Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City Motorbike Trip: Day 5 - Hue to Da Nang

In the morning I ate the free breakfast at the backpacker’s hostel and chatted with Carolina from Austria.

Lukas, Morta, and I met at around 8 am and with to the citadel. We took our motorbikes over the bridge across the Perfume River and parked just outside the walls of the ancient citadel. We payed for tickets and walked in. It was impressive to see the architecture and layout, but since we didn’t have a guide or a guidebook, we didn’t really know what we were looking at. Lukas took the opportunity to dress in ancient royal Vietnamese regalia and have his picture taken. He posed like a ninja.

We looked around and I wished I had had more information about the citadel and its history.

We finished walking through the citadel and I returned to the hostel to shower and pack. We met up an hour later and reviewed our plan to ride to Da Nang and agreed on some hand signals we could use on the road.

We set out and they followed me as I navigated out of the city. I used my GPS on my iPhone and it worked well. We didn’t get lost. We stopped to get gas and soon we were on the highway. I signaled for Lukas to ride in front, Morta was in the middle, and I was in the back.

We rode into the countryside. We were near the ocean and we drove through rice paddies and small towns and villages. Then we came to a small mountain pass. It only took about 5 minutes to reach the top. We stopped at the top of the pass and enjoyed the view.

We rode down to the lowlands and crossed another plain before reaching another small pass. We stopped at the top of this pass to take pictures. We rode across another plain and then we came to Hai Van Pass.

Hai Van Pass was well known to Lukas and Morta because of an episode of a motor sports show called Top Gear. It was clear, sunny, and hot. We stopped to take pictures of the views of the beach and the ocean looking down from the pass. Lukas and Morta were really happy and high on life. It was fun for me to share the experience with them because they were so excited about riding motorcycles.

We went over Hai Van Pass and soon we were in Da Nang. We were hungry so I found a seafood hot pot restaurant near the beach. Lukas and Morta had never eaten hot pot before, but as it turned out they didn’t like seafood. When they brought out the fish, shrimp, squid, clams, and some noodles, they tried it but they didn’t want to eat much. Morta ordered chicken, but it took about an hour for his order to come.

I had called ahead to a guy named Paul who lived in Da Nang. Ben, from Phong Nha, had given me his number. Paul invited us to his house. We went to Paul’s house and found ourselves in a little front yard party. Paul offered us drinks and he had a guitar that I started playing. I ended up playing and singing for about 2 hours. I jammed with Serge, a musician from the Ukraine. He had some really nice original songs. For almost all of his songs, he changed the tuning of the guitar. That’s unconventional but it worked well or him.

Morta and Lukas used Paul’s wifi to find a nearby hotel. We went to the hotel and checked in to a room. I took a nap at the hotel and then went back to Paul’s house to meet Serge.

When I got to Paul’s everyone had left already. Paul was going to bed so I said I’d see him tomorrow. There were some Vietnamese people sitting on plastic stools in the street so I joined them and ate some yogurt that I had bought. I chatted with the Vietnamese people for about 30 minutes. They had a different accent than people in Hanoi, but I could understand them with about the same comprehension rate as I had in Hanoi.

I went back to the hotel and went to sleep.