19th and 20th of october

Yesterday I took a break, my legs were really sore, this climb was heavier than I expected it to be… I slept well but wasn’t ready to go to Da Lat just yet. This town was not touristy at all, which caused some money problems: no atm would accept foreign cards so I had to exchange at a jewellery store… After taking an easy walk through town before noon (nothing to see there actually), I took my bicycle for a spin through the mountains. Without a trailer it isn’t that hard to drive up the mountains and I didn’t have to brake that much while going down! It felt great and it was a beautiful day but I forgot my camera :p…

Today I made the long ride through the mountains from Di Linh to Da Lat: more than 80 km over countless mountains with dozens of: ‘caution slope of 10%’ signs. It’s always 10% here in Vietnam, I haven’t seen a sign of 8 or 12 or whatever… I think it just means that it is steep :P. I had to eat a lot today and that’s what I did, instead of 6 meals I had 7 and a kilo of bananas! One of them was a really good one: somewhere on the road I had a rice meal with kind of everything on it: pork chops, chicken, shrimp, vegetables, soup,… Whenever I almost finished the plate she kept scooping some extra on it! This is the way I like to eat… The problem is that I don’t know how to ask for it; when I stopped to eat she asked: ‘lunch’ and I said yes. It was the only English that she knew.

The last 20 km to Da Lat were uphill and I was already tired so I almost died out there. Not literally, but my legs were really tired. About 3 km from the top I took a rest and I just laid down on the parking lot of some tourist attraction. Afterwards I took a picture of the spot, it’s shown below. When I arrived in town I just looked for the first hotel that I could find and went to sleep. I could barely stand on my feet so I was happy that the owners’ son came to help with the luggage!

27-10-2010, 10:14 geschreven door zoriander  

18th of october

This morning we had another really local breakfast. It’s on those days that you can see how cheap one can live out here. I had banh canh for 20 eurocents :s, anyway after breakfast it was time to say goodbye to my cousin and his mother. His uncle and mother were still going to lead me out of town onto the right road. This was very useful to me and saved me a couple of kilometres. Today the target is 100 km with a resulting elevation of 1200 m, a very tough goal but I set of great! My legs were feeling fine and my first stop was 40 km from Phan Thiet in a small village. I was getting hungry so I looked for a restaurant; what I found was not really a restaurant but more like a ‘all-in-one’ small shop with some tables and utensils. Everything that the woman sold was loaded on her motorbike and I had to point to the things that I wanted, I picked some spring rolls and noodles. Then she yelled at her husband to bring me the right bowls and tea while I took my seat. A pretty interesting experience, while I was eating she kept coming to my table with some more food that I might be interested in. Nobody spoke a word of English but it felt like I was an attraction on my own: the entire school came to take a look at the foreigner who was cycling through. After the meal I bought some extra food supplies because I saw that the mountains were coming close and didn’t know if there would be any more houses. Then I started to climb, in the beginning it was still ok: not too steep but steep enough to know that I was rising. After 20 minutes I passed an old man on a bicycle coming from the other direction; he was furiously signing that I should turn around because it was going to be very very steep. I smiled and kept going, half an hour later I knew what he meant… I felt like I was driving up a wall, this was at least 10% and not just for 1 km… The road was beautiful but it was very tough. I drove like this for 3 hours (including the many breaks), I was getting really tired but kept going. More than once the though of me being crazy rose into my mind but then I just looked to my right and saw a beautiful valley. This made me feel good, I just had to make sure not to look to much to my left because this mountain was high. Then it became even steeper and I got into trouble, I was driving on my lowest gear and still had to push hard, every kilometre I had to take a break. With 5 more km to go to the top, I started hearing a truck driving up the hill. One kilometre further he caught up with me and I was so tired that I asked if I could get a ride, they were very friendly and with the little English and many gestures we had a conversation. At the top we arrived in a village that resembled the village in ‘the last samurai’, the biggest difference was that some of them use plastic to make there houses more water proof. It was beautiful but no way that I could get a good rest here so I asked them to take me to Di Linh: a town 20 km further (my original goal of the day). When I got off I gave them 2 euro and went on my search for a decent bed. They caught up with me at a restaurant where they would have dinner and asked me to join them. After a nice meal I asked them whether they knew a nice and relatively cheap place to sleep, they showed me a hotel nearby and bargained for me. My legs were really sore so I just took a shower, went to a local shop to buy some more food for the evening and just laid myself in bed.

27-10-2010, 08:27 geschreven door zoriander  

Hi all,

This morning I woke up together with the rest of the family, it was a Sunday today so my hosts where at home. After breakfast it was already really hot and it was only 7.30… I explained them that I would like to see the beach and when I wanted to leave by bicycle he said: ‘no no, too far away’. As if 20 km is far when you have already done 500. He took his helmet and keys of the motorbike, so I took a helmet too and off I went; with my own private guide who doesn’t speak a word of English! It was absolutely incredible, the beach was so white and the sea so crystal clear; all that under a perfect blue sky with a burning sun. I would have loved to go and take a dip but had no clue how to explain him and apparently he had planned out where we would go. He just kept going past Mui Ne town over a nice road with some of the most incredible coastline views one can get. Out of nowhere we arrived at a tourist spot; pretty clear with all the busses and English signs… Some red sand-hills on top of which you had a view over the entire coastline. We climbed up trying to ignore all the kids that wanted to rent out a plastic sheet with which you could slide down the hill. The sun was burning and so was the sand, for once I wished I wasn’t wearing sandals :o. We continued the road to a land tongue which was full of purple flowers. Then we took the road back to their house with a stop for fresh coconut on the way. When we arrived back there was a surprise for me: my cousin and his mother had come from Vung Tau to Phan Thiet for a holiday. They surprised me with some more bananas and a special kind of soy-corn-rice, hmm. After playing with my cousin for a while and joining his uncle for a drinking session (with 6 people we drank 48 bottles and 9 cans of beer, quite a few of them were really drunk), I took a nap; everyone was taking a nap so I joined. I normally never take a nap but for some reason I felt really tired… Maybe the long distance from yesterday were still weighting on me. After the nap I felt better but still very weak. I ate some of the bananas but it didn’t help, anyway it was time to go to church. Children have to go to church 3 times a week from 6 till 14 year old to study catechism. I became totally unwell and almost fainted during the ceremony so I was very happy when we were going to eat something right after church! Anyway it was a nice day of discovering Phan Thiet, tomorrow I’ll have to say bye again and I will be going to the mountains…  

26-10-2010, 10:14 geschreven door zoriander