Day 35, Up the coast to Cam Ranh

A sporty start to the day...

The alarm was set for 6:15am, but we were both awake well before this due to the noise in the hotel. We were out by 7:30am, but needed to find some breakfast and so followed most of the local traffic towards the market, where we bought some bread and fruit and then sat down in the shade with a green tea to eat and chatting with a local coffee farmer. I don't think that this town, Tan Son, is frequented by many tourists, as people stared at us a lot, and our new farmer friend was also intrigued, telling me that I was very beautiful several times (according to our guide from Dalat, Vietnamese people appreciate fatter girls, with big noses and frog eyes - so don't worry too much about my ego!).

It was already really hot, much hotter than yesterday had been up in the mountains. But the cycling was good, the road had vastly improved since yesterday and there were lots of gentle ups and downs to keep it interesting. Now that we were down at sea level much of the land was devoted to growing rice.

Some of the differences between Vietnam and Malaysia, and the impact on us as cyclists were starting to become apparent. Firstly, in Vietnam there are virtually no supermarkets or newsagents. There are loads of roadside stalls selling drinks but hardly any fridges. They all just keep ice in thermos flasks, which we can’t consume. After a while the water on my back became hot and quite unpleasant to drink, and I realised how much I had been taking ice-cold drinks for granted.

Sugarcane juice and a hammock -
it's hard to get back on the bike.

However, it’s not a Muslim country and therefore there is no Ramadan here. This means food and drink is at least freely available pretty much everywhere, which is good, as we find we need to stop more often just to cool down. The stalls selling fresh sugarcane juice are amazing and often have complimentary hammocks, which is a big plus point!

We made good time and were in good spirits, and had covered 40km by 11am. We had reached the coast and a town called Phan Rang, where we ended up stopping until 2pm. First we found an Internet cafe and did some blog catching up, then ate some huge portions of rice, and then it rained for a bit so we stopped in a cafe and drank some green tea.

We had another 40km to go before reaching our destination for the day, a town called Cam Ranh, also on the coast, where we knew there were hotels. It was essentially flat, but harder and hotter than the morning. We did pass some amazing sights along the way though. About 5km from the end, my chain broke. We pulled into a little cafe/stall and Nico started to repair it, but a boy of about 14 insisted on taking him to an old man close by who sorted it out with a hammer and a stone – who needs fancy bike tools?!

The end of the day draws near.

We stopped in the centre of Cam Ranh at a hotel just as it was growing dark. The owner told us a room would be $11, but when we asked to look at it there was a clear price of $8 attached to the wall! I asked his daughter, who clearly wasn’t in on her father’s overcharging scheme, if this was the real price of the room and she nodded. We paid $8.

The last encounter of the day was in family-run restaurant where we ate in the evening. They were delighted to see us and the teenage girl immediately got out her English book from school and started revising and teaching her father words while we were eating. At the end they all told us it was a pleasure to meet us, which put a smile on our faces at the end of a good day.