"Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space..."
While its true my motorbike was a bit more scooter, than Harley, the ride was still pretty awesome! The bike maxed out at about 60 km/hour (which a quick division by 1.6 will tell you is ~38 miles/hour), but I might as well have been traveling at ludicrous speed when I was bold enough to crack it up that fast. However, my mother can rest assured that we only did that a few times... for the most part we spent our time dodging around traffic and getting to the side of the road when trucks came barrelling through.
The roads in Vietnam are about the size of a standard two way street, but they have 6 lanes of traffic going through: regular bikes on the edge, than motorbikes, than cars and trucks (and repeated on the other side of the road going the opposite direction). Clearly, there is not enough road space for all of these vehicles, so when a car or truck comes through they typically drive down the middle of the road, the motorbikes cruise into the bike lane, and the bikers ... well, they mostly pray I imagine. Every once in awhile cars come from both directions at once and then everybody prays (and there is lots of horn honking!)
The traffic is obviously the worst closest to the cities and on the roadways used by the tourist buses. Luckily the route we took to My Son managed to avoid the buses so for the most part we had open road. My Son was about an hour and a half outside of Hoi An and incredibly, we didn't even get lost. It was a great way to see the countryside - being on the bike is a lot different than seeing things from inside a van or bus. For one, you are traveling a bit slower and you are also in total control so you can stop whenever you want. You also feel more a part of the surroundings, with the wind whipping around you and brushing right past cows on the side of the road, etc. Plus, even on a motorbike you feel kind of bad ass cruising down the road.
My Son itself was okay - another place I probably would have appreciated more if I had seen it prior to Angkor Wat. They are ruins from the ancient Kingdom of Champa and are quite old (4th - 13th century). Some of them were also bombed during the Vietnam War so you can imagine the shape they are in.
After seeing the ruins we still had several hours left so we cruised back through Hoi An for lunch and then continued up to the Marble Mountains. The Marble Mountains are, well, five small mountains made of marble. They overlook China Beach, which was one of the major areas U.S. soldiers went for R&R during the war. (China Beach was also a TV show in the late 80's, which is why the name might ring a bell.) The Mountains were great - once we reached the top we were given flashlights and led to a bunch of caves. We climbed all through the caves and at the bottom of one was a huge carved out temple. The marble was quite slippery and you could hear bats above you... it was all very Indiana Jones!
Tomorrow we leave in the morning for Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) where I will finish off my trip before heading home a week from today!
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