February 18, 2017

We were away early today at  7:45 a.m. I wanted to get away from the grubby guest house and on the road. We ate our baguette and nutella in the room and were on the road to Mui Ne/Ham Tien.

The bridge and road didn’t exist on Garmin maps, but we had checked the route last night and knew this was the way out of Town. 

I have been reading another blog, an Australian guy who did this route in 2012.  He said this road was a bit rough and paved in sections.  It is now a two-lane divided highway.

Of course the cattle herder who has been driving her cattle along this \”dirt\” track for years does not care that it is now a two-lane divided highway, she continues to drive her cattle along this road.

We figured the cattle herder and her cows were heading for this small oasis.  A lovely spot to relax and maybe wild camp, if you are interested, although possibly a little exposed as it was along the highway.

A lovely route today, primarily along the coast and away from the A1. The route was rolling hills, and with great swooping down hills.

The scenery had large sand dunes along the route where tourists used quad bikes or 4×4 jeeps to race around the sand dunes.

We passed one area where there was a large culvert going underneath the road.  Where it came out on the other side of the road, was a small \”canyon\”.  Not quite the Grand Canyon — yet!

It was hot again, and we were drinking lots of water.   We were having a water break when we spotted a group of touring cyclists. Five cyclists, that had met up over the past few days and were cycling together. A young French couple on a tandem, an older German couple and another German girl. We had quite a long chat with them, all of them are on extended trips. We will check out the German couple’s blog as they have ridden from Bangkok, through Cambodia and now are heading north through Vietnam.

Now Ralf is using the little point and shoot, he does silly things like this.

As we cycled along the road towards Mui Ne there were a lot of new resorts, and a few that didn\’t quite make it. 

We cycled through Mui Ne and headed towards a small fishing village!  The tourists are bused to this area from Mui Ne and Phan Thiet, there were buses and taxis all over the place.  As we came up to the area we couldn\’t quite see what the attraction was, until we looked down and saw the hundreds of fishing boats.

Shortly before coming into our area of Mui Ne/Ham Thien, we noticed the first bit of grafiti that we have seen in Vietnam.  It gets everywhere eventually.

We stopped along the way for an early lunch, it was the worst baguette with egg that I have had. I couldn’t even finish mine it was disgusting, a lot of hot sauce and some mystery meat pate added to it.

We arrived at our hotel at noon, but our room wasn’t ready.

I asked how long for the room to be ready and was dismayed to learn it could be an hour or two.  There is nothing worse than sitting around in sweaty cycling gear when you know there is a  hot shower waiting for you. I took a deep breath, smiled at the owner and walked towards the door, to calm myself down.  Not losing face today.  He suggested we go for lunch, I politely told him we had already eaten. We sat in the foyer of the hotel and proceeded to check email etc. Twenty minutes later we were escorted to our room. Not losing face worked, our room was quickly cleaned and made ready for us. It is a nice room with a large bathroom and a balcony (if you want to climb out of the window to access it). I quickly washed out our cycle gear and after showering and checking our route for the next few days we headed out for a wander around the Town.

We are not technically in Mui Ne. Mui Ne is actually a very tiny part of this area. This area spreads out over a 10 kilometre area of beach and shoreline. The area has a lot of kite boarding schools and is a very popular area for kite boarding. We chatted to one of the instructors and he told us that it is quite hard to learn, but \”this area is a very good area to learn, as the water and wind help you learn quickly\”. Not sure how to interpret that. \”Once you learn here you can kiteboard anywhere in the world\”. Before you are allowed to go out with a kite and board, they teach you about the wind, the current of the sea and then they let you go. He told us you don’t need a lot of arm strength as the kite is attached to your body by a harness. Not for me, I would be afraid that the kite would just take me away and you would never see me again. I will stick to cycling.

It was nice to sit there for a while with a beer and watch the kite boarders, a very relaxing afternoon.

This area, like Nha Trang, is a little more expensive than other areas we have cycled through, but it is a beach touristy area.

We have heard that the Vua Tang ferry is not running, but have decided to head down the coast anyway. If it is running all well and good, if it is not then we have added 50 kms to our journey, which is not a big deal as we are ahead of schedule. We will be entering Ho Chi Minh from the south and not along the A1 from the east.