Hooley in Hoyan

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7th March - 9th March 2010

Hue to Hoyan

Initially this leg didn't sound so bad, “only maybe 4, maybe 5 hours” and as it was a “normal” bus with seats as opposed to a “coffin” bus we boarded just after 9am thinking “piece of cake!”......... WRONG!!!!!! : roads from hell, driver from hell, no a/c, no toilet, no bloody joke!!! I still find it hard to believe that Highway 1 is the main traffic artery linking north to south; it is a pot holed farm track and the vehicles upon it went out with the Ark! Our particular bus of torture was a sweaty “Camel Tour” crate that billowed out clouds of smoke as it growled its way up hills at 15kmph. We were sitting (as usual) over the rear wheels, or where the wheels should have been, as I'm sure they'd been replaced by hexagonal boulders. Probably fearing that the gear box was going to self destruct and obviously deprived of anything remotely resembling a clutch, our baffoon of a driver crunched and ground his way in a weaving motion in 1st, second or reverse gear for 4 and a half hours!! Although the scenery enroute was worth seeing this was not a pleasant way to do it.
We arrived in Hoi An at 1215 and were picked up by a comfy a/c minibus which conveyed us to the Grasslands Hotel ($15 booked by the Thai Binh in Hue - excellent but front rooms near road are noisy). As we checked in we met up with Vicky and Jose Luis who we'd met on the hanoi bus and then in Hue. I suppose that the route south through Vietnam without going into the interior will always bring travellers together and its good to share tales and info on the way. We have met plenty of great folks on the road and are still in touch with some we met years ago, all part of the fun!!

We dumped our bags, grabbed a couple of the free bicycles from the hotel and rode off into town looking for lunch. The wide streets were generally quieter than usual,and there was a nice relaxed feel to the place, as we headed to the Old Quarter we stopped at a restaurant and tried the Hoyan speciality wontons, huge and very nice and great chicken in lemongrass and chilli, delicious.

We pedalled further into town and above us were flying banners and lanterns of all different colours and were absolutely amazed when we came across pebbled little streets and alleyways which led onto the river, this was the Old Quarter, a fantastical step back in time to the old French Colonial days. A lovely chinese bridge crossed the river and after an explore around the riverside area on bikes we decided it was about that time and parked ourselves in a little cafe bar overlooking the river, It really was like going back in time! Now I hate to be un-pc but shortly after we were in a tight spot where all we wanted to do as laugh hysterically but it would have been rather mean to do so. Walking up and down, outside our cafe was a local man in shorts and tshirt, up and down, up and down grinning, hmm odd, then we heard a shriek and a howl and then laughter, this guy was on some fantastic planet. He took his tshirt off, then approached scooters that passed by, by rushing up to them so they had to swerve, then he would point and laugh. We were trying not to watch as we really didn't want his attention but it was just so hilarious, we think he actually did this all day untill a guy came and put his tshirt back on him and dragged him away.

We returned to the digs and I was so exhausted that I could not face the prospect of showering, getting changed again and going out again to eat, so I ate in the hotel and settled down in bed in front of the telly....heaven.

The next day we hired a motorbike with the idea of exploring and going to see either My Son, famous Cham ruins or the Marble Mountain. Our friends Vicky and Jose decided on marble mountain and for some unbeknown reason we chose My Son. It took us about 1hr 45 mins to get there and to be honest the route was quite a boring one, not much to see, our bums were numb and we were grateful when we arrived. Immediately on arrival just as we entered the park, a guy came out from the roadside cafe and started waving his arms. We must park our motorcycle here, in his cafe as there is no parking in the site.....did we fall for it? Yes we did. After the worse veg fried rice ever (white boiled rice with green beans?!) we began the 10 min walk to the payment booth and museum. It cost 60000 vnd each Hmm we then realised that we had to wait for a bus to take us to the first ruin, we could walk the 2km or......we take our motorbike!!!!!!!!! You cannot believe how cross we get with ourselves for believing stupid information! Dave walked back to get the bike and told everyone else who was being conned not to park their bikes
Travel note: you CAN take your bikes in even if u have to pay a small parking fee inside
Annoying part no2: at the actual entrance there are cafe's and icecream sellers and an office where you can hire guides, on the day we went there were no guides and no information so we just bimbled off down a track which we assumed to be the right direction. After a short walk we reached yet another cafe and a site map which sort of showed us that we'd already missed one set of ruins. We walked around the main group of ruins which were to be honest, not that impressive without any supporting information and then walked back the way we came only to discover that there was a second group of ruins behind the main group and back we jolly well went! After the next ruins we saw a sign written in Vietnamese and ending in UNESCO 1991, it was faded and rusty and was obviously the last thing that had been done since the UNESCO certification was awarded. Basically unless you are a historian or an archeologist, take a guide or go to the Marble Mountain instead: sadly for us it was a waste of time and effort.
On the way home we decided to rescue our day and visit the beach which was busy but very nice indeed. The excellent crispy calamari and spring rolls accompanied by a cold beer helped ease away the day's frustrations so we dared to venture a little further in search of a quieter beach for tomorrow's lazing about.

