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.
Although we decided to keep off touristic places we wanted to visit the ruins of My Son. These temples from the Cham-Dynasty were built between 4th and 11th century and nowadays famous for their beautiful Hindu sculptures. During the American War Vietcong tried to hide in the valley of My Son. US airplanes bombed and destroyed most of the temples in the late 1960s. Since 1999 My Son is part of the UNESCO world heritage and they try to restore it. We started early in the morning and arrived at about half past eight as some of the first visitors. Good decision. When we left the parking was already full of buses and cars.
For breakfast after visiting My Son we had our best Banh Mi until now. Banh Mi is a french baguette stuffed with whatever they have. A mix between French and Vietnamese kitchen, usually butter, meat, coriander, different spices, fish sauce and a another sauce I don’t know. A few kilometers outside Hoi An the prices for street food were just as usual in rural areas. That means about 80 cents for two baguettes.
About 20 km before entering Da Nang Ste’s bicycle - hrm… sorry motorbike - just stopped running in the middle of a crossroad. S***! Though there was lots of traffic everybody slowed down and took care of this situation and let Ste push his bike across the street. Nobody honked even though usually everybody does. Imagine this situation in Switzerland. We took this as a chance to have a coffee. After the coffee Ste’s Honda started normally. Now we know how to fix his bike. Fortunately there are street coffees everywhere.
On our way to Da Nang we also wanted to visit the Marble Mountains. We came too late. We would have had to queue to visit the cave or pagodas. So we didn’t stop.
Tigit (the company we hired our motorbikes from) told us to make an oil change every 1000 km. In fact we drove already 1100 km so we had to find a Honda dealer. We are not allowed to make the oil change in a small backyard workshop. All these motorbikes in Vietnam don’t have oil filters, so everybody needs to change oil very frequently. I actually don’t want to know what happens with the oil. The Change costs about five CHF each, oil including.
After our experience drinking Heineken with ice, Ste was searching for micro breweries in Vietnam and found 7 bridges in Da Nang. After some delicious street food we went to this brewery. The roof top bar was the place we stayed until dawn. We just decided to leave as we’ve seen the IPA is available again (they ran out of it before). We took the chance to taste it and had a little talk with the owner. Good decision, it was delicious.
The barmaid suggested to eat in a Vietnamese BBQ restaurant. So we ended our culinary intensive day there, enjoying some squid, shrimps, pork and vegetables from table grill.
To sum up my experiences from Da Nang until now:
People here are as friendly as they are on the countryside of Vietnam. The prices are a little higher but not comparable to Hoi An. You can find menus in English and many people speak and understand a few words English. So they can deal with tourists but it’s not the same mass tourism as we met in Hoi An. I like Da Nang and I’m looking forward to our second day here.
