Spent the last few days in Danang nursing my head/chest cold and talking myself into packing. When I arrived in Danang a month ago, my pack was to the near exploding zone. I brought a lot of gifts for Sharon and Laura and was looking froward to all the empty room. Funny thing was that I had acquired quite a few new clothing pieces and now closing my pack was not even possible. A trip to the post office was necessary and right now I have no idea what went into that box. Guess I don't need to and if it doesn't show up in the anticipated 2 months, I won't know what to miss.

Laura and Sharon and I had been wanting to go up to BaNa Hills on a day trip and just hadn't got around to it. It is a resort area about 45 kms from DaNang that the locals rave about. The magic of the place is that you can experience four seasons in one day. Summer at the bottom of the mountain, spring on the way up, winter at the top where it is colder than most Vietnamese could imagine, and fall somewhere in there.
 
We decided to give the Easy Riders another go and called the local chapter to come and take us out for an adventure. Two guys showed up with the most pimped out 150 cc bikes one could imagine. The chrome accessories alone must weigh the things down to the 100cc power mark yet the trinkets are convincing in making the bikes look like Harley's. Quite funny actually when you think of how small these engines are and yet you see very few bikes that look like these ones - and that is in a country where every man, woman and child owns a bike and/or scooter. We were really eye turning Biker Babes!

BaNa Hills boosts that it is the Guinness World Record Holder 2009, of the longest cable car without a mid station - longest free span. It was OK and the scenery was nice - coming from the Rockies it is hard to get excited about mountains, but for the Vietnamese who live at sea level, it seemed to be very exciting. For me the coolest thing was the giant Buddha at he top. Very giant!!! The cable car is brand new - Swiss built and quite an engineering feat to pull off the 5km??? span.




The ride out into the countryside was nice - the way to see Asia is definitely on the back of a bike!



I was so tired from the antibiotics that I couldn't even play tennis!!!! Ahh - that sucked, but they did seem to be real drugs (one never knows in Asia) and my coughing did not get any worse before I had to head out into the world to make room for Laura's mom. The family was sad I was leaving and even sadder that Laura had told them that she too planned to leave in a month''s time to move to her own apartment closer to the beach.