Ho Chi Minh Highway

  4 April to 8 April 2017

The Ho Chi Minh Highway runs up the spine of Vietnam from Saigon to Hanoi, The most scenic portion of this road is between Khe San and Phong Nha - our drive for the day. It's about 230km which would be one of our longest rides. There is little on the road between the two towns. We got up early and stocked up with eight banh mi bread rolls and some cakes at the local bakery. We also—following the finest Vietnamese safety standards—finished off our 1.5 litre water bottles, filled them up with petrol from the pump, and strapped them onto the bike as there is only one petrol station on the road - fairly unusual as you normally don't need to go far to find a petrol station.

So many corners...

The road was fairly deserted with very little traffic on it. We were just able to drive around the many many corners and admire the view when we turned off the engines and coasted down the hills.  

Beautiful views, average camera.

Rainforest unfortunately means rain, but Frank was dressed for the occasion.

After a quick mechanic stop for Frank's bike we made it to Phong Nha just before dark. Phong Nha is famous for its national park which contains many caves. The most famous of them, the largest cave in the world, offers a multi-day cave experience, but at US$3000 each we decided to give that one a miss. 

We opted for the more touristy boat down the river to the Phong Nha cave. Once you are in the cave the driver turns off the engine and you are slowly paddled through. The cave is all lit up with coloured lights, you walk through and then you are picked up by the boat at the other end. 

Approaching the entrance, almost time to shut off the un-muffled car engine driving our boat. 

Ahh, sweet silence, and bitching cave formations. We went through a kilometre of similar scenery, and apparently it goes on much further.

Eventually you leave the boat and do some more wandering on foot, 

And carry on up a few flights of stairs to another cave. You can tell Frank is disappointed about the lack of bats.

My bike had started spewing larger-than-normal clouds of white smoke, so while we were in Phong Nha I had a top end rebuild and had the cam chain changed. Or at least I paid for these things, same problem recurred a week later so who knows... I picked up the bike that morning and we hit the road. During the course of the day we made stops at six separate mechanics and unusually only one of these stops were for Frank's bike. 

(For those who are interested - Frank had a flat tire which was fixed; my chain fell off - I was pushed back to the mechanics shop, the chain was reattached and my wheel bearings were replaced (apparently actually tightening the chain slipped everyone's mind); we got out of town into the middle of nowhere - my chain came off again - I fixed it this time; in the next town I got the chain tightened; after some intermittent engine failure I got a new spark plug; after continued intermittent engine failure I had the spark plug read and after he messed around with the HT lead the problems were fixed!)

After such a frustrating day we stopped at another one of those weird empty resorts that we seem to keep finding. It smelt a bit odd. But there was a pool.

The other patrons (a few dozen of them later in the day) were amused as Frank and I raced down the slides.

Google Maps Leads NZ Tourists to Illegal Jungle Border Crossing: International Incident Narrowly Averted

After thinking that 230 km was our longest ever day our final leg on this part of the trip was 253 km. At the beginning we were on the Ho Chi Minh Highway so the great scenery and winding roads continued. We took a little detour down one of the roads and headed to the border with Laos. There was a border marker that we drove in circles around to leave and enter Vietnam / Laos multiple times. Apparently this drew the attention of a border guard. I had checked google maps and there was a cool road that ran along beside Laos - which purported to be on the Vietnamese side of the border - the border guard told us that we would be in Laos and we could not go down the road. I tried showing him the maps with the border lines to little avail. When he started telephoning someone Frank suggested that we move on swiftly.

Apart from this detour up into the jungle-clad mountains on the Laotian border, today was fairly bland as far as scenery. There was heaps of water buffalo on the roads as we drove along and children waving at us in every village. Our stop for the night was Lam Son. It was a very small town but it was starting to get dark so we needed to stop. I don't think that there were ever many tourists there. As we walked down the street just about every person we passed asked us the questions which seem to be the limits of English here - what's your name? how are you? where you from? 

We went for a walk into the smallish national park built around some ancient fortress that evening, and had multiple species of glow-worm and firefly surrounding us as we strolled back after dark, a fitting end to the jungle-based portion of our journey.

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.