The
previous post I wrote, we rode through the rain to Phan Rang - a beautiful but tough ride, and eventually a nice place to stay. From there we had to make up our mind: another scenic coastal road, or settle for the AH1 because of the weather. The forecast really looked "promising": more rain and stronger wind than the day before. Looking at the direction and location of the coastal road, we had to decide, very reluctantly, to not go for the scenic option... And looking back at it, we're really happy we went for the "safer" option. Firstly, the AH1 was quite beautiful too on this stretch, and the traffic not too heavy. But secondly, yes, it was indeed very bad weather, relentless rain and wind, and it was clear it was worse at the coast. So we had 45km to Cam Ranh, and that was more than enough! We were also getting enough of this bad weather by then, it started to work on our mood... In all our 18,000km of cycling in the past 2 years, we haven't had this kind of bad weather, and definitely not for such a long period...
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| Leaving Phan Rang, with a promise of what is yet to come... |
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| The heavy clouds and wet weather make for some nice dramatic photos however; a village market - and note the wind turbines in the back. |
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| Cycling through some charming villages, before getting to the AH1. This is the still very authentic, typical Vietnamese countryside (big contrast to the cities and touristy areas - see below), and here people are usually incredibly friendly |
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| Scotland, New Zealand, ...? No, just Vietnam! |
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| Dark clouds gathering above the rice fields |
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| AH1, OK for cycling, and not so much traffic |
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| Everything is wet by now (yes that includes us) |
The day after, from Cam Ranh to Nha Trang, same story... This time it was partially a scenic road along the coast - which we did not fully realize when we set off. The road was carved into the mountain side and curving in all directions - so we sometimes had some tailwind, but typically whenever we went around a left hand curve, we were met by very strong wind gusts with rain - so hard that the rain drops actually hurt in our face. Luckily, it was another short day. Also on this ride, we saw again a lot of gigantic resorts under construction, between Nha Trang airport and the city. Resorts with thousands of rooms sometimes... I really wonder which tourists they're aiming at; the Chinese, Russians? Koreans too maybe? And I wonder if this is all realistic, there is so much under construction...
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| Spotting waterfalls all around |
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| Again, on AH1 with the dramatic clouds and scenery - during a short moment of little rain |
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| Lunch break |
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| Trying to get our raincoats less than dripping wet |
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| The sky just looks much better the day after... NOT! |
We cycled the 54km to Nha Trang non-stop. No coffee shops, no restaurants, for a long time no places to take shelter, and the weather way too bad to just stop for a rest. At noon we arrived in Nha Trang already, soaking wet, and happy that we could get off the bicycle and into the hotel, Mozjo Inn. They went the extra mile to get us into our room, and we enjoyed the heavenly hot shower... Nha Trang is another place we had been in 1993 - I'll post some "before and after" pictures soon together with my 1993 dairy entries. It had changed a lot - that means, A LOT. In fact, it's totally unrecognizable. It used to be a sleepy, peaceful beach/fishing town with a few simple hotels and some handfuls of tourists. No high rises at all. Now, it's full of hotels, some big hotels (you'll find all the Novotels, Sheraton's, and many other), high rises with easily 40-50 floors, for sure more hotels now than tourists back then. It's a bustling city now, rather than a sleepy town. An incredible metamorphosis in 25 years time.
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| Arrival at the Mojzo Inn, Nha Trang, very wet |
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| Getting the entire reception area wet |
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| Not so attractive beach in this weather. On the island opposite, the light are from a huge theme park/hotel which you can only reach by a 3km long cable car across the sea (of which you can see the pillars lit-up in the back) |
Nha Trang is a clear and almost painful example of how Vietnam is going on 2 different speeds. Where lots of tourists go, there is a lot of change, a lot of development, things are relatively modern, and almost everything is centered around tourism. Outside of those places, things go much slower and are still quite simple or primitive, sometimes leading to "less than optimal" living conditions. Houses are smaller and basic, it's much messier, hygiene is less, and a lot of people make a living with their small business - selling pho in a foodstall, welding shops, small shops - or agriculture. Compared to Cambodia though, it seems wealth is a little bit better divided among all people (well, it is still a communist country in theory...), you see less real poverty and also less insane wealth; or maybe we just haven't seen that... In any case, riding through the suburbs of all these places, we never saw the same kind of poor living conditions which we did see in Cambodian towns.
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| Small scale fishery in the front, large scale development in the back |
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| At the entrance to one of the big hotels; climate change??? |
Having arrived in Nha Trang is a bit end of part 2 of this trip, with Cambodia part 1. We stayed 2 days in Nha Trang and then took a night bus to Hoi An - which by itself was also a bit of an adventure. The night bus was quite good value, at 200,000 VND per person (a bit less than 9 USD) except we also needed to pay for the bicycles, 300,000 VND each! It was a quite comfortable bus, with seats reclining so you're almost lying flat. Despite that, it's not that easy to sleep, especially not when the guy(s) in front of you are snoring loudly most of the night. And the bus stops every now and then, typically to load some extra cargo - yes, the bus doubled up as a cargo truck it seems. Once they stuffed the stowage full of onion, the whole bus reeked like onion through the aircon, yummy! Anyway, we did sleep a bit, and we arrived safely in Hoi An in the morning. Later today, Sander and Vere will arrive here. We then plan to take a family vacation with them for the next 3 weeks - not on the bicycle for a little while.
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| Getting ready to leave on the night bus to Hoi An |
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| And fresh arrival in the morning! |
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| View from the rooftop of our guest house in Hoi An, nice!!! Rice fields being prepared for the next planting. |
After the family intermezzo, to which we look forward very much, we will continue our bicycle journey, still to be finalized where we will be going - although it's almost decided already. Will it be from Vietnam into Laos and Thailand? Or continue in Vietnam, and then into China? Or Taiwan perhaps? We just need to finalize our decision, can you guess what it'll be? Stay tuned!
