So today we got up early and had our final morning of beaching before we headed north. It has been so nice to have a few days of lazy holidaying, especially in such a beautiful place. Hoi An is such a pretty little town and with such a fun vibe, would definately come back here if I ever come back to Vietnam.

Just out of interest, we asked about the hospitals here with a view to elective opportunity, and went to visit the Pacific Hospital which is apparently a western one. It was newish and clean, though very basic, and they encouraged us to email the "boss", so maybe that'd be worth investigating once back in England, though the language barrier would obviously be an issue.

Anyway, I skipped out the morning.

So we were meant to be meeting the motorbike owners in the hotel this morning to talk about biking to Hue, but when they didn't turn up and we contacted the lady we'd spoken to the day before - she told us that they weren't up for it, that it was too far. We knew this to be nonsense, so started walking round again asking more local sellers on the street.

Some would kind of know what you were talking about, implying they had done this setup before, and some would be completely baffled by the idea. It was basically a job of finding someone with whom we could communicate well enough to feel confident leaving our luggage with and knowing we would be meeting them in Hue to swap bags for bikes. We found this in the Thoi family.

An Thoi was a lovely smiley woman, and so was her husband, and they were offering a reasonable price and seemed confident in the plan. They were also letting us pay half upfront and half on arrival in Hue, which was a bonus. Organising it was a family affair, and all the brothers, sisters and family friends would trot over and hassle us all the time, changing minor details and faffing with minutia, but that was fine. It was all very exciting.

We then rented motorbikes out for the day (4US$) and headed back down towards the beach. When we got there, we turned north and kept going, in the hope we'd find somewhere a bit more secluded. And that we did. It was a beautiful little area with some simple, small huts at the top selling basic food and cold drinks, and some sun loungers down on the sand. The sun was scorching.

After about half an hour, I biked back into Hoi An to meet the other 3 girls from med school (as planned) and bring them down to our new found spot. Abi rode the back of my bike and the other 2 followed after half an hour or so. We all hung out on the beach for most of the day, the only exception being when I got a bit hot I thought it'd be a good idea to bike back to Hoi An to find a road map for our trip the following day.

It turns out there is one road map of Vietnam available to buy in Hoi An, and it is on such a big scale that it was totally useless. I bought it anyway, don't know why. In the end, Julia and I memorised the route on Google maps, which as it turned out, worked a treat.

We went for dininer in a restaurant which kept having power cuts but sold delicious beef skewers, though it's impossible to find bad beef out here, and I popped out to call the old man on his birthday.

Bed was an early one, as we didn't want to be tired for our long ride the next day. Which had been estimated by some know-it-all Canadians on the beach at 12 hours or something ridiculous. We later saw them in Hue and it turned out that they got too drunk that night, and slept through their opportunity of biking this famous, beautiful and untravelled route - what pillocks.