Tag Archives: rainy

Day 77: Đồng Hới

Distance: 67,00 km Time: 3:43 Total distance: 3930 km

As yesterday morning, I was not motivated to get up, so I got up again late. Outside it was still raining. Not much but still enough to have to wear a rain coat. After all,  my cloth don’t dry during the night as it is not that warm anymore,  so I just wear not completely dry cloth. The temperatures are still okay to do it and as soon as I start moving,  it gets warmer inside the raincoat.

I was out of energy. I did an early break and drank a coffee. 

Sadly after the break I was still without energy. So I had an early lunch at 11. After that one it was a little bit better. Also the rain had stopped and I could take of the raincoat. But the wind stayed. I even took out my camera to take some pictures😀 (the picture at the break was taken with my smart phone)

Because I was cycling so slow I arrived not that early in Đồng Hới at around 14 o’clock. After some searching I found a hotel to stay in and I put out all my wet stuff to dry.

As I want to visit Phong Nha and Paradise cave tomorrow, I tried to join a guided tour for that. I walked through Đồng Hới  to find some agencies offering that. I just found one place on the internet,  so I just went there. Now I have a tour which visits the two caves and picks me up in the morning 😊

On the road now appear always the signs with Hà Nội written on it and the distance. I find it nice because it is like a countdown to my final destination 😀

Day 76: On an unmapped road

Distance: 104,26 km Time: 5:25 Total distance: 3863 km

I didn’t want to get out of my bed this morning as I knew it would rain. Actually it wasn’t raining. It was just drizzle. So I was able to ride without a jacket and just my long shirt. But the closer I got to lunch the more it started to rain.

At lunch I met a British guy travelling with a motorbike. We had lunch together. The picture of him is actually the only picture I took today…

After lunch,  the rain was joined by wind and I got cold so that I put on my rain jacket. The wind slowed me then down. I just followed main road until I checked my GPS, I was in the middle of nowhere… I checked Open Street Maps and Google Maps, on both providers there was no road but it was the main road and all the traffic went over it. After 15 km it joined again the main road marked on my GPS. These 15 km were long as I didn’t knew if it would go into the right direction,  windy,  rainy,  lots of traffic on a small road and nothing but rice fields as far as I could see. The view wasn’t really clear because of the weather.

I arrived in a hotel and had a long half-warm shower. The heater didn’t gave out more hot water…

Tomorrow I will continue to Đồng Hới. There I will decide. Either continue and skip the national park or stay and visit the national park the day after tomorrow. It depends on the weather. Currently the weather seems to be fine on the forecast,  but I have to check that tomorrow☺️

Day 75: The city of slippy pavement

no cycling

So a day at Hue. In the morning it wasn’t raining. I walked around and went to a place where locals ate breakfast. I pointed at some food of people at another table, something with meat and these french baguette they have here. The guy went away,  a second guy came and asked “omelet or scrambled eggs”  and I said omelet. I thought it would be combined with the meat. No I just got a baguette with omelet.

I continued walking through the city and got a second baguette at a street vendor. This time there was omelet,  meat,  vegetables,  some more unidentified stuff and sauces. Really great. Continue walking around to get some coffee.


All the time people say “hi”  to me to either offer me a motorbike ride or to get me to eat at their restaurant…

Around 10 o’clock I decided to visit the old citadel of the last dynasty of Vietnam (beginning from something with 18xx till 1945). It is a nice place,  sadly a lot is destroyed due to two wars (I think it were two wars). A nice cheap animation movie explained me a little bit about it,  so I didn’t need a guide to get at least some information.















At 1 o’clock in the afternoon it then started to rain. As I left my raincoat at the hotel,  I had to get back there.

Arrived there it started to heavily rain and I didn’t want to go outside anymore, because my further plan was to rent a motorbike and visit some places 10 km away from the city center and I didn’t want to drive in the rain. So I spend the afternoon in my bed  sleeping,  reading stuff on the Internet and watching stuff on YouTube😂

In the evening (yes,  it was and is still raining) I went out  for some dinner and to walk a little bit more through the city through a rainy night.

