Today was the day were we would be heading north again, we had a massive 39km to do, 39km, the weather was hot really hot, it was going to be back roads to Danang, following along the beach, yep it was going to be a hard day. I was not feeling that great and Mike had not fully recovered from his bad gut so it was kinda lucky we did not have far.
Zach and Elise had headed out snorkeling for the day and would be meeting us later in Danang, so it was just Mike, Kat and me heading out, we had breakfast first before we headed out, the temperature was increasing, it was 5km to the coast then 30km along China beach. Now for those of you that don’t know anything about the American Vietnam this was the place where the Americans first landed there forces. Saying that when this happened the Americans had already got 20000 troops here in Vietnam, but this was where the war officially started for the Americans. Danang was also the home to a lot of the American troops on leave.
The beach is a beautiful white sandy beach with a very bad under tow is what I had read. Non the less tourist seem to flock to it, by the time I got there I was not really feeling that great, still jaded from my cold that I had. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes with some Kiwi’s from Nelson and then we carried on down the road. We were going to stop along the beach a bit for a swim and then carry on going we were also going to stop at Marble mountain and have a look around.
The road ended up moving away from the beach and then when we did get back in view of the sea it was through construction sites, they are building all these big resorts along the coast, massive things I really wonder how much money they make on these things. So it was looking like we might not get a swim.
We stopped off at marble mountain and mike decided to stay with the bikes so me a Kat headed up the hill. The five 'mountains' are named after the five elements; Kim (metal), Thuy (water), Moc (wood), Hoa (fire) and Tho (earth). All of the mountains have cave entrances and numerous tunnels, and it is possible to climb to the summit of one of the peaks. Several buddhist sanctuaries can also be found within the mountains.
At the top of the hill(mountain) you get great views of the surrounding area, it is a very nice view, the Buddhist sculptures are not too bad either. We walked around for about an hour then headed back to the bikes and the road ahead. First of cause we had to look through a marble shop, they had some pretty nice stuff in there. It was interesting to find out that a lot of the marble comes from China now and is not taken from marble mountain.
We decided to carry on towards Danang before we had lunch, by the time we had got to our lunch stop I was starting to fade fast, we stopped for lunch and then started to look for a place to stay, the day had ticked on. The first 3 hotels down by the beach were full and expensive so we headed towards town. It seems Danang is not really set up for the travelling market. All the hotels were really expensive and really over priced and full.
We ended up finding somewhere, but it took some time and we covered a lot of hotels in finding ours, I was really ready to sit down and stop for the day and was really glad to have somewhere. I was going to share a room with Kat and Mike for the night, there was another room available so hopefully Zach and Elise would get there at some point. Mike and Kat headed out and I had a lie down. I was a bit worried about the next day were we had over a hundred km to do and one really big hill.
After an hour or so I was feeling a bit better, Mike and kat came back, so we just hung out and snacked on what they had brought back. Later Me and Kat headed out to grab some dinner and Mike stayed back it seemed me and Mike were taking turns at feeling crap. We had not heard from Zach and Elise so just had to hope they got the email sent earlier. On returning we noticed a couple of extra bikes down stairs, the Americans had landed.
So the fellowship would be heading north together in the morning. Excellent.
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