February 14, 2017

A long ride today, but what a tail wind – awesome. Total elevation gain was 627 metres of climbing and the temperature peaked at 37 degrees C.

We were up early and had a good breakfast at the hotel. Two minutes on the road and I am already heading in the wrong direction. Ralf corrected me and we headed out of Tuy Hoa. We crossed a bridge that didn’t exist on garmin maps, and I spotted a sign that said A1, this road did not go anywhere, it was a new clover leaf coming of the non-existent bridge. There is a lot of new road development in Vietnam, on this occasion there were signs in place but the road wasn’t finished yet.

We had to find our way to the A1. We made a right turn through a village and were surrounded by kids on bicycles going to school. Hello, hello, hello, and the occasional “what’s your name?’ Ralf loves racing with these kids. All the boys started racing Ralf and laughing when he won. Ralf commented that the kids would be at school early today because they were chasing him.

The A1 today was fairly quiet and we had an awesome tail wind. Here is an example of major road works on the A1. A small barrier and then the construction crew – risking life and limb to fill in the holes.

We had one major hill to climb today(167 metres). There is a tunnel in the building stage that would take all the truck traffic away from the pass. That would be good because it was a busy road, as the trucks crawled up the steep incline.

The view of the valley we had come from was lovely.  There is always the ever present danger of land slides.

The downhill was not as good as the Hy Van Pass, because there was too much traffic and the road was not as good.  We spotted this oil refinery on the way down, I have no idea how they got the trucks to that area, it appeared to be down a very narrow road from the top of the Pass.

At the half-way point (65 kms) we stopped and had a second breakfast of eggs and bread and a cold coke. The temperature peaked at 37.4 degrees c. The wind kept us cool, but you have to be really careful when it is this windy, as we didn’t feel overheated. It is really important to stay hydrated in these temperatures, we drank over 6 litres of water today (3 litres each).  We put our sleeves on at noon and our arms were covered, we didn’t burn.

We have seen lots of trucks with pigs in them traveling north.  We see at least six a day.  At various stages during their trip there are pull offs with hoses and the pigs get sprayed.  We are not sure if this is too cool them down or an attempt of giving them some hydration.

Although it was a long ride we stopped and took photos along the way.

We have traveled over 1,000 kms in Vietnam on back-roads and busy main roads.  This is the first STOP sign that we have seen. The sign was on a quiet side street coming from a dirt road, up a slight incline.  I am guessing that you had to floor the scooter to get up the little hill, but you were supposed to stop before entering the highway.  Not sure if that happened, because as I mentioned before, most of the scooter/motorbike riders do not even look when they come out of an intersection on to the main road.

Although some people think you don\’t get to see the \”real\” Vietnam when cycling the A1, I beg to differ.  A lot of the population live along the A1, they conduct their business, whether it is recycling, drying food or commercial enterprises and they live next to or behind their business.  In North America and Europe, these businesses would not be allowed to set up shop so close to a highway.

We were 11 kms outside of Nha Trang when we spotted the left turn to Nha Trang. Damn, it was the scenic route and added another 6 kms on to the ride.

I am not sure if it would have been less hilly going along the A1, but we were both tired and wanted to get to the hotel.

This very colourful cemetery caught our eye on the outskirts of Nha Trang.

We negotiated the busy streets of Nha Trang. We got within a block of the hotel and could not find it, we went down back alley ways that opened up into small squares with restaurants and hotels tucked away. No sign of our hotel, Ralf said “It’s like Paris all over again”.

For those of you who do not know the story. When we were in Paris for our honeymoon, we could see the hotel but could not get to it because of all the One-Way Streets. Eventually, we parked the car at the end of the street and walked to the front door of the hotel. At reception they told us to bring our luggage and park the car at the Place de la Madelaine and that is where we left the car for the week in Paris!

We went down one narrow street with restaurants along the alley, turned right as instructed by a local shop-assistant, and the hotel was still not to be seen. I turned around and about 50 metres in front of me was the flashing neon sign for Souvenir Hotel. Turn left not right! The hotel is the narrowest hotel we have stayed in – about 18 metres wide!

The city is a big tourist place, mainly filled with Russians. Everywhere we turned there were signs in Russian and the menus were in Vietnamese, Russian and English. Tomorrow we will relax and maybe go for a little walk, but nothing major planned for the day. A rest day.