Today Vietnam tested our patience. Though other people rated our hotel with five stars because of the delicious breakfast they just serve some instant noodles as Phở. Nevertheless we started early to make some kilometers to reach Ha Long Bay in three to four days. The weather was cloudy and the temperature comfortable. The first 100 km today have been the quickest until now. The streets were broad and there was almost no traffic. The valleys and mountains we passed weren’t as steep and narrow as they’ve been yesterday. We rode through giant rice fields and many villages. At about ten we already arrived in Hoa Thanh where we fist wanted to stay for one night.
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Today is easily described in two words: asphalt perfection. Or rather, concrete perfection. We started at 8:00 sharp in Khe Sanh and arrived in Son Trach at 16:00. Between us and our destination were thousands of turns, no traffic, jungle on both sides and views which could be taken directly from a movie.
It was quite hard to get woken up by the alarm clock this morning. The morning after this super evening on the villa’s roof having a few beers and guitar plays. Though we had our breakfast at seven and I got a real cà phê sữa again.
So we left the beautiful Riverside Villa and it’s great staff at about eight o’clock. The rain from the evening yesterday didn’t have an influence on today’s temperature - it was already warm.
The evening before, while drinking some beers with the local Finns, they told us about an abandoned water park close by. Since I love seeing abandoned places we decided to go there this morning.
Hồ Thủy Tiên is a lake about 20 minutes from the city Hue. The water park was built in the early 2000s and was abandoned shortly after. The details on the story are a bit vague and hard to come by though. I’ve read that it was open for about 3 years and also that it was never opened at all.
Today was a very lazy day. We started by eating breakfast at the hotel. We had eggs and a baguette as well as a coffee, although the coffee was certainly not in our top 5.
After breakfast we went out to do some local sightseeing. There are a lot of local tombs around the town which are supposedly worth seeing. We left the house to see the tomb of the King Thieu Tri in the morning. It turned out to be a wast of our time. The tomb was off the main road, behind a school. It was being guarded by a few cows and a barking dog. It had a few stone figures in front of it, but the tomb itself was badly maintained.
For today we planned to do the Đèo Hải Vân (ocean cloud pass). We’ve seen this pass in Top Gear’s Vietnam special. Hrm…there’s actually not so much to say about this pass - especially not for Swiss people. First we had to overtake a few trucks. After that we enjoyed a few serpentines before we abruptly realized that the mass of buses on the parking means we’ve just arrived on top of the pass.
As we learned in the past few days, it’s always best when traveling through Vietnam to leave early in the morning. So that’s exactly what we ignored this morning. We woke up at around 6:30 and hung around the hotel until nearly 10. Perfect timing if you like to sweat a lot…
We left the hotel, took our bikes and left the city towards the Son Tra Mountain, also know as Monkey Mountain. It was a beautiful climb towards the top, sometimes overlooking the city but most of the time with a beautiful view over the sea. On our way up we skipped the temple and some of the nicer spots planning to do them on the way down instead.
Weather report: 27˚C (feels like 32˚C), overcast. Night 23˚C.
First of all we won’t hold back following anecdote:
We always park our bikes with first gear. Yesterday we realized this is a perfect “lock” in Vietnam. Someone from our last hotel in Hoi An tried to move our bikes. After a few unsuccessful tries he noticed he had to change gear to neutral. He tried without pulling the clutch. Carefully (to avoid losing face) we explained him how this works. Vietnamese motorbikes can be shifted without clutch.
Weather report: 29˚C (feels like 33˚C), overcast. Night 22˚C.
The alarm clock went off at 7:30 but we were both already awake. I actually got up a bit past 6:30 already. We packed some stuff and went downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant to eat some breakfast. Before going I was told to expect eggs for breakfast every day, but this was actually the first time so far. Two sunny side up eggs in a very hot cast iron pan and a baguette. We also had our obligatory coffee with that.
Weather report: 31˚C (feels like 34˚C), overcast. Night 20˚C.
For today we planned to follow the Ho Chi Minh road. This highway is one of the most important connections between the north and the south of of Vietnam. Because the Ho Chi Minh road cuts through extremely mountainous area with steep hills and only few gas stations, most heavy traffic avoids this road. For us this was reason enough to choose it.