Hoi An and Hue

Hoi An and Hue 29/3 - 3/4

Hoi An
After our emphasis on coast and beach time over the past week or so we headed (slightly) inland to Hoi An.

Look we are in Hoi An! Together!

Hoi An is known for its well preserved ancient town, which has banned motorised vehicles during certain hours of the day. It was a welcome relief from the constant chorus of people tooting to be able to wander around the quiet streets. The ambiance was also improved by the classical music played from the large speakers attached to the power poles and the lanterns which were lit up at night. 

Riverside Hoi An with lanterns and classical music

Hoi An is also known as the town where you get tailored clothes. So when in Hoi An...

Mark needed a professional wardrobe for when he returns to real life so he ordered six shirts and two pairs of pants. I didn't really need anything but thought I might as well get a dress made. I cam away with three dresses. They are very effective sales women! There was talk of a wedding dress but that went in the too hard basket. 

There was the initial bombardment of questions - Which material? What about this colour? What type of sleeves? What about one more? Then we were measured up and sent away with instructions to return the following morning for the first of two fittings. When we returned for the fittings they were very complementary of how great the clothes look! Hopefully the same holds true when we wear them in real life. As well as tailoring you can get bespoke leather bags made - well I need something to carry around files and folders. 

After our dinner of suspect meat a few days ago it was slightly disconcerting to come across this cage full of puppies. 

Adorable, or delicious?

Having had enough of shopping it was time to have a day doing tourism. We jumped on the bikes and headed about 20km out of Hoi An to the Marble Mountains. These are a group of five marble and limestone mountains named after the five elements. The most popular and heavily touristed is the "water" mountain. The views over the surrounding area were fabulous, there were temples, there was clambering and there was even a massive cave too. 

Fabulous views

And temples

We clambered to the top

The giant cave (with atmospheric sun beams)

For some reason Mark insisted that I include this photo he took of a random sign.

After exploring the main water mountain we then headed to one of the smaller mountains - "fire" mountain. There were no other tourists here. This mountain also had a cave. We had seen on the reviews that there would be many touts who would try and insist you need a guide to show you around, only for them to speak limited English and not really offer anything for the money paid. Sure enough we were quickly approached by a man who offered his services as a guide. A firm no thank you followed. He then chased us and said that he would turn the lights on in the cave for us - for a fee of course (equivalent to $2). Again a firm no thank you and we wandered on into the cave.

This was a decision that I fairly quickly regretted. This was not a giant big open cave like the previous one. This was a small passages, pitch black, there are squeaking bat noises cave. Our cellphone torches were doing an adequate job as we walked along the first part of the cave. Mark was doing his best to improve the situation with a very jaunty "be brave in the cave, be brave in the cave" chant. We continued on and the cave then went upwards. Cue a series of slightly dodgy (probably structurally sound) Vietnamese ladders bolted(?) to the rock wall. Each of the rungs had bat shit on them and there was a fairly strong smell. As we climbed up the three long ladders I had to try and hold onto my phone so I could see where I needed to go while I really really wanted to be holding on to the ladder with two hands. You also had to switch from one ladder to the other around a corner as you climbed. I threatened Mark that if he started his jaunty chant at this point his life was in danger. While standing halfway up the second ladder I thought wow this would be a terrible place to have a panic attack. I then had a slight moment as I considered how many different fears of mine were all combining at this one point in time. But I was halfway up a rickety ladder in a pitch black cave, hand covered with bat shit as the bats squeaked around us. So I pulled myself together and got to the top. Of course the only way out was back the way we came...

Hue

After our restful time in Hoi An it was time to get back on the bikes. Today we were travelling to Hue. Although there is a tunnel through the mountain between Hoi An and Hue motorbikes are not allowed to use it. We had to go up and over. This is far from a bad thing as the road the motorbikes use is the Hai Van Pass. Translated this means the pass of Ocean mist - we got the full experience with a drive through misty clouds at the top. There were many many stops on this 20km road to look at the view. But apparently not to take many many photos...

