Really!?!?! Get out?! The entire African continent? Yup!
Click on the map to see where my travels will take me over the next 4 months. This is the basic schedule with dates and locations. All camps are approximations.
Technology is a wonderful thing… when it works. Depending on connectivity and the wonders of the internet, you MAY be able to track me (and the Tour) on a daily basis. If everything works and I have access to a data connection…
Yawn! Pool. Zzzz
Cambodian Queen Mother?
Dog with bling. Giggle!
Zzzzzzzzz!
Today was our last day in Vietnam. Great food, great people, great BIG hills. Cycling in the pouring rain was the highlight for me. It sounds odd, but it was so refreshing in contrast to the oppressive heat and humidity.
Our next country…Cambodia. It’s a new country for me. The border crossing was slow but smooth. As always, there seems to be just one person to do the hard, time consuming job and six others to watch or do the trivial fast stuff.
The ride was pretty nondescript. Much of the same foliage and landscape we’ve seen in Vietnam. I’m going to withhold judgement on differences between countries until we get a little closer to a major town. The areas near a tiny boarder crossing don’t seem to be a good representation of a country.
I’m still very tired from the epic ride two days ago and I’m very much looking forward to our rest day tomorrow. It’s going to be a very lazy day of do nothing, nap then do more nothing. Thankfully there isn’t much in the area where we are staying, so I won’t feel guilty about missing something.
What should have been a super easy day through beautiful countryside was a struggle. The previous day shattered me. My body was aching, every cell in my body screaming “Stop! Let me regenerate!” I kind of think this is what it might feel like after a dose of chemotherapy. However, unlike a cancer patient, I asked for this. I PAYED for this. I must be crazy.
Thankfully, the day involved mostly long gentle decents on smooth tarmac. We passed through numerous rubber and coffee plantations. Many of the locals working hard in the baking sun to harvest the beans and spread them out on the ground to dry.
Rubber is such a weird thing to come from a tree…isn’t nature amazing? Our poor lunch truck driver accidentally backed his brand new passenger van into one of the rubber trees and managed to bed the rear door frame badly enough that it wouldn’t open. The rubber tree immediately started oozing its white gold. I imagine that’s how it was discovered thousands of years ago. Poor Fred Flintstone probably backed his AutoRock 3000 into one and…poof rubber was born. No more stone wheels!
These two days nearly killed me! 280 km and over five km of vertical climb! Holy moley! Day 11 in particular was the toughest ride of my life! It even trumped the 50+ Celsius day in Sudan and the 208km day in Botswana. Africa was just plane flat compared to Vietnam. We didn’t have anywhere near this much climbing. Even the Blue Nile Gorge was only a little over 1000m climb. Day 11 was over 3 times that and stretched over 141Km. Just getting the 40km to lunch was an epic achievement that took almost 5 hours.
The roads were crap (a mixture of gravel and broken asphalt) and the inclines were steep (some between 10-15% grade!) For comparison, usually you won’t see more than an 8% on a major road in Canada). I actually had to get off my bike and push it up parts that were just too steep and rough to ride.
Then after all that climbing came the fun part…right? Everyone loves zooming down the back side of the mountain! Bzzzzzt! Wrong! The inclines were terrifying! The roads were even steeper on the back side and corrugated with infuriating bumpy paint lines. Like we needed a warning not to go too fast on the way down? I’m sure if I had pored water on my brakes they would have instantly turned it to steam, they were so hot. I did actually touch them with my finger and regretted it immediately. Ouch!
I ended up spending about 10 hours on the bike (on day 11) and just barely made it in before cut off. We are not allowed to ride in the dark for safety reasons. Sunset was officially 5:18, and I rolled into the hotel at exactly 5:18! One other rider ran out of time and had to be pulled off the road after spending all day fighting her way towards the finish. A real bummer not being able to complete the journey after so much struggle…but safety first.
In the end, out of 20 riders only 9 of us even attempted the entire ride. 8 finished it. A HUGE accomplishment for everyone. It truly was an epic day and real test of strength, determination and will power. It destroyed me, but I’m so glad I finished it. Tomorrow will be another matter…
Two days of very easy cycling bring us to our next day off in the town of Hoi An. It’s known for its food and cheap tailored to order clothing. Several people on the tour had suits and even custom shoes made. All in less than 24 hours. All I did was rest and eat. I joined six of my fellow riders and went on a guided food tasting walk around town. We hit all the places that served classical Hou An Vietnamese food.
After eating way too much I stopped off at the little Japanese covered bridge to see what all the fuss was about…and I don’t get it. I’m sure there is a history behind it but it’s TINY. I’m not sure why it gets an honoured place on the 20,000 Dong note.
