Quy Nhon
Trip Start
May 19, 2011
1
24
27
Trip End
Jan 31, 2012
Quy Nhon, Vietnam
Friday, December 2, 2011
Saturday morning we headed out on the motorbike after having breakfast at a café across the road from our hotel. It was an interesting experience. No one spoke english, so the waiter wrote down the food options for us. We had a decent breakfast. At the end we tried to ask the manager where we could rent a motorbike and he brought us forks. We ended up renting a motorbike from a tourist place further up the beach. We also bought our bus tickets to Hoi An from there. We headed out to try and find some of the local Cham ruins. We first stopped at the Thap Doi Cham towers located within the town. Unfortunately they were closed for lunch. But as we were figuring this out Guillaume was mobbed by a pack of 12 yr old girls. It seemed as though they we amazed by his size. Lots of holding their hands above their head measuring his height. Of course once they saw the camera they wanted their picture taken. After we were free we went to Banh It Cham towers which were a well developed (by Vietnam Standards) with four towers. It was really quite nice. The views were good and there were blooming flowers and butterflies everywhere. We had a nice walk and then headed out to try and find the Thap Thap Pagoda. We drove all over heck and back. It was a really pretty drive, lots of locals working rice patties. We found another Cham tower that was developed, but the site was closed for some reason. We saw a sign that was laying on the ground nearby that said Thap Thap Pagoda 200 meters. So we thought we had found the place. After thoroughly checking that we couldn’t get in we headed out to try and find another ruin. As we were driving on the highway we saw another Cham tower way up on a hill that we assume to be the Binh Lam tower. We drove around asking directions at every turn and slowly began to get closer and closer. The funny thing is that even the locals didn't seem to know how to get to it and they argued between themselves about it. At the end a nice woman lead us on her motorbike through some tiny paths to the bottom of a hill. She said from there we could walk to the top. After checking the climb through some dense forest we decided not to hike up and instead to head back for food. As we headed back into town we stopped at the ruins that were previously closed and got to check things out. We had dinner at the place that rented us the bikes, which turned out to be terrible western food. We then went on a hunt for a place where Guillaume could eat something else. We found a small place that made us fresh spring rolls. That made Guillaume happy and we were able to head back to the hotel to pack for our very early bus ride.
