Author: ouwen

• On the bus pickup, I got to meet the girl who played the day before at our rooftop. She is studying law and is travelling with her boyfriend who does something in crafting professions. In Chinese societies such couples would never work out (because people value university education more) but in western culture, the basic beliefs or the environment shaping their values are on the same level. (interesting topic to expand)

The bus ride was quite “fun”. The road went up and down and the driver was trying to break his personal best record. There were moments where we almost feared our lives.

I met up with Fabian and Nicolas at the pool in the other Ostello Bello (there are 2 in Bagan) as agreed at 7. We joined the Bingo game back in our hostel which was extremely challenging and fun … nooot. Despite being a bit tired, I decided to go for the free tour next day.

There I met Christopher. A young local uni graduate doing tours now in his hometown. He shaped his perfect English mostly with movies during his studies. We talked openly about any topics in Myanmar, including what is on the media. But there are actually more conflicts than the Rohinjas (more on that later). Chris sat in the shade of the temple and told us what he knows and what he believes in. He values the backpackers because it is us who actually are helping the local economy. By boycotting toursim, the only ones who suffer are the ones relying on the business, not the government.

Chris also taught English in a monastery. It was part of the tour where he showed us the classeoom. He put up a video about continents and let us chat with the monks (from young to old) about where we come from and where we have been. It was nice to see how some kids are interested and some less. Monastery is a way to let kids receive education for those who cant afford school.

We went to watch the sunset after the tour. All temples are not allowed to be climbed since a American girl wanted to take a selfie and fell into her afterlife a few months ago. We managed to find a place with broken gate on MAPS.ME. Sadly some locals discovered us and we were chased down pretty quickly. The lucky in the unlucky was that the sun went into the fog already when they chased us down.

Sunrise was a typical thing to do as well, of course also because of the air balloons. Me and Fabian scouted a spot Chris recommended us the night before and led also 3 other dutch people we met.

Back to people:

Fabian is travelling for 9 months now. He started in Ecuador where he took 2 weeks of private Spanish lessons in Quito. He has spent at least one month in Ecuador, Columbia, Palau, Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and now is in Myanmar. It is difficult to describe, but all Swiss people have something in their behaviours that confirms that they are Swiss. I haven’t found the exact words yet, but it is something in the conversations, the way they carry on a conversation, or maybe it is simply just the language itself.

We met a dutch couple after the sunset. They are a bit older. We actually just joined at the table, and started talking. The guy is divorced and runs a building emergency service company. His gf, mike,works at oil company who has 45 days of holidays in a year! He has a pilot license and showed us some pictures from the cockpit as well. They are very grounded person and the conversation felt easy flowing where we would exchange equally.

There was also a dutch guy the next morning who was doing internship in yangon where he was organizing sport events.

On the day tour there was a Brazilian girl who spoke Portuguese, Spanish, very well English (a year in the US) and got a job in Shanghai to teach English and learned Chinese as well. And she spoke well! She is very talkative and uses all the chances to practise. That is what sets her apart.

We met Alfie again after the sunrise and together with Nicolas and Fabian, we ended up discussing about Bitcoin, our jobs, slavery, raeggae, passive income.

Then my second diahrrea hit strong … I was not able to puke it out as last time so I had my troubles for a while before leaving for Pwin Oo Lwin. But not too many details needed …

Me, sitting in a calm cafe on the riverside in Luang Prabang (Laos positively surprised me!)

My trip to Mandalay went via Bangkok. Actually the plane remained the same for both legs, I could have stayed in the plane … (This is something I still remember after 3.5 weeks, which is funny considering how significant this fact is …) Also along the way, saw some more red passports speaking Italian, the first one I have heard on the road so far.

I had organized a pick up from the airport to the hostel. The guy who had my name written asked for the taxi money (20000 Myanmar Kyats, also when he opened his mouth, his teeth, full covered in reddish beet stains, scared me a little). I did not have any Kyats with me so I gave him 20 dollars to exchange. I know that 20 dollars should be at least 26000 Kyats and after he returned he still insisted on giving him tips because he waited half an hour outside. (To be fair, you never pick up someone exactly when the plane is supposed to land … but I wanted to save the troubles to argue) After I pointed out that the missing 6000 Kyats went somewhere I am not aware of, he quickly grabbed the 6k from the taxi driver and split with him by half. This was really the first disappointment I had after hearing a lot of good things about the people in Myanmar. But I guess this is what tourism brings with itself …

The hostel Ostello Bello was pretty organized. They have a specific desk for organizing transportation. Events are organized on the rooftop. The first night, we played “Stand, Land, Fluss” (Didn’t know it is called like this haha) where I briefly met a Nicolas (FRA), Selina (CHE/ZH) and David (AUT) (I believe). Selina and David met online to find their travel buddies for the world travel. Basically, the moderator mentions a letter and you need to come up with unique answers for different categories. For example, for B, you would need to write down Belgium for country, Belfast for city, and if anybody also mentioned Belfast as a solution for city, you only get reduced points. After the events you would get to know different people on the rooftop but after 2 beers, I went down to catch some sleep for the tour next day.

