It rained our entire short ride down the beach, but at this point we are getting used to it. In addition to walking around the city, we took care of retrieving our passports which were not returned to us by the hotel two nights ago. They sent them via bus. It was a bit of a runaround trying to intercept them and the bus driver tried to shake us down for 5 bucks, but we have them back.

Aside from that we had lunch at an all vegan place with some Vietnamese takes on western food. It was so good we are back there right now to try more of the menu. If you are ever in Hoi An be sure to stop at Karma Waters.

Our hotel has an indoor pool so that is the plan for the rest of the evening.

Today was probably the toughest yet most enjoyable yet. Started off in the rain but it didn’t last. This ride included Hai Van Pass which tops out around 1600ft elevation and made for some great views…

…that is until the we reached the fog and had maybe 50 feet of visibility.

We met up with a tour of 60 cyclist from Thailand on the hill. They were fun and all wanted a pictures with us.

We ended the day on China Beach in Da Nang, not too bad.

We took some video from this ride. We’ll try to post it here soon.

We went inside the inner citadel today. This is all Nguyen Dynasty era Vietnam.

Most of it did not survive the war.

Then we saw this guy.

Hue has been a great break with amazing food.

Today turned out to be a pretty great day, even though we had the first flat tire of our trip. We fixed it quickly and made it to the Google Hotel by 11:00. No affiliation.

The city is centered around a large citadel that was mostly destroyed during the war. We spent some time walking around inside.

Then we made a stop at a massive outdoor market. There are many exotic fruits here that we had never tried.

This is our bounty, including jackfruit, dragonfruit, mangosteen and the thing in the top right that may be a guava. We are not sure.

We found an amazing vegetarian Buddhist restaurant. Possibly our best meal yet and all this for 95,000 dong ($5 US).

To top that all off we are writing this over free beer, courtesy of google. We will be spending an extra day here for sure.

Another cool day with a little less traffic. We had a visitor while stopping for drinks today.

Hard to tell which dogs are strays since they just go about on their own and seem pretty much ignored by people. We’ve seen signs advertising cats and dogs as food which may explain the disconnection.

We have seen tons of these signs around. We wish we knew what they said.

Dong Ha is a town right on the Ben Hai River, the border around which the DMZ was formed. Today there are tours around the area, and many monuments honoring the North Vietnamese soldiers and their victory.

We met a man named Ting in town, who was very excited when we told him we were American. He said his father was a lieutenant for the South Vietnamese Army during the war, and had many American friends. He spoke candidly for a while with us about which side of the conflict he was on. Very interesting.

Today was our first real climb, it was nice to break up the flat roads. The scenery is continuing to improve as we head south. Picked up a nice tail wind which brought with it some cooler weather.

We arrived in Dong Hoi by noon which gave us time to check out the town citadel. Our hotel is also quite an improvement from the last couple nights and still a bargain at about $17.50. From our balcony we can see the remains of a church bombed in 1965 which is preserved as a memorial.

We got another early start today to beat the heat. Left the hotel at 5:30 but by 8 it was already 80 degrees. The scenery is improving. People are friendly and anxious to attempt conversation. A woman tried out Jasmine’s bike at a gas station and there was a pretty rad high five with a kid on a bike.

Lot’s of these guys in the road.

There are plenty of places to stop, but for some reason no one keeps drinks cold. By the end of the ride it hit 93 degrees.

Today was our furthest planned ride and we are glad to have it behind us. Hot and muggy with constant horns. Also we are becoming a bit of a spectacle. Motorbikes pull up along side and stare for a few moments before pulling away. The children all shout “hello,hello” as we ride past them on their way to school.