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Bicycle Touring

Day 69: flat, flat, hilly

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Distance: 115,11 km Time: 6:34 Total distance: 3457 km

First of all: DON’T PANIC with flat I just mean flat roads,  NOT a flat tire😀

Secondly: Yesterday evening. Of course it didn’t went as I thought,  it got even better😀 Ban,  the girl who picked me up for dinner had to meet some people who wanted to do a trek today. They turned out to be from France and liked playing music. Because we promised to visit the cafe where on of the other two girls were working, we quickly said goodbye to the french people and went to the cafe. After that one closed,  we all went to a guitar bar where we met the french people again. The Vietnamese girls and the french people are really great at playing music and it was a really fun evening.

The evening was also long so getting up in the morning was a little bit hard. At 8 o’clock I then finally left the room and went on search for breakfast. I am really sad that suddenly all the rice places don’t serve rice in the morning… So I got phố again. Some noodles in soup.

So now to the title: in the beginning it the roads were inside a really big valley,  so it was flat nearly always. Eventually it got hilly again😀 As the Ho Chi Minh highway turned twice off main road (main road git to a different road and the Ho Chi Minh highway was a smaller side road), which resulted in less traffic for me😀

On the road then I realised two miscalculations of me:

  1. I was running out of cash,  I thought I would have had one more 500.000 Dong bill,  but there wasn’t. I realised it only the afternoon were I already passed the last town with an ATM. I checked the map: No ATMs until tomorrow at the destination…  I checked my wallet: enough money for a hotel,  dinner,  breakfast but no lunch for tomorrow…  I came up with some solutions. Either go as far as possible get food and the next morning try to get to the ATM as quickly as possible. Another method would have been exchanging or buying stuff with my remaining US Dollar from Cambodia.
  2. The villages I choose to stay in all had no hotels.

And now the solution to both of the problems: In the last village I marked on the map for today I saw a kilometer stone with another city marked in 25 km. I checked my maps,  no city,  no village not even side roads…  I thought the worst that can happen is me cycling the whole night 😂 Or somebody would just host me but I went to that village called Dak Lak. It’s actually a nice little town with everything a guest house and an ATM 😍. The only thing,  I had to cycle so much,  the last 15 km were just me dying up and down the hill,  rolling with 10 to 15 km/h on flat parts… But worth it in the end. Also the landscape was really beautiful,  as there are many hills and when the sun went down,  some were in the shadow and some were still in the sun,  sadly I didn’t took any pictures, I was too exhausted.

Tomorrow I will climb probably my last big climb. Because after celebrating luna new year in Hanoi with my brother and his girlfriend I will return back home. I will leave Thailand, Laos and the rest of Vietnam for another trip or multiple trips. Why probably? Well I never know what will happen on my way to Hanoi😂

Bicycle Touring

Day 67: Kon Tum

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Distance: 87,40 km Time: 4:59 Total distance: 3341 km

It was hard to find breakfast in the morning,  as I always try to get rice. Eventually I decided then to take some noodle soap. At 12 o’clock I was really hungry again… For the rest was it a normal day like the last once,  just that the clouds went away,  so most of the time it was blue sky😀



When I entered Kon Tum a woman on a motorbike started talking to me. I asked her for a good hotel and she then helped me to find one. She herself had to ask around. But now I am in a nice hotel😀

After a shower, I went outside to find some soap,  as I am running out of it. I needed to search a little bit for something like a store and found one with shampoo. When I asked for soap and showed them a picture,  they went to the back to get some,  it kind of seems that it is not a usual product here,  I don’t know,  I have soap again😀 I just walked a little bit around the market to find something to drink. As always people start saying hi to me. Dan and Dam (hopefully I wrote the names correctly), two sisters who asked me about where I come from,  then showed me a place to drink something. They joined me and we talked about what to visit here and they explained everything to me. We took their motorbikes to see the 2 wooden churches here but it was night. I will be going back there tomorrow. Then we went for dinner. and separated,  as I am really tired 😴.

