RIDE DAY: Huong Khe to Phong Nha, VT

2/3/09
Day: 126.6 km
Cume: 1820.5 km
Avg: 16.1 kph
Max: 59.5 kph
Time: 7h50m (long day!)
Highs: The sun came out a little to wash away the grey, majority of the day was spent riding on the Ho Chi Mihn Highway through the mountain in Wilderness through a National Park, unbelieveable limestone mountains all around rivaling the King's Road in Laos, HUGE LUSH jungle, got a good nap in at lunch stop, lots of hellos and kids following me on bike and on foot, approving glances and nods from adults, felt really good after a long day in the mountains
Lows: The sun came out a little to heat things up!, 3k at 10% grade + 5k ascent at 90km into ride, BAD BAD road signs, TERRIBLE map, arrived after dark (fortunately on a country road, there was very little traffic and a few motor bikes helpfully followed me for the last 5k to light my way) 30 minutes after sunset, a lot of shouting and hollering for the roadside along with the hellos


This was a long but tremendously rewarding day. There is just nowhere to stay and/or eat through much of this section of ride. It was literally Wilderness (with a capital "W"). I could have camped and would have had water but would have had no food for some time, so I decided to push on to the bitter end. The riding was killer, lots of ups and downs, a couple of long ones. The mountains were insanely beautiful, but due to the grey skies, all the photos look mute and uninteresting, but this national park truly rivaled the King's Road in Laos. I got my first taste of Vietnamese style rice farming with oxen and plough rather than the tractors of Laos and Thailand. WoW! It's all very new still, so I'm just in awe of everything, especially the kindness I see from people along the roadside. Very very friendly.

My map simply sucks! It has towns in places where they don't exist or it reverses the order of towns or says town are on the road when they're 4km off the road. It's really bad. To compound things, the road signs were changing all day. There is a marker every km that lists the distance to upcoming towns. It wasn't until 15km before the town I was heading to that they actually declared the distance to the town I was heading to! It was strange. One road sign said 50km to Phong Nha, where I knew there were hotels, and then 10km later, it said 45km. I had no idea how far it actually was and then got hit with the killer climb out of the national park at 90km. It was awesome, though, because the remainder of the day was literally dead pan flat or downhill and the downhill was long and awesome. I need to list town names so this is clearer, but don't have my map with me. I'll return here to ****EDIT***** just in case there are cyclists reading this.

Riding after sunset sucked, but due to the terrain and feeling pretty good from having had an afternoon nap, I was able to step it up. When it finally got dark enough, I broke out all the lights and pedaled on at a quick pace. I arrived at Phong Nha at 7:00 or 7:30 exhausted and starving. The hotel proprieter was more than happy to make me be a big plate of fried rice and the BEST spring rolls ever!!! OMG!!! Very different from the states with a crumbly meshed wrapper that was very fibrous and flakey. So yummy! I crashed shortly after finishing dinner.

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a farmer
surfs his plough thru his rice field
his ox licks its lips

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