Cycling in Asia

If you have ever been on a cycling trip then you realize that there is not too much to do when you have a very rainy day.  I have lived in Asia a long time and I do not recall seeing as much rain as I have here on our cycling trip in Vietnam.  Today was a scheduled rest day anyhow to prepare us for the big ride to Dalat tomorrow.  There is a new roadway to Dalat from Nha Trang which is supposed to be very scenic and include a 33km incline followed by a 40km descent.   This is a new route from previous trips and all the gang was keen to try it out.  Many of the people on the tour have done it before so it is only a few of us who are new to cycling Vietnam.  Anyhow we spent the afternoon looking at maps and getting prepared for tomorrow’s early departure for the new route to Dalat.  We thought it would be a good idea to get all the details worked out before our semi-English speaking tour leader arrived.  When Mr. Hung did arrive we provided him with a detailed overview (in English and French just to be sure) of what the plans were for the next day and he crushed our ideas with one simple word: mudslide.  The new route was shut completely due to a massive mudslide.  While this was disappointing it was not unbelievable given all of the rain that has fallen.  The good news is that we will be taking the same route that the tour group has taken in previous years which will include a three hour incline with no descent.  This may seem like a lot of hard work without the pleasure of the descent but as I learned the other day, descending is also hard when you ride the brakes all the way down the way I do.  Apparently the ride the day after includes a 40km descent so maybe that will be a form of delayed enjoyment.

What you do on rest days on a cycling tour

After spending a day enjoying ourselves in the hotel, we went out for a nice dinner at Nha Trang Seafood.  The food was excellent and we had some good laughs over a few ice cold beers.  Not too many beers though as we have that three hour climb today and we will need all the energy we can find to get up that monster.  One of the things we laughed about was the concerns that Charlie and Neil had about forgetting their malaria pills in the USA and their fears of contracting the disease.  Now malaria is nothing to joke about but they were the only guys who actually wanted to take these pills and Kim and I, who have lived in this area for a long time, never take that stuff.  So we discussed how funny it was that these guys who were so concerned about getting malaria and suffering its consequences had very little concern about riding the roads of Vietnam in the pouring rain the other day and even worse, riding partially in the dark.  It is amazing that a miniature sized mosquito can illicit fear in man while a crazed, speeding, inattentive Vietnamese man speeding down the road in an oversized, under-maintained, over-packed bus with a super loud horn does not scare these guys.  With night visibility at low or almost no levels….these guys must be a bit crazy!  Thankfully everybody is safe and happy.  

Dinner in Nha Trang

Seafood at this place was excllent. They served up some jumbo tiger prawns done BBQ style.   Charlie had commented that he liked to pay more money in the USA to have the prawns all clean and ready to eat (no heads/tails/etc) so I told him that people in Asia eat the prawn heads.   He did not believe me so Kim told him about the time during her brother's wedding where nobody believed us and we had a prawn head eating competition.  So since Charlie said he would eat one if I did, I chomped the prawn's head and enjoyed watching Charlie eat one shortly thereafter.  I am sure there are some valuable nutrients that will benefit us on the big climb.

Today we are hopping in the bus for the first 110km which will give us a 135 km ride into Dalat.  We have a rest day in Dalat which may be needed after the three hour climb!  it is NOT raining at this moment (5am Friday morning) so we should be good to ride today!