The only (slightly average) view point where we took a photo on the beautifully scenic road. 

 [M- actually, I also got a shot at the end of the spot where Top Gear hung out and talked about how quintessentially Vietnamese the spot was. Well, that's only gotten more true: it's still beautiful, a mix of old and new, and has noisy boats in the background, but now it's also crowded with people driving dangerously and parking badly to have a look, and Vietnamese people trying to sell you shit.

Apparently the roads further inland are even better than the admittedly pretty great Hai Van pass, but they lack celebrity endorsement. -M]

As we got closer to Hue we saw a cemetery that went on for miles and miles. Each tomb was more elaborate, colourful and large than the last. Almost like mini temples. We were perplexed. After a little research at our afternoon coffee stop we discovered that this is the final resting place of those whose descendants have emigrated (mainly to America). They send money back home for the elaborate tombs of their ancestors who remained in Vietnam.  [M- i.e. post Vietnam War boat people fleeing after the south lost. These tombs, which were apparently upwards of $50,000 US each,  made quite a contrast to the piles of dirt with some tinsel on a stick planted above them we saw in the far north later on. Apparently there's still quite a lot of inequality and resentment between North and South, but that's above my pay grade -M]

After battling through the traffic we settled into our hotel near the centre of Hue. We had intended to spend the next day touring the Citadel, which is the main tourist attraction in town, However, the rain defeated us and instead we spent a few hours having multiple meals and drinking ginger tea and coffee in a nearby cafe (and blogging...).

Although it doesn't strictly fall in the "how things work tour of Vietnam" we came across a building being demolished by a digger. The safety standards are different in Vietnam. There were far more jandals that you would see in New Zealand. At one point one of the guys decided it was a good time to clamber up the pile of rubble to salvage some metal as the digger driver continued to hack away at the corner of the building. Mark assured me that he (the metal collector, not Mark) would probably not get struck by any falling rubble. There is also a video of all of this excitement but a photo will probably suffice. 

The next day all that was left was a pile of rubble (we checked!)

Rather than stay on in Hue for another day we decided to keep moving and head to Khe San. We had started looking at the calendar and doing calculations of places we would like to see, distance we need to travel and time left before we need to sell the bikes. By this point we had decided to cut out going to Laos on this trip and travel there some other time. 

The road to Khe San was great riding through jungle like terrain.  We had decided that we should make more random stops throughout the day as we drive rather than just gunning it from A to B (gunning it being a relative term given the low top speed of those bikes). In aid of this we stopped at a waterfall for a short walk to the top of it. Turns out the track we were following was probably just a water pipe maintenance track and the best views were to be had towards the bottom of the waterfall. Oh well it was good to stretch the legs in any event. 

Rather than the moderately disappointing waterfall - how about a picture of the road we were travelling on?

Khe San itself is an unmemorable town. Despite it being fairly remote and having no real tourist attractions there were many other foreigners with backpacks and motorbikes. The reason for this becomes clear once you know that Khe San is the jumping on point to what is said to be the most scenic part of the Ho Chi Minh Road. But Mark can tell you about that...

Dalat to Hoi An

Right, technology, let's try embedding a map with more-or-less the route we took until Google stopped letting me make changes. Many entertaining small diversions are omitted but this gives you the overview of where we went for this section of the trip.

Open Map in New Window:

We realised that as we headed further north it would get too cold for enjoyable swimming, so decided to hug the beach as we headed up the southern half of the country. Our first day was a descent from Dalat at 1500m to the sea at about 0m, so we had some huge 20 minute long continuous descents where we could switch off the engines and just enjoy the sound of birdsong and the wind rushing past. Or in my case, the sound of CCR and other Vietnam-war-era classics blasting out of my handlebar-mounted bluetooth speaker. (I'm currently up to two USB chargers, one for the phone, one for the speaker, plus LED strip lighting for, um, additional visibility and safety. The alternator is struggling and I'm having to make some hard decisions about which electrics I can afford to run at any one time.)

