Here Be Elephants

The last few days were spent travelling to Mui Ne, another beach resort town 170 miles southwest of Nha Trang. The first day out of Nha Trang was our most impressive day yet for distance, finishing up at 67.5 miles (107 km). Other than that, the day was just another typical day of cycling through the flat rice fields of Vietnam. After about 35 miles, mountains began to crowd in from all sides and we could see no way that our road could avoid them, but as it has so many times before, Highway One somehow wiggled around them and remained flat. In the last 20 miles, we were gifted with an impressive tailwind for the first time in our journey, which was so strong we did not even need to pedal. The land also grew much more desolate; despite everything remaining flat, farmed fields were less common, and we saw our first sheep grazing on the scrubland. We spent the night in a small town called Phan Rang, which made very little impression on us.

On the 27th we also managed a pretty impressive distance, stopping in a small town called Cho Lau. Another typical day, another unremarkable small town, another bowl of beef pho. That left us only about 30 miles to go on day three, which was a good job, as this last bit of the road was a lot more hilly. We had to turn off the One onto a much smaller road, the 715, to get to Mui Ne. The landscape changed dramatically, as you can see from the photos, becoming much drier, and eventually giving way to sand dunes and sandy scrubland as we got close to the coast. It was quite pretty, but not the nicest we’ve seen in Vietnam. Unfortunately the verge was also covered in litter in several areas. But we did get to see some countryside, as the area is quite desolate and doesn’t suffer the strip development that we’ve seen along most of the QL1A.

Mui Ne is actually a small, bustling fishing town. But the Mui Ne that the tourists know is the beach that stretches to the south-west of town, and which is completely lined with hotels, resorts and restaurants. This ‘strip’ is also about 5 miles long, with the cheaper hotels at one end, and most of the restaurants towards the other, which made getting around a bit of a pain. Unlike Quy Nhon, this area is not a proper town, so there is no municipal beach, and instead the coastline is divided into many ‘private beaches’ belonging to the restaurants and resorts – who can be very strict about access. We found a nice complex with a private beach, a pool, and individual bungalows for rent. The beach was ok, and nicely lined with palm trees, but generally I think we preferred Quy Nhon. Mui Ne’s beach was too littered with debris – and not just the natural, acceptable shells and dead jelly fish, but also cigarette butts, bricks and, bizarrely, old discarded clothing.

Our journey through Vietnam so far has followed Highway One, which has an incredible ability to remain flat when there are mountains all around. The main north-south train line also utilises this miraculous route. Having seen a lot of trains chug past us, and not being particularly excited about a long cycle through the huge Ho Chi Minh City suburbs, we decided to cycle to the nearest train station at Phan Thiet and get a train for the last 200 km to HCMC. Trains don’t go very fast in Vietnam – ours averaged about 25 mph, but they are quite comfy and air-conditioned, so it was a nice journey. As so many people ride motorbikes here, the last carriage in the train was purely for storing two-wheeled vehicles, so the bikes were no problem whatsoever. Ho Chi Minh City will be the biggest place we’ve been to since Shanghai, and is sure to be quite a change of pace.

AW & MD

This post covers December 26th to 30th, sorry for the delay in posting, and happy new year!

Pictures from this post can be found here

Other Pages Updated: Maps, Statistics, Pictures

~ by Elephants on January 2, 2011.

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