The Ancient Capital

We deserved a bit of a lie in after the last couple of days, and we would have really enjoyed it if there weren't these idiot kids in the dorm that started telling stupid stories of their lifes at 6 am.
When we came out of the dorm onto the veranda we saw that it rained in the night, but it had stopped now.

Well, off to breakfast, which was not bad. I created my own Vietnamese Breakfast roll, with bacon, scrambled egg and chilli sauce.

After I finished this an elder lady sat down at our table and introduced herself as a Nina the travel coach. Apparently she coaches people how to travel well. Specifically, single travellers who are not yet comfortable with travelling alone. I was surprised there was a market for something like this but it does seem to be a lucrative business opportunity.

Now it was time to explore the forbidden city. Similar to Beijing this is the royal palace of Hue (which is the former imperial city of Vietnam) and is set up in a similar architectural style, just much, much smaller and not as well restored.

Therefore we could just roam around where ever we liked.

We visited some of the halls and temples on the grounds and then took a rest in a little tea house with pond surrounding it. This is where we realized: "life could be worse" - sitting there drinking tea, with not much more on our minds, other then "maybe the rain stops soon" and "I like these roof tiles over there".

On the way out of the palace Basti acquired a nice, very authentic and reasonably priced, lamp for is home.

Unfortunately the Lassi women weren't there yet, otherwise we would have gotten a drink at the first lady this time.

We had a long bus journey ahead of us, all the way up to Hanoi (about 700km or 14 hours), so we went to the supermarket to stock up on snacks and drinks in case we would not get any food on the way again.

For the same reason we stuffed ourselves with a nice two course meal before getting on the bus.
We again got the good, fully reclining seats in the back but this time the bus had working reading lamps or wifi, so we were stuck with hanging around and sleeping.

Top Gear

At 7 am the guys dropped off our scooters and pick up our bags. Before heading off we filled up on breakfast and picked up some money at the ATM.

Then it was time to hit the road. We rode east to the coast just 3 km and then turned north on our way to Da Nang.

Just a couple of km into the ride I noticed my phone was not in my pocket any more. Did it fall out? I had a feeling that it may have slid out of my pocket while we were taking the last corner. Basti rode back there and I rode (against the traffic) up the road again to see if I could spot it.

While looking on the ground my adrenaline slowly settled down again and I began to think and realized that the phone was in my day backpack, charging on my powerbank.

I was really relieved but knew that Basti was ahead probably looking for the phone. I tried to catch up with him at the corner but he was already on his way back to the hostel.

I sat down at a cafe on the corner, used the Wifi to send him a text and got a coffee.

A couple of minutes later we were reunited and could continue our trip with the phone in my zip up pocket.

Just a couple of km later a woman on a scooter pulled over Basti to tell him not to leave is phone in the cup holder of the scooter, as people ride by and snatch it up. I thought, "how nice of here to tell us" and we rode on.

By "coincidence" we met here again a couple of km later and she led us to here shop of marble statues right next to the marble mountains of Da Nang that we wanted to visit anyway.

Fair enough of her to use every trick in the book to get customers, I was just a bit disappointed that the earlier experience of the "selfless" woman was only in order to pull us into here shop and make us feel guilty to buy something.

This is what most of south east Asia felt like unfortunately. At least in the touristy places, you want to trust the people to have some local experiences but many times if you do, it's some sort of a scam or a trick to get money off you. This makes you more suspicions to anyone who just wants to have a chat and you may miss out on some of the real experiences.

Anyway, we went up the mountain from where we had a good view over the area and a bit of climb through some caves and we went back down and to the shop of our new marble selling friend. We had no choice, since she insisted to park our scooters just outside her shop.

I bought a little marble rabbit for Yuni and Basti a Jade Buddha.

Now it was off to Da Nang and further up the coast. Da Nang is just a fairly big city with loads of resort hotels and Casinos along the coastal strip (and a former US airbase). I'm sure there is more to it but we didn't have the time to further explore this place and just rode through it.

Soon after Da Nang we arrived at the reason why this stretch of road is so popular with tourists on bikes: The Coastal road over the Hai Van Pass.

Already called one of the best coastal roads in the world by the Top Gear team in their Vietnam special I would have to agree with them.

It was a lot of fun to roll up the hill with a 15 hp scooter, that I can not imagine how it is on a proper bike.

The curves were lovely, the view was magnificent and all the other adjectives you can get from the video here: http://www.streetfire.net/video/top-gear-vietnam-special-season-12-episode-8-full-episode_part-1_2008597.htm (around minute 6:10 in Video 4).

At one of the viewpoints we spotted the Hanoi - Saigon Express just coming out of a tunnel and crawling along the cliffs south to it's final destination.

It was a real adventure to ride this road, with the mile stones always reminding us where we were going to.

