15th - 18th July
So far in Vietnam we have stuck strictly to the backpacker route but this was about to change! Thanks to a fab wedding present from Linda and Marian we had booked a 3 day easy rider tour through a 500km stretch of the central highlands of Vietnam which is a tour on the back of a motorcycle with the driver as your guide. It was another amazing, surreal experience - to be cruising through the central highlands with the wind blowing through my hair (metaphorically speaking only as I had a crash helmet on) seeing rural life as it goes on as normal.
We were travelling 200km that day but taking the full day to do it. The phrase 'it's not about the destination, it's about the journeys' definitely applies to these three days.
The second day was only 125km but we spent some time at a waterfall and swimming in the fast flowing river at the Dray Nur park.
The final day we travelled 175km to our next city, Dalat, spending time seeing some of the big sights that are the main reason for coming here like the Linh An pagoda, happy Buddha and Elephant Falls waterfall. Each day we averaged about 8 hours on the motorcycles including stops.
Over the 3 days we stopped at at least 40 different places seeing how rural families make a living doing tasks that the modern western world couldn't fathom undertaking without machinery such as making bricks for building houses, rice harvesting including shelling each grain of rice individually by hand, manufacture of silk from the worm and bleeding rubber trees. If you had seen the amount of work that goes into the rubber trees you would never throw an eraser in the bin again! Here is a snapshot of just some of the things we saw along the way.
Each easy rider tour is different as the guide just stops along the way as he sees people working in their homes. They aren't expecting us and don't get paid for letting us look around their house and industries but are so friendly and welcoming, offering tea and hospitality at every turn. Some of the ladies were just happy to be able to touch my pale white arm!
We were lucky enough to have some amazing experiences from having some of the finest coffee in the world (yes I struggled to sleep after it again but couldn't pass up the opportunity to try the richest and silkest coffee ever) to having dragon fruit literally just picked off a plant and still hot from the sun (this is my new obsession now). We also got to meet some ethnic minority tribes such as the Ede people and the K'ho tribes. At one stage I was ahead of Ronan as my bike was faster and when he turned the corner this is what he saw:
I'm awkward with kids at the best time ever but this wasn't helped by the communication barrier! Luckily our guide had brought sweets for them to break the ice. We visited a graveyard for the Ede people which was a little freaky as they have pipes coming out of the graves and going into the dead person's mouth. They use this pipe to feed the dead 3 meals a day for 3 months after their death. Then they don't visit the grave again until the funeral celebration after 3 years.
All through the country we had being aware of people talking about us but we never knew what they were saying obviously but I always felt self-conscious and assumed it was bad but our guide translated and it was usually about how nice the colour of my skin was! Although it was a little creepy when he translated that an old man said I'd a nice body!! Ewww! Jean said he's used to seeing Americans coming through!**
** note this is a quote and not representative of my views on Americans!
The Vietnamese love white skin and see it was a sign of education and wealth as it means you don't have to work outside in the sun but have an indoor job. For this reason most women wear heavy layers and loads of clothes when outside to avoid the sun for vanity reasons not protection! It's a common sight to see jumpers, coats, socks, scarves and gloves in 34 degrees heat! Anyways so I'm getting complimented on the whiteness of my skin and here is me thinking that i had a nice tan! They sell skin whitening cream in the shops here, no fake tan to be got! So the guide said that when the Vietnamese talk about you loudly in public it's always complimentary and when they whisper behind their hands it's an insult! Very interesting and nice to know.
Some of the bigger sights we went to included the waterfall in Dray Nur Park where we also went swimming, the Linh An Pagoda with the happy Giant Buddha and Elephant Falls. I actually didn't go down to Elephant Falls myself cos it was so dangerous with broken handrail, really steep, slippy steps and I was wearing flip flops. Ronan went down and had to hang from a tree and launch himself from one rock to another. He came back filthy and sweating like mad!
We were eating with the guides in all the local restaurants and as is usual for us on this trip, we loved it! They guys also said that I was better with the chopsticks than Ronan! In fairness he was starving and literally shovelling the food into his mouth at the time!