On the tour, I met Nicolas again, together with Dane and John. Nicolas is a social worker who lives in Le Mans. Dane just finished his 2-year teaching in Korea and is traveling through land routes only from Korea to London. John is retired and is exploring the world by himself.

The tour guide used to be a monk for 2.5 years. He said he was a very bad monk, and we suspect that he might have been kicked out of the monastery. He also has an owl at home, which if screams at night, is supposed to bring good prophecy for the family.

During the lunch we discussed some interesting topics, however, I can’t recall the details after 3 weeks … Maybe it was not that interesting to me after all. The golden leaf pagoda, Ava, monastery and U Bein bridge gave us a pretty good impression of Myanmar.

At the sunset, while having a beer, we met others from the hostel as well. One particular Dutch said something that I still remember: if you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much. I had a good chuckle at that one.

Without doing much that night, I headed to the Mandalay hills the next day. I took a bike to get to the foot of the hills and took the below local bus which drove quite crazily to the top.

The walk from top down was really enjoyable since there were almost no tourists on the way ( I only saw two). There was time to observe and also to let your own thoughts flourish. In the afternoon, I followed suggestion someone and visited the area behind the hills as well. Despite being only a blink of an eye away from the imperial palace, the neighborhood looked like a shit hole. The food was so cheap (500 Kyats for a noodle soup). It doesn’t really make how this area is so underdeveloped. But of course, from time to time, you see well established buildings too (such as the pink one in the picture).

The (last) imperial palace did not have much to offer, except the exterior. I met a French lady, Darphene, in front of the gate and we visited the palace together. She used to work in a medical device company and basically the relationship with her younger, newly joined boss, went south and she decided to quit.

The more modern part of the streets of Mandalay.

That night, live music’s been played on the rooftop. Also, a German girl played there as well, who I met afterwards in the bus to Bagan as well. Just before, I met Alfie, who just introduced himself downstairs while I was reading a lonely planet about Myanmar. Normally, I would not have done that since reading a book would be a sign that normally someone does not want to be disturbed. But did I mind? No, I did not … So interpreting these kind of signals can be misleading too. If the person is interested, he/she will be. The best way is to find out.

After the concert, I also talked to Fabian from Lucerne, whom I did many things together in Bagan along with Nicolas. We ended up checking our facebook friends to see whether we have some mutual friends or not since Switzerland is not a very big place. He was able to explain his connection to everyone I mentioned which is not bad at all.

We also had conversation with a girl originally from Uzbekistan, who lives now in Miami. She was on the same trek with Nicolas from Kalaw to Inle Lake, where all 3 guys in the group ended up being gay. Nicolas told us much drama on this trip whereas the Uzbek girl considered the other 2 guys being very nice to them. ” fights? xD”

Me, in the raining Bangkok, I guess it is god’s turn at the water festival now to pour down what he/she might have missed. But this was some good catch up to do, now I am only one country behind!

Angkor Wat has been the place that I was looking forward to the most. The trip is somewhat pre-organized. In order to save some money and get around the outer circle of Angkor a bit easier, I created a post on Qyer (Chinese travel app / platform) to find some buddies to share the cost for a mini van. Finally we ended up being 4 with a girl (let’s call her A) around my age who is traveling with her mom and an other girl (let’s call her B) who is slightly younger doing data analysis for a milk product company.

The major difference traveling with Chinese people is the involvement/interaction with other groups. It is very difficult to get in touch with others since our group doesn’t really speak English. Also because we did not participate in any other tour activities. Our 3 day in Angkor is all organized by a Taiwanese driver who contacted me through the travel platform as well.

