Day 42 4/12/2009
Repair costs: 150,000 VND
As it turns out the bicycle repair man was right about something yesterday, the 3 cogs connected to the peddles had worn right down into a shark teeth shape, this meant I needed to replace the whole peddle assembly. This was possibly caused by my excessive cycling yesterday. He was offering 150,000 VND for the repair, I thought id look around town and try find someone else for cheaper but having to explain the problem to others who don’t know English turned out to be quite irritating so I went back to him and offered 120,000VND, he then raised it to 180,000VND for some reason, but we settled back on 150,000VND.
Whilst I waited for the repair I joined an English couple (Chris and Rachael) for a vegetarian lunch, which was new to me and I though to be quite delicious and for only 10,000VND it was a great deal. We wondered around town and set down on the beach for the afternoon.
When I got the bicycle back the guy had replaced the assembly but the gear ratios had changed dramatically, these cogs where much larger than before and because they differed the derailleur couldn’t derail the chain on the smallest cog. This meant going uphill is going to be more of a struggle. As the man pointed out there was also a bit of wear on the rear cogs too, so some slipping of the chain was going to occur whilst cycling on certain gears. When I cycled around town I found out I went from 18 gears from when I bought the bike to now 8… well I have about 800km to go, lets see if I make it to
In the evening there were more westerners in the hotel. I gathered up half a dozen people from all over the world and had a few beers to drink that others bought me. Actually didn’t spend a cent on alcohol this evening J
We went for food, the vegetarian place I ate at earlier because it was cheap but it was shut so we settled for pho… again.
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