South Vietnam Coast

This story was posted under the categories: Big Asia Trip, Cycling, Cycling South-East Asia, Vietnam

After the fertile lands of the Mekong Delta, we took the bus to Vietnam’s capital Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon), where we cycled together with 3 million motorbikes. That was fun, for about 2 hours, so we jumped on the hydrofoil (one of those flying boats) due for Vung Tau.

Vung Tau is mostly popular with Saigonese weekenders and it is a typical Vietnamese beach town. Compared to our european standards, it isn’t really cosy as the city is  widely spread out and you have to take a bike (or a motorbike if you’re vietnamese) to go from the beach to the cafe and then to a restaurant. Internet is omnipresent and online gaming is very popular with the local youth.

Instead of playing, they’d better fix their roadsigns so we wouldn’t get lost.

From Vung Tau, we went East along the Southern Vietnam Coast. This is where we meet our worst enemy: El Nino. El Nino is a natural phenomenon which causes a strong wind to blow in from the East. Thus for the next couple of days, we’d be bashing against a wind with speeds up to 20 kms per hour. At least the kite surfers were very happy with the wind…

And we, we reached our first 1000 kilometers! Hoerah!

Luckily for us, the accomodation along this trip were wonderful so we could have a good rest after a long day on the bikes. We slept in a bungalow 3 meters from the sea (Ho Coc Beach), another one set within sand dunes (Mui Ne) and in a very clean and well maintained hotel in a tourist-less fishing village called La Gi.

We found the South Vietnamese to be very catholic over here. Though very devote (everybody went to the church on Sunday), they seem to be a bit more kitchy than us.

When we weren’t cycling, Ine tried to get some sun, but Gregory really couldn’t handle the heat.

And talking about heat. This region also has a little desert near Mui Ne. Very hot! Especially at the feet

Time to cool them off with a little walk in the Fairy Stream. Look at those canyons!

The final leg of our coast trip would take us from Mui Ne to Phan Ri, our last stop at the beach. This turned out to be the most beautiful part of the whole seaside trip. We started along the coast with beaches and palm trees, then headed in-land into a desert-like area lined with huge orange and white sand dunes (a little bit like on our Belgian coast, but bigger and whiter) and finish the day with the Central Highlands within eyesight. In a few days, we’d be climbing these mountains.

For more pictures, please check the South China Sea, Vietnam album.