We spent day one driving our champion of a motorbike from Danang to a beach near Hue. I bought the motorcycle in Danang from another foreigner for 3 million Dong which is around $120 or so dollars. It’s semiautomatic and a goddamn champion. We bought it with 22,000km on it and she purrs like she was born yesterday.
Stuff – On our trip we are bringing a medium sized bag that holds 2 sleeping bags and tent, a medium sized bag that will hold all the clothes and food, and a backpack that will hold the computer, drone, and other electronics. We bought a rack that goes across the back and I strapped the back with the 2 medium bags with one of us sitting on the one holding the sleeping bags while wearing the back pack and the other driving with minimal space up front. The entire drive I was crouched over with my knees touching the front panel while my right ankle continually burned themselves on the extremely hot engine.
The trip from Da Nang to Hue passes “Hai Van Pass” which is considered a dangerous drive. To be honest there really isn’t any point that seems dangerous to me. Unless you lost your brakes on the way down the road is in great shape and none of the turns are that sharp. There’s also rails to keep you on the road for the parts with a steep drop off. And the views are absolutely spectacular.
We made it all the way to Hue where we found a beach that we thought would be a good spot to spend the night. We set up the tent right next to this restaurant that had a sweet old lady that let us park our motorcycle at the restaurant for the night. The waves lulled us to sleep very early(around 8pm) as we were already exhausted from riding. We were woken up almost instantly by children sprinting by our tent. They spent the night sprinting back and forth by our tent at what seemed to be very high speeds until around 2 am. Then there were crews of people that would drive up, pack sand in some bags and leave. When we finally woke from our slumber we ate some coco crunch, dragon fruit and started on our way to Phong Nha.
How to get a motorcycle in Vietnam – We bought our motorcycle(Honda Wave 110) using the facebook buy and sell page for Da Nang, the city we were in. Another way to get a bike is to walk down streets near hostels and look for bikes with for sale signs on them. A lot of travelers will be selling their bikes for very cheap. You can expect to pay 3-5 million dong minimum(about $120 to $200) for a pretty shitty motorcycle.