WALLACE & GROMMIT AND THE CASE OF THE WRONG MOTORCYLE:

After a brief park up and stroll along a stretch of lovely white sand we jumped back on our bike and headed back towards the hotel hoping to make just one more recce' on the way. As we reached cruising speed (50kmh!) our bike started to whine and judder and the steering seemed a bit looser than before so I eased off and pulled off the road towards yet another beach. Here we were hounded by locals wanting to sell us parking space so I totally poo - hooed the idea and told Anna to have a peep at the beach while I rattled and pulled at things in an attempt to locate the problem with the bike. I stopped it, started it, revved it and shook it from side to side but nothing fell off apart from my head when I suddenly noticed that the fuel gauge was working and the bloody thing had 2 mirrors: when we set off in the morning we had no fuel gauge and no mirrors!! “SHIT ANNA, GET YOUR ARSE BACK HERE, WE”VE GOT THE WRONG BLOODY BIKE”
It was only about 5 minutes back to where the swap must have happened but as I coaxed the maximum speed out of the stolen bike with Anna giggling away behind me, a thousand silly things went thru my mind:
I'd struggled with the blasted keys all day as the petrol station guy had pointed out, they were Honda keys for a yamaha bike, the bike I'd inadvertantly nicked was a yamaha! If all keys fitted all bikes, how many times did this happen to dozey tourists like me because all the bloody things look roughly the same? Did the rental places constantly get wrong bikes back ? Did they care which one they got back? What the hell was I going to do if “our” bike had gone? What would the other bike's owner/hirer do about it??
As we pootled along all too slowly, trying to locate the place we'd left it I hatched the plan to just hand it in and plead ignorant if worse came to the worse but............ it didn't! Our crock of crap bike was still where we left it so we did a high speed swap and sped of giggling like kids!!! I was very pleased to hand the wretched thing back in at the hotel and slung the keys back telling the guy that they weren't theright ones, “I know” he said, “Everyone has wrong keys, everyone rides wrong bikes all time so keys work for all!”

That evening we had arranged to meet Elin from Norway who we had met earlier in our trip on Ko Tao. She had been in Hoyan about a month and was studying at the university, so we met on the chinese bridge at 7pm, a bridge that she hadn't even crossed even though she had been there a month, we found this unbelievable!!! We promptly marched her across the bridge into the nearest boozer and met up with Stu and Lara, a couple from our hotel. From this moment on ….a quite frenzied boozeup started and continued back across the river where Elin recommended a very nice restaurant. All very very nice and the food was lovely (if you increased the portion size by 5 times!) but to be honest it was a bit too nice for us backpackers and we made a swift exit after eating. After a 20 min walk she took us to the Why the F**K Not bar, a seedy little joint which stays open late.
Starting on buckets of whiskey and coke sat at tables things soon moved to the bar where the shots started flowing and Dave and Stu really got their snouts in the trough. Not happy with what they'd drunk by 2am they tried every other bar on the way home and eventually got served in a grubby little dive full of locals not far from the hotel. Language was a problem here, in every sense as Dave & Stu couldn't make sense of themselves never mind the locals and what was intended to be an order of chicken legs turned out to be plate of chikens feet!! Quite dreadful. This chaos continued until about 4am!!


After very little sleep we awoke feeling decidely rough but looking forward to a day on the beach before taking the nightbus to Nha Trang. This was not to be as the sky was overcast and it was really windy. Instead we packed our gear, had breakfast and then joined Vicky and Jose for a wander into town with the mission of finding a good italian. And we did, my god it was good, quite expensive comparitively but well worth the money! We had a very relaxing afternoon, eating and chatting until our bus arrived at 5.30pm. No sign of Stu and Lara (who after going to bed at 0400ish were supposed to be going on a trip at 0500 to see sunrise at My Son....think we may have talked them out of it!)

The bus was better...marginally, not having the bottom half of your body contained within a plastic coffin is like first class!! We both slept ish as the driver didn't nervously honk his horn every 5 minutes, not a bad journey and we arrived with relief in Nha Trang at 0630.

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Photos

Temple at My Son
hmmm doesn't get more exciting than this!

Doing as the locals do..
...stroll on the beach with yer helmet on!

Doing as the locals do..
...stroll on the beach with yer helmet on!

OOPS!
ours was on the right, we took the bike on the left!

Drinking Buckets!!!
1.75 quid a bucket...bargain

A bit squiffy!
Our friends will recognise this look!

Chickens feet
its always handy to have chickens feet handy when you have an itch!