We've just finished our 35th day of our SE Asia bike trip and have logged about 2200 km on the bike so far. We've gotten our cycling legs under us and can pretty easily crank out 100 km days, especially now that we're riding down the Vietnam coast where the terrain is relatively flat. We're still getting up early so that we can get most of our riding done before it gets too hot. We had a really difficult day of riding last Saturday riding between Lang Co and Hoi An as Ginny was sick (feeling nauseous and throwing up) and had very little energy. It was a fairly challenging day of cycling too as we were riding over Hai Van pass which is a 496 meter high pass just north of Da Nang. I would wait for Ginny every couple kms climbing up to the pass and she would pull up looking pretty ill, throw up on the side of the road and then hop back on the bike and carry on riding! What a trooper! When we got to Da Nang, we tried to catch a bus for the final 30 km to Hoi An but it proved to be too difficult to figure out so we just gutted out the final kms on our bikes. We're not sure what Ginny had (food poisoning? Heat exhaustion?) but the good news is that she was feeling better within 24 hours!
We had a two day riding break planned for our stay in Hoi An which we spent walking/casual biking around the old town, getting some clothes made and just lounging by the pool! Hoi An is a beautiful little city with old houses, a lazy canal, amazing lanterns that are magical at night and is famous for its tailoring industry. I had two suits and shirts made and Ginny had two jumpers made - all for less than $400! Hoi An closes their historic central city to traffic every day from 8-11am and in the evening from 3-9:30 which creates a great environment for walking and cycling through the narrow, old streets.
After a couple relaxing days in Hoi An, it was back in the saddle yesterday as we rode about 120 km south to the city of Quang Ngai. Our first 60 km were great as we were on smaller, lightly traveled roads along the coast with small villages every 5-10 km. Our next 60 km were on the busy, dreadful SH1 with all the buses, trucks and scooters honking none stop! We experimented with putting earplugs in our left ear and I think it really helps but the honking is still really annoying. Today we spent our entire day on SH1 which I was really dreading but it ended up not being too bad as the traffic wasn't as bad as previous days. We did see a western couple at a gas station who had just been in an accident on their motorcycle. They were pretty shaken and had some bad road rash but looked to be okay otherwise.
Here are a couple other observations from traveling through Vietnam:
- People dry all kinds of stuff on the side of the road! Fish, rice paper, rice noodles, and various other things that we can't even identify! The last couple days we've seen tons of people drying rice seed (we think) and it's often spread out on the shoulder of the road!
- People love to walk around in their pajamas at all times of day! Ginny says many of the women are not in pajamas but in matching tops/bottoms but they look like pajamas to me. I think it's brilliant - wouldn't you walk around in pajamas all day if you could?
- The beer here is pretty much all lager and is dirt cheap. The going rate is 10,000 VND (40 cents) for a can of beer. While the beer is very similar, the breweries change as we cycle from region to region. When we were in northern Vietnam, Ha Noi beer was everywhere. In Laos, Beer Lao was the beverage of choice. Since we've returned to Vietnam, I've tried Huda, Saigon, Tiger, Larue and Dung Quat and if you asked me to identify them in a blind taste test, I would fail miserably!
We had a two day riding break planned for our stay in Hoi An which we spent walking/casual biking around the old town, getting some clothes made and just lounging by the pool! Hoi An is a beautiful little city with old houses, a lazy canal, amazing lanterns that are magical at night and is famous for its tailoring industry. I had two suits and shirts made and Ginny had two jumpers made - all for less than $400! Hoi An closes their historic central city to traffic every day from 8-11am and in the evening from 3-9:30 which creates a great environment for walking and cycling through the narrow, old streets.
After a couple relaxing days in Hoi An, it was back in the saddle yesterday as we rode about 120 km south to the city of Quang Ngai. Our first 60 km were great as we were on smaller, lightly traveled roads along the coast with small villages every 5-10 km. Our next 60 km were on the busy, dreadful SH1 with all the buses, trucks and scooters honking none stop! We experimented with putting earplugs in our left ear and I think it really helps but the honking is still really annoying. Today we spent our entire day on SH1 which I was really dreading but it ended up not being too bad as the traffic wasn't as bad as previous days. We did see a western couple at a gas station who had just been in an accident on their motorcycle. They were pretty shaken and had some bad road rash but looked to be okay otherwise.
Here are a couple other observations from traveling through Vietnam:
- People dry all kinds of stuff on the side of the road! Fish, rice paper, rice noodles, and various other things that we can't even identify! The last couple days we've seen tons of people drying rice seed (we think) and it's often spread out on the shoulder of the road!
- People love to walk around in their pajamas at all times of day! Ginny says many of the women are not in pajamas but in matching tops/bottoms but they look like pajamas to me. I think it's brilliant - wouldn't you walk around in pajamas all day if you could?
- The beer here is pretty much all lager and is dirt cheap. The going rate is 10,000 VND (40 cents) for a can of beer. While the beer is very similar, the breweries change as we cycle from region to region. When we were in northern Vietnam, Ha Noi beer was everywhere. In Laos, Beer Lao was the beverage of choice. Since we've returned to Vietnam, I've tried Huda, Saigon, Tiger, Larue and Dung Quat and if you asked me to identify them in a blind taste test, I would fail miserably!
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