Bluetooth speaker bungee corded in place, dry conditions phone holder in front of my useless speedometer, waterproofish phone holder mounts to the stalk on the right when in use. Not pictured: sweet LED underlighting.

This was a beautiful stretch of road, and in fact the next few days along the coast were just packed with stunning views. Along the Nui Chua National Park we stopped at Hang Rai, a promontory full of beautiful huge granite boulders and what I think was a fossilised coral forest.

What's over on those rocks?

Much the same as before. What about the fossilised coral forest? 

AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

There were also turtles. I choose to assume they were rescued and not captured for our viewing pleasure.

Then we were off to another of the strangely abandoned large resorts we were frequently staying at around this time. This one had an enormous swimming pool full of dolphin fountains that we never saw anyone else using. We did borrow a kayak from the pool and take it out to the ocean to check out the fishing fleet, but were quickly swarmed by tiny pirates.

I promptly abandoned ship and left Frank to her fate. I think I counted 8 passengers aboard at one stage.

Every time the larger kid in the red shirt started to climb on a chorus of high-pitched Vietnamese yelling arose from the other kids as the kayak rolled alarmingly.

The bay was full of the charmingly blue-with-red-trim painted fishing boats with jauntily angled bridges that we've become accustomed to, and we found a small cluster of street food stalls on the waterfront for a feed of squid pancakes and coconut waffles after we returned.

The next day was, again, an absolutely beautiful ride. We had a short trip along the coast to the Cam Lap promonotory, where there was a rather more upmarket place we'd planned on splashing out for a lunch at but ended up absolutely blowing our budget by staying the night at.

Hitting that narrow zone of wooden bridges exciting enough to be worth photographing but not so exciting that Frank won't follow me onto them.

"Look, the place we stayed at!"

"Be quiet, I'm posing!"

Let's prove we were actually somewhere at the same time for once.

This place was stupidly pretty.

We stayed in the next room after this one. It was 10 times as much as our normal accommodation, or, alternatively, it was about as much as the cheapest motel we could find in Taupo over summer.

Blogger has totally frustrated my efforts to embed these 8 and 15 second videos at a decent resolution, so watch them here: https://goo.gl/photos/uW1QSLz63sPheinw7

Not quite able to pull off doing the splits like one neighbour we spotted posing for how many dozens of photos over a couple of hours, with multiple wardrobe changes...

Holiday mode was fully active here.

We stayed here until the last minute before checkout, exploring further round the coast where they had attempted to expand but apparently run out of money, leaving behind a rickety decaying boardwalk snaking between huge granite boulders over the clear turquoise sea. A few hundred metres away, past some smouldering rubbish fires marring an otherwise lovely patch of beach, was a collapsing concrete villa that looked like the Platonic ideal of a Flintstones house, with an empty swimming pool right on the ocean. If they'd finished it it would have been the most magical spot.

Flintstones house is behind me, my photos failed to capture it.

Finally, the hotel kicked us out, and we carried on North to Nha Trang. We had our usual lunch at a random roadside hammock & plastic chair place where, after feeding and caffeinating us both for about $3 NZD  the proprietor then held us up picking fresh fruits off the backyard tree for us and finally gave us a coconut as we were about to pull away. Yum.

We also stopped at roadside attractions such as the VietSovPetro Monument to Peace and Regional Stability

And whatever this thing was.

And then we started coming across signs for Vietnam's most famous
(among the Vietnamese) attraction. We were pretty excited.

Nha Trang

Nah Trang is Vietnam's big famous beach resort town. Think Honolulu. We were there for Vinpearl Land. Imagine a cross between DisneyLand and Vietnam, and you're pretty much there. We were having too much fun to take photos, so you'll have to deal with my description instead.

