We followed the coastline for a few days now, from Life’s a Beach to Tuy Hoa and then Van Gia Town, leaving the coast sometimes as the route dictated. Some of the time we were avoiding riding on AH1, the busy main highway from north to south, and that brought us over some hills but along much more interesting paths. The temperatures have been increasing, and daily high temperatures have been in the mid-90’s with a good deal of humidity. We have begun to wake up earlier to get out on the road before the heat rises, but we often still are cycling during the high temperature of the mid-day. We cycled more than 100 miles these past two days.
For 3 nights in a row, we’ve stayed on the beach and that has been super nice. Each place had it’s own character which we’ve enjoyed.
The best part of the first day was arriving at our hotel! Or maybe, it was the grilled corn on the side of the road. It reminded me of the last time I had grilled corn on a bike tour, in Colombia!
Yes, there were the usual delights of the road, but the room that Chris had booked was super-luxe and the restaurant across the street was really good too. Expensive by Vietnam standards but quite inexpensive anywhere else. We even had a bottle of wine, which is not often available in small towns.
The next day, Chris got up early to see the sunrise while I got some more shut-eye. The beach was lovely (I’m told) and lots of people were out swimming at 5AM. This boy needs his beauty sleep, and he knows it.
From what we could tell, many upper middle class Vietnamese come to Tuy Hoa for holidays, as the street we were on was lined with hotels much more luxurious than ours.
Day two was definitely the day of rice! As we’ve traveled south the first harvest of rice seemed to be completed and the next planting begun. The roads in all directions were covered with rice drying, and the evidence of new planting was seen all along the way. It was a spectacular day!
We stopped for coffee mid-morning and got a cat bonus. Cute little kitten! Ordering coffee is always a bit of crap-shoot…local variations of what things are called make things tricky sometimes. We’ve started just showing a photo of what we want in addition to saying what we think we should. That seems to work best. We stop for coffee at least 1x a day, and usually 2. The coffee is strong espresso mixed with evaporated milk over ice. It’s really good. Some people call that Ca Phe Sai Gon and some people call it Ca Phe Sua.
While we are on the subject of eating, I often get hungry in the middle of the day, and Chris may want a tiny something but not a whole lunch. So we get one lunch at a restaurant and then share a mango and/or an apple along the route to keep us going. Food is mostly very available in Vietnam in small roadside cafes, and really inexpensive, tasty and safe to eat. I had read some travel journals of bike touring in Vietnam that kind of scared me in terms of food availability, suggesting that you might need to bike 50 miles between food stops but nothing could be further from the truth. While many restaurants/cafes close for a few hours after 1:00PM, you can typically count on having great food in almost any village or town.
Arriving in Van Gia Town after about 45 miles, we checked into our hotel, showered and then took a stroll on the seafront promenade, filled with lots of young people enjoying the early evening and moonrise.
Chris had identified a restaurant candidate nearby and it looked good if empty. We were getting up a 5AM the following day so wanted to eat early! On the positive side, we had the waitress to ourselves. After some consideration and use of Google Translate, we ordered a Seafood Hotpot and a green salad, both of which were amazing. The waitress helped us on how to do it all – what to put in the boiling broth when, and what to combine with what. They seem quite proud of their food and want you to enjoy it by eating it properly.
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