Ba Ngoi to Ca Na

The hotel in Ba Ngoi where Chris and I are staying the night is right on Highway 1, so the traffic never really dies down at night. The night is punctuated by sounds of trucks and buses barreling through the town. One advantage of doing a cycling trip is, even if a typhoon hits, I can still sleep throught the night like a log.

In the morning, the combination of sunlight streaming through the window, animal noise, and the increasingly louder traffic noise works better than an alarm clock. After the morning rituals, we are off again.

Five kilometers south of town, we come upon a swanky-looking restaurant and decide to stop for breakfast. Although totally outside of town and next to Highway 1, it is quite a nice place. With real furniture and what looks like a concerted effort in decoration, the restaurant wouldn't look out of place in any big Western city. Prices on the menu are steep by Vietnamese standards but are still a bargain by Western standards. Chris and I order a couple of cheap breakfast items. Soon we are on our way again.

From the moment we get on our bikes, a generous tailwind starts to push us onward. During some stretches of the road, I wish I have a higher gear. This has got to be the most effortless day in the whole trip. The wind propels us at speeds up to 44 kmph over pancake flat roads.

Gradually, the landscape changes from lush green fields to arid, desert-like terrain. The population starts to thin out. Cacti start to appear at the side of the road, the air gets noticeably drier, the hills and mountains start to lose their green covering and become rocky. With the hot sun beating down from the cloudless sky, it start to feel like we are riding in the American Southwest rather than Vietnam. I never knew Vietnam has an area like this.

Assisted by the tailwind, we fly through this strangely un-Vietnamese landscape. Before long, we start to see little shacks appearing at the side of the road. A pungent smell hangs in the air despite the wind - or maybe the smell has already saturated the shacks and is now being blown about by the wind. It is the unmistakable smell of fish sauce. Every shack has bottles upon bottles of the golden nector of the sea for sale.

And with this introduction, we reach Ca Na. It's not much of a town, more of a collection of shacks with a few hotels in between. We become aware of how undeveloped the town is when every place in town that can afford it turns on its own generator as night falls.

Ca Na has a very nice beach - and it's deserted. We check into a hotel right on the beach, jump into the ocean for a swim, enjoy a quiet sunset, and have dinner at the excellent restaurant next to the hotel.

At night, I sit on the beach, enjoying the gentle breeze, the soothing rhythmic sound of the waves crashing onto the beach, and the blinking lights on fishing boats in the distance - what a way to end a day.

Stats:

Distance: 78.5 km

Time: 2h 44m

Average speed: 28.6 kmph

Max speed: 44.0 kmph

Odometer: 1301.1 km