January 29, 2017

We left Ha Tinh at 9:15 and had a nice tail wind for most of the day. The weather was hot again today about 28 degrees C. The traffic has started to pick up again, but it is very manageable. A lot of other bloggers have commented on how bad the A1 is, we haven’t found it too bad. We have a wide shoulder and there are two lanes, yes the drivers can be crazy with their horns and when they are passing but on the whole I have felt safer driving along the A1 than I did cycling in Northern Ontario.

However, today, we saw our first traffic accident. About 1 km before the accident the police had blocked of the road with a large tree branch and were waving the car drivers to the other side of the divided highway! They didn’t seem to slow down at all and the cars that were heading towards them were flashing their lights. I am sure they had no clue as to why the cars were on the wrong side of the median.

The reason the police had directed the traffic was because of the traffic accident. As we came up to the bus I thought that his engine had fallen out onto the road. Unfortunately, it was a motorbike under the bus. The police waved us by and were busy measuring the accident scene. It did not look good.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, the same scenery of rice paddies, except one church that was being renovated and a small road side shrine.

We came into Ky Anh and I was expecting a nice town. It was a grubby town, garbage everywhere. We found our hotel, and the price had gone up from Bookings.com. We got the receptionist to reduce the price again and then she said we could leave our bikes in the underground area. There was nowhere to secure the bikes, the underground area was completely open. We didn’t feel comfortable leaving the bikes in such an insecure area.

We headed back onto the main street and stopped at a large hotel and asked if they had rooms. Yes, 250,000 per night, I went to view the room. The stairway was filthy, the first room she was going to show me was not cleaned and I noticed a used sanitary napkin in the doorway of another room. We went up another flight of stairs, the room was gross, dirty bathroom, dirty sheets. I thanked her and we carried on to the next hotel we could see from the road. The hotel was down a side street, the owner welcomed us and showed me the room, clean sheets, bathroom and a reasonable shower. The cost was 350,000 ($20.00) per night. We were going to stay two nights as we are due for a rest day, but the town is nothing to write home about so we are going to do the big push to Dong Hoi tomorrow. It is about 95 kms and one big hill to go over. The weather should be a little cooler tomorrow and we are going to start out early to beat the heat.

As we were bringing our bags in the owner offered us what we thought was a green tea, until she poured it into tiny shot glasses! It was a very potent liquor, it was very similar to the liquor we had in Cat Ba Island.

We settled into the room and then headed out to find some lunch. A lot of the restaurants are still closed for New Years. We found a corner store and bought some dried noodles, a can of ham and a couple of beer – that is going to be dinner. There is a kettle in the room and we bought our dishes and kfs. For lunch we found a café that was advertising sandwiches, similar to Hanoi. Unfortunately, she had no bread! But suggested sushi or some kind of dumpling. We opted for the dumpling, no idea what was inside it. We think it was wild rice and an egg of some variety, but really had no clue what we were eating. It tasted good and we needed the carbs from the dumplings.  The mix next to the dumplings was the usual hot sauce, but she added some mayonnaise to cool the hot sauce down.

We spent hours trying to find a room in Dong Hoi, too many options, prices and locations. Often we find something on-line that is affordable, then when you go on to the website it looks rough or the price has gone up. We are spending two days in Dong Hoi, so we want to be comfortable.