The three of us wake-up and grab a delicious breakfast of banana pancakes, club sandwiches, ice coffees and banana fruit shakes before heading out to see the sights.
Today we’re going to visit the Marble Mountains, which are about 20kms from Hoi An.
We decide to rent bicycles and after a thorough inspection, Eric and I decide on yellow ones, while Stewie picks a green one. We make a very colour-coordinated biker gang, which inspires us to pick a gang name… “the Awesome Gazelles”.
Now that the important tasks are done, we can head out.
The ride starts off very nice – we make our way along a quiet dirt road surrounded by farms. In the distance we can see the Marble Mountains, which are very impressive.
The Marble Mountains are a series of large cliffs and caves – obviously made of marble – that are home to a number of temples and shrines. They seem to pop up out of nowhere and are quite amazing… from afar.
Unfortunately, as you get closer, they lose some of their charm.
The quiet dirt road turns into a massive paved highway and all the fields and farms, become a series of buildings, stores and restaurants. There are dozens of marble masons surrounding the mountains, each of them showing off an unbelievable array of statues and carvings. Eric and Stewie start joking around about how the way they’re going through marble, eventually the area will just be known as “Marble Mountain”… singular.
We stroll around the temples, which are quite peaceful and then make our way over to see China Beach.
During the Vietnam-American war, China Beach was a base camp for the US Army. Today, it’s a very quiet beach, though judging by the amount of development happening – the Hyatt chain is building a resort – this won’t last for long.
We don’t go for a swim as the temperature is still pretty chilly and the waves look pretty intimidating. But we do check out a number of fishermen braving the waters and heading out in their “basket boats”.
Eventually, we decide it’s time to head back, so we hope on our bikes and begin the ride back “home”. For a change of scenery, we take the long route home, which adds another 5kms to our route. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I get a flat rear tire and we end up having to walk the last 9km of our “scenic route”.
The plus side is the last 4km of it is quite beautiful – the paved highway disappears and we go back into the peaceful world of rice fields along a river.
Our evening is spent wandering the ancient city of Hoi An and looking for dinner, which we eat in three courses. Cau Lau is the first course, Xima Phu – sweet black sesame seed soup – is the second course and Mi Quang – noodles with pork, bean sprouts, peanuts, vegetables and a boiled quail egg – as the third and final course.
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