At breakfast this morning we got a fruit salad alongside the normal options, I finally got to try dragon fruit, this was white but it also comes in a deep pink colour… It tasted of nothing! We were picked up at 10am this morning to take a 6 hour motorbike tour from Hoi An to Hue on the Hai Van pass. We had a few options to get to Hue, the bus goes through the tunnel so that wasn’t an option as we wanted to see the views. We could have hired a bike and David to drive… That also wasn’t a safe option. So we decided to go with the easy riders. Another girl from the hostel called Katy was heading to Hue also.
The first stop we didn’t really know where we were or why we had stopped. One of the riders took us to the main entrance and told us the entry fee. It only became apparent we were at the marble mountains once we had actually started to look around. It’s 5 peaks of marble and sandstone with Buddhist pagodas and cave systems.
The caves looked nothing from the outside but once you went in they were spectacular, the beams of light coming through holes were impressive, one was huge and had shrines and also marble statues carved in the rock itself inside.
After this stop it was about half an hour on the highway to the hai van pass. There were some hairy moments in the roads, if you get stuck behind a bus then the only way to know it’s slowing down is to watch for the conductor sticking their hand out of the door. It’s actually easier to be on the bikes than to try and cross a road though!
As we approached the pass the views were awesome, green mountains and clouds creeping through the valleys
As we wen up into the clouds the temperature drop was so sudden! We took plenty of stops for photos, they particularly liked to stop at the big bends in the road. Stupidly we decided no suncream was the best option given the clouds at the hostel and sitting on bikes all day, at the first stop we had to uncover and offload our
bag to get some before we actually shrivelled up and burned!
David’s rider was a bit crazy but a good laugh, that’s him photo bombing us!
Final few photos from the bikes:
We stopped for lunch at a seafood restaurant, where there was very little other choice except fries, which had definitely been fried in butter, and got served with butter!!
Before reaching Hue we stopped off at a fishing village lagoon where the fishermen go out all night on their longboats using lights to attract fish. Apparently they also live on these boats although I still find this very hard to believe!
From here we saw the rice paddies being prepared, acres and acres prepared by hand for very little money, getting 3 harvests a year!
On arrival in Hue the riders dropped us at the door of our hostel which was decent of them, it saved us a 30minute walk.
The hostel is average, seems clean but a little noisy. We went for cheap and cheerful at £8 a night for ensuite private room as we leave here for Phong Nha at 630am in the morning.
South East Asia 2019 