The article is written by Giang, a Tigit Guide, and lightly edited by Jon, with an attempt to keep the original language of a Vietnamese guide.
Da Nang loop
Contents
This is a famous loop, starting from Da Nang to go to A Luoi – Khe Sanh – Phong Nha – Hue – Hai Van Pass. It can also start from Hue.
The loop combines many good roads and war sites such as the Western HCM road, the DMZ, Vinh Moc tunnels, Ta Con airport museum, and many American camps. This is the area of battles in the American war.
To make the loop, you can take an Easy Rider, a Van tour, or a rental jeep,, which is very easy to book at your hotel. You can also rent a bike to ride yourself from many motorbike rental companies or the Tigit Danang Office.
Offroad Da Nang loop
I got the idea for this offroad loop by a Tigit tour in April 2024 riding with Richard. He is an American who likes history, he did everything in this loop before Covid. As an offroad guy, he wanted to do it again on a dirtbike.
Tigit guides are off-road experts, but we are not very good at history and culture. Lucky for me, he is a very knowledgeable guy. I learned a lot from him.
To prepare for the trip, I worked on Google My Maps, got some datas from my Tigit colleagues. We had a map of Danang offroading and a video of Jon offroading HCM road and Hamburger Hill.
The offroad section is located in Truong Son mountain, the HCM road, and the border area with Laos which make it quite difficult to build a tour:
- Some of the trails are very dangerous for tours.
- Many trails end up at the border.
- Roads in border areas are usually paved very well.
Explanation of colours on maps
- The blue lines are live data maps we got from our trips. That means we’ve done it before, and it is possible to go.
- Red lines are our plan to research, not checked yet, we’re not sure about that.
- Black lines are also not checked yet. We’re not sure about that; don’t do that.
- Pink lines are roads, and I put them there to show how far to escape the trails.
Day 1: Da Nang to A Luoi
For people riding between Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, this road is Tigit’s recommendation which we call “the option for riders” to compare to the Hai Van Pass “the tourism option”.
There are many Tigit bikes on this road, and we also share the routes for every rider to use.
Distance: 224km
Times: 5 hours of riding. The Danang’s traffic was not so bad, we also covered a lot of km on the good road.
Highlight: Beautiful HCM road, easy and fun offroad, A Shau Valley, B52 bomb holes.
Hotel: Thanh Quang Guest House is a basic Vietnamese Nha Nghi with good hot shower, you will need to book for a twin room if you want the air-con option, the beds are comfortable.
- Single room with fan: 200.000 vnd/night. 8 usd
- Twin room with aircon: 300.000 vnd/night. 12 usd
Food: we walked for 130m to a local beer place “Nha Hang Hang 3” to have very nice “Bo Luc Lac” (stir fried beef and French fries), we filled up with fried rice and a morning glory with garlic.
Coffee: A Luoi is not a big coffee area but yes, they have their own coffee, we went to the cafe opposite the hotel.
Day 2: A Luoi to Khe Sanh
A Luoi and Khe Sanh are both famous for war sites. We normally ride straight from Danang/Hoi An to Khe Sanh and don’t stop for A Luoi when doing onroad.
For this offroad trip, we didn’t stay much on the main way(even though it is beautiful) but went through the countryside to see more history and local culture. It was an easy ride, and so much time to explore.
Distance: 171km. Do a bit more if possible to save time for the ride on day 3.
Times: 4 hours of riding.
Highlight: Hamburger Hill, Ho Chi Minh Legend road, Lang Vei Camp, Hill 881s, Ta Con airport museum.
Hotel: We stayed in Khe Sanh Luxury Hotel, the best in town so far for the price 400.000 vnd/night (16usd). It is a new hotel with comfortable beds.
Food: The hotel served us soft grilled chicken and sticky rice. 200.000 vnd/pax (8usd)
Coffee: The coffee at the hotel is grown and made by the hotel itself. They have a coffee machine to make every kind of coffee you want, such as Ca Phe Sua Da, Cappuccino, etc.
Day 3: Khe Sanh to Dong Ha
This day is the off-road day of the trip. I was lucky with the map because I had never done it before. We had a lot of fun.
Distance: we did 126km on this day but the route can be 170km with a lot of offroad. We failed with the terrible temperature of 37 degrees Celcius at noon.
Times: It would be 6-7 hours of riding if we could do a whole route.
Highlight: Rock Pile Hill, Camp Carroll, jungle offroading and river crossing,
Hotel: We rode for 15km more and the same way back on the next day to stay in a good hotel Golden Quang Tri, 650.000vnd/night (26usd) including breakfast.
Food: The hot weather killed our appetite, so we walked a bit to Quan 10 Nguyen Bieu for some fried rice and fried noodles; the restaurant is famous for roast pork.
If you don’t want to walk or ride, the hotel recommends taking a taxi to Nam Hao Lake; there are many good local beer places there.
Coffee: We had coffee and breakfast at the hotel, available from 6:30 am.
Day 4: Dong Ha to Hue
We planned for many war sites on this day such as Con Thien Camp, Truong Son military cemetery, The DMZ, Vinh Moc Tunnels.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t do much because of a small crash. Richard twisted his knee and couldn’t do as much walking as planned.
We were stuck in a jungle for a while and the heat forced us to quit, we arrived to Hue quite early at 2 PM.
Distance: We did 152 km, shorter than 170km which we wanted to do.
Times: 4-5 hours of riding.
Highlight: good offroad in the morning.
Hotel: La paix Hue with a poetic river-side view costs for 700.000vnd/night (28usd).
Food: We had a set of typical Vietnamese food in Vi Da Xua restaurant. They cooked for us good fried rice, spring rolls, beef, chicken with lemon grass and chilli.
Coffee: We had coffee and breakfast at the hotel, available from 6:30 am, the best in this trip.
Day 5: Hue to Da Nang
We did Hai Van Pass to Danang and returned the motorbikes at Tigit office.
There is an offroad map as optional if you want to do “Clutch burn hill.”
Distance: 124km and the optional offroad.
Times: 3 hours of riding.
Highlight: Hai Van Pass.
Monkey pass, Ban Co peak, Clutch Burn hill are optional.
Monkey pass is blocked a half way already.
Photos
