Two returns from Da Nang
For the home stretch with the sire, we hang our feet in a surprise pass and with the Vietnamese airport bureaucracy.
I have to admit that I was a little worried about having to spend 24 hours a day with my Pops, especially for a whole month. We have a great father-son relationship, but would we have things to say to each other for such a long time?
I had finally worried for nothing.
Not only did we have things to say to each other, but above all I got to know my father better during those few weeks than during all the last years when we lived within minutes of each other.
Rediscover my wonder
Plus, Pops helped me see things that I didn't even notice when I was on the road.
Like the lack of stores and the ubiquity of stalls all selling the same thing. Like the happiness of children to see us. Like poverty, the difficulty of daily life.
Of course, I continued to see this reality, but it is now so much a part of my life that it has ceased to be a surprise. I saw myself again in Croatia, last spring, when poverty began to take more place around me and everything surprised me.
I also humorously realized that my quality standards were made even lower than I thought when my dad and I both commented on the look of one of our hotel rooms upon entering!
« Oh, how beautiful! »
« Hey boy! What a hole! »
110 km and a pass
This is the way that remains to get to Da Nang, from where my father will start. We do it in a day to get rid of it. And we stuff ourselves a little surprise collar at the end of the day, that of Hai Van. A nice little climb of about 500 m in altitude. But after climbing to almost ten times that altitude at Tadjikistan, I wonder a little how this place can deserve its nickname of "pass of the clouds"!
Finally, this effort is rewarded by a beautiful landscape, and by a superb descent towards the city on the other side.
A last surprise pass before Da Nang, that of Hai Van.
Fishermen, shortly before arriving in town at the end of the day.
da Nang
With a little over a million inhabitants, da Nang is one of the largest cities in Vietnam. On the web, the city boasts with pride, saying it now has three grocery stores to serve its population!
In our view, what the city counts above all is an innumerable number of hotels. These are mostly clustered on the edge of a long beach, where it looks like every building is a hotel or seafood restaurant.
We walk here and there for a few days. But there is not so much to visit, and above all, we are at the end of the cacophony. It's nowhere near as terrible as it is in Hanoi, but it's still very exhausting and we realize once again that silence is a luxury.
The Dragon Bridge in Da Nang in Vietnam.
The same photogenic bridge along its length.
Pops leaving
Do with the means at hand to put a bike on the plane!
Finally, the time for a new farewell is approaching.
I'm going to drive my father back to the airport. It will then take him a good two hours to walk from one employee to another in order to successfully put his bike on the plane. It is ultimately by dint of persuasion on the price, bits of tape and cardboard, and forms filled in countless carbon copies that the bike is taken over by the Asian airline.
I'm sad to see him go. Not only because I got used to riding with someone again, but above all because it's the end of our daily sharing.
Traveling solo allows you to meet more people, to live different and often more intense experiences. But these experiences lived alone only become individual memories.
My father made me laugh and think. He refocused me on the surrounding reality and motivated me to continue this journey by bike. And with me on the side of the road, he learned to handle chopsticks, to keep calm in the rain, in traffic, in the incomprehension of the language and the customs.
And in one month together, we have created an eternity of memories.
See you soon, Pops.
Back to Hue
For my part, after having cycled for almost a year on half the globe, in all conceivable conditions, I need a break. I decide to retrace my steps, in Hue, to relax there for the time necessary to restore my mental balance.
So I take the Cloud Pass, this time to the north, to take a vacation from my vacation.