All this riding made us pretty hungry so we stopped off a little restaurant along the way and tried to order Pho Ga, which they didn't have.

The owner did not speak any English but we understood from her signs that she wanted to follow us. So we did follow her into the kitchen and found us looking at a big pot and a bowl of meat. We weren't sure what it was and I tried to imitate a chicken, then a pig and a cow. All of them were replied with crossed fingers.

No idea what it was in the end, it did taste like pork and was good, though. Maybe my pig imitation is not quite up to scratch.

Back on the road I got a bit tired and exhausted and didn't enjoy the ride any more, as by now the road has become a long stretch of straight concrete with plenty of large trucks and buses passing us and construction sites every other kilometre.

We decided to turn off this main road and try to find our way through the back roads.

We couldn't have done a anything better.

The roads were great, barely any traffic, going through forests, along lakes and passed through little villages with kids waving at us and laughing.

I felt just like Charley Boorman on "the long way round".

We passed through a large field with an immense Chinese Cemetery (probably 2 or 3 km long and stretching to the horizon on either side of the road). I have not seen this in any travel guide but it could certainly have been a major tourist attraction, but no one other than us and a few locals was there.

Just a couple of km onwards we rode into Hue and found our hostel. And a few minutes later (after a call from the receptionist) our bags arrived and our scooters were picked up.
The hostel was again a party hostel (the stupid Vietnam chain hostel one with the water buffalo with sunglasses - man that is an annoying icon).

We went out for some food and found a place where I had some really tasty duck with lemon grass and rice.

It wasn't very late yet, so we went across the river to have a look at the old town (inside the ancient city walls) of Hue.

Outside of the royal palace the old town just looks like any other part of town, so we would have to wait until the morning to properly explore the place.

We did, however have a small, nice experience when we got some bamboo lassi from a street stall. There were two and we walked by the first one and made up our minds until we passed the second one to actually buy a lassi.

So we set down there and had our drink, some kids coming around and we played schnick, schnack, schnuck (I'm not too sure how this is called in english - it's the game where you form either a stone, scissors or a piece of paper with your hands). It was lovely to play with the kids, as they were really happy and we didn't speak the same language but still understood each other and had great fun.

Then a little later the woman from the first lassi stall walked by and looked at us very angry (I assume because we didn't get a lassi from her). I'm not sure if she was serious or if she was upset that we chose the other stall of the 50 % chance... It was funny either way.

After the long ride on our bikes I felt pretty tired and was happy to get an early night's sleep.

Easy Rider

After a short but deep sleep I got up just in time to go down to the shop and get my shoes by 10 am. They now fit perfectly but I chose my normal shoes to go back to the hostel. Breakfast just finished but we had our next appointment already lined up. At 11 am we were suppose to be back at the tailor.

The shirts fit well but my jacket and the pants had to be altered slightly (that's what the tailor told me at least - I thought they don't look bad).

So we were scheduled to be back again around 6pm and had nearly a full day to do something. What to do?

We got scooters for 5$ and rode out of town. The plan was to visit my son. Sorry.. My Son (this is the name of an ancient temple area, similar to Angkor Wat).

It was the first time for me on a scooter, or any motorized, two wheel transportation device, at that.
Since these things are automatic it wasn't too hard to pick it up. Also riding through the busy streets (where there are not any obvious traffic rules) with all the other scooters was more fun than scary.

A little wobbly at the beginning it became a lot of fun very quickly, and after a couple of kilometres out of town I even started enjoying the scenery and the way you experience your surroundings much more intense, when sitting on a bike, rather than in an air-conditioned bus.

We saw the rice paddies with farmers planting or harvesting their crops, water buffaloes, palm trees, huts and boats on the rivers. We heard and smelled our little 110 cc engines whizzing along, mixed with the sound and smells of other bikes, cars, animals and anything that was around us while having the wind blowing in our faces (the helmets were not exactly first class).
It was really exciting.

The freedom we got with these bikes we used by stopping of at a random little, very local restaurant with only one dish to choose from (but it was nice).

After about 50 km we got to My Son, and could explore the ruins. Unfortunately a lot of these temples was destroyed during the American/Vietnam War.

Some of the holes in the ground were pointed out to be created by B52 bombs.

The whole area had five or six separate groups of temples, all very close together and as compared to Angkor much smaller. On the positive side, we were nearly alone and could freely roam around.
However we did feel a bit wrecked after the ride and the long days and nights before, so that the temples could not excite us that much.

After we checked them out very quick we decided to ride home, also not to arrive in the dark.
When we passed through a larger town on the way back, it seemed the entire town was riding around with their scooters and it was crazy do join them in their way home from work or wherever they were going. It felt like being an ant in a large ant colony, but we made it out of there safely and soon were back in Hoi An and just on time to visit our Tailor again.

