Vietnam from the back of a motorbike

Easy Rider…sitting on the back seat of a motorbike and being driven through the back roads of Vietnam.

Cuong, my easy rider guide fetches us from our hotel with 2 friends Que and Mingh. After assuring my friends that they are safe drivers, we are relegated to the back seats and off we go, cruising down the road.

Cuong has a good command of English and loves to laugh at his own jokes. Whether we understand or not, we break out in laughter at his mirth. He is very thoughtful, regularly stopping to give our bums a break but most likely it is for a smoke as well as give us some information about what we are looking at.

First stop, Marble Mountain. Here we climb hundreds of stairs to reach the top of this hill with 360 degree views of Danang and China Beach. Inside are caves that were used by the Vietcong to spy on the American Airforce airport a few kilometres north. The caves are humid and wet, it is hard to imagine that the largest one was used as a hospital in the war.

A quick coconut water drink on the beach and we find out that this 30km beach has many names. Our stop is at My Khe – translated to American Village since the soldiers used the beach during their break from the war.

We meander along the ocean and then river in Danang and soon we start to head out of town, slowly up a green pass towards the clouds of Hai Van Pass, heaven according to Cuong. Halfway up, we stop for a view of a leprosy village. They still live here in spite of advances in medicine, I would too, it is beautiful.

Hai Van Pass marks the border between the north and south of Vietnam. Both the French and Americans built bunkers here and the views are of green and yellow and blue.

And then we head into the countryside, the real Vietnam according to the wisdom that is Cuong. I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with beautiful fresh air. The smells change from typical city to that of wet earth, the occasional cooking fire, lunch being cooked and the smell you get from crushing a leaf, the smell I can only imagine the colour green would expel.

There are water buffalo in fields of rice and bicycles laden with farming goods playing the artful game of balancing their wares. Between forests of trees, crops are grown and workers in the plantations are all protected by their typical straw hats. Children happily play in the streets smiling and waving a greeting to these ladies on the back of motorbikes.

Have I mentioned how humid central Vietnam feels? Fortunately we have natural air-conditioning as we snake our way along the roads and finally get to a waterfall to plunge into the coolness.

Sunset over rice paddies and the wind filtering between my fingers and hair, I didn’t want this day to end.