Ride day 17: Lăng Cô to Hội An
18 June 2016
It’s a sad good bye to Lăng Cô and the beach resort which has been our home for nearly a week. We head along to the restaurant for one last breakfast before packing up and heading off.
As we’re packing the bags, I notice my headset is slightly loose, so take a few minutes to tighten this up before loading up. We get a few pictures of the bikes outside the resort before heading along the road to get some fuel. The second petrol station that was just an empty site 5 days earlier is now fully up and running.
From Lăng Cô we head south, cross the bridge and the railway before beginning the climb up the famous Hải Vân Pass. We’d ridden to the top a few days previous with Andy and Janice pillion, and have ridden to the top from Da Nang in the south back in February. But today is the first day fully crossing the pass.
It’s a touch cooler than earlier in the week, and it seems that a lot of the road repairs have been completed with a much better road surface and less single lane sections. As we climb up, I can see views down Lăng Cô beach in my mirrors. A sad good bye to a wonderful place.
Crossing the top of the pass opens up stunning blue sky and blue beach views across the bay to Da Nang and the marble mountains to the south. It’s a fun wind down the southern side of the pass in to Da Nang itself. This feels like familiar territory after our week here in February. We ride through town and to the bridge across to the beach peninsula side. Great views down the river to the dragon bridge as we cross over.
Dragon bridge by night
At this point we take the opportunity to dive in to the supermarket we know of and pick up some supplies, then round the corner close to our hotel from February to grab some excellent Banh My Pate for lunch.
We decide to take the lunch with us and plan to stop near the marble mountains to eat, but at this point Tracey’s bike starts cutting out in 3rd and 4th gears. We pass a Castrol Bike Point, so stop in to have them take a look. After some explaining through pointing and sound effects we manage to communicate the problem, and the mechanic gets stuck in to testing it.
After a quick road test he diagnoses the problem with the accelerator assembly. Whilst we sit and eat our delicious lunch, we watch the mechanic take the assembly apart, fashion a new part by hand from some sheet aluminium and rebuild the assembly. Another quick road test and he’s satisfied it’s resolved. We get the bikes a quick all round check over, and VN $40,000 later we are on our way south to Hội An.
The road from Da Nang to Hội An is one we’ve ridden a few times before. Whilst it’s quite a major road, in places we duck in to small villages with fairly broken up Tarmac and large potholes. No signs of improvement on this road from February 2016 until now. The road past marble mountains and along the front is in better condition, but fairly anonymous, with lots of large resorts being built and the new Greg Norman golf course.
As we enter Hội An the traffic intensity increased significantly. A very large number of motorbikes and crowded streets. There are a lot of street sellers here, and whilst we haven’t ourselves had any real problems, it doesn’t feel the safest place to stop and check maps. We got off the main drag and checked our way to the home stay we’d booked for the night (Flame Flowers HomeStay – a beautiful home with very friendly family and very well priced at US $13 per night). After a few wrong turns up the very narrow streets near the market we eventually find the Home stay and are warmly greeted.
We unload our bikes in to our room and get showered up to head in to the old quarter and meet my mate Jamie and his girlfriend Bec (who runs sheroamssolo.com). A couple of very cheap beers and some local White Rose as a snack, and the night begins. We head to a couple of different bars for beers and cocktails before ending up at a reggae bar just outside the old quarter. A few gun buckets, some beers and some pool with local expats (who ran a scuba diving company) and it’s time to grab food and head home. Tracey and Bec somehow manage to find a street side burger seller and acquire delicious burgers for us all. A great end to the night!
Full days route here:
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