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Published: April 16th 2009
Ride from Quy Nhon to Doc Lech was another biggie..just over 200 kms and with the combination of rough and broken tracks masquerading as highway and a heavily weighed down bike we were only averaging 35 kms an hour..High point of the ride was a cliffside mountain pass separating the mainland from the Hon Gom peninsula..Breathtaking scenery and exciting biking with both sweeping and tight curves on switchback roads...However turned one sharp corner on the descent to find a small tour bus on its side with a lorry sat on its back seats, a couple of guys transferring the lorrys load to another vehicle..Couldnt tell how long ago the accident had happened but the road was still covered in oil which slowed us down for the rest of the steep road back down to sea level.
We had booked ahead by phone at a small resort complex of bungalows directly on the beach at Doc Lech 45 mins out on another peninsula south of Hon Gom..2 nights and 3 days of doing absolutely nothing but eating,reading and swimming..Just what the doctor ordered!
Place was run by an eccentric 83 year old French expat named Vladimir Cherie who immediately announced that Rhianydd
Surfs Up!
It was the only board I could find big enough to cover my pot belly!was too old for me and that there needed to be at least 40 years between man and wife...In his case there was slightly more..he had one 8 and one 7 year old son living with him and another 14 year old boy living on his own in a Saigon apartment (HCMC)...Mad as chips but you wouldnt put the old guy a day over 65!
On the morning off the 9th, fully rested and recuped we headed off in the cool early morning for the trip to Ca Na (another 180kms)...
The scenery on this stretch was some of the best we had seen since leaving the Ho Chi Minh Highway in the North..In some ways we think we have made a trade off..The beauty and emptiness of the HCM highway was definitely fantastic but the teeming town and village life we had seen everywhere along the way since hopping on and off Highway 1 has been even more of an experience.
Now however this Southern scenery came into its own and we were winning both ways..
Found out the hard way that the reserve tank system on the bike wasn't working when about 5 kms after Rhianydd saying "Are
we OK for petrol?" the bike choked to a halt..The reserve is supposed to hold 2 litres but when I flipped the switch found that the reserve was dry as well....Sh*t!!
After first telling us that the nearest petrol was a few kms further on a young girl working in a cafe ran back out and smiling lead us to second cafe just a hundred metres away where would you believe they had 5 litres of petrol in bottles? Saved again! Or at least for a short while...Some 15 kms later the bike again chugged to a halt and I realised that the petrol probably hadnt been exactly the best...Ended up having to change the plug and blow through the petrol feed, but, after about half an hours fiddling again got the bike going for the last stretch into beautiful, and I mean Beautiful, Ca Na!
The most wonderful beach we had seen to date and given the fantastic hotel run by Vietnam Scuba directly on the beach, again we couldnt resist an extra night before pressing on to Ho Coc. Tell you about that in the next post!
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