600km done!

Feb. 23 - Feb. 27/08. Cycling sure takes a lot out of you. We didn't have much of a chance to find internet while riding so I thought I would finish up our bike trip with a quick snapshot of the biking after Hoi An! Following this quick break we headed into 5 days of riding.

Hoi-An - Tam Ky: We left Hoi An on a ferry and after we got off we were on a new off-road route (i'm really glad I didn't send over my road bike). It had started to rain again and because the bus had to take the overland route we completely lost Bing (our bus driver). We kept asking locals for directions but they thought we wanted to go the very noisy Hwy #1 so we ended up on some really muddy routes. We even went over this little bamboo bridge in between rice paddies on a route no one had been on before!

Our bikes aren't equiped with fenders (or mudguards in Australian) so you can imagine that we were pretty funny, with our skunk strips over our helmets, to the locals (who all have fenders on their bikes!). We finally met up with Bing but we had a long way to go on our short 52 km ride! IT POURED and all we could do was laugh until we had to stop for our picnic lunch!!! Yeah, we ended up eating baquettes on the bus while every school child in this little town practiced their english on us!!! It was funny...we rode for another hour or so but decided, with what turned out to be only about 5 more km to go, we were just "not having fun" anymore!! We got into Tam Ky drenched and everything we had was covered in mud!!

Tam Ky - Quang Ngai: This was supposed to be a good long day (89km) and of course it started in the RAIN again! We headed off on the notorious Hwy #1...it is noisy and rather dangerous as every animal and mode of transportation rides it too! It was nice to get off the Hwy #1 and have a bit of a break at the pink wedding chapel restaurant. It actually stopped raining so we took off our ponchos very excited. By the time we finished our Vietnamese coffee (cafe sua) it had started to rain again. At least we were on the secondary roads again. We had a big bowl of soup for lunch and finished off our ride to the My Lai Massacre site and then arrived into Quang Ngai...a funny town - we stayed at the Petro Hotel (yes it is owned by a gas company!). Again...we did laundry!!!

Quang Ngai - Quy Nhon: (67km). We left predicting rain but when we started riding we actually saw sun (the first time in Vietnam!). It was an awesome day of heat and beautiful back roads. We were along the coast and saw lots of friendly children (this was now the norm - "hello, hello, hello"). We did a lot of hills that day but it was fun. Ted's legs were tired that day but once he got on the dirt road...he got his mojo going and he was on fire all the way into town. We had an awesome meal of pizza and beer to top off our first day of sun!!!

Quy Nhon - Tuy Hoa: (100km - our longest!). This is also the hilliest day of the ride. It started off with wind (but no rain!). We headed into the hills and did about 10 hills before reaching our first rest stop. The hills were 500m-1km on average (8-10% grade). Ted realized that he is a downhilling specialist. Whereas, I realized I love uphills! It was a super fun day of hard riding. But we had a fast little group and arrived in Tuy Hoa way ahead of schedule. We had to ride around the parking lot for .3km to ensure that we made exactly 100km! Andrea, Ted and I (our whole group minus our guides) went strolling for afternoon beers to celebrate!!! Only one more hard day ahead (but Adam -our guide promised it was short).

Tuy Hoa - Whale Island: (64km) The last day! We were hoping that it would be a breeze (and it was literally as the wind was howling outside of our funny little government hotel!). Shortly after leaving we ascended another hill and then it wasn't long before we hit our second longest hill of the whole ride (4km at around 8-10%). The hill became even more difficult because our gears and cables were so mucky that we didn't really have all of our gears (at least we had the granny gears). It also started to rain. By the time we were at the top it was pouring again, windy and there was tonnes of traffic. Ted started descending and he got some dirt in his eye so he was even more cautious. We got to the bottom and a rest stop just in time for a "cyclone" to hit the top (trees were sideways). We waited it out with another cafe sua and then headed up our last hill and off the Hwy #1 to the pennisula. We were heading to the ferry to go to Whale Island. It continued to rain and so we ended up at this island paradise in wind and rain! We toasted the ended of riding at this lovely private island and enjoyed reading and doing more laundry!

What a blast! This bike trip was awesome. We enjoyed it so much. Definitely recommend Grasshopperadventures to anyone interested in an interesting and beautiful way of seeing Vietnam!!!