Vietnam :: Hanoi to Saigon :: 2011 : Part 5

Day 18 - Mui Ne to Bao Loc - There and back again

I was supposed to stay in Mui Ne until a day before my rental term with the bike was up, but I became very bored with the lethargy of the place and felt depressed to think that the fun was over. The restaurants were great but all the so called 'attractions' were sh*t. I missed the chaos, adrenaline and madness of the roads.

I started a hastily planned trip up towards the Cambodian border.

The first leg would take me back up the great mountain road I came South on before I headed North West to Gia Nghia through Bao Loc. I was deliberately heading to areas I knew foreigners rarely visited.

A little before hitting the mountain trail again I met up with two great Australian bikers on very powerful trail bikes, father and son Anthony and Ethan. They were great company with good advice about riding in Vietnam. We stopped for drinks a couple of times, before parting ways as they headed East for Dalat.

All the gear and good ideas vs the opposite.

The ride from the mountains to Bao Loc was quick and easy. On the main road I found a very nice hotel, the Minh Quan. I appreciated being somewhere cooler than the lowlands and, as I had read, the coffee there was amazing.

Day 19 - Bao Loc to Gia Nghia via Dambri - Dam it

I headed out early to find the famous Dambri falls, riding through humble dwellings in coffee fields on quiet roads. Turns out that the popularity of the Dambri falls has spawned a mini amusement park with bumper cars, rollercoasters and discos. Due to it being the weekend and a national holiday the place was ramajam packed, and again I had a lot of attention from Vietnamese folk.

I rode back through Bao Loc then headed North towards Gia Nghia over smooth rolling hills.

After an hour I stopped to take a photo when a chap on a scooter told me in broken English that the road ahead was blocked and that I should go back to skirt around the enormous valley ahead. I found the sign I should have seen for this detour hidden behind a big truck in the previous town.

The detour initially took me through miles of cool shaded pine forest. Suddenly the forest receded and there was a huge power plant surrounded by a development site, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a lot of construction and development around most towns in Vietnam, but I was starting to see entire new towns being built.

The roads here were very much in progress with huge ruts little better than a motocross track. I then took what had to be a wrong turn onto a shabby dirt track through dense forest, it was slippery fun but I had to turn back. After twenty minutes I had found the right road.

This led me through a low mountain jungle, which was quite foggy, cold and wet but there were many fun corners.

Another surprise came when I exited a corner to be faced with a huge dam under construction. After that more low hills gave great views of distant mountains.

I found the outskirts of Ghia Nghia as the sun was setting, a real work in progress town with construction related debris scattered around.

Thanks to the lengthy detour I was ready for food and bed well before I got a damnable flat front tire. Cursing Odin as I entered the centre of town, it started raining too. Drenched in mud, I wobbled into a half decent looking hotel, unpacked my bike and slogged my gear into a room, planning to fix the bike the next day. Two minutes later the owner decided my photocopied passport was not good enough, that he needed a driving license like his. I offered to let him talk to the chap who rented me the bike over the phone to explain my situation but he declined, what a time to meet the only difficult person in Vietnam.

I limped the bike over to a mechanic but he was closing down. I then rolled the bike downhill wearing my big backpack to a real dive hotel, the only other one I could see in the rain. The owner was nice enough, but I spent the night with all sorts of weird bugs crawling about the windowless room.

In the evening I had gone out for some food. Despite having wonderfully polite and generous hosts, the only place open had fairly rough food and lots of moody mangy dogs hanging around. The smallest dog had a mysterious scar, much like Harry Potter's, carved into its forehead... shame my photography hit a new low.

Day 20 - Gia Nghia to Saigon - Like a bat out of hell

I had tempted fate enough and decided to head back to Saigon.

The hotel owner was nice enough to direct me to a mechanic working and living out of some corrugated iron boards and wood struts. We propped my bike up on a big brick and he put my spare front tube in. That took twenty minutes and cost the equivalent of  2 Pounds Sterling. This was their operation-

This would be the furthest days ride. Despite many of the supposed main roads being little more than a barely flattened surface covered in stones, I made good time and got to Saigon before sun down. The buses on those roads were still driving at full speed, firing rocks all over the place. There would be perfect road for miles, then suddenly huge potholes and cracks, usually on corners or crests of hills.

Riding in Saigon was even less fun than Hanoi, but not too slow. I spotted the inviting looking Evergreen Hotel and pulled in. After sorting a room I rode the bike into their garage and parked up. Smiling, but with a heavy heart, I kicked out the stand and then switched the engine off for the last time.