Blogs from South Central Coast, Vietnam, Asia - page 5

Hue and Hoi An We departed from Hanoi around 7/8pm. We were all in the first class sleeper carriage with a 4 person sleeper and me, Bill, Andrea and my dad shared a cabin. The others gate crashed the girls’ cabin and started making gin and tonic mixers (thanks to Duc for buying it!) I swore it was a dry day but was coerced into having a G&T! So we talked, they drank (a lot- finished the Gin and cleaned the trolley lady out of beer). I went to bed at midnight (my crew were already asleep) and the others went to bed soon after. We arrived in Hue at about 9am, some worse for wear (and badly hungover luckily not me!) We checked into the hotel and had a light breakfast. The weather was drizzly ... read more

Woke to a crisp temp with a cloudless clear blue sky, perfect for a riding city tour of Dalat, a beautiful town unlike any other in Vietnam due to its manmade lakes & gardens, palaces and colonial-era summer homes that have largely escaped the ravages of war. The riding part of the day was a 40 km morning ride and a 20 km afternoon ride. The whole day was easy riding and both sessions had a 10 km downhill decent. The morning decent was a good surface & able to reach speeds of 50 Kph while the second was in a remote coffee growing area with a narrow twisting road with rough & broken surface in part & interrupted by local cow & goat herds but good speeds were also made. Our accommodation for the night ... read more

A long day starting at 7 am with a 6 hr bus trip to cover some 300 kms through the central part of Vietnam with a planned afternoon 60 km ride to our overnight stay at the Seagull Hotel in the coastal city of Quy Nhom. However the weather gods turned against us. While the whole country seems awash with water today was our first wet riding day with heavy showers all day. I would never consider riding in such conditions at home but off we set with our $0.50 plastic poncho's riding in potholed & flooded roads. By 22 kms with a winter night setting in early under grey sky's we came to a soon to be impassable section of flooded road & we obviously needed to turn back. Despite the rain it was still ... read more

Am Morgen des 15.11.2017 bin ich extra früh aufgestanden, denn um 7:30 sollte mich der Bus zur Grenze Kambodschas abholen. Um 8:00 war er dann auch mal. Mit 21 Personen, in einem 15-Sitzer, ging es dann los. Im Gang saßen die Kambodschaner auf kleinen Plastikstühlen oder direkt auf dem Schoß. Circa 1,5 Stunden später wurde ich mit einem slowenischen Paar an der Grenze abgesetzt. Da standen wir also mit Sack und Pack in sengender Hitze in „the middle of nowhere“. An einem kleinen Schalter, mit der Aufschrift Arrival erhielt ich meinen Ausreisestempel und dann lief ich die wenigen hundert Meter zu Fuß nach Vietnam. Immer wenn ich an Vietnam dachte, dann kam mir Forrest Gump in den Sinn. Wie er im Krieg gegen die Vietnamesen gekämpft hat. Ich war gespannt mehr über das Land und seine ... read more

This was our first attempt at hitchhiking in Vietnam and we'd not been stood for 5 minutes on the road before another couple told us they had tried and it was a hopeless venture. It took them 4 hours last time to get one lift. 10 minutes later we got a lift with a helpful trucker and took great pleasure in waving to them out of the window as we zoomed by! This guy took us two thirds of the way and once again no sooner had we got out we hailed another lad who took us pretty much the rest of the way. We'd arranged to meet up with a Vietnamese friend we'd met in Laos (Tano) and stayed at his families air bnb - it was plush! Da nang itself was very modern and ... read more