Danang and around....

We arrived in Danang after our last wonderful breakfast at our hotel in Hoi An. We came there with a mission….a mission to ride motorbikes all day, every day in search of the wonders Danang and the countryside had to offer!  After checking in we rented motorbikes straight away and were off on our first adventure to find this large Buddha statue and to ride up Monkey Mountain! Both were quite a glorious ride!

 We almost didn’t make it to the top of monkey mountain though because there were some monkeys that hopped across the road and I was too scared to drive by, thinking that they would jump out and attack me! My friend Jordan, who is bear trained and the works (she’s Canadian!), made me very worried about rabies! I really didn’t know it was such a bad thing or that there was a shortage of medicine! 

We came back and ate at a restaurant/bakery place that supports deaf people.  We had a great Vietnamese pizza!

The next morning we got up and drove to Ba Na Hills, about 45 kilometers away. Another great scenic ride. On the ride there, Lance made a local friend, who ended up driving next to him for about 10 kms, just chatting and asking questions! This was all good, until this cost us time and the last 3km or so we got caught in a rain storm! We were absolutely soaked! We waited it out at the bottom of the hill.  We were told we could bike to the top, but once we got there we were told otherwise! There is the world’s longest cable car to get to the top of the mountains – 5km long! We decided to take that and it was well worth the money! We ventured over the most dense, thick and beautiful mountains, with random waterfalls and big rocks.

  At the top, after traveling through these beautiful mountains where it was nothing but nature, we found ourselves at a resort with a place called Fantasy Land, which was a huge fun park. It was a little disturbing. There were also some big Buddha’s and other cool things to see fortunately.

A local fishing net....

The next day we got back on our motorbikes and headed out to find this beach shop that was supposed to have awesome food. It took us 2 hours, asking 8 different local people and turning around a few times to finally find it! It was worth the wait! This quaint little place tucked away had the BEST burgers and the BEST mango smoothies! The secret to the smoothies (the owner told me), was freezing the fruit and the yogurt! I will remember that one!  Then we ventured on to Marble Mountains, which was a bit of hiking, seeing statues, pagodas and some cool caves.

We also drove up to Hai Van Pass, which is just a beautiful winding road through the mountains.

The next day we slept in and slowly made our way to the airport to go back to Hanoi….vacation is over!!! Back to work!!!  It was a very well needed, refreshing break from the grind, pollution and over populated Hanoi!