Tag Archives: motorbike

Bicycle Touring

Day 82: Some rowing through caves

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no cycling

After a more or less longer evening playing cards,  we got up a little bit later than planned,  but got on the road quick. With we, I mean Sinéade from Ireland and me on a motorbike.

Our first stop was Trang An. There we had breakfast as we didn’t find a place on the road,  it was just 6 km. From there we took a rowing boat to explore caves,  lots of caves. Our rower woman gave us paddles and we could paddle too😂 Through the caves we got into different valleys with our boat. We also visited some temples on the way through the valleys.

Yes this is the entrance to a cave,  we all had to put our head down to not hit the roof, just the Vietnamese kid on our boat was amazed with the hands up in the air😂

closer to the entrance

Sadly I was unable to take a good picture inside the cave due to less light,  this is everything I got,  one light.

The caves weren’t that long,  after 100 to 300 meters we always reached an exit.

It was a round trip,  so we never took the same cave again,  we also exited the caves at a different opening than we entered.

Our rower,  really strong,  she was rowing the whole time. we,  the passengers, took lots of breaks.

A boat going into a cave

Arrived at a temple we got off the boat and walked around a little bit

Back at the station where we started. They have enough boats there to ship a whole army😂 The are lots of boats at the other side of the lake (as one can see) and that it continued like that😂

It was a long boat ride,  we arrived for lunch and wanted to visit two more places on our map. On the way to an ancient capital of Vietnam,  we didn’t knew the way and we found a tourist with a Vietnamese friend on their motorbike and they were looking for the third place on our map,  the biggest pagoda of asia or south-east asia (I don’t know, it is big). So we decided to follow them as they could always could ask for the way😁 We decided to visit the ancient capital later.

The pagoda was not the only thing to see there. There were also big statues. To get to the big pagoda we had to walk up some stairs. But the statues were great,  there were different once at different levels. The higher we got the bigger the statues got or the more there were. The second last one was big and on the last level there were 3 of the big once from the level before.

They had a really big bell there

The first impressive statue.

The big pagoda (no we didn’t climb to the top,  I don’t even know if that is possible).

The next big statue.

One hall where the statues are inside

Inside that hall (the biggest one on top), were three big statues like this one.

This is Sinéda with me😀

Returned to the bike we went to the ancient capital. I was not really impressed by it and I didn’t took any pictures. But I don’t say that it wasn’t nice.

For the way back,  Sinéda wanted to ride as I was riding the whole day. So she was riding for the first time in a long time. She was pretty good,  expect sometimes in the curves,  but I am not the easiest one as passenger because of my height and weight😂

Arrived back at Ninh Bình we had dinner and then she took the night bus to get to Dong Hoi to visit Phong Nha caves,  which I did some days ago😂

Tomorrow I will do my final kilometers till Hà Nội😀

Bicycle Touring

Day 73: Đà Nẵng

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no cycling

After (for me) double portion breakfast, we decided to visit the mountain resort called “Bah Nah Hill”. It is close to Đà Nẵng. Arrived at the bottom we got some tickets for the cable car. Everything is built for long queues,  but there are no people to queue 😂



We had to take two cable cars to get to the top. There they tried to rebuild some castles and build up a little resort there in french style. Behind that one there was a little temple. When some clouds placed everything in fog,  we decided to go down again.


The good eye can see: I have two cameras,  one belongs to Banh and she took this picture with her phone 😂






Banh had a selfi stick with her,  from that moment on, she took a million selfies😂



We decided to visit a pagoda at a half island of Đà Nẵng. Before we arrived there,  we visited a colorful Buddhist temple we saw on the road. It started to blow heavily and I sometimes had to slow down because of tge wind 🍃.





Because of the wind,  somebody got a little bit cold and I gave her my buff and my orange long shirt,  which I had packed for the day trip.

After the  temple we then went to the Pagida,  where we also saw the sunset behind Đà Nẵng.





At 8:30 in the evening Banh had to take the bus back to Kon Tum. I returned the motorbike, got a bed in the hostel I stayed in one day ago. I git into the same room but the lower bed😀

The rest of the evening I spend with repacking my stuff and writing the two blog posts (as I didn’t write one yesterday).

So who is Banh? She is a tourist guide from Kon Tum,  who decided to join me in visiting Hoi An. How do I know her? She is a friend of a girl I met in Kon Tum and we were all spending a nice evening together with some more French people (read it here). If you want to travel to Kon Tum,  I can give you her contact☺️

Tomorrow I will cycle to Hue,  where I again will stay one day.

Bicycle Touring

Day 72: Hoi An

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no cycling

The day started early at 5 o’clock. Banh arrived with the night bus and I took the motorbike to pick her up. We decided to get immediately on the road to Đà Nẵng. It is just a one hour ride with the car. As I am not that quick on the motorbike it took us a little bit longer. We also stopped at some rocks, called “Ngu Hanh Son”, on the way,  where there is a temple inside. It was nice,  as nobody was there.

A picture of Banh,  me and a Buddha

Arriving in Hoi An we got breakfast at a place of a friend of Banh. He then showed us a nice guesthouse. We left our stuff there,  Banh took a little nap of half an hour. Then we took of to get to “My So”  some more ancient temples.