I met B first in the hostel. I was bit tired after being squeezed in the first row of the bus from Phnom Peng (Mekong Express is a safe company, the service is very good despite the old bus, the only down side was that I had no leg room, yes, I finally had this issue too … The Australian high school admin beside suffered more though). She very warmly said hi and went upstairs to finish her work in her dorm room (because of AC). We walked around after and bought some pants for the next day and had a chat during a can of Cambodian beer. She has been to a few places in China and mentioned how the traveling has ‘destroyed’ her world/value/life view. However she refused to mention details and I can only guess this goes into the physical attraction direction.

Girl A seemed a strong woman in the chat beforehand but turned out to be quite easy going when we met her and her mom. Her mom smiles a lot and is also very easy to talk to. She would take a break from time to time and then tried to teach our tuk tuk driver more Chinese.

Our taxi/tuktuk driver, named 祁益龙/QiYiLong (I always imagined “peculiar dragon” in my head which sounds exactly the same) is the highlight of the Angkor Wat trip. Coming from a poor village, he taught himself Chinese. He laughs a lot and the laughter is always genuine which comes from deep within. Sometimes he would watch us suffer from the heat and laugh at us, sometimes he would make a joke and laugh at his own joke, sometimes he would mention his boss and laugh a bit about him too, sometimes he would look at us how we eat the bamboo rice and laugh at us.

Despite him not knowing a lot of the history background from Angkor, he was a very fun person to be with. The genuine way of communicating with us just gives us the warm feeling of him being honest with us. When we had a flat tire, he would laugh out loudly as well. In the end, he is just a happy man. You do not sense any annoyance even when the tire broke. Whatever happens, his laughter is always the best answer to any problem. In the night, he would drive us back to the market and said that he would look for a job to drive back, if nobody hails him, he would drive us back home.

YiLong is also quite skilled. He knows how to climb a tree, how to drive a boat, how to distinguish all the plants in the fields. And us, slaves of the modernity, can only watch him and envy.

The last day, we met the Taiwanese boss and another boy from HK who joined for the mini van last minute. The boss seemed very quite and did not talk much. Girl B talked a bit with him and he mentioned that in Taiwan it is not easy anymore to make money and sustain a balanced life, that is why he moved out of the country.  He didn’t introduce much either about the different temples we went to. I wonder how he found YiLong to help him with his agency. The boss himself can’t really speak the local language, YiLong is such a valuable asset to him. The first time he started saying something is actually in the afternoon to say that the Cambodian people are offered a chance to learn Chinese for free when we saw a 4,5 year-old girl selling us bananas.

The HK guy made a very weird first impression. When he got into the van, I asked him whether he speaks Chinese. He just looked up and did not say a word. But after the first stop in a temple, he started to tell a bit more of himself in Chinese. In the end, he seems quite talkative. He is working in the cinema as someone who sets up the film rolls. Now he would even make mean comments within the group chat. I guess the first initial nervousness is something I still experience as well. There are days, where I instinctively avoid eye contacts when seeing new people.

So this is our group, we did have a fun time together, although we could have had more (meaningful) conversation after dinner. I had a beer or two with the HK guy where he told me some of his stories living in HK. That was actually quite nice.

One thing that surprised me on the road is the Cambodian People’s Party buildings. Everything around it looks fucked up and this one was just shiny and freshly painted … They charge now 30 dollars for one day in Angkor. Looking at the sheer amount of tourists there, and all the join funded preservation projects, I wonder where the money has gone …

Otherwise, Angkor Wat is really astonishing with its architecture and the detailed carvings (I missed it the first time I went in, only got to know it after visiting the museum so I went in again on the last day). Every other temple has its own specialty as well, the below one (Banteay Srei) has very detailed carving of the gods. Some temples have wet stones and the trees can actually grow on them.

And on the way to the muddy/dirty lake of Ton Le Sap crossing the floating village.

2 more pictures:

After the first day ofc, there were so many tourists around so that I decided to go to Myanmar straight after. Also to give myself enough time in Myanmar.

me, in Bangkok for 4 days to get a tailored suit.

The bus ride to Phnom Penh was really smooth. In the half empty bus, the guy would collect your passports and take care of the stamping and the arrival visa for you. Compared to the China Vietnam crossing, this one is so easy to walk (almost no walking) and easy to manage.

It turned quite dark when I arrived in the city centre. On the road, I noticed that many shop signs are also in written in Chinese. The influence they make is too large. As usual, I felt unease getting out of the bus and being surrounded by tuktuk drivers. Without internet, I was able to bargain the price down to 3$.

The dark streets of Phnom Penh don’t give you the safest feeling in the world and I also read about bikes that would grab your stuff in your hand when they drive by. So I am trying to be more cautious.

