The plan for my remaining time in Vietnam is to ride the ~2000km from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. Who needs bus travel?!
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April 13. Ho Chi Minh to Vung Tau. 109km.
Leaving the crazy city of Saigon was ultimately my most intimidating experience of my whole trip to date. Simply walking through the city is a mission. Motorbikes are everywhere, cars are everywhere, people are everywhere.
I am really grateful to Chris back home for letting me ride his bike even for a short time to get used to changing gears and riding a motorbike, because the learning curve still took a little bit of work. Prior to buying this bike I have spent about fifteen minutes on a geared motorbike and three days riding scooters in Koh Tao, Sihanoukville and Kampot.
I managed to convince one of the girls at the hostel to buy Haley's bike and join me on the journey - I wasn't keen to do it alone! It got even better when we were gearing up to leave I noticed two guys out the front and started chatting. They had the exact same plan for the day to head to Vung Tau, an "easy", closer ride than Mui Ne where most people make their first stop.
So the four of us - Aaron and Ellie from England and Xavi from Spain - set off for Vung Tau.
Making it out of the city was not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I managed to keep the bike from stalling for the most part (only a few miss-shifts), and went through with the traffic without too many dramas.
We stopped for a bite to eat after a couple hours riding, at which point it started raining. After buying a poncho to ride with we set off on our way, arriving in Vung Tau around 4pm, five hours after leaving.
I checked into a hotel and caught up with the others for drinks later in the night, on the beach.
The beach was really nothing special compared to what I have been spoilt by with Thailand and Cambodia. It actually reminded me a lot of the beaches back home; brown sand, wind and waves.
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