19th May - Saigon to Mui Ne

Got up early and checked out. Asked for the best place to find at Atlas and headed to Farasa books on foot. I was hoping to also find some kind of bracket to attach my phone to the handlebars for sat nav or at least a tank bag with a map pocket but couldn't find anything. Got a good map though and returned to the hotel to load up the bike.

At this point I was really quite nervous but decided to just get on with it so I entered Mui Ne in to Sygic on my phone and battled my way through Saigon traffic. Before long I noticed that something was rubbing on the back tyre as I went over bumps so I nipped back to the place I bought it from where we discovered it was the home made rear rack. I guess it had cleared before a new tyre was fitted.

If in doubt, smack it with a hammer

Danh wasn't there but the mechanic, who could only speak a tiny bit of english, gestured to me to follow him so we both jumped on bikes and headed through the Saigon traffic to a small engineering shop where I bounced up and down on the bike to show the problem. After a few moments of head scratching the guy went away and came back with an iron bar and a large hammer and started smacking the rear cross member of the rack to bend it out of the way. This worked a little but it still fouled on the tyre so he grabbed an angle grinder and cut the piece off, showering the diners at a nearby cafe in sparks,  before propping it up on the iron bar and wailing on it with the hammer a bit more. Once happy he'd bent it enough he offered it up and welded it back into position and it cleared the tyre fine. After saying farewell I was finally on my way.

I followed the directions to a river ferry, off the other side and onto some absolutely massive new empty highways which seemed to be leading into a huge industrial park. There was absolutely no one else around and it seemed odd.

 

After a while I ended up going through some small villages where they obviously didn't see so many tourists as I caused quite a stir. The sat nav then instructed me to turn onto a dirt track for a few miles and into the middle of nowhere. This really didn't feel right compared to the route I'd looked at on the atlas but I had no idea where I was and thought that the sat nav quite often takes an odd route but gets there eventually so I ploughed on. After getting further and further off the beaten track I came to a dead end where the sat nav showed a cross roads that it wanted me to continue over. It was at least point I finally realised the sat nav was talking bollocks. I don't know what was going on with it but when I zoomed out it was quite clearly not locked onto to where I was and as I watched it I noticed it was flicking between 3 different roads. None of which looked like the one I was on.

I decided the only course of action was to backtrack to the nearest major road and try to head east which was roughly the direction I needed to be in and hope that I could at least get the sat nav to tell me which town I was near. It was at this point the battery died in my phone. Awesome. I carried on with my plan until I hit a town where I stopped for a drink and asked in the cafe if they knew where I was on the map. They didn't so I asked at a few other places and they didn't either. Eventually I found a steamed dumpling seller who did and I could finally start to head in the right direction.

Once I eventually got onto Highway 1 I could start to make some decent progress. It's quite a busy road, only a single carriageway with what we call the hard shoulder used for motorbikes. The miles were flying by on the nice paved road and it was good to be finally making some progress.

Something to note about the Honda Win is that it doesn't have a fuel guage or even a fuel light so the only way to know how much fuel you have is to remove the cap and look inside or just run out by the side of a busy highway. I chose the latter, but fortunately you are never far away from a petrol station or at least a small shop selling petrol in 1l plastic drinks bottles and I managed to coast most of the way to a large petrol station. I gestured that I'd like the tank to be filled up, which was a mistake as it appears the tank leaks into your crotch when completely full which isn't the nicest feeling in the world. Regardless I carried on thinking that I'd get this fixed at some point in the future.

I eventualy hit Phan Thiet which is where I had to turn off Highway 1 onto some local roads. This seemed like quite a nice little town and had lovely fishing boats on a river so I briefly stopped to take some photos, but having all my stuff strapped to the back of the bike, I didn't wander far and soon started on the short coastal road to Mui Ne.

Once in Mui Ne which is basically just one long road next to the beach (which is a pretty stunning beach) I was a spoilt for choice with accomodation. I pulled into Mui Ne Backpackers which looked nice but wanted $6 for a dorm bed so left and carried on up the road. Not really knowing which to choose and with the bike now deciding it didn't want to idle, causing lots of fun in traffic I stopped at a random place and negotiated a nice room for $7 with AC/TV/Hot shower.

After a quick bite to eat I wandered along the road that is Mui Ne but didn't find it very interesting. It was pretty dead to be honest, despite the fact that there were clearly a lot of tourists here. Maybe they were all waiting to watch the football game that was advertised at every bar? I soon got bored and wandered back towards my hotel. Along the way I was acosted by various moto drivers offering me the same services in Saigon which I politely declined.

By this point I was knackered and had pretty much decided that Mui Ne was not really going to be my kind of place so I went back to my room and ended up watching crappy movies on TV before falling asleep. Not very exciting.