Not much more happened the first night except signing my new contract. Hype.

I booked the day tuktuk to the killing fields and the S21 museum. Together, there were 2 swedish girl, both around 20 years old on their gap year(s). One looked older and now I slowly start to believe, there is some truth to the sentence “you look like you have stories to tell”. She lost her brother on 2016 new years eve, her grandma 3 months later. Her brother took his life, and it came as a surprise for family members. After such turmoil, I think your facial expressions won’t be the same and somebody tried to explain that it is the gaze that changes when you grow older.

I played chess with some Swedish guys from Linköping. Some rooftop chats and I am heading off to Siem Reap.

Me, just arrived in Nay Pi Taw at 2:30am and waiting for the apparent possible early checkin at 6am

Something I ate in Dalat got me pretty bad and I had diarrhea in the morning when I am supposed to go to Saigon. I took 2 Imodium tablets and even puked out what I ate in the last 24 hours. That helped a lot … With much worrying, I arrived in the hot HCMC without much troubles after 6 hours. May’s cousin was also riding with me since he is going back to work (his family has a packaging tape factory close to HCMC and the competition now is more fierce since China is producing some raw materials itself which leverages the competitiveness of Chinese products.)

I met up with Yawhuei’s cousin for dinner with stories about her cousin who  would observe her from his room across the road and come to visit whenever she is home. But she hasn’t really figured out what she wants to do after some years learning Chinese in Taiwan and China.

The hostel itself seemed not to organize events to gather the guests together so it was a bit more difficult to get to know other people. I talked to a Malaysian student who is visiting friends here. Met a firefighter guy from Catalan who used to be a web developer during my half day tour to the tunnels outside of the city. I eventually met 2 Danish girls in Phnom Peng again but we did not talk much.

The owner was more interesting. She was learning German and greeted me in German and we had some very basic conversation. Later I found out that she is actually only 29. She used to be an accountant and is now trying the hostel business. This is her second hostel since she sold the first one and rented this apparent one million USD house and designed it herself. One thing she is confused about is that the facilities she has is better than some other hostels in Vietnam but they have far better ratings (not that hers is bad, she has roughly about 9 but she wants to go to 9.5). One thing I would think is missing are the activities that brings people together. She does not seem the type of person who is super outgoing and likes to connect with everyone. She is a good host by all means but the warmness that for examples Kate radiates is missing here. That was the suggestion I made, hopefully that would help. We even ended up talking about Bitcoins and how she was reading into trading and actually made some thousand bucks last week. So all in all, she is a doer and learns thing super quickly. Also very smart since she seems to get it. I wish her all the best! (The Like Hostel & Cafe)

I did not do much sightseeing. The war museum is very informative and the pictures are quite powerful. Also if you think about it, all things sort of stitch together now for what happened after WW2. Korea war, Vietnam war, and afterwards I would also find out more about Cambodia and Myanmar. Politics and wars are actually interesting topics and I start to see the impacts of them in those places I went to. Crazy how some decision of several individuals can impact the lives of millions of people. And do these people take accountability or responsibility for what they did? I don’t think there is even equivalent responsibility for them to take what they did … maybe they can try to do some things as of help to fund the reconstructions, but … it is not the same … (something we talked in Myanmar is actually that a country can take responsibility for what was caused before by helping now, France is doing that, but not every country)

I also met Valerie again before she flew back to Austria. We had some nice conversations while eating sushi and having a beer on the rooftop in a bar in the backpackers area where you can also find all the bars and clubs. I can’t remember the details now what we talked about back then … I do remember we talked about Croatia and my high school class but I don’t think the conversation got on to a deep level.

That actually concludes my 20 days in Vietnam. I may have missed Sapa or Phon Nha, but all the people I met along the way and all the beautiful sceneries are such enrichments to my life and I hope I did capture the most interesting in my blog posts. Sometimes I still recognize the “thinking too much” me but the journey continues. And I am very much looking forward to browsing through these pages again once I get back.

Me, in Hsipaw feeling very productive even though sitting in front of a very crappy computer where some keys get stuck when I type …

Eddy dropped me off pretty early in Dalat and when I checked into my room, my roomies were sleeping. Later I found out that they were catching up with sleep since they did the canyoning tour that day.

