Up bright and early and it’s overcast at the moment, but not raining. I stop off in Da Nang at the Motorbike Station to get the bike checked over and pick up a second crash helmet for Danika, for when I arrive in Hanoi. Hanoi is 794km away, so I have a lot of road ahead of me, especially on a 125cc semi automatic.
Back on the road I’m soon in the foothills and climbing up the Hai Van pass. The visibility is rubbish and it starts to drizzle. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while, but with the weather and the mist and fog ruining the view, it’s a real anti-climax. I snap a couple of pictures and stop for a coffee, but the rain continues. At one point I round a bend and there are quite a few little shops and stalls with the sellers all beckoning me over. I stop and buy a ridiculous looking purple rain mac and trousers although I’m already wet.
Having made the purchase I accelerate away without a backwards glance. Only later do I realise that I was at the summit, as I’ve been riding downhill ever since then. So I didn’t even see the view from the top. The pass is very short at 21km, so no great loss. Sneeze and you’d miss it.
The rain eventually stopped, but it was unpleasant. The miles ticked away and at some point I stopped to eat the Banh Mi, I’d bought in Hoi An before leaving. I kept going all day until I finally arrived in Dong Hoi, 307 km and 8 hours later. It was dark when I arrived, cold, damp, hungry and saddle sore There was some nice scenery and some beaches on the way, but really I just rode.
The plan to tootle along in the sunshine stopping for lunch and lots of fabulous photo’s went by the wayside.
Dong Hoi is quite a decent sized city and I stayed at a hotel on the beach. Just along the road from me was a night market with lots of food stalls, so I ate there with the locals. Skewers of chicken with a spicy sauce, some Vietnamese sausages that were excellent and a corn on the cob. I ate the lot and then went back and had the same again!
After all that riding I fancied a massage and as luck would have it there was a blind massage place only a couple of hundred metres away. As I walked in the guy at the desk looked up in completely the wrong direction(honestly) and asked if I wanted a massage.
The blind lady doing the massage was excellent and it deserves the high ratings it has on trip advisor. Quite different to the usual massages. Lots of tiger balm and very strong, but that was what I needed.
It’s cheap here, my expenditure for the day was £25.67. That includes my hotel for the night (a suite with river view), lunch and dinner, 2 full tanks of petrol for the motorcycle, 2 beers and a 1 hour full body massage, oh and a packet of Orio’s.
After the trials of yesterday, today is a breeze. I am only driving 42 km to the Phong Nha national park. The rain is gone and the views are good.
I arrive early as I want to go on the phong nha cave tour. It takes about 2 hours and it’s half an hour by boat to the entrance. Entry tickets are 150,000 dong, but the boat is an additional 550,000. However what you do is find people to share the boat with you, so reducing the cost. I got talking with a few people and we decided to get a boat together, so in the end we were 6. A dutch guy and his indian girlfriend who live in Amsterdam, a Lithuanian girl who lives in London and spoke flawless English and 2 Vietnamese girls on holiday.
Once you reach the cave, the engine is cut and the two women who run the boat get the paddles out. One at either end and proceeded to paddle us into the cave.
The boat is not small and I’m impressed at their stamina as they rowed us the best part of a kilometre. The cave is lit up and boasts amazing stalactites and crystal formations.
Watching one of the woman paddling the boat in front of me into the gloom ahead, you could almost imagine yourself being ferried along the river Styx, never to return!
On the way back we were dropped off and could walk back towards the entrance following a path underground through the rocks.
Keen to do more after the caves and a spot of noodle soup for lunch, I hopped on the bike and went to the botanic gardens. There is a nice waterfall and a good viewpoint. It’s quite a climb and a rope is there for you to help pull yourself up. The view is partly obscured by a large tree and it’s overcast, but the climb was good and I’m clocking up the steps. Going back down you continue all the way to the base of the waterfall and then you can climb up the fall itself, stopping to take photo’s and rest along the way. It’s a steep climb and slippery as well.
For dinner I went to a restaurant called Bamboo Chopsticks, that’s popular in the area. I had an unusual meal. The Vietnamese beef stew was served in a piece of bamboo pole, which you then pour out on to your plate. It was a bit of theatre and quite tasty. I treated myself to a glass of wine as well.
Afterwards I got chatting to some Canadians in the bar, who were great fun and have been travelling for a while. We talked about Canada and their trip so far. They are thinking about India and Cambodia for their next destinations, so we talked about my trips there and they took my blog address to read up on a few tips.
Well it’s raining again, properly raining not drizzle. I went to the market to buy a waterproof cape as the purple affair I bought at the Hanoi pass is not up to the job and the trousers were ripped anyway.
