t head on collisions I have no idea.

Fortunately Ralf and I choose to ride on the side that was undergoing the roadworks, there was no one working on that side and although it was a bit rough in places, we had the side of the road to ourselves.

There seems to be a lot of new roads being constructed.  I am not sure where they are going to or coming from.

Eventually the road widened out again and there was a concrete divide between the two sides of the highway. We had our wide shoulder to ride on again and everything settled down to the chaos that riding in Vietnam is all about.

At about the 70 km mark we decided to find something to eat and start looking for somewhere to stay.

According to google maps there are no towns between Hoi Ann and Nha Trang a distance of about 500 kms. Of course that is not true, there are hundreds of little towns, some of them only have a few street stalls others are large and have all the facilities including “motels” and “guest houses”.

We cycled through a large town where we found a Bahn Mi stand – this is a road side stand that usually has some scary meat and if you are lucky eggs that she will fry up and put in a baguette with hot sauce and a few veges. We always opt for the eggs, or just buy the buns and eat them dry – anything for a few carbs

After lunch we started to look for somewhere to stay. There were two options in the Town, one of the hotels we had to wake the owner, he was sleeping in the front foyer. The room was disgusting – I am not sure when the sheets were last changed. The second option was cleaner, on the third floor, but small, but at 170,0000 VND ($10.00) was a good price. It was only 1:00 p.m. and I figured there would be more options down the road. We carried on and that was a big mistake.

The remaining Nha Nghi (guesthouses) I looked at (4) left a lot to be desired – no proper plumbing (squat toilets) and only a sink to wash-in. We were at 86 kms and Ralf’s arm was hurting, he couldn’t do another 12 ks to the next bigger town and who knows what would be in that Town. We pulled off the road into the Nha Nghi 2009. With my handy dandy Phrasebook the lady of the house showed me the room, it was clean except for a big crack down one wall and there appeared to be a flush toilet and shower. Although I could tell the shower only had cold water. I asked if it had hot water, showing her the translation in my handy Phrase book. Yes she said and bought me a kettle, she later came back with a thermos of hot water.  Something lost in translation, I think.

By the time I had come back to talk to Ralf the whole family had dragged him in and parked my bike next to the room. I guess we are staying here the night.

At least we can get more hot water for our noodles tonight and we can eat the tuna and two buns we bought on the way. Tomorrow morning we can have coffee and our muesli and milo – pure luxury.

We both had cold showers, had a hot cup of coffee and some snacks. Then it started to rain, we are clean, dry and have a relatively clean bed to sleep in tonight. The rest of the facilities are somewhat lacking – the toilet although appeared to be a flush toilet, we actually have to pour water down it to get it to flush.

There is no internet – Ralf has cellular data on his iPad, but even that isn’t strong enough to find us a route tomorrow. We have no idea what the weather is going to be like, where we are going or where we will be sleeping tomorrow. Life is an Adventure.