In the common area, I met some people before having the family dinner. One girl looked Asian but spoke native English. She has a tattoo on her inner forearm with 司徒 on it. It was not a beautiful handwriting, so I was wondering how that came to be but didn’t have a chance to ask. One girl called Anna is running a blog and later when I got to read it, her posts are really 流水账 where they are all simple descriptive texts of what happened. (none judgmental since mine might not be better)

After the dinner, I went for a smoke outside where I met the chilled Dutch roomies Jacky and Melissa on their gap years (if I remember correctly). We ended up even doing some abs exercises the next day. That became the running gag between us.

When I stepped back in for the free awesome piano plus violin concert in the hostel, this is when  I sat next to Mai / May. She lost her husband and is now travelling (to deal with it). With her own words, losing her husband “sucks dick”. I can’t imagine how much that sucked, but that snapped me out of my problems for sure. She grew up in a west Africa country which name I forgot and moved with her parents to South Africa as refugees since civil war broke out there (her parent worked as agricultural advisers). Now she is an asset manager in Capetown who has the freedom to invest the money in meaningful projects such as funding of a local church. She is travelling with her cousin who lives in Ho Chi Minh City and rarely travels. He is a chilled dude actually and has 2 kids who are living in Taiwan withe their mom. May convinced me to take the canyoning tour next day and later even convinced me once more to extend one night to do the secret tour. Both of which are the best things in Dalat instead of going around the city.

The canyoning tour includes up-sailings, water sliding, jumping off a cliff of 7 meters (which I never did before). What stressed me out a bit was the fact that when water comes into the lenses and you have a feeling that you might have lost them. A psychological thing… But the whole tour fits well into the theme of “feel the fear and do it anyway”.

The secret tour is a really cultural one and if you are in Dalat, definitely do it! If you wanna know more, PM me ofc. And on the way Mai would speak thoroughly about her knowledge gained in research about food and  the unhealthiness of sugar. But she is not only knowledgeable but also can sort of let go as well when drinking beer. That made her so all around and likable (that comes also with experience I guess).

During the two tours I also met Tylor (young Canadian guy travelling for quite some time, riding the bike to the north, he told me stories about how he doesn’t feel connected to his friends back in his town who don’t want to go out and see the world), Valerie (anthropology student from Graz who I met in Saigon again), Luisa (Argentina girl who I have not found out a lot about), Lorena (German student), Becky, Josh (sweet Winnipeg couple), Andi (also a German student from Mainz, a pretty energetic guy and interested in general), a German guy who lost his bag incl his passport on the road to Dalat (he lost the bag on the road, realized a few km after, went back but the bag was not there anymore), Saskia (who is out travelling with her boyfriend still in NL) and others.

I even went out the night before the secret tour to a club called rain. The music has some weird basslines that is specific in Vietnam. I ll try to upload it later.

Also the maze bar is really cool! With decorations like the Crazy House it is a good place to spend the evening. I also met one girl from Hoi An whom got called old when the 18 year old German boy was asking her age. Andi met some people from Saigon and there was one guy who got laid off whose job ironically was to lay people off (HR i guess) back in the UK.

Me, in hsipaw still recovering and getting better and ready to go to Kalaw.

 

This really is just a bridge post. In these 2 days, I saw a lot from the beautiful country side of Vietnam.

Departing from Nha Trang, there are awesome rice fields on the road. Eddie took me then off road, showed me some sugar cane, and we headed into the hills to go onto the plateau.

(I ll finish the rest later so that I can work on Dalat, where more people are involved)

Me, waiting for diarrhea to be over in Bagan

I arrived in Nha Trang early in the morning with the night bus.

But one funny thing was when I was picked up for the night bus. When I opened up the door of the mini van, I met Michi again. And there were another 2 Swiss girls in the van. A van full of Swiss people! And based on their face expression, they were surprised by an Asian speaking Swiss German too!

Being not too tired I decided to take a daily tour just as I did in Hue. The hostel did not recommend to ride by yourself so I decided to go for an easy rider. That is when I met Eddie Murphy.

So we started with the church in Nha Trang, did the pagoda on the church and went on along the coast side. When he were having coffee, he was of course pitching me his rides to other places. I had a quick thought about going to Dalat through the countryside and after seeing that some Swiss People in his booklet mentioned that it is really easy going with Eddie and there is no “Kaufzwang”. So I decided spontaneously to take a 2 day tour to Dalat through the country side. But also because so far, he gave me a good feeling about it since he is always smiling and not trying too hard.

Eddie also took me to the water fall and convinced me to go into the water even though I didn’t have anything with me and were wearing glasses. Just do it is what he some times says.

