Planned trip with Vicky Sanders, Gary Davis and Keith.
Hoi an to Prao – 120 km
Prao to A Luoi – 105 km
A Luoi to Khe Sahn – 106 km
Khe Sahn to Dong Ha 80km
Dong Ha to Hue 70km
Hue to Hoi An – 110 km home again
We met up at 7 am at Gary and Vicky’s, muck around for a bit with cash, fuel, okky straps, go down the road, luggage falling off, another okky strap lesson and off we go (again).
Decided to take the alternate route to Prao as suggested by
http://yetigonecrazy.weebly.com/lets-drive-to-prao.html
Only drama of the day was a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere. Gary dropped Wendy and I off in the shade at the bottom of a waterfall tourist attraction and he and Keith went down the hill to get it fixed. To say it was as hot as Hades in the shade was an understatement. Vicky and I stripped off to our padded bike shorts and not much else to try and keep cool. Such a good look! Did I get a photo? Will I share it? The road we were on was adjacent to a river full of large rocks. There must have been a massive flood at one stage to throw down the boulders from on top of the hill to fill the river. Stunning scenery! I don’t know about the boys but we had a massive laugh about life while waiting for their return. There was a waterfall and rock pool up the top of the hill (Khu Du Lich Sinh Thai Ngam Doi), but we stayed down waiting for Gary to come back. I went a further 300m up the road to some road cafes and bought more water and a cig lighter for Vicky. We waited about an hour and 20,000 vnd to fix the flat and off we go again.
We turned off the main road after visiting a community house onto a quiet narrow ( one car lane wide) cement road with quite a few rock slides, caused by massive logging on roadside hills and who would have guessed it, a bit of rain, and half the hill falls down. Seriously guys! The hills will soon reclaim this road again. It was very pictures and as it was so hot we stopped at a small river and decided to have a quick dip in less than a foot of water. It was very refreshing.
The weather for the day said a (very high percentage chance ) of thunder storm at the end of the day. And guess what, we had a bit of a mad dash at the end of the days ride to try to get to Prao before it started. We would have made it with heaps of time to spare if we did not have the tyre drama. Note: This is a recurring theme for the five nights away. We had stopped just before Prao for a coffee but the weather looked really bad so we decided to leave Vicky there as she had just ordered a coffee and we would continue onto the Hotel and come back for her and a coffee.
We arrived at the booked hotel to find that the owner had on sold our bookings to an easy rider group. Lucky for her there was still rooms available in the hotel next door. She is going to get a sledging on trip advisor from me. I know why she did it. She wanted to keep in good with the easy rider groups who will continue to use her, verses a three room booking of people she did not know. And she could not even use the excuse of not understanding the booking because we got Lila Home stay to talk Vietnamese and do all of our bookings for us.
We quickly take our bags to our rooms and are just sitting having a quiet beer when the biggest thunder, lightening storm I have ever witnessed happens. The skies just opened up and let loose. Gary waited until it eased a bit before going off to collect Vicky. Well, it just got worse and the biggest lightening strike occurred while Vicky and Gary were coming back. Vicky says it was so close she thought she was hit. All good, they arrive safely at Hotel, drenched and shaking, but ok.
Luckily, we did not have to go out in the weather to forage for dinner because they found some food for us. Yay. Dinner, beer, shower and bed. Everyone is tired.
