Weekend Trip

After close to 3 years, I no longer work on weekends! And that gives a chance to take weekend trips away on the motorbike + Monday if Bảo can have the day off. Our first destination: Phan Thiết, about 170 kilometres up the coast from Vũng Tàu. Mũi Né,- fishing village cum major tourist destination, is just a bit further from there (went there with David back at the beginning of 2009).

We worked out from looking at the map and advice from colleagues (Bảo's and mine) that we would not have to venture onto national highway 1 at all for the trip - a great bonus to stay away from the traffic. The route took us from Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu province, via Long Hải and Bình Châu into neighbouring Bình Thuận province, travelling parallel to the coastline to La Gi where there is an option to turn inland to highway 1. Instead we took the lesser road sticking with the coastline and travelling past what appear to be volcanic mountains and through the thanh long (dragon fruit) fields to the village of Kê Gà. Here we stopped - literally on the beach - to take a (still distant) look at the lighthouse, before continuing on in the southern approach to Phan Thiết city. This road in is also in the throes of resort development but hopefully will remain much more restrained than Hàm Tiên/Mũi Né.

As regular readers know already, Bảo has contacts everywhere! Phan Thiết is no different where one of his former colleagues from Kinh Đô company (Tây Ninh days) now lives with his young family. He helped us find a reasonably priced hotel in the city, next door to Co-opMart, and we met a couple of times more during the weekend for coffee, etc.

In the afternoon we tackled highway 1 so as to drive back out of the city to one of the biggest mountains in the area, Núi Tà Cũ. Bảo's previous visit was on pilgrimage when he climbed up the mountain at night so as to reach the pagoda by midnight. This time we had the cable car available to us - it leaves Vũng Tàu's in shame incidentally for length and price and it took us up one high slope and then partly down the next one to reach the pagoda complex. From here we could also look back to the coastline along which we had ridden earlier in the day. The photo shows clear weather, but this is rainy season and it set in with a heavy downpour on the ride back to Phan Thiết.

The next day we decided to head north to Mũi Né. Properly speaking all the development is in Hàm Tiên village rather than Mũi Né, but for some reason it's the second name that has stuck. I thought it was getting over-developed last time I was here; now it's just kilometres of resorts and hotels, with the beach getting eroded by the sea and the water itself polluted by the thrill-seekers on sea-doos. Very disappointing and we would have been better to stick to Phan Thiết beach ...

On the way back we stopped to take a look at Po Shanu Cham towers, a simple vestige of three Cham-era towers on a headland. Compared to other sites in the central-south of Vietnam, or at My Sơn, the towers are nothing much but the setting is still peaceful and beautiful.

Monday came it and was time to retrace our steps home.