South China Sea

Whew, a lot to update here. In the past few days (no wireless for the past couple days) we left the Mekong and have now firmly established ourselves on the coastal route heading north to Hanoi. Getting out of the Mekong was an epic day of bus rides linked to other bus rides (no easy feat when your "baggage" is two large bicycles). The problem is that to get to the coast, one must go through Ho Chi Minh City -- a sprawling urban mass of 7 million people, give or take a few million. Rather than spend a day or two cycling through industrial city grid, we took a string of buses that eventually landed us in the nearest coastal town of Vang Tau. Given its weekender distance to the big smoke of Ho Chi Minh, it was pretty choked with city dwellers hitting the beach for the weekend. Anyway, we got out of there pretty quick and headed 65 kms up the coast to a more isolated place called Ho Coc. Well, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It was exactly what the doctor ordered. 12 bucks for a bungalow on the beach, and 70-cent beers. That was enough to intice us to stay a couple of nights and take a break. So that's what we've been doing in the last few days. Just chillin' on the beach. Aside from my 24-hour bout of explosive diarrhoea, it was an awesome break (Amy's bowels are fine, so it must be my insatiable attraction to street food and mystery meat).

Today we packed up and continued north about 80 kms to Ke Ga, where we found this amazing resort that isn't quite open yet, but they were happy to give us a room at a discount. "We give you good rate". 25 bucks for poolside/oceanside deluxe accom. Living like rockstars for a day. We'll take it.

So tomorrow we are northbound again, with our sites set on the resort town of Mui Ne. It's a big surfing area with lots going on like bars and restaurants, so it should be fun. We're also pretty excited because we've exhausted our supply of books and are looking for fresh reading material. We're hoping for a big book score in Mui Ne.