Solo Ride – Vietnam

I got up early this morning and checked the latest on Storm Fengshen – not quite the update I was hoping for. The forecast showed the tropical storm still on track to hit Da Nang early Thursday, bringing strong winds, torrential rain, and the threat of landslides and flooding.

Unfortunately, Da Nang is exactly where I needed to be heading – and I was desperate to make some progress today.

Looking again at the map, even reaching Quy Nhon, about 200km further north, felt risky. It’s not right in the central path of the storm, but still close enough to face higher winds and heavy rain.

I emailed the motorbike rental company for advice – they’ve been consistently helpful and, crucially, they know Vietnam’s weather systems far better than I do. Their advice was to avoid going further north until the storm passes.

So that settled it. I logged into Booking.com and extended my stay another night.

That’s the bad news. The less bad news is that there are far worse places to be “stuck” than here. I’ve spent the day making the most of being somewhere beautiful – swimming and resting by the pool, walking along the beach, and taking a two-hour ride around the local area just exploring.

It’s now 5:30 p.m. as I write this. For most of the day, the weather has been warm and calm – but over the last couple of hours, the wind has picked up sharply – the first signs that Fengshen’s outer edges are starting to reach.

I should be far enough south to avoid the worst of it, so it’s now just a matter of sitting tight until it’s safe to move on.