CAITA Day 9 Trang-Hue:'An Unexpected Detour'

Day 9. Sunday Oct. 22nd

Today, Our destination was Hue City 600km

We started off at 6am and expecting the drive to be smooth and easy going....
About 30km out of town, we came across a whole lot of queeing lorries parked by the road side, apparently, the coastal road was not passable to heavy vehicles, and they were waiting for authorisation to take a extended 250km detour. After a while, we met up with the first convoy, - our’s being the third, and was told of a major rd diversion because of a collapsed bridge. This diversion added another 250km to our run to Hue, it meant that we are expected to be on the road for at least 10 hours. Our detour took us inland for 30km westerly and then north for about 250 and thereafter 170km easterly to rejoin the coastal HW1. The progress was painfully slow, averaging 60km/h through narrow and busy B roads. As we were not given any road map, we could only see where our heading was thro the GPS’s tracer. Our pda did not have the map software for both Cambodia and Vietnam, however, what we could see was the tracer direction and distances as recorded on the pda. This section of the drive was very interesting as we drove up narrow and winding mountain rd. This was where we longed to breakaway from the group and play. But we have to behave as not to upset anyone. There were several occasions where we had to take evasive actions to avoid colliding with the general road users as we encountered a young cyclist cutting across our path, in spite of our honking regularly. The locals here are not taught about road safety, the typical behavior is to behave like the cows– if the car honk, just keep going the direction w/out looking back and they will avoid you. Yes we nearly collided with a cow when it decided to wander across the rd 50m ahead of us. Scary! We passed a m/cyclist transporting a fridge! (see photo)
The accompanying tourist guide was not confident of the inland route that he got out of the lead car several times to ask for direction. It was quite worrying. We eventually got our little fun when the convoy leader slowed and asked our cars to lead while they stopped to do a “song and dance” – a Chinese Team’s way of saying -to visit a toilet. We finally got on to rejoin the main coastal HW1 at 2pm – yes after 8hrs, and have another 400km to go.
On the HW1, we could make up some time but the traffic was building up towards the evening. The scenic view of the coastal rd was rewarding for our tiring eyes, we drove through a 6km tunnel near Hue, which was quite spectacular.
We eventually reached our hotel at 845pm. A total of 14.75hrs on the road! What a day!! Guess what? We are the first group to arrive. I understand later the last group came in 3 hrs later. I was so tired that I crashed on the bed for 3 hrs before getting up at 1am to write this report. Tomorrow, we start at 7am for another gruel ling run to Ha Long Bay – about 700km.

Leslie’s car mate are doing well

Cheers
William & Harold at HUE
0200hrs