Day 19: Buon Ma Thuot – Gia Nghia

Distance: 77.1 miles

Time: 6:44

Average Speed: 11.4 mph

Happy New Year from Vietnam!

Well the day has arrived. Tet, the Lunar New Year, Vietnamese New Year, whatever you’d like to call it. I do vaguely remember reading something about the ‘Tet Festival’ before I came here, but I didn’t really see how a festival would have any significance to me. It was the Yorkshire cyclist I spoke to in Phong Nha that suggested it was something to worry about, and he’d already booked his accommodation to sit it out for a few days. Obviously, that’s not my style, so I went down a different route: get to big city the night before, stay in fancy hotel, eat lots of food; cycle long way to next big town, and hope that some entrepreneuring local decided a national holiday wasn’t a good enough excuse to stop making money. It was my plan and I was sticking to it.

My hope that – much like Christmas back home – the roads would be deserted, seemed like a furlorn hope whilst I watched from my hotel room last night, as the mopeds departed, en masse, from the Buon Ma Thuot fireworks.

Setting off, the roads were busy, and there was an energy in the air. People wished me Happy New Year as I pedalled along, there were no trucks, just family-full after family-full of mopeds, with a new record high of 5 people.

The first 10 miles were a breeze as a gradual descent was only improved by a pleasant tailwind. By the time I’d been cycling for an hour I’d racked up almost 15 miles. But the tailwind didn’t last, and either did the descent.

Once again, just as I was starting to believe it was all downhill to Saigon, the road started to climb, the hills were rolling, and every time the road started downwards, I could already see it was climbing higher again ahead. From a low of 300 metres, the road climbed to 750 metres by lunchtime, when I reached the attractive lakeside town of Dak Mill. I stopped for some kebab skewers from a food stall by the lake, it was a relief to get some shade from the midday sun.

After lunch, the road kept climbing, little by little. 800 metres, 850, as it inched towards 900 metres I was certain this was the high point of the route, but after a short downhill, the road was climbing again, back to 900m, then down to 880m, then back up again, finally topping out at 950 metres, luckily the views were almost worth the effort.

Even as the road started to fall, there were regular re-ascents as the road weaved its way along the landscape. These Highlands had been true to their name, the road seemed to pick out the highest line available at all times, not necessarily optimal for cycling.

Passing through the empty streets of one hilltop town, a girl on a moped lost control on gravel on the other side of the road, to make matters worse she was carrying a small child. She seemed to be ok, luckily it wasn’t a big fall.

So, much as the roads seem safer than they probably should, the incident count on my journey so far is: bicycle with buckled wheel in Hanoi, two moped riders who crashed on an otherwise empty road in Phong Nha, moped rider who’d gone into the ditch near Dong Hoi, two mopeds that had crashed and had chalk marks around them – like it was a crime scene, and now this one.

After 77 miles and over 5000 feet of climbing, the road finally dropped as I entered Gia Nghia. Arriving at my hotel, everything around looked shut, but I took a wander and found a woman washing dishes in front of her restaurant. She made me a very tasty bowl of noodles with Tofu, but I was wondering what I should have ordered when the lady and her family sat down to a large pile of savoury pancakes.

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