He also took me to the fields, showed me how to get rice from the rice fields and eat it. The cham ruin in the city was just overfilled with chinese tourists, 10 minutes were enough for that.

There was also Cao Dai and the mud bath. The Cao Dai being a weird religion in the region at the border to Cambodia. The mud bath is a good place to wind down a bit.

And Nha Trang really is just a huge touristic city filled with Chinese and Russian.

Me, after 3 days of Angkor and its temples, (not quite) ready for a last full day in Siem Reap and Cambodia. (not sure whether I still want to see more temples …)

 

I arrived in the evening in Hoi An. The old city town is a mixture of chinese style buildings and western buildings. The lampions in the street add an extra vibe to the city. That is probably the reason why people extend their stay here.

[pic missing for camera]

But when you think about it, the scenes are created only for tourists. Even though the vibe is chilled, the setup doesn’t feel like an authentic life of the locals.

The next morning, I got into conversation with my roomies. It turned out that we are all roughly about the same age and we joked that this is indeed the oldie’s room since there are quite some party “youngsters” here.

There is Jenna from Wales. She was betrayed by her best friend and business partner. While Jenna was on holiday, her friend did crazy things with her car doing drugs and caused accidents. The car was even under her mom’s name and her best friend even tried to lie to her about what happened. Now she sold everything and came out for travels.

There is Alex from Copenhagen. He is doing social work back in Denmark and he is compensating his overtime with 3 months of travel (jeez he worked a lot). He went to South America before coming to South East Asia. According to him, you have older backpackers there compared to SEA (I guess I might head there after SG). He has been going out for a few times and seems just to be the laid back guy who embraces what he is doing now.

The hostel itself organizes a lot of group activities such as street food tour, spring roll cooking class or pub crawls which help you to get know other people.

In that short night of cooking class + pub crawl, I got to know some people. There is Pope whom I got to know after the Spring Roll cooking class. We were playing some card games and making some jokes. We talked more when we were walking back from the bar to the hostel, ofc, same stuff. But she seemed a good companion to talk to, easy going and making some good points. There was also Michi, the second Swiss guy I met during Vietnam. He is on his holidays between his master semesters.

 

The next night, I met a Dutch girl and another Swiss guy from Bern (Now in Hindsight, I don’t even 100% remember what we talked about, just some chit chat). The Dutch girl is working in the HR area. And she mentioned that a good question that you can ask someone to get to see who they are is: What would you do if you have a lot of fortune that you don’t need to worry about anything. Although she seemed straightforward with her dreams (which is have own company to provide them the best job they are suited for based on their qualifications and character) and likes to laugh, she seemed a bit disconnected. I can’t really say why, but you don’t feel like the real her is coming through even though you are not talking about shallow topics.

I didn’t do much here in Hoi An except walking around in the old town, going to the beach, went to My Son (Mini Angkor Wat) with the bike and spent a last lazy day with massage and reading before boarding the night bus to Nha Trang.

Me, after an early day in the Angkor Wat for the sunrise and seeing the outer circles of Angkor.

 

This post will not be about the people but just a simple day trip from Hue to Hoi An. I only knew it later in Hoi An, that there is actually an Top Gear episode about the Hai Van pass which they call the Hai Van pass challenge.

When I was at the breakfast in Hue, somebody told me I should just do the trip myself instead of an easy rider. So I did. It is super easy to organize, for 400k Dong you can have your luggage delivered and get a good bike in front of your homestay.

I went along the coast line, which Gijs recommended to me. On the road, I saw local weddings which was cool.

And the rice fields on the road are nice too.

It is quite a experience to drive yourself. You would even end up on the high way with your bike, driving faster the a truck does. On the way, there is elephant spring, where I missed the entrance road 3 times. I ended up going back and forth to find it.

The pass has nice sceneries with the view of the ocean. The curvy road is particularly nice to drive on. I realized in the middle that I might not have enough fuel to reach the other end, so I turned back mid way. Good thing that I was also able to see the pass from the other direction, which is closer to the sea.

Da Nang is a big modern city with not much to offer. The hotels are all very close to the beach and it looked very touristic. The marble mountain on the road is a good spot to step by but the small (limestone?) mountain looked a bit misplaced in that area.

I finally arrived in Hoi An at 6:30. It was a nice ride and I am glad that rented bikes don’t give you much trouble compared to guys who bought their bikes somewhere and always need to repair on the road.

Me, just arrived in Siem Reap, deciding to go to Myanmar after this stop.