July 27th, 2017
On the road again
We walked a long LONG Â way yesterday so felt completely justified in renting motorbikes today. These are the priciest bikes we yet encountered at 220,000 dong (close to $10usd) per day per bike. But the alternative we are tossing around is going to the cable car which will be close to a $100usd day and I’m sure I won’t enjoy it nearly as much. So bikes it is. We get them from our hotel which we have decided is always the best plan if it’s an option. After sunsscreening up (a little bit of horse already being put of the barn there-but why make it worse) we head off for the hills. I am sure they call them mountains, but they really are just hills. We didn’t know this before heading out but the area we went to is actually called monkey mountain. We should have seen lots of monkeys running around, but except for one small glimpse of a monkey by Troy, we didn’t see any, there were Jeeps running around the narrow roads taking tourists who I am sure paid a lot of money and one guy leaned out and yelled at us as we passed “WHERE ARE THE MONKEYS?? I am sure I don’t know. It was a great ride and we were out for 4-5 hours!
We did pass an Australian guy (I think) whose bike had broken down. The throttle cable snapped and he was going no where. Fortunately for him a nice Vietnamese couple stopped and was already trying to talk to him when we came by. She was saying something and gesturing a lot. We didn’t know what she was saying so I flagged down another guy and asked him if he spoke English “a little” he said. He translated enough to let us know that she was saying push it to the top of the hill and then coast down the mountain to town. So those of you who read my blog know I’ve been in this situation also. Started a long way from town with a broken down bike. Now my situation was self inflicted of course but no more or less frustrating. So the older gentleman of the couple rode his bike a ways up the hill, walked back down and started pushing with the guy. He was about to expire, so Troy parked his bike and pushed up the second half of the hill. Having got him to the the top, he said he was fine and was going to coast as far as he could. I gave him a bottle of water and we parted ways. Us going further up the mountain and he coasting off. We did another 20 minute shift or so of driving down dead end roads before we realized we had exhausted our exploration and needed to head back the same way the guy had gone. We drove a long way down and the whole way all I could think of was that he had it soooooo much luckier than I did in Laos two years ago. I didn’t have nearly as much coasting as he. Although I would say our temperatures were similar. We got almost all the way to the turn off where we were going to head to the other side of the peninsula when we finally came to the first hill he would have encountered and there were two different young Vietnamese men with their flip flop feet on each side of his bike (one on a tail pipe😳) pushing him up the hill. Sooooo not their first rodeo…..they got him to the top and then he went left coasting back to Da Nang and we headed right. But good to know he got at least that far. And for the most part my faith in the Vietnamese people is at least partially restored.
So off we go despite the ominous clouds I see building up in front of us. The day has been mosRly sunny and really really hot. So the cloud cover is not totally unwelcome. But it is a little grey, but regardless we persevere. And the view of the ocean from up high is truly spectacular and worth the risk, but then it’s like someone turned the lights down and then the rain started. The good news is that is is still very hot, somaside from being wet, I wasn’t cold! We navigated our way around the peninsula and back to De Nang. We are very proud of ourselves. At some point the check engine light started flashing on Troy’s bike and the were large amounts of black smoke coming out of his tail pipe. But it didn’t kaputz on him and it got him back to town, so we weren’t that guy having to push the bike 15 Km’s back to town.
We were exhausted and hungry, so after parking the bikes and refreshing ourselves in the room briefly, we headed out to supper. Still can’t get my brain wrapped around Vietnamese food so for the second day in a row, we had Indian food. Really good Indian food from a different place. Off to bed at a decent hour though because Ritchie, Vanna and Alice are coming tonight and we are all heading to Hoi An tomorrow.
