Epic Vietnam Journey (Day 9-Hue)

I wake up at 7:30 am and go on a city bus tour, which lasts until 4pm.  Basically saw a few tombs of emperors and some pagodas.  Pretty relaxing.  

I then drive my motorcycle to the beach, which is about 15km away from Hue.  I take a nice walk on the beach, although, unlike the other beaches, this one was pretty crowded, probably due to the fact that it is located next to a fairly large city (Hue).  I draw the usual attention, and strike up conversations with the locals.  I do wish I knew more Vietnamese, as it is very difficult to converse otherwise.  My hand gestures can only go so far.  

I finish my walk along the beach, and I get back on my motorcycle and it is dusk.  So I turn on my lights, or at least try to, and they do not work yet again.  There has to be a short circuit somewhere that is causing both light bulbs to burn out. I drive all the way home with no lights, and I am especially careful, knowing that no one can see me.  I somehow make it home without anyone crashing into me. I truly have a POS motorcycle.  If I make it to Hanoi with the bike, I am just going to throw it in the trashcan, because it really was meant to be a disposable motorcycle.  

I go out to the same restaurant that I went to last night for dinner as I kind of made friends with the waiters and waitresses.  One guy wants to get into the tourism industry, so I help him with his English skills for a couple hours while I eat. After eating, I walk home, and of course, I get accosted about 10 times by pimps or whatever they are.  It’s getting pretty frickin’ annoying.  Now, when they say that I can get a woman for 10 bucks, I say how about zero bucks.  Or when they say I can get a young girl, I say I don’t want young girl.  I want old lady. 

Tomorrow morning, I will head to the DMZ (demilitarized zone), which obviously has a lot of war history.  It’s where Khe Sanh and Hamburger Hill are.  Instead of taking the 1 Highway, I plan to take a road eastward, and then up the Ho Chi Minh trail, and then west to Dong Ha where I hope to spend tomorrow night.  This way I will kind of be making a circle without backtracking, although this is definitely a longer route and only moves me 75km northward.  I was told that it will be a very hot ride as I will encounter a lot of heat blowing westward from Laos.  At this latitude, Vietnam is only 50km wide, so it doesn’t take long to get from the east coast to the western border of Vietnam.  It’s skinny in the middle and wide at the ends.  I have to say that Vietnam is a geographically sexy country.


#vagabonding #vagabondism #travel #instatravel #travelgram #tourist #tourism #vacation #traveling #vietnamroadtrip #vietnammotorcycle #vietnam #hue