So after spending 4 lovely nights at the Beach, we headed to our final stop in Vietnam – Hoi An. We really wish we had more time at that beach, but oh well, other adventures call.
All of the guidebooks recommended that to get from Hue to Hoi An was to take a private car ride and see a few sights along the way.
Our driver picked us promptly and headed south. Ash promptly fell asleep after the driver stopped asking us about our travel. Our first stop was a Lap An Lagoon. The weather was shit, but you could tell the immense beauty there even with overcast and cloudy conditions.
We had a so-so lunch before jumping back into the car. After a short ride, we checked out the edge of Lang Co Beach. We didn’t go to the beach, just saw it. Meh.
We continued in the car and over Hai Van Pass. The views here would have been spectacular if conditions were clear. We weren’t the only ones doing this trip, there were 5 tour busses and a ton of motorcycles on the pass.
Our final destination was marble mountain. We really had no idea what this was going to be. We rolled up and went to buy tickets. It was relatively cheap for the ticket – 40,000 dong which is about $1.80. But you also had to pay for the elevator ride up. It was only 15,000 dong but still. As we rode up the elevator, we anxiously wondered what would greet us at the top.
It was a series of pagodas and temples. Many of which were in caves. While it was crawling with tourists, it really was quite charming.
We hadn’t seen much in the way of Buddhist sites. The country is Buddhist and as you walk down the stray you see offerings and smell incense. So we picked it up, but we had only walked by a few temples and skipped the big pagoda in Hue (due to the motorbike accident). We loved the sites of the Buddha’s. We got to crawl through some caves to check out the vistas. One crawl was pretty intense as the marble (d’uh) was very slippery.
The whole experience was quite charming. It really reminded us of Rock City near Chattanooga, TN which we visited on our honeymoon almost 21 years ago.
We arrived in Hoi An about 4pm, which had a much busier vibe than the beach or the hot springs. More about that later.
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