Apparently there was still something wrong with my jacket so it was also necessary to ride over to the little factory place where the suits are made, so the master tailor can have another look himself on how it fits.

Some of the tailor guys were more interested in following the football game in TV. It was Vietnam : Philippines which Vietnam won 3:1.

Anyway, it was suggested to come back after dinner around 10pm. No problem, so we walked around the central market and got some Pho and a walk along the river with the nice lanterns. We found a little place far down the road, with no one sitting there but the owner.

He was really happy to have some customers and we enjoyed the view onto the dark river.

We also used the time to book scooters for the next day. The extra kick with this was that we were going to take the scooters up the coast about 150 km to Hue and return them there. Our larger luggage was going to be brought up by car and was suppose to be waiting for us at our next hostel.

We didn't have a hostel booked yet, so we did that quickly over the hostelworld app and all was set for tomorrow.

We picked up the perfectly fitting suits and thanked the lovely tailor team for doing such great work and then headed back home, Not before dropping into a little Hawaiian Music Bar that charged crazy amounts for a beer. So we only stayed there for one and then got back to stuff our newly acquired suits into our backpacks. It all fitted, but just about.

A busy day was over, with another adventure waiting for us in the morning.

Suit up...

Obviously sleeping in a bumpy bus is not quite as relaxing as in a bed on solid ground but I really like the idea of moving to the next place while sleeping. You don't waste time during the day of sitting on a bus, you have a relatively cheap bed (18$ for the bus from Mui Ne to Hoi An) and you are in the new place early in the morning and can start your exploration before everyone else gets on the the streets.

We rolled into Hoi An on our bus watching the sun rising above the rice paddies, seeing the kids going to school, people opening their shops, having coffees before going to work, the fishermen coming back from sea, with their boats full of fresh fish.

It was really lovely see that. People looked genuinely happy with what they did and what they had.
From the bus we walked to the Hostel that was recommended to us. The Sunflower hostel. It was recommended partly because of an amazing breakfast buffet.

Fair enough, I usually am not the breakfast man but since I was awake for a while already I was able to have a good bite as well.

Again, since we arrived so early we couldn't check in yet, so left our bags at reception and went for stroll around town.

Basti had planned a special treat for is in this place. We were going to get suits made.
Tripadvisor has one specific shop it praises and that was Bibi Silk. We quickly found it and indeed, it looked very professional and the taylor girls hovered around us like bees, showing us material, styles and examples of finished suits.

I decided to go for one two-piece suit and three shirts... all tailored to suit me.
Aside from being very reasonable priced it was an really cool experience to get measured for a suit. I felt like Barney Stinson.

After we got the measurements in the shop where the material and different styles were displayed we went on to the actual tailor shop where the guys were sitting and producing the suits.
They measured us again and then we were sent off and told to come back the next day around 11am to check the suits.

Since we were already in the UNESCO protected old town of Hoi An we decided to take a walk around and check out some of the Chinese assembly halls that were left from times where this town was a large Chinese trading post.

The old town consists of a couple of streets with well preserved buildings that create a really nice atmosphere. Obviously most of the buildings now house souvenir shops, restaurants or booking agents, but it is all done in fairly decent way. At least we did not see a huge McDonald sign sticking out of the wall.

While walking around I looked at some shoes and a pretty feisty old lady saw her chance to sell me some tailored shoes. And while I'm here and get my suit done, I might as well pick up some custom made black leather shoes that go with it.

After this exciting morning it was time to go back to the hostel and check in. We didn't spend much time there but got some bicycles and rode to the beach to get some lunch and go for a dip.
It was a bit of a ride so we were hungry when we got there. Relaxing on the sunbeds with some fresh spring rolls and a view onto the sea was well deserved after the action of the last couple of days.

At 5:30 I should go and pick up my new shoes. They were slightly wide around the ankle so, the women took note of that and told me to come back the next morning.

The evening program was to be some dinner with three Americans and then a walk to the famous Japanese Bridge and the area where all the colourful lamps are lit along the river.

It was quite a sight to see and nearly impossible to capture the atmosphere on a photo.

We thought it was the end of the night, but when we came back into the Hostel dorm room a bunch of people sitting on the beds, drinking Vodka Coke dragged us into their conversation and later out on the street.

We tried to just get a beer or two locally but all the restaurants and bars around the hostel were closing down.

As the clubs and bars in Vietnam are very business driven, they send out scooter drivers to pick up thirsty people along the road. So we go some guy offering us a free lift to the a place called "Why not?!"... how could refuse an offer like that? So our answer was "Why Not?" and it was three of us on a scooter going to this place (very quick).

Once again (and not surprisingly) it was one of these headshot places, where you pay 5 USD and can drink as much Vodka Red Bull (or Barcadi Coke) as you like.

I stuck to beer and headed home around three.