• Two kilometre cable car supported by miniature Eiffel Towers over the ocean to get to the island the park is on!
• Getting on the first ride we saw without knowing what it was, being moderately buckled in with no common language, then promptly being taken 40 metres up in the air and held upside down and spun around resting on the safety harnesses we had no faith in!
• Yummyland!
• A water park with some genuinely pretty awesome slides!
• Half-naked Russians everywhere!
• A house of illusions that made Puzzling World (Wanaka) seem pretty world class!
• Construction!
• Moderate animal cruelty in the aquarium!
• Dolphin Show! (also, see above...)
• Water and fire show, with an amazing collection of fountains and lighting and flame jets set to a soundtrack of your favourite patriotic Communist songs!
• And some pretty great rollercoasters and assorted other rides.

[F- When Mark says a cross between DisneyLand and Vietnam he really means a theme park in Vietnam that has blatantly infringed DisneyLand's intellectual property - the M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E song was playing and there were cutouts of Goofy around the park.

There was also a hilariously crap 4-D experience, it had a weird redneck ghost miner guy who did an intro which said make sure you don't go in the mine (in English!) - then you went in the mine. The Vietnamese were screaming at the top of their lungs at the "scary ride", cue much laughter from me!]

The next day, we continued north up the coast.

We were invited into some sort of dice-based gambling at a fishing village where we stopped for the traditional Vietnamese coffee on ice. I thought this would probably be unwise.

We went through some rice paddies for a change of pace from all the beautiful ocean views, which we apparently mostly neglected to photograph.

We had to pull over to let this herd of water buffalo past so I got a photo of Frank with them. Frank is the one in front centre, on the motorcycle.

We took a detour out on the Hon Gom sandbar, with this deserted 4 lane highway to nowhere.

The next day we took a shortcut on the way to Da Dia Reef. I enjoyed the drive, which makes half of us.

But it was all worth it once we got there.

 I couldn't convince Frank to follow me out on this bridge.

We had lunch at a small colony of Swedish expats in an otherwise unremarkable town, and stayed the next two nights at "Life's a Beach," an expat-run hostel with about 20 tiny crappy "Honda" Wins like ours parked out front. At night the ocean was lit out to the horizon with bright twinkling lights mounted on buoys and fisherman scurrying between them, pretty magical. 

I took this opportunity to finally install the blue LED strips I'd been carrying since Saigon. I looked up a few online tutorials that were all "make sure you include a fuse for safety," but I figured when in Vietnam, do as the Vietnamese do, and just plumbed it all into the battery with a 30 cent light switch to turn it off. The grand test of the completed product only caused a very small fire, which was no problem since I'd sensibly mounted everything along the outside of the gas tank, so the fire couldn't get in. And half the LEDs still worked, so I count it as a success. Apart from that we mainly lazed on or near the beach all day, before setting off for a day of breakdowns and rain.

Sunrise at "Life's a Beach" from my hammock

Where I was quite happy to spend a while 

This guys shop was contained in that little cube with the walls hinged at the top, so he could let them down at night it would revert to just being his house. Pretty nifty. The guy in white is hammering a bit of rebar into a new foot lever  to be welded to my centerstand. That and welding Frank's broken exhaust together was $4 NZD. Although the exhaust weld only lasted a day or two.

Frank in the rain just after rear ending me and smashing her headlight. I'm not sure she knows I took this photo instead of doing something more useful, so I hope somebody appreciates it enough to outweigh the trouble I'm about to get in.

Random side of the road cockfighting.

We eventually had all 4 of these guys actively trying to work out how to correctly rewire Frank's new headlight. 

We gave up and went to get lunch. Thank God labour is cheap here. Frank came back and had a good old chat with the grandmother in the back of the shop while I worried about the bikes.

They also upsold us on a new chain and sprockets. Fair enough when you see this, and like $15 instead of the $200 + it would have been in NZ. I'm beginning to doubt the guy who sold us this bike took as good care of it as he claimed, and also my own ability to do pre-purchase inspections.

A look inside the RHS cover when we were replacing the completely shot clutch on Frank's bike at another mechanic (lost count of the total number of them). Ditto on my earlier doubts, and also how truthful the previous owner was with his supposed fastidious oil change intervals...