The next two days riding are gonna be really hard. Time to rest up!
Take a look at the above graph. It’s a plot of the elevation gain/loss on today’s ride. Amusing eh? Basically we are headed over Hai Van Pass. Windy road goes up! Windy road goes down. It’s a 500m vertical crawl on a bicycle. Thankfully I’ve got 8 days of training and conditioning behind me or this ride would have killed me!
It took 51 minutes to cycle up and 13 minutes to get down, and that was with me hammering on the brakes so I didn’t shoot off the side of the mountain on the hairpin turns.
Other than some minor pain in the butt, from sitting on my bike all day, and a mild numbness in my left hand (exaggerated by the Dupuytren contractures I have on it) I’m feeling really good now. I don’t think there is anything this ride can throw at me now that would phase me…short of a Balrog (Nerd alert: a Balrog is the demonic beast Gandalf faced in the Mines of Moria when he uttered the lines “You, shall not pass!”).
Of course we shall see. The next two riding days are very long with some huge climbs
Since the ride was so short today, and I was feeling energetic, I decided to do a little diversion. There was an interesting temple we could see from our lunch stop. It was only an additional 6km round trip, and rather than spend time at the hotel waiting for my room to be ready, I figured a little side adventure couldn’t hurt.
The trip was well worth it. Dozens of ornate statues carved from white marble are placed around the grounds. At its centre, a ginormous statue the tourists call “Lady Buddha” (which is technically incorrect) takes centre stage. Think Statue of Liberty but slightly smaller.
A little further on is an impressive temple and pagoda. I didn’t bother going inside as my cycling attire would have been frowned upon. No one wants a sweaty, stinky cyclist, in tight spandex shorts, dripping all over the polished marble floors…
Another ride, another bunch mausoleums. It’s incredible the sheer numbers of them. They line the road, built up on the sandy ground, just barely above sea level. They are often surrounded by water and, I’m sure, frequently submerged as the areas they occupy are prone to flooding.
Today was another short day of cycling, but a very peaceful one. Small winding roads took us past some nice vistas(once we got past the piles of dead people). The day ended back on the South China Sea in an area that was built up for tourism.
I get the sense that things have been tough here for a while now. Covid probably hit this area hard. Half the resorts along the beach have closed or never even opened their doors. The Movinpick resort, a few km down the beach, is a derelict compound with unfinished rooms filled with unopened crates of what are presumably building materials; All rotting away in the humid air.
We are staying in one of the resorts that’s managed to survive. It’s a beautiful place with large modern rooms, ocean views and a large sandy beach. It’s a pity we are here for only one night. This is such a contrast to my Africa trip. I can have a shower every night, wash my clothing and sleep in an air conditioned room with a real bed! Luxury!
Our second rest day of the tour brings us to Huẽ, the home of the Vietnamese Emperors and the Imperial City. A small walled compound that housed the elite of Vietnamese society. I spent about three hours wandering around its buildings and gardens. As usual I’ll let the pictures speak the words…
Today was a strange day; Fish farms and cemeteries. We are passing through the geographic center of Vietnam and finishing the day in a town called Huě. It’s where the old Vietnamese Emperors lived back in the day. The people of this area decided they wanted to be like their emperors and display their family wealth by building elaborate family mausoleums. Only problem, the people were dirt poor so many spent their family fortunes on these things. It’s become such a problem that the Vietnamese government had to pass a law restricting the size of these things so people wouldn’t waste all their money on such things. Food and shelter are more important in THIS life. Not the next.
As we cycled the short 79km to Hue we passed thousands of these elaborate tombs. That and fish farms? I don’t get it either. It’s a very strange combination.
Another big day, and another rainy day…and yes I’m still loving it. Only problem is it’s hard to take photos in the rain. Pretty much everything is hard to do in the rain (except cycle!). My iPhone is mounted on my handle bars and it’s my sole source of navigation. If it fails…I’m screwed. I’d have to wait for another rider to come by and just follow them. The rain on the screen makes the phone freak out, and good luck interacting with it when the screen is wet and your hands are wet. No bueno! Despite the phone being waterproof, I’ve taken to sticking it in a zip-lock bag to keep the water from pushing virtual buttons and ending my navigation or sending me off track.
Today’s ride was a record (for this trip) of 145km. It was almost all in the rain. Light rain mostly, but strong at times. We finished the day in a little resort village called Cua Viet right on the South China Sea. I wandered over to the sandy beach and stuck my feet in the surf. The waves were quite rough but the water was very warm.
I’ve told the TDA staff that if I start quacking, I may need an intervention.
