January 5, 2017
The Master Plan: Ho Coc to Vung Tau
WE didn'g get what we expected of Vung Tau. It stands on a short peninsula which marks the seaward limit of the Mekong delta. Everything one way is solid land and everything in the other a chaos of polders, flooded fields and countless ways of getting the Mekong indecisively to the sea.
You can take a ferry from here up one of the estauraies and into the heart of Saigon. That is the attraction, of course, because it avoids the noise and the two-wheeled mayhem of the country's largest city.
Because of the ferry, I'd expected Vung Tau to be a little port town, perhaps with international ferries and container ships to who knows where. There'd be dirty Viet coasters with salt-caked smokestacks and perhaps a bearded man or two in seaboots and a heavy blue sweater, puffing on pipes as they mend their nets.
Instead of that, it turned out to be a modern holiday destination with a long strip of hotels facing the sea. There is golden sand and there are sploshing waves and the world of internauts complains of the lack of plastic sun beds.
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Vietnam is big and wants to be bigger in the sandy sunshine business. We stayed last night in a bungalow by the sea in a complex we could never have afforded in Europe. There were a handful of similar places along the road this morning. The traffic was light because this is winter in Vietnam - it's funny to see people in jackets while we're sweating in the heat - and that made the road seem even wider.
After a while, we detected a Master Plan. The road had been built for the planned heavy summer traffic and the shoulder on which we were riding was probably bus parking. The surface looked new and, rather than running along the beach as a more utilitarian road would have, it kept its distance to make room for the hotels that would one day be built there.
Oddly, all the land between the road and the sea was walled. Not just fenced but lined in brick. The walls were shabby and dated and the land beyond had returned to nature. The Master Plan had stuttered. The walls suggested there had once been hotels, that they had been demolished for something better but that the something better had never happened.
One day, the plan will swing back into action. And this would be nothing novel in Vietnam because towns often have broad boulevards stretching into the countryside with nothing beside them. In other places, whole housing estates have been laid out, complete with kerbs and road makings and (wildly optimistic in Vietnam) pedestrian crossings. But no houses.
Well, we rode all the way along that coastal road, past a lot of flat and unremarkable countryside. We had one of the worst lunches we've had here but some of the best sugar-cane drinks. More than that, I've added to the list of countries in which I've had my hair cut. And tomorrow we ride the remaining six kilometres to that port and the ferry that will take us into Saigon and the end of the ride.
Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,665 km (1,034 miles)
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