Tomorrow I will continue cycling in the rain (as war as the weather forecast is correct). I intended to do an extraordinary distance of 164 km in one day as it is flat and I would reach another city where I would take another day of to visit a national park, but because of the weather, I split it up into two days of unknown distance😂

I saw this toilet today and I thought they had misplaced the sign…  I don’t know

ohh about the title,  I really had problems with the pavement here because it was wet. I nearly fell 3 times and started then to walk more carefully. It is possible that just I have these problems because of my medal plates underneath my shoes to fix my shoes to my pedals while cycling.


With this I also want to present my shoes:

1. My cycling shoes are the best. They have SPD, which is a system fix the shoes with the pedals. Great grip for hiking. I used them to hike up to Annapurna Base Camp,  therefore I took of the metal plates of the SPD system. And now finally the last feature cam in handy too. They are GoreTex,  so waterproof. Until now I never had cold or wet feed in these😀 The only thing I hate about them is getting them on and off.  As they have normal shoelaces to close it but also some velcro fastener,  so that the Loops of the node do not get into the chain or somewhere else. It’s a perfect solution for the problem but annoying when putting them on or taking them off.

2. My flip-flops,  what is there big to say, when the weather is okay (not like today) I wear them,  so that my feet can breath, but because I always wear my shoes with socks while cycling,  my feet are white and my legs are brown,  it looks a little bit funny. But I can’t walk for a whole day in flip-flops as my feet hurt then so much…

Day 74: R.I.P. Ipod

Distance: 108,58 km Time: 5:32 Total distance: 3759 km

The last few cycling days I had some problems with my music. I thought that my headphones were broken because the music was not working all the time, so I changed the headphones (yes I brought 2 pairs,  in case one breaks). I thought it solved the problem, as it was better but then it happened with these too,  so I checked both headphones with my phone and they were alright. So my Ipod has problems with the jack-connector. For those who don’t know my relation to my music: it’s really bad when I don’t have my music. I always take my headphones everywhere and listen everywhere,  even when it is just a one minute walk, I take my music with me,  I even listen to music while I shower (I have a speaker with me). My love to music is also the reason why I brought two headphones. This morning then I was unable to ride some meters without the music going out… So I was without music. But I still have my smart phone. I downloaded the Google Music App, they offered me two month of free music. So I try it out and am downloading lots of music to have it offline while riding. Hopefully my battery will survive with my power bank.

So that happened all before I even git to breakfast. At breakfast I switched then my music to Google Music.

As I wrote some days ago that the climb back then would have been my last climb PROBABLY,  it is proven to be wrong. Right after Đà Nẵng is a 7 km tunnel,  which one I didn’t want to pass with the bicycle. The alternative was a pass which is at over 400 meters of altitude (Đà Nẵng is at sea level). So I had again a nice climb and afterwards a nice descent. On top there was even a UNESCO world heritage site,  where all the tourist buses stopped. As it was the top,  I stopped there too and had a coffee😀

Somewhere there in the mountains there is the pass

view down on Đà Nẵng

my coffee

Because the wind was blowing strong on the other side and I was wet from the climbing,  I decided to pack myself good in

The view on the other side

And then there was mainly just straight road till Hue mixed with some Drizzle.

The Ipod was not the only thing which nad problems today. My rear gear shifter was making problems. My gears were jumping around sometimes,  which makes it really hard to ride… After multiple adjustments it went better again. In Hue then I fixed it adjusted it correctly (hopefully).

I found a cyclist hotel. The owners are cyclists themself and the name of the hotel is “Hotel Cyclist” 😂

Tomorrow I will spend one day to visit some of the stuff here at Hue

Some more equipment of mine: My notebook. It was a gift from SAP XM where I wrote my bachelor thesis. I mostly just write down as log: my distance,  time,  total distance and total time of my road computer. Also some phone numbers of people are written down here who I met on the road and they wanted to write down their number. Or I use it to compare prices of hostels/hotels or flight tickets. Something I did in the beginning was writing down some kind of “golden rules” for my travel, but i don’t add any more after rule 6. Some of them I ignore completely now some I respect,  but I never think of them.

A page out of my logs. Sadly some water git into it today so on top there is a little place where water is…