That night we struggled to find a place to eat. Two separate restaurants were 2/3 full and seemed to be doing a roaring trade, but we were politely shooed away when we tried to enter. We naturally decided that this town must be a hotbed of anti-foreigner sentiment, but it was probably just a private function and a language barrier. We ended up finding a place that served mystery-meat mince kebabs next to a truck full of barking dogs...

Then on our final day into Hoi An I tried to do my self-guided tours of an oil refinery and ship yard, but apparently heavy industry actually does care about security, so those were dead ends. I discovered that messily slurping makes Pho slightly more enjoyable, if no more nutritious. For our final 60 km into the city as it was getting dark we managed to find a newish and empty 4 lane highway going right where we needed that wasn't marked on the guide we were following or any of our mapping apps, so I got to try out my new underlighting as we blasted along this empty road through the desert and sunset.

Heading North - The Central Highlands and Dalat

14 March 2017

After battling our way through the traffic in Saigon we headed to Cat Lai port for a ferry across the river and then we were out of the city and starting our motorbike trip north towards Hanoi. 

Like many of the days that follow our days on the bike have a certain similarity to them - breakfast either at the hotel or from a lady selling a Banh Mi sandwich on the street. Drive for a couple of hours, stop somewhere scenic for a coffee, drive a bit more then stop for lunch. Depending on how many stops we make, or interesting things we look at we seem to arrive to our stop for the night in the late afternoon / early evening. We try to avoid driving when it is dark as some of the roads can have large potholes and our headlights are fairly crap. [Most motorbike headlights are "fairly crap". These ones are somewhere between "glow worm" and "hand-crank torch being powered by an arthritic pensioner". -M] and There are also many other road users without headlights, and random people or animals that wander out onto the road. 

We did make a stop on "Mark's tour of how things work". Today the stop was a brick factory. There is no Worksafe or equivalent here so we just parked in front of the factory and wandered on in. The ladies who loaded the finished bricks onto the truck gave us a cheerful wave as we walked past. The place was huge, there were piles and piles of bricks in various stages of production and down the middle of the building kiln after kiln with glimpses of fire through the oven doors. 

Our destination for tonight was the Cat Tien National Park. As we turned off the main route to head towards the national park the skies began to darken. We had 15km to go. We started hooning along the road which was surrounded by jungle. Then the massive thunder and lightning started. We needed some kind of dramatic music playing in the background to accompany us! We arrived at a small guest house near the national park headquarters just as the rain started falling. [Blasting down the narrow, and windy, but new and smooth road, past jungle and farms, with terrifyingly huge black thunderheads building up all around us and gusts of wind whipping around and the smell of imminent torrential rain was hugely exciting, a real highlight for me -M]

15 March 2017
Since we were staying at the national park we decided to have a rest day and go for a hike. Although it was a change from the motorbikes, we didn't really manage the whole rest day thing.

The ferry crossing over to the national park

We decided to do the trek to Crocodile Lake. After catching the ferry we went and rented bicycles from the park headquarters. They were in a fairly poor state. There was then a 9km cycle to the trail head. As we cycled along on the track there were hundreds of butterflies congregating around a puddle every few dozen metres. As you cycled closer they all flew into the air and you were surrounded by butterflies. It was like being in a Disney movie. 

Climbing in the jungle

After a very bumpy ride we got to the trail head and jumped off the bikes. We then had a 5km walk through a jungle way to Crocodile Lake. Once we made it to Crocodile Lake there was an observation tower we could sit in to look out at the view.  

Crocodile Lake - not pictured: actual crocodile!

Once we had looked at the view for a while we turned around and headed back again. It started pouring with rain as we bicycled along. Then the best part of the day - there was a massive bashing and crashing in the jungle beside us. We looked over and there was a troop of wild monkeys swinging through the trees just metres from us!

