In the direction of Ho Chi Minh City
N 11°23'33.4'' E 106°36'50.3''
Date:
22.03.2017
Day: 631
Country:
Vietnam
Province:
Bình Phước
Location:
Street town
Latitude N:
11°23’33.4”
Longitude E:
106°36’50.3”
Daily kilometers:
81 km
Total kilometers:
22,910 km
As the crow flies:
67 km
Average speed:
24.5 km/h
Maximum speed:
52.9 km/h
Travel time:
3:10 hrs.
Soil condition:
Asphalt
Maximum height:
320 m
Total altitude meters:
69.871 m
Altitude meters for the day:
402 m
Sunrise:
05:56 h
Sunset:
6:04 pm
Temperature day max:
33°C
Departure:
8:00 a.m.
Arrival time:
1:00 p.m.
(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).
We are on our bikes at 8:00 am. Nevertheless, it is already uncomfortably warm. To keep our energy levels up, we have a roadside breakfast of phở bò (beef soup). Because it gets hotter every minute, we don’t take our time. As soon as the power broth has landed in our stomachs, we climb into the saddle to take advantage of the slightly cooler hours in the morning. The Cat Tien National Park is now on our left. This means that we have circumnavigated its northern tip and are now heading south again. The once quiet, low-traffic Ho Chi Minh Road is now very busy in places. Not like the 1A but still quite hectic and loud. No wonder, because the center of the 8.5 million capital Ho Chi Minh, or Saigon, is only 100 km away from here. This means that we are already in the Moloch’s sphere of influence, which has a north-south extension of 120 km and a west-east extension of 46 km.
On the rest of the journey I feel shoulder pain again for the first time, which shows me that not everything is in order. I try to ignore the pain and concentrate on the traffic. When we think we’re going to melt off the saddle like melted chocolate due to the increasing heat, we take a break in one of the many hammock cafés. We order fresh Vietnamese coffee and rest for a while. “I could easily fall asleep,” I say to Tanja, who is rocking back and forth in a hammock right next to me. “Ask me about it. If we didn’t have to go any further, I’d stay here,” she replies, yawning.
We reach a small town after 81 km at around 13:00. Although I had already transferred the coordinates of the accommodation from Google Maps to my GPS and the MAPS.ME map program on my smartphone yesterday, we were still wandering around. We keep asking for accommodation at the roadside, but people send us back and forth. “Phew. I won’t be able to do it any more soon!” I say, suffering from the enormous heat. Tanja is no different. Apathetically, we let the pedal cranks continue to spin through the heat-soaked town. “Follow me. I’ll show you where the hotel is,” a Vietnamese man offers us and darts ahead on his moped. In a dusty side street, next to a stinking river, he stops and points to a house. “That’s the place to stay?” I ask uncertainly, as you can’t tell from anything. “Yes,” he says, laughs and disappears. I put my bike on the stand and enter the strange house. In fact, I recognize rooms that have no windows and no air conditioning. A woman comes rushing over and asks if she can help me. “Sure, we need a room. Do you have one free?” “We do.” “With air conditioning?” “Yes, there’s one available,” I hear and am relieved, as it would certainly be unbearable in this heat in a small room without AC. Only when we have stowed everything away in the small, dark room and the AC is quietly rattling away to shovel out the hot and humid air do we realize that we are staying in a 24-hour hotel. A place where couples meet up for a little romp because otherwise they have no chance of making love. Anonymity is very important in this store. The people who book a room here chug through the hotel corridor on their mopeds and quickly push it into the room. This way they are sure to remain unrecognized, and it is also impossible for passers-by to recognize the moped’s license plate. The owner of the establishment gives us a very fair price of 200,000 Dong (8.29 €) per night and is extremely friendly…
If you would like to find out more about our adventures, you can find our books under this link.
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