After the temples we drove back to Hoi An. As we had to pay for the ancient town, we decided not to go there. We went to chill at the beach,  where we stayed till the evening. We also had dinner at the beach. I didn’t took any pictures… Just a picture from Banh’s phone.

It was so nice to have a person with me who speaks Vietnamese,  so I just always send her and she then did everything😀

Bicycle Touring

Day 44: Prasat Preah Vihear

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no cycling

This morning I met up with Philip to have breakfast and go to Prasat Preah Vihear together.

Prasat Preah Vihear is another UNESCO world heritage site of Cambodia,  like Angkor Wat. It is located next to the border of Thailand and we needed about 29 km to get there. As we were told it would be very steep there,  that eventually we would need special motorbikes to get up there,  we decided not to take our bicycles but to get a lift from a motorbike.
As soon as we went out after breakfast to get into the village center to find someone to take us there with a motorbike,  2 guys on motorbikes were already coming our way. They immediately phoned a guy who spoke kind of english and Phillip negotiated a price to give us a lift to Prasat Preah Vihear and back, 11,5 $ each. The ride to the ticket booth of the area took us 40 minutes on the back of these uncomfortable motorbikes. My ass hunted more than after 6 hours of cycling😂

Arrived at the ticket booth, we had to buy a ticket for 10$.Then we wanted to get back to our riders but the women in the booth told us,  that they wouldn’t take us there as their motorbikes weren’t strong enough. We had to get another rider with another motorbike for an extra 5$ each. The motorbikes weren’t that strong but they should have a different chain and “special” cooling system (a container with water fixed between the legs of the driver which will drop water on the engine).

With our second rider the climbing began and then I saw,  why we needed special bikes, I wouldn’t have been able to cycle up that way,  too steep.

Arrived at the top,  our tickets got checked by military. As there were some conflicts in the past with military of Thailand, there is still a little presence of Cambodian military there. After examining my passport really carefully because he didn’t know Luxembourg. Eventually I was allowed to pass the checkpoint. After that just the temple,  some asian tourists, 2 french tourists and us,  see for yourself.




















Here you can see Thailand, with its military post and the tourists there:


On the search for our riders to get us back down,  we got a coconut to drink😀

We found our drivers which got us to our other driver which got us back to Sra Aem:

Arrived back in Sra Aem,  we had lunch and went back to the guesthouse as there is nothing more to see here. I spend the rest of the day lying in my bed,  watching some movies on YouTube. I had some headaches.

Tomorrow I will cycle again. 80 km through the jungle, there is no closer place.

For people wondering what Phillip looks like:

Bicycle Touring

Day 34: On a motorbike

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no cycling but biking,  distance: I don’t know,  somewhere in between 70 and 100 km

So this morning I finally got to rent a motorbike. After some negotiation I got a bike for 1400 NRP (11,94€) fuel and helmet included. It was something with I think  125cc.  Good enough for renting and driving the first time a motorbike😀 Afterwards I understood why they went so down with the price. The display for the speed wasn’t working,  so it always showed 0 km/h and kilometers weren’t counting too😂 But I didn’t care about it.

I asked for a good place to ride and went of. Out of the touristic place into the main road into the direction I was told to go. Police told me that the road is blocked by… they couldn’t tell me,  so I went around. Slowly I got out of Kathmandu, some waiting at intersections which were handled by traffic police. Out in the nature and little villages it was a beautiful road up the hill with lots of curves, I git used to shift gears up and down. Really great.
As I had my camera in my backpack it took me lots of time to take it out,  so I didn’t take that much pictures today.

The road to come up☺️

a good part of the bad road to go down

Same as on the bicycle,  always were a helmet, especially if it is a cool one

After reaching the top,  the asphalt disappeared and going down on the other side was more hard and slow work but still nice. Somewhere more down in the valley the asphalt came back and I started to get faster again (not too fast,  normal speed) Eventually there was some water on the road, because of a river I think,  I break with the front brakes and then… I kissed the floor… my front wheel blocked and went into another direction, me sliding on the ground next to my bike. Immediately some people came to help me,  got my bike off the road and stopped the engine. Really nice,  I was back on my feet in no time. I checked,  just some little abrasions and bruises. Luckily I had long cloth and my helmet on☺️ Just my gloves were in my backpack as they got too hot even when riding. One guy told me to get checked up in a medical place 1 km away. So I did, I got into an examination room and the guy packed out clean working equipment,  didn’t touched anything with his fingers,  just with clean pincers until he got out some glows and started cleaning my wounds. He just charged me like 100 NRP (0,85€ 😯) for his work. 

I continued to get back to return my bike. On the way there were even more traffic jams than on the way out. At the renting place they didn’t even noticed anything that the bike had a crash😂

Grabbed some dinner with Jimmy the Australian guy of my dorm and now I am relaxing in my room.My shoulder starts to hurt a little bit,  but I will be fine.

Will I ever ride a motorbike again? Hell yeah,  it was awesome,  I learned from it and now I know better😀

Originally I wanted to rent a motorbike again tomorrow, but I don’t know if there are any more cool roads near Kathmandu and I have to check how I am feeling tomorrow.