To Quy Nhon

Great views, almost sunny for a few minutes.

Free drinking water at lunch stop.

Basket boats.

Basket case.

Weather still grey, grim and windy but no way are we staying at Scandia for another night.  Vietnamese tea definitely more quaffable than the Vietnamese coffee.  Poor Paul is stuck with water for breakfast with his cold fried eggs.  A quick clean of the rusting bike chains and off back down the mucky road.

At least the road is quiet.  A back road for part of the way before hooking back onto Highway 1.  As a major highway linking north and south Vietnam this is surprisingly light with traffic too.  Mostly it is trucks carrying hundreds of live pigs – lost count of how many passed us.  The smell lingers for a couple of minutes as the truck races by.  Other road users are the small minivans, the worst, with their loud persistent horn blowing and habit of overtaking on blind bends.  Second worst are the large green buses.  Heads down, against the wind we stick tight to the hard shoulder.  At least it’s not raining.

A nice detour through an unmarked fishing village.  Daily food market on the street with fresh veg on the ground, then the fresh fish and an enormous pile of shellfish being cleaned off by half a dozen women, but nowhere to eat.

Have one of our best lunch stops at a roadside stall.  Pointing and miming we manage to order large plates of rice with squid, prawn and veg on one and crackling pork and chicken on the other.  With two Pepsis the bill was only around £2.50.  Bargain and really tasty.

Wildlife watch today – Paul saw a large snake slither across the road.  Linda was busy in the bushes and missed it. Pah!

85 kms and some good hills.  We cycle down the very narrow village lanes to “Life’s a Beach”.  A brilliant spot.  An upmarket backpacker place and very well done.  A gorgeous curved sandy bay and our room upstairs is a bamboo hut with a veranda overlooking the beach.  The weather hasn’t cleared yet and still in the tail end of the big storm but the view is amazing and it is such a treat to sit watching and listening to the thundering waves crashing onto the beach.

Two days here we think, to hope the weather improves a bit.