So feeling pretty confident in our moto scootering skills, we booked with a company to ride scooter from Hue (say wheigh) to Hoi Ann, a 140 kilometer (86 miles) trip over the Hai Van Pass. It was a terrifying, exhilarating, tedious, mind numbing experience. We stopped at a fishing village

and Elephant Springs to swim,

a couple of coffee breaks, Marble Mountain (which we could have done without; the most difficult stairs I have ever climbed… they were twice as high as most normal steps!)

We left Hue about 9am and arrived in Hoi An about 5:30. We were so exhausted but so happy. What an absolutely amazing experience. We rode our own cycles along with Katya, our new German friend. There was a young couple from Belgium and a girl from Holland who rode tandem with the company’s riders. We also stopped at a floating restaurant for lunch and it was amazing. I will never forget the huge gorgeous plates of seafood nor the fact that is where we learned the likely outcome of the Presidential election. I was literally crying at the table.

But we couldn’t remain distracted for long; riding the motor scooter required far too much concentration. The Hai Van pass (Vietnamese for Ocean Cloud Pass) is 21 km of winding roads with the mountains on one side (actually you are on the side of the mountain) and the South China Sea on the other. Going around one curve, the first sight of the sea literally took my breath away; it was so gorgeous!