Da Nang Motorcycle Ride
Xin Chao bitchez!
Rented a Yamaha Sirius and headed North about 30 klms to Da Nang this morning. The road was fairly good on the way without too much craziness (relative to what, I’m unsure) and the bike engine was fairly new and ran smoothly with the luxury of disk brakes!
The few klms leading into the center of Da Nang is just total construction. I don’t mean, a cement slab or a dirt hole here and there, I mean 99% construction, with the only high buildings visible are concrete shells with scaffolding around them. It made me very happy I bought a baby blue with white polkadots cloth face mask before we left Hoi An (from a woman infinitely amused by our purchase) as the dust was outta control. (And the mud splash to the face afterwards was kept from getting in my mouth at high speed by it as well. That wouldn’t have been pleasant!)
Getting into Da Nang and my horn started failing (It’s never happened before, really! It’s not you! I kept telling Rose…) which is a worry as the magic button on the left hand grip has supersceded the head-check and indicators in S.E. Asia. More on this later.
We found a nice pizza placed called “Mr Pizza – WHAT A PIZZA!” and ate hearty and downed a chilly Coca-Cola and went in search of a mechanic to fix my aural impotence.
We pulled up at a mechanics – bike mechanics are sign posted by a tiny dark grease-pit room with piles of brightly wrapped tyres stacked out the front, with bits of Honda strewn around – and the funny looks started. I don’t they get too many crackers wanting motorcycle repairs there.
After some beeping the pathetic horn and with them saying “aaah GONE!” they started quoting their price to fix the horn. $2.00. Obviously accepted that and faster than you can say “It’s not you, it’s me” they had removed the fairings and replaced the shitty broken horn with a new shiny one, tested it, laughed at how loud it was, and had the fairings back on lickety-split.
I gave them 50,000VND instead of the quoted 30,000VND as the whole show was pure amusement and the tip was recieved with more gags so it was worth it. Five Star Yamaha, take note you greedy slow turds of motorcycle repair. After I said “Ok” to the price, I had 6 hands straight on the bike working furiously. Can’t be beat in Australia. FTW.
As we rode up the coast, I spotted a huge Quan Yin (Chinese depiction of the Buddha of Compassion, aka Chenrezig) jutting out of the jungle mountain which I believe is Monkey Mountain, yet to verify that.
10 minutes later, we were ascending the mountain and found a winding road up to the statue and found a large, very beautiful pagoda, shadowed by this enormous Quan Yin statue, under construction. The face and half of the body was rendered and looked finished, but facade was still being rendered beyond that. It was huge, really!
The pagoda was the best we’ve seen so far I think. It was adorned with paintings from milestones of the Buddha’s life ranging from the traditional stories from his birth, enlightenment and death and many points in between. the place was empty and I would be highly supprised if there’d been more than a handful of tourists there this year. Was a really cool find.
The view Quan Yin yad was rediculous. Really. the bay was awesome. We didn’t have our camera with us which is a major shame but it’s not something we’ll be forgetting any time soon.
Right, I’m beat and going to crawl into bed. 80 klms on these roads on those bikes is pretty taxing.
We’re heading West tomorrow to My Son to check out the Cham ruins there, or at least what’s left of them after they were bombed and shot up during the war due to the VC or NVA, not sure which, used them as a fort and was subsequently bombed and raided.
Take it easy.
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