As all good things have to come to an end and it was a culture shock reaching the city of Dalat after 3 glorious days of countryside! We had a little bit of drama when we landed to the hotel we had booked to find she had given our room away. We had booked into a more expensive place than we had being staying in with a hot tub on the roof (I know, such backpackers) and she tried to move us to a different hotel at the same rate but without the same facilities so we said no as it was a rip off! We went to a couple of places that were full up so got a little worried as it was getting dark. We eventually got a place anyways so it worked out fine. The beauty of Vietnam is the way you can rock up to a hotel, ask to see the room and then decide whether or not you want to stay!
We went for dinner that evening and a Dutch couple from our Nha Trang hotel arrived in bedside us! We keep meeting the same people randomly! Sally and John facebooked to say they were in Dalat also and then we met them randomly on the street on the Wednesday morning. And it's not a small city!
Dalat hadn't much to offer as we had done the main sights on the easy rider so we decided to leave on the night bus on Wednesday 18th. As I said we met Sally and John randomly on the street and arranged to meet for dinner that evening. Then myself and Ronan went to a place known as the Crazy House and met them there again! The Crazy House is a guest house which is basically a crazy architects' imagination running wild - think an Alice in Wonderland theme!
It started to rain so the 4 of us decided to do lunch and drinks while the shower passed! Ran into a random cafe to get out of the rain and as we were looking around I realised there were photos of my friend Linda and the 4 girls she did the easy rider trip with last year EVERYWHERE!! So random as they didn't even know they were the poster girls for the easy riders! That evening we did dinner and more drinks with Sally and John before getting the night bus at 10pm.
It was supposed to take 8 hours so we were due in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City (no sure what we should be calling it to be honest!) at 6am. We got two seats in the back row, with no box to put our feet into like the other seats had, so had acres of space and even Ronan, the giant himself, got to sleep comfortably! But our sleep was rudely interrupted at 4.30am when we were chucked off the bus as we had arrived 1.5hours early!
All good and well until we saw they dropped us at a bus station outside the town where conveniently there were motorcycle taxis everywhere to help us and bring us to our destination! This is another scam between bus drivers and taxi drivers so the stubbornness in us won out and we decided we weren't paying a tenner! With the help of google maps we figured out we had a 2km walk with our bags to get to our hotel so off we set!
Of course we couldn't check in at that time so we went to an all night bar and sat there watching while it turned from late night bar to breakfast restaurant around 5.30am while slowly the prostitutes were replaced by street food vendors! We sat and had brekkie before going to our hotel. We couldn't check in there until 10am (the room was ready but they wanted us to pay a half day room fee to check in early) so we trotted off to walk around the town a bit and hung around another cafe until 10am. You would think that 6hours hanging about at that time of the morning would be tough going but it wasn't too bad. We have become experts at killing time efficiently and it was actually grand. The only reason I got these 3 blog entries done actually! It was funny looking around at other backpackers with really cross heads on them waiting for their hotels to let them in and me and Ronan in great form laughing away!
Feeling a little sad that we have reached our last stop in Vietnam, the time has flown and we both love it so much, don't wanna leave!
So far in Vietnam we have stuck strictly to the backpacker route but this was about to change! Thanks to a fab wedding present from Linda and Marian we had booked a 3 day easy rider tour through a 500km stretch of the central highlands of Vietnam which is a tour on the back of a motorcycle with the driver as your guide. It was another amazing, surreal experience - to be cruising through the central highlands with the wind blowing through my hair (metaphorically speaking only as I had a crash helmet on) seeing rural life as it goes on as normal.
We left the beaches of Nha Trang on Sunday morning on 15th July with our drivers Jean and Tu.
We were travelling 200km that day but taking the full day to do it. The phrase 'it's not about the destination, it's about the journeys' definitely applies to these three days.
The second day was only 125km but we spent some time at a waterfall and swimming in the fast flowing river at the Dray Nur park.
The final day we travelled 175km to our next city, Dalat, spending time seeing some of the big sights that are the main reason for coming here like the Linh An pagoda, happy Buddha and Elephant Falls waterfall. Each day we averaged about 8 hours on the motorcycles including stops.
