February 13, 2017

The Vietnamese hotels have incredibly hard beds and last night’s bed was one of the hardest, I felt as if I was sleeping on a wooden board. I usually wake up first, although I had a bad nights sleep Ralf was awake before me and had taken some excellent photos of the sunrise.

I was a little sluggish to get on the move today, which was o.k. as it was supposed to be a short ride to Song Cau. We had planned on taking the highway, although there was an alternative coastal route to take. The coastal route involved taking a very rickety wooden bridge. It was a toll bridge!! I had read a blog about this bridge and was concerned about Ralf’s wrist and the control he may or may not have of his bike while crossing the bridge. The Dutch ladies suggested we could always walk across it, that was what they planned to do.

After leaving Song Cau we had a nice ride up the A1, there were some lovely statues.

At the 15 kms mark I spotted the rickety bridge and for some unknown reason I said to Ralf let’s do it. We crossed the highway and made our way down a dirt path to the rickety bridge. The cost for crossing was 2000, 3000 or 5000 VND (11 cents, 17 cents or 29 cents) the cost depended on whether you were a bike, motorbike or weighed over 100 kg. They told us the price was 5000 VND, we both looked at the chart and laughed and said no we do not weigh over 100 kg, they had been caught out. Everyone laughed and we were charged 4000 (22 cents) for the two bikes.

It was a little scary going across the bridge, but I cycled all the way.  There were motorbikes going across at the same time, I would stop when they went past, but apart from that I cycled all the way.

We caught up with the Dutch ladies in the next village and then got misplaced. We headed up the paved road to Ga Da Dia a scenic lookout point, we should have taken the concrete road out of the village. We went 4 kms up hill to the scenic lookout and then turned around and came back down again.

We found the right road and followed it all the way into Tuy Hoa.  Village life is tough, both for the oxen and the humans. 

Most of the work is manual labour, although I think there were two workers and a foreman in this picture.  The guy sitting on the log while the other two are sawing away/

Today we went through lots of villages with loads of kids shouting hello. Sometimes you don’t see the person or child shouting hello, the “hello” appears out of nowhere. I think that they are actually motion sensors that shout hello when you come into range, if you don’t respond then it keeps going, if you do respond \”it\” giggles and then it stops.

The scenery wasn’t stunning today, but the villages were interesting. This is how they dry rice paper used for making spring rolls.

There were some large houses and some very small houses and always lots of children.

As we came to the outskirts of the Tuy Hoa, I spotted these buildings, one of them had the olympic rings on the outside. I speculated that the group of buildings was probably an athletes training camp. The translation on the gate actually says it is a naval facility (submarines), police and nursing centre.

We arrived at the hotel at 2:30 and settled in. The City of Tuy Hoa is very large with wide landscaped boulevards, but appears to not have very much going for it. It has a large beach area and some large hotels that were deserted. We bought some street food and headed back to the hotel.

An early start in the morning as we are going to make the push to Nha Trang where we will get a few days off.