Vietnam Travel Diaries: Day 5 – The Hang Mua Challenge (or, How Not to Injure Your Knee at Sunrise)

After yesterday’s decision to choose lunch over a mountain, we set the alarm for 5 am and gave Hang Mua another chance. The idea was to reach the viewpoint around sunrise, before the day became too hot. About 500 stone steps, a fine view and then breakfast: a tidy little plan. My left knee had not been consulted.

The Climb—and the Knee

The staircase was steep, with some steps high enough to make progress feel rather less elegant than the photographs suggest. Near the summit I made a wrong movement, heard a crack in my left knee and felt immediate pain. That was the moment the morning stopped being a straightforward sightseeing outing.

I carried on to the top. It was stubborn, and I would not offer it as an example of sensible decision-making. The view was extraordinary: rice paddies and limestone peaks spread out below us in the morning light. I was pleased to see it, but also increasingly aware that every step up would need to be followed by a step down.

The Part the Postcard Leaves Out

Going down was much harder. The knee hurt on the steep steps, and by the time we reached the bottom I was drenched in sweat. Even flat ground was painful afterwards. A beautiful view and a bad decision can exist in the same travel story; this morning managed both.

Breakfast, Then a Travel Day

Back at the homestay we had breakfast on the rooftop, which meant one more staircase before our ride to Hanoi Airport. At the airport, a pharmacy supplied a spray that gave me some relief. It did not resolve the injury, and I still had a painful knee to manage on the journey to Da Nang.

Writing at the gate, I was left with two very different memories of Hang Mua: the landscape at the top and the difficult descent. The viewpoint really was memorable. So was discovering how much a single knee can influence the rest of a holiday. We would need to adjust our pace rather than keep following the original plan.

Next came Da Nang and Hoi An, where the knee earned us an unscheduled hospital visit. The itinerary was about to become rather more flexible. Unfortunately, I was not.