April 7 - Back to the Coast, Again

A beautiful, clear and sunny day awaited for me - the highlight of which was definitely the luxury breakfast at the hotel, overlooking the golf course, where people were already out on the green.

Breakfast...yummy...

Golf course

I could have set for a couple of hours and chilled - well, I think I did spend somewhere over an hour there, enjoying the sun, the views and the excellent food. To my surprise, the hotel, which looked quite empty at night, was quite busy in the morning.

With a heavy heart (and belly...), I sat on my bike and took the nice private road, then on a nice public road, which forked into a not-so-pretty major road. I could have ridden westwards right towards Ho Chi Minh City, it was only about 250 kilometers, but I decided to take a longer route, toward the coast in the south.

Once again on a smaller road, it was a bit of a rollercoaster. Yes, I was somewhere at 1,500 meters above sea level and a big drop was still ahead of me. Outside a small town, I saw a nice combination of communism with the free market: a number billboards were to be seen with propaganda paroles - sponsored by Vinaphone, a cellphone carrier in Vietnam. Interesting, eh?

Blend of communism and capitalism

As said, this was a bit of a rollercoaster, so had to shift gears quite a lot of times. I noticed it was getting harder and harder to shift in the front - and, for the second time on this trip (the first time was at the very beginning), the front gear gave up its soul, it was stuck on the largest crank. Darn, not good at all. I stopped at a house, where two gentlemen saw me struggling with the cable, they offered to help, but the issue was to stay. I managed to shift manually to the middle gear, which allowed me to climb - though with a lot of effort. At a curve with a beautiful view, I was very frustrated, made a second attempt on trying to fix the issue, when a motorbiker stopped behind me. Good fortune in my biking misfortune: he turned out to be a bicycle engineer from the company Specialized, working at a bike factory in HCM City and touring the area. He offered his help, alas, he was not able to find a complete solution, but made sure the chain was running smoothly (on the middle crank). He also helped change the pads on my brake, which, although I had new ones in Hanoi, were by now completely worn.

Great view

My buddy from Specialized

Without knowing, I was very close to the summit - so not a lot more suffering from the climb. A nice downhill ride began - now it meant getting down to the coast from the highlands. The roll ended, then I got to a rather boring area, with some headwind. The middle crank was not really helpful - on downhill stretches, it was too easy of ride and too hard when it was the opposite. A couple of hours later, I reached the main artirery 1A, where a sign confirmed I was really not far from HCM City.

Getting close to Saigon

Yet again, I did not go for the main road, I turned onto a minor coastal road and was met by quite a resistance - a very strong wind, where it took an hour to make 5 kilometers (ouch!), then it got a lot worse: I was in midst of a real sand storm, it was not pleasant getting all the sand into my face, eyes, nose, mouth.

Sand storm

I was about 10 to 15 kilometers outside Mui Ne, a beach resort town, but I've had enough: not being able to shift, getting sand all over - I stopped at a deserted sand beach and pitched my tent again.