Geoff Jones

Today I was quite pleased to be leaving The Homestay, I found it a bit humourless and not so friendly, in fact it was only the new girl who had any cheer in her at all.

The morning started off cold and drizzly but after an hour or so the rain stopped and I was humming along the relatively traffic free Ho Chi Minh highway with it’s lovely smooth suface. BTW you can always tell if you are on this road as it has a yellow lane marker rather than the usual white.

I gave myself a tour around a roof tile making place, making them in the time honoured fashioned of pressing the clay, allowing it to air dry and then firing or maybe it’s just drying out the clay in a wood fired long kiln. Fascinating to see and how all the tiles are loaded in the kiln by hand through an 18 inch square hole. It must be hot work for the guy who has to go in and hand the finished tiles out!

Starting to come across the memorials dedicated to the USA war. A huge new pagoda place by a modern river bridge in ? and the remains of a bombed out building in Ho Xa. The highlight today was visiting the Vjnh Moc tunnels that the local residents built to hide in duringg the incessant bombing raids. They are pretty big, I could just about stand up in them and they go for km and reach depths of 30 metres. I met one of the guys who was actually born in the tunnel. They even excavated wells inside. It’s interesting how they are built into the sea cliff face, so that you can actually come out on the beach. Also interesting to see their collection of unexploded bombs and other artefacts in their little museum.

It started to get late nd after 80 odd miles of bikingI was beginning to panic about finding somewhere to sleep. However, in Cho Ngoi about 3 miles along the coast from the tunnels I happened upon The Ngoc Ha Guest House with the aid of Google translate I managed to get a room and a fantastic vegetarian dinner.

The only problem is the house has no WiFi so the pictures aren’t up yet but the Strava is at https://strava.com/activities/113366702 a very respectable 84.1 miles in just over 6 hours including 3000 feet of climbing 🙂

The pictures can be found here

As you can see from my Fitbit sleep data I had a rubbish nights sleep 🙁 Could have been the guy bringing up his guts in the adjacent room, uncomfortable bed, road noise or just maybe that was meant to be. First thing when fully awake was to peer out of the window to discover yet more rain & low cloud. One day I’m sure  I WILL see sun crikey I’m only 17 degrees away from the Equator!

Next job was to try and find somewhere for breakfast, to no avail. Every place I went in they just looked at me weirdly. 🙁 So I munched on a few of my stash of bananas and kept going. Traffic was heavy with lots of container trucks, it’s clearly industrial around here, especially when I saw a blast furnace and it’s cowper stoves, many memories of my first job in 1962 and my City & Guilds in Ironmaking certificate 1st Class!

Just after Con Giang I sailed through a set of toll gates where the folks gave me a funny look, a few yards further on I discovered why – a tunnel that looked dangerously narrow with such huge trucks & no rear light. So I turned around and went up the pass In heavy rain & wind, good training for the mountains.in the next couple of weeks.

Once down I found a truckers cafe and with the aid of Google translate was able to order some food 🙂 amazing spread and all for less than £2.  Pounding on with a good tail wind & admiring the stupidity of someone carrying an 8 foot long pole on a moped,  I eventually reached the turn off  from Highway 1 and then followed the switchback road upto Phong Na and the Phong Na Homestay, an upmarket backpackers place (My room is 0ne million dong (£28) – the most expensive  in Vietnam yet), it’s also my first English speaking place since the Halong Bay cruise.

I’m staying here two nights, as tomorrow I want to visit the worlds biggest cave & other attractions 🙂

Today’s 51 mile ride is on below:

and the pics are here