Asia-Europe 2012

Traffic is a madness, a “free for all” where the motorbike rider has no rights and no obligations. After being stucked in city traffic together with million other motorbikes, we finally hit the roads, only to find trucks and buses passing with total disregard to the incoming 2 wheeled vehicles, including us. If this was just annoying on most roads, on the main North-South highway it felt more like every minute someone was trying to kill us.

Still, of great surprise, the rate of accidents seems very low. During 30 days spent here, we only saw 3 accidents. Furthermore, cars and motorbikes have no collision marks on them, not even tiny scratches. It looks like the Vietnamese mastered the art of driving without rules. Wondering what would be the result if you could spice up this traffic with some extra horsepower 🙂

Another interesting thing, more than 95% of the motorbike and car fleet appears to be newer than 5 years. Were did all the pre-2005 vehicles go? Were there any?

For 3USD on top of the 5USD paid for the My Son tour, we got back to Hoi An by boat instead of bus (lunch included in price!)

We had a stopover in a village across the river from the destination, where we had the opportunity to see the locals engaged in various crafts like ship repairing, wood working, painting. Everything under the close guidance of the Communist Party, of course!

Too bad we couldn’t buy any of their work due to space constrains aboard Palomina…

This is, for me, the singe most interesting item I’ve seen during this trip. Built during 1000 years (from 4th to 14th centuries) by the Champas kings as a burial and worship place, the site was largely destroyed by US air raids in the ’60s.

Fortunately, enough was left so we can see something and imagine the rest. Note: the heads of the statues are replicas. The originals are at the Louvre in Paris, removed during the colonial times.

We decided to go visit My Son archaeological site, located just 40km West of Hoi An. Lesson learned: don’t rely on “GPS->Find route” when you are in jungle or else a 40km trip might become a 1 day adventure, like it happened to us.

After spending 2hrs to advance through 500m of dirt (we were already almost there) we decided to call a strategic retreat and look for alternatives.

Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage site for being an example of well preserved trading port from 15th to 19th centuries.

Once Southeast Asia’s largest port (during the Champas empire), today it is a popular yet affordable tourist destination. Highly recommended!