Post # 52 Quang Ngai

Day 60 1020 days to go. Distance: today 97km total 3453km. It’s 5.00pm Monday 30/1/2012 Quang Ngai. Hi there. One more day to go one more day to go one more day to go. Do you get I’m a bit excited yayayayayayaya. Can’t wait to see my friends in Hoi An nd guess what….. one more day to go J Oh dear it has been a big few days. I’m sooo happy with myself to have gotten this far in the time frame and now between 125-130km to go (not sure haven’t seen Hoi An come up on the highway yet) it’s one good days ride to get there, but only one. Then I’m socializing and out of the saddle for a couple of days. That sounds so good to be away from the highway and in a good space to recoup a bit. I’m so fried from the mental and physical challenges I know my edges are a bit frayed and patience a bit wayward. There have been regular blasts of verbal and horn aggression from the mixtures of folk on the road. It’s horn first regardless of need followed by a myriad of abuse. I have no idea what they’re saying but the message is the same. Its clear I’m a hindrance and a good sounding post for road rage Vietnamese style J. I’m totally saturated by it and my filters clogged. I’ve had to shut down a bit over the last 2 days just to get through the kms without blowing a stack. And even then I’ve had my moment’s opsy. This lad this afternoon wanted to talk the last 10kms into town which was all very nice and welcoming but amongst the chaos on the road I eventually said goodbye thanked him for his conversation and asked him to move along so I could deal with safely arriving in town and finding a place to stay. He was riding his moped alongside me and it was becoming dangerous as he traffic temp turned up getting closer to town. He didn’t get the hint and proceeded to ask me out and stay at his place bla bla bla you get the idea. No meant keep trying and after another five minutes I had to raise the voice to make it a bit clearer to him to go away. Still no response. OK angry now. Lets say yelling words to the effect of ‘go away’ did the trick but raised the cranky richer scale up too high so it was time to find a bed for the night. The saying is ‘don’t ride angry.’ There’s no longevity in riding safely if I go that path so I was relieved to stop. The timing was perfect. I found a roadside hotel for $7.50 just before the 3km turn off to the city so no backtracking in the morning yay. I’m all cleaned up and perfumed now even plucked the eyebrows J to be socially more presentable tomorrow so feeling human again and that’s a good thing. Rube and I headed into town and found this internet café so awesome chance to upload photos and update the blog before Hoi An. There are some beautiful photos from the coastal ride the last few days it’s really good to get them attached to the blogs. The speed is awesome. The place I stayed last night had wifi but the connection was dodge so my partner and I didn’t have the best of skype chats this morning (Sorry darling). We’ll make up for it Wednesday morning in Hoi An yay. It drizzled all day today with a headwind for most of the day bugga. I had lunch earlier to keep the calories up and that worked allot better. Yesterday I left it a bit late and had a no brainer for the afternoon which made it tougher than it needed to be. Ive heard that coconut milk has awesome electrolytes. That was my treat and highlight today. I stopped at the little roadside stall where I spotted this old couple sitting. They were so welcoming and helped me select a coconut. She skillfully stripped and cut the husk with a machete and made a small hole in the top and handed it to me with a straw in it. It looked great and was devoured. I’ve never had fresh coconut milk before and it tastes yum. Once that was devoured the machete was still sitting on the ground so I tried to cut away the hard outer to get to the pulp. It’s allot harder that they make it look. Much to their amusement they rescued my crap effort and went about in moments cutting it in half for me to eat the inside flesh. The man handed it over with an Asian curved metal spoon perfect for scraping out the inside. Again it was delish and a great calorie hit. They offered me to wash and have a sleep in their single hammock. As tempting as that was I thanked them immensely and headed back on the road for the remainder of the kms. The photos are all uploaded now so I’ll leave it there and get to attaching them. Tomorrows an early start to get through the kms and into Hoi An at reasonable o’clock. Talk soon x