Destinations

Ride day 10: Xa Te to Sam Son

937

June 5, 2016

27 May 2016

We’re up early and ready to ride in to town to get Traceys bike sorted. This means a slight change in direction, and a small detour north in to Thanh Hoá. A quick blast up the road and we’re there. Turns out Thanh Hoá is really quite a big town and very busy. We get to what we think is the centre but are struggling to find anywhere to eat, so branch off the main road and stop at a small cafe. A couple of iced teas later and we’re feeling refreshed. I take a walk around the block to try and find food and a mechanic. Mechanic located, food is not such an easy task, so we opt for a delicious breakfast of ice cream at the same place as the tea.
After our deliciously nutritious breakfast we head to the mechanics. It turns out what I’ve spotted isn’t so much a mechanic, as a motorbike parts wholesaler. An amazing place doing a roaring trade with every imaginable type of part piled as high as the roof. We eventually manage to communicate the problem to one of the staff who speaks a bit of broken English, 10 minutes later a man reappears with a new brake lever exactly the same as the broken one, for the price of 30,000VND. We leave with our new purchase and head in to the mechanic a few doors up to have the lever fitted, and also a quick oil change and general service of both bikes. This ended up consisting of 2 wheels being trued up, one replacement spoke, 2 oil changes, 2 chains tensioned and realigned, and an all over check of bolt tensions, oiling all points and adjusting brakes on both bikes. A bargain at 200,000 VND per bike.

Castrol garages – very thorough, speedy and a bargain!

Given where we had detoured too, we took the opportunity to visit the famous Ham Rong bridge, and take a ride over it. We also tried to search out the ancient Dong Son tombs, but to no avail. At the place they were signed there was only one young man there who spoke broken English, but had never heard of the tombs.

Ham Rong bridge

Time wise it was getting in to the mid afternoon, so looking at our options of stop off point for the night we decide to head to the coast and stop at Sam Son. The 20km ride out to Sam Son from Thanh Hoá is not hugely inspiring, but the beach itself once you arrive is pleasant if a bit busy. It seems it’s a hotspot with holidaying Vietnamese. We grab a cold drink at one of the beach front cafes and decide to do a quick tour around of the back street hotels to find one for the night. In the end we have to try five or six before finding one with a room. Rooms in Sam Son are relatively expensive by Vietnamese standards, and it’s a very noisy busy town with karaoke and neon everywhere you look.

After showering up and heading out to find food we eventually chose a small but busy looking restaurant a block or so from hotel. The food like the hotel was relatively overpriced and below par.

We wandered back towards the hotel and up to our room to get bike keys, returning downstairs to move the bikes inside for the night. No sooner had we parked the bikes than the young man behind the hotel reception counter called us over and demanded 500,000 VND. A relatively heated exchange continued back and forth using a phone for translation, before eventually him backing down and letting us to our room.

We’d heard about some tourist spots trying to fleece westerners before, essentially they try to charge you twice for the room – at night and then again when you check out in the morning, claiming you didn’t pay the night before!

Not a good impression of Sam Son.