Vung Tau was the first stop that I made on my Vietnam road trip. It's a cool city with a lot of coast and beaches. There seemed to be a lot of things to see and do here. But I had limited time and didn't do much besides have dinner and sleep.
The drive from Saigon was short, but a little nerve-wracking. Getting out of the city was no easy task for me. I accidently went onto a freeway that was for cars and trucks only. People were waving and pointing for me to get off the road.
Once I got out of the city, riding was more enjoyable. I still hadn't figured out a good way to transport my backpack and I didn't have much room on my seat. On my previous road trips in Loas, I had left my big backpack behind and didn't have to share the seat with it. Now it was taking up about 80% of my seat and riding wasn't very comfortable.
Outside of the city, driving was better but there was still a lot of traffic for the first hour or two. Eventually I made it to areas without a too many cars and trucks.
Next to the road, I saw a statue factory. Actually I'm not exactly sure what it was. Whatever it was, I had to stop and get some photos.
I really liked this monkey tree. It's hard to argue with a statue of a monkey giving a bald eagle a high-five.
Further down the road I saw a field with a ton on water buffaloes. I'd seen quite a few of them in South East Asia, but usually only a few of them at a time. This field seemed full of them. It was the most buffaloes I'd ever seen in one place.
The day's ride was a short one. I didn't want to plan a long ride for my first day. I wanted to make sure I could get comfortable and make sure my bike wouldn't break down after a couple of hours.
I arrived in Vung Tau in the early afternoon and found a room. I don't recall exactly how I was finding rooms. I know I used the booking.com app quite a lot, but usually I wouldn't use it to actually book anything. I would use the map to find where the hotels were located then arrange a price in person.
After unloading my bike, I went out for a ride to explore the area and get some dinner.
I found a little look-out area and spotted this island. I wonder if it's a private house or if you can rent rooms there.
There were also a lot of big ships at sea.
After finding some dinner, I turned in for the night.
My first day of riding started out a little bit rough, but I was slowly getting used to driving in Vietnam. I would spend the next few days trying to find a more comfortable way to carry my backpack.
That's about it for this day's post. I didn't take many photos on this day and that's just how some days went. Whenever there was a lot of traffic, I didn't want to stop for photos. Other days I just didn't feel like taking photos or I felt like I already had photos of mountains or rivers or whatever. We'll see how it goes as I make my way through this trip. My previous series about this trip focused a lot on the videos that I took, but I think they got 1 or 2 views each so I'm going to skip the videos this time around.
I hope you'll join me tomorrow as I continue my road trip to the northern edge of Vietnam!
