10/3/2025 Da Lat to Nnoh Truong Ro Mai + Buon Ma Thout


ATD 0840
ATA 1600
Ride time 7.5 hours

Nice ride up the mountains. Supposed to stay overnight at Nonh Truong Ro Mai but when I had my lunch there it was a dusty hot town so I decided to move on to the coffee city of Buon Ma Thout. Booked a room using booking.com while having my lunch.

After arriving at my hotel at Buon Ma Thout, I was told the room was not available. There is a coffee festival which started today. I kicked a fuss with the hotel that they could not simply accept my booking without ensuring that they had the room. They only apologized but would not give me a room.

I left the hotel and spent the next 3 hours searching for a room. There were 2 hotels who had room but one wanted double the rate and another wanted close to triple the rate for the room. I finally found a room but it was below my expectation.
I had to use a towel over the pillow as the pillow covers had hair and yellowish stains on them. The mattress was also thin AF but I needed a room to sleep as it was already about 1900hrs by then. Wifi was also intermittent.
It did have hot water, bike was safely parked inside the hotel.

I would check out next morning and leave BMT since there were no rooms in all the hotels due to the coffee festival and the traffic was also crazy with many roads in the main city closed.


I arrived BMT and left without seeing anything!

pics

11/3/2025

Buon Ma Thout to Ninh Hoa

ATD 0815
ATA 1215
Ride time 4 hours

Got out of BMT and on the boring QL26 road except for the last hour which had some twisties.
The hotel I booked here is a 180 degree over the accommodation at BMT.


Went for a 4km walk/run for some cardio exercise. My belly is getting bigger.

pics





Tastes good but this would be most likely the root cause of my problem later on

12/3/2025

0200 hrs

Woke up and rushed to the toilet! Fark!
Having the diarrhea shits ........................

I know it's not a matter of if but when I will get diarrhea from all my travelling. This my 10th bike tour with each tour at least 3 to 4 weeks in duration. I had a slight discomfort in Saigon when I ate at the Indian restaurant for dinner but the next day was ok. In my other 9 tours I had not experienced any diarrhea and ate whatever the locals ate.

This one wasn't so easy to shrug off. I had originally planned to stay a night only at Ninh Hoa but decided to stay another night to recover as I was feeling weak and might need to go to the toilet at any bloody time.

Most likely came from the unhygienic food I had for lunch.

By my estimate I slept almost 20 hours. Had the hotel get me some fried rice for lunch but I couldn't finish it and skipped dinner. I carry some diarrhea medication when I travelled and it helped.

13/3/2025

Ninh Hoa to Tuy Hoa

ATD 0710
ATA 1010
Ride time 3 hours

I still wasn't feeling 100% but I had already booked the hotel and would stay at Tuy Hoa for 2 nights to get more rest.
Was another boring ride and the hotel allowed me to check in early. Quiet and comfortable hotel.
I was hungry as I had only eaten a little fried rice the previous day and I wanted some English breakfast! Could not find any Western restaurant that served breakfast so I opted for a pizza and the taste was rubbish. LOL So much for good reviews on Google maps.

Went back to the hotel to sleep some more as still wasn't feeling great.

In the evening I wanted to go to a doctor but the hotel receptionist said there were no English speaking doctors and she recommended a pharmacy. The pharmacy staff could not speak English either but they were very helpful and used Google translate to patiently communicate with me. They prescribed Imodium.

pics




Rubbish pizza.



I liked pho but couldn't finish it as the appetite just wasn't there