I’m heading for a town called Cua Lo, 213km away. It’s raining hard and does so for almost the whole journey. It’s miserable, long, cold and unpleasant.
I though Cua Lo, by the sea might be nicer than Vinh, which is a city slightly inland and was just going to be a stop for the night, rather than a place of interest.
However, Cua Lo appears to be a ghost town, I’m the only person in my hotel, most are shut and it’s eerie. I had asked for a room with a sea view, which they advertise and fair enough they had given me a room facing the sea, but unfortunately there was another hotel or two in the way. Indeed the view was what you might expect to see out of an East German apartment block, pre the fall of the Berlin wall. Dilapidated with peeling paint, grim buildings and a birds nest of power lines. Mrs Richards didn’t realise how lucky she was!
Not only that, my bed is hard. I don’t mean the mattress is firm or even very firm. I mean it is like sleeping on a plank of wood. I kept waking up in the night as it was too hard to be comfortable.
I did have one bit of luck. Driving around the ghost town I saw in the distance quite a few motorbikes disappearing up an alleyway and so decided to tag along. It soon became clear that this was a rat run or a hidden route to another part of town. After a mile or so it emptied out into a lively market with lots of shops and noise. Hurray! I was soon munching on a rice pancake stuffed with meat and vegetables and wandering around the market. The only westerner there for sure and I attracted quite a few looks.
A bit later I went out to eat dinner and found that a few places that had been shut earlier were lit up and full of young Vietnamese eating and drinking. I stopped at one and had a pretty awful meal. It’s difficult to know what to order sometimes. The vegetable component was very odd and one of the items on the plate was identified by my plant app as a plant mostly used to make soap and not to be eaten.
After a long tiring night on the plank of a bed I was back on the road by 8 am.
Luckily it wasn’t raining, as the cape had been slowly ripped to shreds the day before by the incessant high winds.
I’m heading for Ninh Binh, which is another lengthy ride of 197km, but although its a bit chilly and overcast, there is no rain. I make good time and arrive in Trang An around 12.30.
I have a family apartment, it’s nice enough, but doesn’t quite match the description. I booked a mountain view, but actually have a pool view, when I mentioned this, the owner pointed to the mountain, which I can see from my room if I plaster my face to the window and crane my neck upwards. Actually though I have to close my curtains, because everyone walks past my window, which is on the ground floor in front of the pool and so everyone can see in. The bathroom floods a bit because it’s not been laid at the correct slope and so the wet room drain doesn’t work properly. Nor did I get my sofa or dining area. I’m not quite sure with all this how they achieved 9.7 on booking.com, but the lady owner is super friendly and helpful which counts for a lot.
There are 3 routes you can take for the caves and temples. All of them take 3 hours, but follow slightly different routes. I chose route 2 and had to wait a little while for some other people wanting the same route. The boats take 4 to 5 people, but when 2 Greek guys came along that was good enough and off the three of us went. It’s rowing all the way this time and we go through some very low caves. If the water was much higher you’d be lying flat on the boat. The caves are interesting, but less so than Phong Nha. The temples are only accessible by boat as is the island used in the film King Kong Skull Island. We walked around all of them and saw some amazing statues, one of whom was a dead ringer for Ming the Merciless.
The Greek guys were interesting to talk to and we talked about the state of europe and travelling etc. They are staying in Hanoi at the moment and doing one or two day trips from there. Their English was excellent, rather a lot better than my Greek, which only extends to 30 words or so.
The speciality of this area is goat and they actually have street vendors with whole roasted goats sitting on their stalls. Even as a confirmed carnivore, I find it quite an unpleasant sight.
The next morning I headed off to Bai Dinh, a huge temple complex and I mean huge. You can walk for miles and I did. An electric ’bus’ takes you from the ticket entrance to the actual complex. There are various temples dotted around, towers and a laughing buddha. There are extremely long ’cloisters’ that have equally long lines of statues and gold figurines. It’s very impressive, although something I’ve noticed both here and in Thailand, as you can see in the photo’s, is that there is always a load of food in front of the statues. We are talking packets of biscuits, cans of coke and other junk food. It really detracts from the beauty of the statues and I don’t know why they do it. Perhaps something to do with a food offering, but they could choose something healthier!
The whole area is very beautiful with limestone hills, mountains, cliffs, rivers and caves. It’s similar to a place I visited in China many years ago and really is impressive.
Sightseeing finished, I pack up the bike, strap the rucksack on and head off towards Hanoi and my daughter, now only 113km away.