I got up for the train to Da Nang early, as there was only one train available for the day that I wanted to travel and I took it. The journey was meant to be scenic and it was, but I didn’t find it that interesting. It was quite spectacular, but all the tourists straining themselves to take photos meant that it wasn’t as enjoyable as it could have been. I left the train in Da Nang feeling slightly un-impressed and sat down to figure out what I would be doing over the next couple of days.

As I had a week in Hoi An, I had a few options as to what I did next. Either I could buy a motorbike to Saigon, or I could rent one, or I could get the train. As I was in the train station, I thought that it was a good time to make a decision and as the soft-sleeper train tickets were 1 300 000 VND, I decided to keep my options open and continue on to Hoi An.

I asked a woman in the train station how to get to Hoi An and she pointed me in the direction of the nearest bus stop. Here I could get a bus to Hoi An without having to get a motorbike taxi to another bus station. Whilst waiting for the bus I met a girl from Taiwan who was on her way to see some karst mountains using the same bus route. We just had time to establish that she was from Taichung, before the bus turned up and the scam unfolded that I talked about in the Being Ripped-Off in Vietnam post. We got to Hoi An and I called my hotel, who offered to come and pick me up.

Once in Hoi An I spent a very special couple of days exploring the surrounding countryside during the Tet holiday. Tet itself was spent in Hoi An, wandering around the city and watching the 15-minute firework display show from the riverside. The next few days were spent cycling around the nearby villages, having motorbike after motorbike of people saying ‘hello’ and being invited for nuts, coffee, beer, tofu and buffalo in nearby restaurants. It was very unique and I got to interact with the locals directly, who were feeling very generous.

Whilst in Hoi An, I spent at least 2 days researching and organising the options for getting to Saigon. I had 3 main options, which changed in preference regularly and these were: buying a motorbike, renting a motorbike and paying for an Easy Rider tour. The Easy Rider tour would be the most expensive and would mean that I wouldn’t need to buy (and sell) a motorbike. I could rely on someone else to do the driving, fix the motorbike if it broke and generally take me on a guided tour of the Central Highlands. Renting a motorbike would be the second cheapest, as I could return it (theoretically) in Saigon and have someone to ring if it broke. In reality, it would be difficult to organise, uncomfortable and I’m not sure having someone on the end of a phone would be much help. Thirdly, I could buy a bike. This would be the cheapest, as I could sell it again in Saigon, but after riding a semi-automatic and an automatic moped, I had decided that I would need a full-size motorbike. As I hadn’t ridden one on my own before, buying one for a journey to Saigon didn’t seem like a very good idea. One point that precluded all of this was that I wasn’t able to find a motorbike for sale in Hoi An. In addition to this, I wasn’t able to find a decent map either. It is because of this and the fact that I was able to get the Easy Rider price down that I decided to go on an Easy Rider tour.

I had one day spare before having to make a decision on whether I bought or rented a motorbike and I used it to practise riding a semi-automatic bike, just in case I wanted to buy one for the trip to Saigon. Once on the bike, I needed something to do with it so decided to go to the My Son temple remains in the same province. I got there, got round the temples and managed to get the bike back before my time ran out. The woman who rented it to me wanted an extra 10 000 VND for petrol, but she was very good-natured about it and I gave it to her. The decision from that experiment was that a semi-automatic would be too uncomfortable to ride for the 850 Km to Saigon.

The last day was spent moving hotel, as the one I had been staying in was out of places and the other one I had reserved changed their booking at the last minute. I stayed in a new, expensive hotel for one night whilst I waited for my Easy Rider tour to start. I met Jack, my tour-guide the same day and we agreed to start at a fairly respectable time of 07:30 the next day.