Day 1

When mister Chinh showed up, he discussed the route that he had planned with us. We left and our first stop was after 10 minutes at 'vegetable village'. This was a village where they, the name kind of gives it away, were growing a lot of different vegetables. Chinh showed us how they watered the plants and we were allowed to try it as well. We started riding again and the next stop was Marble Mountain. This mountain was pretty cool because it had several caves on the inside, some with some really nice Buddhas cut out of marble. The streets also hosted a lot of shops where you could buy very impressive marble statues. After Marble Mountain we went to a hill where there used to be a US military base. We were told that the hill was off strategical importance and that a lot of soldiers died trying to overtake the base. The next stop was at a nice waterfall. The waterfall was different than the others I have seen so far since they had far more rocks and the water streamed down from it instead of basically dropping down and splashing in the water below. We climbed it and continued our journey.

After lunch we were about to start with the most important part of the journey; driving on the Ho Chi Minh Road. The North Vietnamese army built this road to create a new way into the Southern part of Vietnam. The only road seperating the two parts was heavily guarded and therefore they built this road to surprise the enemy from behind. The landscape was awesome. I was driving this day and sometimes it was quite hard to enjoy the amazing scenery while keeping my eyes on the road but it worked out allright. We were allowed to stop wherever we wanted and whenever we wanted to take pictures along the way so we made good use of the opportunity.

Our next stop was a pineapple plantation. That was pretty cool to see because I always thought they grew on trees but it is just like a flower on the ground. After some short stops for some landscape pictures we stopped at a small riverbed where we walked up the stream on the stones in the water. It was ok to do, maybe Chinh just wanted to kill some time haha. We ended in a minority village and to get into the village we needed to cross a hanging wooden bridge across a river. I was convinced that Chinh has done this lots of time already and when he and Philipp, he was on the back of the bike of Chinh, made it across I raced behind them. Some of the planks missed a part or were missing at all so it was quite cool to do. The minority village has a lot of problems of the Agent Orange (drinking polluted water) and incest because the people don't travel out of the village.We had an overnight stay in a hotel in the mountain. Dinner was awesome, we ate local food throughout the three days, and we had several side dishes with the rice.

Day 2

After breakfast we continued our way. We first stopped at another minority village. We then visited a sign of the Ho Chi Minh Road which is nice to have a picture with with the bikes as well. Then we went to another village where we were explained how ricewine was made. We tasted it as well, but a 40% alcohol containing drink at 10:00 isn't a great succes. We saw a grave of a chief of a village that was made out of wood and decorated with several carvings in it. After that we stopped at a tea plantation and Chinh explained us the difference between yellow, green and black tea. I don't know the order anymore, but it all grows on the same plant and the flavour is determined by how long the leafs are on the bush.

The next stop was a natural hot spring. I was hoping for a warm water lake somewhere in the mountains, but it was at someones place who created like bathtubs in different sizes and filled it up with hot water from the mountain. We chilled for about an hour, got lunch and were on our way to Da Nang. In Da Nang are several bridges and there was one in particular that I wanted to see; the Dragon Bridge. This is a bridge that has a quite impressive dragon on it and it lit up at night. We first passed it at daytime and continued to a 68 meter high Buddha statue. I was quite excited for that since that was the biggest one that I have seen so far. After this we went back into the city to check in at our hotel and after dinner we went back out to go see a flower market and the Dragon Bridge at night.

The flower market was because of Vietnamese New Year. This is a holiday that lasts about 10 days and has only been annoying for us since not every sight was open and everything costed more. The Vietnamese believe that if they buy flowers for NY that it brings them luck and fortune for the next year. After that we went to the Dragon Bridge. It was awesome to see and it changed colors after some time. It usually breathes some fire as well but although we were there at the time that Chinh said it should breath fire, it didn't.

Day 3

Day 3 didn't start of very nice. After ten minutes of driving I fell of my motobike because I came too close to the side of the road while enjoying the scenery. I tried to correct, but fell on my left side in the process. My left knee and both elbows were open and my bag, that was on the back of the bike, was damaged a bit on the side. The motobike itself needed a new mirror and had some small scratches. Luckily Philipp quickly took out his medical equipment and after some anti infection cream, some bandages and some water I was good to go again. I was just fine, it hurted a bit but I could walk ok and I continued driving because then I needed to bend my knee less than when I was sitting on the back of the bike. Our first stop was the border between North and South Vietnam where we saw some old bunkers with bullet holes in them. The scenery was very cool again.

Our next stop was a view over a lot of rice fields. This was quite nice to see and after this we went to the biggest graveyard in Vietnam. This place contained about 70.000 coffins and a lot of them were placed in huge family graves. Most of them were very expensive, around 50.000$, and built by Vietnamese who have been in America and saved money to be able to build it for their family.

We arrived in Hue at around 16:00. We were dropped off at the hotel, checked in at our hotel and I ended up paying 15$ for the damage to the motobike. My knee had been bleeding quite a bit during the ride and the bandage was quite bloody. I needed to take some rest the next couple of days, but first we needed to decide what we were going to do the next coming days. The initial plan was to go to the Paradise Cave on the 30th, take the night bus to Hanoi on the same day and spend Vietnamese New Year in the capital on the 31st.