[Also, Cat Tien national park was full of wildlife, and our accommodation was no exception. We first discovered our nightly frog infestation when Frank was on the toilet and one jumped on her, at which stage we realised there were about 4 of them hanging out in the bathroom. We left them to their own froggy devices, which we hoped would involve eating mozzies but mainly seemed to consist of serenading us in the middle of the night.

Later on when we were leaving, while loading up the gear onto the bikes I felt a sharp pain on the top of my head. Turned out there was a low overhanging tree branch above me I'd been brushing my head and shoulders into, and ants had decided to build a nest there. This lead to a few minutes of some distress.

aaaaaaannntttssss

-M]

16 / 17 March 2017 We had read about some lovely accommodation that was halfway between the national park and Dalat so we decided that would be a good place to stop off. The road there was beautiful country roads through all types of farming. There was a swimming pool at the villa's so we got there fairly early in the afternoon and made the most of that.

Scenic blogging location

Since Dalat was not far away I spent the next morning blogging as Mark made improvements to his motorbike. Once we were underway we got caught in a massive rainstorm. We were a bit optimistic that the rain wouldn't last so we didn't get the rain gears out quite as quickly as we should have. We got saturated before finally admitting defeat.

And why would you not want to wear this fabulous poncho?

En route we stopped for a long lunch, where Mark tried to learn the complicated game that you see many men sitting around having coffee and playing. It seems kind of like chess with some added complexities. [ Xiangqi. It takes all my effort to just work out which piece is which, let alone think about what moves they can do, let alone actually what's going on in the game... -M]

Elephant Falls was our final stop before we got to Dalat. You first see the falls from the top and they are quite impressive. There is then a meandering path over rocks to get to the bottom of the falls. You can take a path to the side and end up behind them as well. 

Elephant falls

After our stop at Elephant falls the last 20km was a bit of a race against the clock to try and arrive before the darkness. It was a fairly horrible drive. But we arrived safe and sound - despite the various hazards on the way and the shit headlights.

18 March 2017

Today we did some sightseeing around Dalat. Dalat was a lovely little town, with a lake near the middle of it that we made a circuit of on foot. The area is renown for its fresh produce so the central market was full of every type of dried fruit and vegetable you can imagine. We bought what we thought was dried mango but ended up to be dried sweet potato. The first mouthful of what you thought would be mango but wasn't was unusual. 

After lunch we walked to the cable car terminus to catch the cable car across from town to a pagoda. The views it offered over the surrounding area were pretty spectacular. 

A photo that doesn't really capture the view but we don't have any others..

 

10 points if you can guess the name of the pagoda we visited

[That night after dinner we discovered "the maze bar." Dalat is famous for "the crazy house", and this place is in the same style: 6 (or more? how do you count all the intermediate levels?) stories of tiny nooks and crannies and winding staircases and ladders and trap doors and mysterious dead ends, with H.R. Giger meets M.C. Escher decorations of flowing organics on every surface and occasional themed sections full of giant octopus and coral and the like. Totally sweet place to grab a drink and then explore and get lost, and such a great environment for striking up conversations with other random backpackers, this place is a must visit if you're in town. Sadly we couldn't have a huge night since we had to be ready for the next morning's activities... -M ]

19 March 2017

In addition to many fruits and vegetables Dalat is also home of outdoor activities. There were a number of options and companies - we were deciding between going mountain biking or going canyoning. I had said to Mark that I would prefer mountain biking but that was mainly because going canyoning would be scary (heights not being my favourite thing). Mark took this as a rare opportunity for Frank improvement and today we went canyoning. 

We had three rappels down rock faces with one of those ending with you being smashed by a waterfall. There were "waterslides" by sliding down rocks in the river, some sedate floating down the river and jumping off the rock face above the river. I managed the 7 metre jump (after a brief false start at the top), Mark also did the 9 and 11 metre jumps [The last one needed a running jump to clear the ledges halfway down, exciting stuff. -M]. All in all it was a really great day and made a nice change from other death defying activities - like riding a motorbike in Vietnam! 

And we still like each other at the end of the day.