Day 8 - Saturday

Temperature: 20 - 34ºC Humidity: 87%

Destination: Kon Tum to Buon Ma Thout


Firstly let me correct something in Day 7. I made reference to Nahid and Nadia in one section. It should be Nahid and I apologise Nahid. Keeping the blog up to date often means working into the early hours which means Christine is usually fast asleep so she doesn’t always get chance to check for typos before I post it to the site.


Second – I have had delays in posting the blogs to the site due to internet issues and long hard days, making us all tired and still needing our sleep for the next day.


Breakfast at 7.00am and then board the bus for the Dragon Slope at Pleiku, a 1 hour 45 minute ride to the top. We grab our bikes for the start of today’s ride which is to take in a local village market. We rode on and on, not much changing at the back of the pack, me as usual at the back. We catch up with the pack at the next drink spot,on the edge of a rubber plantation. Hilly gives a talk on the plantation and we continue on, this time we are off road for about 5 km, which gives us a breather from the traffic. As I’ve said before, the traffic is chaotic to us, but it seems to work and there is no road rage. On the journey we pass many coffee and rubber plantations. We also pass through a number of small villages where we are greeted by the well know “hello, hello”


We arrive at the market and go for a walk through. Perhaps we should not gone in as all types of produce including; meat, fish and chicken all amongst general produce is sold at the market. It is Saturday and the market is busy. We head off again and Christine decides to take a bus ride instead. A further 7 km on, after riding for 32km in busy Saturday traffic, Karyn and I decide to get on the bus as we are a long way back from the front riders.


The Happy Bush - From the very first day we were advised by Hilly of a new term. If you wanted to use the bathroom when we were out cycling you would use the "Happy Bush". Following our ride there are many many happy bushes from North to South Vietnam. A different happy bush is used for the ladies and the men.


Lunch stop at the 51km mark – Hilly is cooking lunch for us. He has many hidden talents this guide of ours; tourist guide, Vietnam historian, singer, translator and now cook. He cooked a beautiful Vietnamese lunch for us, how many courses – we lost count.


After everyone had their fill of a great lunch we made ready for the bus trip for Halan Slope which is a 2 hour ride. We then had a steep descent by bike a journey of 14km. This was going to be an interesting descent as Christine was nervous going down the slope constantly braking and negotiating the sharp bends. So with Ngoc in the lead and me at the rear this small convoy of 3 went down the slope at a sedate pace, negotiating the traffic as it arrived. 14km later we reach the bottom and continued on for a further 9km. As the darkness arrived we boarded the bus, picking up others along the way, finally arriving at the front runners about 23km from the hotel, by which time it was pitch black. Wisely they had stopped riding sometime earlier and were waiting for the bus to pick them up.

55 km traveled by Fred

Some interesting sights observed by other riders:

- A girl rode up to Kim on her non-geared bike grabbed Kim's arm to help pull her up the hill.

- Brendan after getting off his bike after a long ride - he is covered in perspiration.

- Imaginative ways using a scooter or push bike to deliver or carry goods.

- How to carry long pieces of timber with one hand and steer with the other.

- How to take your family of 5 for a ride on your scooter

- How to negotiate other traffic or pedestrians