After the obligatory photo with my homestay hosts in Hoi An, I headed north towards Da Nang and the bucket list, Hai Van Pass. Reaching the green rice fields just outside Hoi An, I saw an elderly gentleman with his signature lampshade hat. A few meters from him another guy in the rice field attending to a water buffalo. I asked the old guy whether I could take a picture. He nodded, and walking towards the buffalo he asked me to remove my helmet and wear his hat instead. His mate had a small bucket standing next to the buffalo, and suggested I mount the animal, so he could take a couple of pics of me. All done, they then indicated I had to pay them for their service. I paid up and walked back to my bike. As I was about to leave, a big tour bus pulled up, and dozens of tourists streamed down to the buffalo and the two Vietnamese guys, to have their pictures taken. Nice little business and high level entrepreneurship!! The bus driver was probably complicit.

Hai Van Pass is supposed to be one of the most beautiful passes in Vietnam. Some would dispute that statement, but the pass was made famous when Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson and his inmates in 2008 filmed an episode with them riding the pass on bikes. The episode can still be watched on YT. Since then the pass has become a "must do" item when visiting the Da Nang area. The pass is quite spectacular with the mountainside and dense jungle on one side and deep valleys and slopes down to the ocean on the other. The pass is only about 20km long, and it's all over, almost before it's begun. I rode it to the end, and back again. Thanks Jeremy!

Leaving the coast I now headed inland to connect with the Ho Chi Minh Road (HCMR) to Khe Sanh. It is an incredible road in terms of scenery. A bikers dream. I spent the rest of the day on this road. It skirts the Laos border and feels extremely remote. I could drive for a full hour without seeing a soul. You stop the bike and park up to take a photo. The silence is deafening. Not a sound to be heard. The road twists and turns through impossible mountain areas - one after the other. Hundreds of corners and switch-backs. All this while following the flow of a beautiful turquoise river. It combines mountains, jungles and rivers into one phenomenal ride.

The riding surface is made of concrete slabs, wide enough for one car and can be a bit slippery when wet. The concrete slabs remind me of the way the Germans build roads in Denmark during the Second World War. Another odd - but extremely effective - traffic calming effort, is to spread a thin layer of gravel in some of the corners. The hardest thing to navigate on a bike - but it works. Late afternoon the weather changed and I was enveloped in a thick fog, so loaded with moisture that I had to constantly wipe my helmet visor. Visibility was down to a few meters. The biggest danger is probably running into a water buffalo or cattle walking along the road. Suddenly, at one point a tunnel turned up - unlit, grim and dark. The power of the Honda's front light is about as good as candlelight, but fortunately it was a short tunnel. A little while later I hit a much longer tunnel, and slowed down to walking pace on the bike, trying to navigate the road and get out safely on the other side. By this stage I was completely wet and cold. Fortunately, Kha Sanh was just around the corner. I stopped at a small shop to buy some water, when I saw two foreigners pull in at a building next to where I was standing. It turned out to be The Green Hotel, where I booked in and headed straight for the hot shower to get my body temperature up!

The following morning I continued along the HCMR to reach the world heritage caves at Phong An - another MUST see. This is acknowledged as the most beautiful stretch of the HCMR, and did not disappoint.
I woke up to a sunny day, and couldn't wait to get back on the road again. I was in such a hurry that I took a wrong turn out of the city, and only found out 20 kms later! Back to the start again. Around midday I stopped for lunch at a small restaurant, where I met 3 Americans and their 2 Vietnamese guides, all on bikes. All in their sixties, they were on a 5 week tour of Vietnam from Hanoi to HCMC. A tour they had planned to do 3 years earlier, but which had been interrupted by the pandemic. Late afternoon - after yet another stunning day on the bike - I pulled in to a hostel in Phong An. The whole area with the world's largest caves and the Phong An-Khe National Park, is one of the most visited tourist spots in Vietnam. There are hundreds of hostels, hotels, homestays and Nha Nghis, so finding a bed for the night was not a problem.

As I was dozing off to sleep a thought came to me. Perhaps I should suggest the Vietnamese rename the Ho Chi Minh Road to the Joshi Minh Road - after all I had done enough kilometers on the road by now to deserve that!