Tomorrow will be no cycling day and I will relax and visit Kon Tum.

Bicycle Touring

Day 66: Road 14

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Distance: 104,59 km Time: 5:48 Total distance: 3254 km

Again just a normal day,  expect the clouds went away and I could take off my long shirt 😀

If you take out the camera here girls get wild and want you to take a picture of them😂

As lunch time approaches I keep looking out for these signs with “COM” written on it. Com means rice. Which I am eating really often here because I don’t really like the soups here. This sign is a really really big sign, sometimes I really have to search for it, but there is always one at least every 5 km😀

I intended to only ride till Nhơn Hòa, but as I felt really great cycling in the afternoon, not like in the morning,  I decided to continue 20 km to Chư Sê where I am now. Nice little town again. The room is a normal room,  not like the hole from yesterday. And there are people on the other side of the street playing karaoke 🎤 (not a karaoke bar,  a private group,  but they are so loud 😂)

Before I will crush the karaoke party (I don’t know if I really want do that 😂) I found a bakery where I bought some desert. The one on the right side (with something red on it) is called Bánh Pía,  it has a salted egg inside and is normally eaten in mid autumn. The other one remains unknown, but its good,  I think something with coconut (I am bad at guessing whats inside).

Tomorrow my destination is Kon Tum,  where I will stay for one whole day,  to visit and not cycle for one day😀 for the past 12 days, I was on the bicycle every day😯

I ran a little bit out of titles so today I made a little reference to a road in America as it is the 66th day WINK 😂 And I am always on highway/road 14☺️

Bicycle Touring

Day 65: The other way around

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Distance: 99,76 km Time: 5:45 Total distance: 3149 km

In the morning it was so cold because of the wind and the clouds blocking the sun that I had T-shirt and long-shirt both on. After 2 hours of cycling,  the sun came out and it was hot immediately 😂 The wind stayed though. It was so strong sometimes that I had to slow down while going down as it was hard to control my bike with the speed and the wind pushing me in the middle of the road…










The last few days were always going up first and then going down. Today it was the other way around. First I was going down, to climb again in the afternoon.

Arrived in Buôn Hồ I searched for a hotel. The first one was open but nobody at the reception for 5 minutes,  eventually somebody came shouted a name,  nobody answered and went away again. So I decided to go too. I found a second one, but as they saw me,  they waved with their hands to say noo. They showed me that down the street would be another one. Which I then took. After taking a shower I realized why there was so much dirt on the floor. The whole bathroom was under water. I got to the reception and they gave me new room,  which is freshly painted,  so it still smells in there…

Also I have the impression that people in this town are a little bit strange,  some of them hide and laugh. At least is that my impression of them.

Tomorrow I will just continue following the highway☺️

Bicycle Touring

Day 63: going up even more

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Distance: 94,59 km Time: 6:12 Total distance: 2979 km

Today nothing really special happened,  expect that I forgot to change the batteries of my GPS so it ran out of juice in the morning. It was no problem as I just followed the highway and my road computer told me how far I went.

Fir the rest it was lots of climbing to somewhere above 800 meters and going down a little bit to the town called Gia Nghĩa. The landscape while going up was amazing☺️

Just notice the smoke next to the truck  😂








When the highway hits a town then the road is transformed into an allay with some green stuff in the middle.


And these are just a few spots. Often there are electricity cables,  houses,  trees or something else in the way to take a picture of it but just by passing by,  the view is great. For example here are cables in the view


For breakfast: rice

For lunch: rice

For dinner: pizza…  wait what? Yeah I found a place where they sold pizzas and some kind of bubble tea😀 Luckily there was a girl who spoke english and so helped the waitress and me to make the order😀

This evening I will check if I should take the train to visit a city a little bit off the highway and get back or just continue on the highway and therefore visit some other places.