March 10 and 11th

What a difference a day makes! On Tuesday, we booked a bus trip to the Perfume Pagoda, 2 hours from Hanoi. Upon leaving the bus, we (15 of us from the tour) got into a rowboat and were rowed for 45 minutes to the base of a mountain where there are many pagodas in caves and on the mountainside. However, much to our dismay, there were also rows and rows of vendors all the way up the mountainside, blaring music, litter all over the place and thousands of people. It was really not an enjoyable day.
Wednesday morning, we flew to Danang and took a cab into the city . I sat at a café with our luggage while Tim went to find a hotel. A Vietnamese gentleman joined me, asked how long we were staying ,suggested that he could drive us by motorbike to see the caves and pagodas in the nearby Marble mountains then phoned a friend to come by to meet us – he would be the second driver. By the time Tim returned, this fellow had planned our afternoon for us. We decided to take him up on his offer, negotiated a price and agreed to be picked up at our hotel at 2pm. We had a lovely afternoon. The mountain, caves and pagodas were peaceful, beautiful, clean and had only a few vendors selling refreshments, not tacky souvenirs. After our mountain visit, the drivers took us to
China Beach-an absolutely beautiful stretch of sandy beach that goes for kilometres.
What a difference a day makes!