16 Sep – Motorbike Touring in Hue

Today, we are on a different sort of bike, one with an engine and a rider.  We are being taken as pillion passengers on a motorbike tour of Hue.  Motorbikes in Vietnam, as I have mentioned before, are all small capacity machines, and my trusty steed for the day was a Kawasaki 110cc bike.  My rider spoke no English, so that was fine – he rode, I sat on the back, tried to go with the flow whenever we went around corners and did my best not to look terrified when we were in the traffic.

Actually, the traffic was pretty OK, and in the day I had on the bike there was only one incident where I thought we were in trouble, but we got through it OK, and I didn't need to swear, so all in all it was good.  What I hadn't quite expected, however, was that Vietnam’s roads are really more like bush paths, and that we would be spending most of the day on a combination of narrow smooth well-formed concrete paths, narrow potholed and in desperate need of repair paths, and basically dirt tracks with a fair amount of water pooling on them because of the deluge that we’d suffered yesterday.

Pictures tell the best story for the day, so you can see what we got up to by clicking here

The ride had various stops, which was good, as the seat was not the most comfortable I’d sat on, and although it had suspension, unlike my pushbike for the last two weeks,  after 20 minutes or so of bouncing over bumps on our journey from place to place, I was well ready to get off each time and go for a wander.

Some of the crew hadn’t been on motorbikes before, so I had to give a couple of them advice about how to get on and off the bikes.  For the taller ones (my height), the seat was pretty low, so it was better to stand on the ground and throw your leg over the seat, then put your feet on the foot rests.  For the shorter ones, this was a mission, so it was better for them to put a foot on the left pedal first, their hands on the riders shoulders, then push themselves straight up, so they were then at full height on top of the foot pedal, then throw their leg over, put it on the other pedal, then sit down.  Easy techniques when you’ve made all the novice mistakes, but good to point out to people before they did that, and they were all soon fully competent to get on and off the motorbikes.

Helmets on - ready to go

So, off we went, firstly weaving our way through the Hue traffic.  It’s amazing what you can do with a 110cc motorbike, and the little machine seemed to have no problem taking me and my significantly lighter driver round the streets of Hue.  Soon enough however, we got off the main road and onto the little concrete paths that seem to make up a fair chunk of Hue’s commuter network.  It was great fun zooming round on these little paths, and we would spend most of the day going from sight to sight, travelling through small local markets, going completely off road at one stage to stop and look at the rice paddies, and the water buffaloes wallowing in a mud bath. 

Close formation through the markets

These are two way tracks for people, bikes and scooters

Ladies at the market

Scooters will go anywhere

A mud bath anyone?

At one point, we headed out onto the motorway and the speed got up to 60 kph, which was a bit unnerving, given that the only safety equipment I had was a pair of gym shoes, and a fairly rudimentary helmet.  I got to see close up how the Vietnamese traffic sometimes doesn't work, as one of the people crossing an intersection in front of us decided that the 4 foot gap between my scooter and the one in front was the one that she was going to cut through.  The driver had to break very hard, then turn towards the street the woman was heading into in order to avoid hitting her.  It was all a bit too close for my liking, but we got away with it.  The first principle of driving in Vietnam is obviously don’t hit anything, rather than who has the right of way, and that is how the whole system works.  And generally it does work very well, however, the statistics aren't good, so you can’t go on the “Buddha is on my side” philosophy all the time.

The main attraction of the ride was the visit to tomb of Minh Mang, which is a huge complex with lots of pagodas, statues, lakes and gardens.  Walking from one end of the complex to another took us about half an hour, and we enjoyed the setting of the place – it had a very peaceful feel about it.  We had visited it on our last trip, and this was where we found the most desperate, destitute people – the children all grabbing your hands as you left to take them to their mother’s stall to buy a can of coke or fruit.  There was none of that this time, and the place was almost deserted.  There were still a few people selling drinks – out of a fridge, so things have certainly changed for the better in the 20 years.

After another blast on a bit of motorway, and through some back country lanes, we arrived at lunch which was an all vegetarian affair, which was really enjoyable. I even enjoyed the soup, and many of the dishes were very creatively prepared and presented, so it was a very varied, and tasty meal.  The restaurant was at a monastery, so we got to look around at the statues, and even ring the lunch bell, which was fun.

The first stop after lunch was the lookout for the Perfume River. 

We then went on to a temple which has the car of the monk who burnt himself to death in 1963 in protest at the South Vietnamese Government's treatment of Buddhists. The event occurred at a busy Saigon intersection - the monk had driven himself there, sat himself down in the middle of the intersection, poured petrol over himself and then set it alight.  The pictures of the event went around the world, and led John F Kennedy to declare that “"no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one."

Finally it was back through the rush hour traffic into Hue for the end of a very enjoyable days motorcycle touring, site seeing and eating.