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.