To N. Song Cau: Bai Tien Hotel

January 29, 2007

Patrick wakes up a couple of times during the night from huge downpours pounding on the roof. As we pack early this morning another storm passes over. We set off anyway, the road still wet, but at least eventually it has stopped raining.

As soon as we leave town the road starts to climb to a hillside with nice ocean views. Hundreds of fishing boats, all painted in blue, red and white are anchored in the bay. Fisherman are paddling between the shore, their boats and fish farms off shore using the woven round basket boats.

The climb continues for a while, then turns inland and we descend into a valley with green rice fields, bordered by hills full of granite boulders. Everywhere are small operations splitting the boulders and hacking out square cobblestones. The children here are scrawny looking, and several ask for money. Patrick think they see quite a few cyclists pass this way and it must work sometimes. Although we saw eight cyclists yesterday, we'll see more today.

The wind is again blowing against us.

Where we have some cover from trees or houses, we can ride okay, but there are several exposed sections, riding on a dike amongst green rice fields, where the going gets tough. Despite the wind it's a good day for cycling. We see many interesting sights along the way and stop often for pictures. In Tuy Hoa we are briefly tempted to stay according to our map it is another 61km to Song Cau and the wind is making it hard riding. But it is only noon, and we'd like to make tomorrow an easy one...

So, we push on and we see one pleasant surprise by a road sign that makes the distance only 48km. There are some hills now, we climb, turn and descend back towards the ocean. When we get to Song Cau a new bypass confuses us for a moment, but some locals point us onto the old road, up a hill of course. We get up the hill, descend to the town and go looking and asking for a hotel or guesthouse. No luck. We try several different times, the best we get is that there is a hotel about 15...or 10...km down the road.

Our options are to push on or cut our losses now and take a ride to Quy Nhon, the next large town. But the road tomorrow is supposed to be very scenic, so we hate to not cycle it....so we push on.

A couple of moped riders tell us it's about 10km on, when we get there, some people say it's another 3km, although they first confuse us by saying 15 instead of 3. But we find the hotel! Over a large pond built into the bay is a grouping of motel like rooms. It's a bit expensive $15USD, but Patrick gets the price down to 200,000 dong by not including breakfast.

Power is supposed to come on at six....it doesn't. But there is hot water and a restaurant right "on shore". We clean up, enjoy a Saigon beer each and have a nice dinner. We are given a light for our room, write in the journal and read a bit.

Today was a hard long day in not so easy circumstances...it's nice to know we can still do the kilometers.