Over the 3 days we stopped at at least 40 different places seeing how rural families make a living doing tasks that the modern western world couldn't fathom undertaking without machinery such as making bricks for building houses, rice harvesting including shelling each grain of rice individually by hand, manufacture of silk from the worm and bleeding rubber trees. If you had seen the amount of work that goes into the rubber trees you would never throw an eraser in the bin again! Here is a snapshot of just some of the things we saw along the way.
 |
| Blacksmith husband and wife tag team |
 |
| Rice harvesting |
 |
| Cartilage from an american bomber |
 |
| Tough day |
 |
| Poor pigs off to the market |
 |
| Local taxi (genuinely) |
 |
| Rubber trees |
Each easy rider tour is different as the guide just stops along the way as he sees people working in their homes. They aren't expecting us and don't get paid for letting us look around their house and industries but are so friendly and welcoming, offering tea and hospitality at every turn. Some of the ladies were just happy to be able to touch my pale white arm!
We were lucky enough to have some amazing experiences from having some of the finest coffee in the world (yes I struggled to sleep after it again but couldn't pass up the opportunity to try the richest and silkest coffee ever) to having dragon fruit literally just picked off a plant and still hot from the sun (this is my new obsession now). We also got to meet some ethnic minority tribes such as the Ede people and the K'ho tribes. At one stage I was ahead of Ronan as my bike was faster and when he turned the corner this is what he saw:
I'm awkward with kids at the best time ever but this wasn't helped by the communication barrier! Luckily our guide had brought sweets for them to break the ice. We visited a graveyard for the Ede people which was a little freaky as they have pipes coming out of the graves and going into the dead person's mouth. They use this pipe to feed the dead 3 meals a day for 3 months after their death. Then they don't visit the grave again until the funeral celebration after 3 years.
All through the country we had being aware of people talking about us but we never knew what they were saying obviously but I always felt self-conscious and assumed it was bad but our guide translated and it was usually about how nice the colour of my skin was! Although it was a little creepy when he translated that an old man said I'd a nice body!! Ewww! Jean said he's used to seeing Americans coming through!**
** note this is a quote and not representative of my views on Americans!
The Vietnamese love white skin and see it was a sign of education and wealth as it means you don't have to work outside in the sun but have an indoor job. For this reason most women wear heavy layers and loads of clothes when outside to avoid the sun for vanity reasons not protection! It's a common sight to see jumpers, coats, socks, scarves and gloves in 34 degrees heat! Anyways so I'm getting complimented on the whiteness of my skin and here is me thinking that i had a nice tan! They sell skin whitening cream in the shops here, no fake tan to be got! So the guide said that when the Vietnamese talk about you loudly in public it's always complimentary and when they whisper behind their hands it's an insult! Very interesting and nice to know.
Some of the bigger sights we went to included the waterfall in Dray Nur Park where we also went swimming, the Linh An Pagoda with the happy Giant Buddha and Elephant Falls. I actually didn't go down to Elephant Falls myself cos it was so dangerous with broken handrail, really steep, slippy steps and I was wearing flip flops. Ronan went down and had to hang from a tree and launch himself from one rock to another. He came back filthy and sweating like mad!
We were eating with the guides in all the local restaurants and as is usual for us on this trip, we loved it! They guys also said that I was better with the chopsticks than Ronan! In fairness he was starving and literally shovelling the food into his mouth at the time!
As all good things have to come to an end and it was a culture shock reaching the city of Dalat after 3 glorious days of countryside! We had a little bit of drama when we landed to the hotel we had booked to find she had given our room away. We had booked into a more expensive place than we had being staying in with a hot tub on the roof (I know, such backpackers) and she tried to move us to a different hotel at the same rate but without the same facilities so we said no as it was a rip off! We went to a couple of places that were full up so got a little worried as it was getting dark. We eventually got a place anyways so it worked out fine. The beauty of Vietnam is the way you can rock up to a hotel, ask to see the room and then decide whether or not you want to stay!
We went for dinner that evening and a Dutch couple from our Nha Trang hotel arrived in bedside us! We keep meeting the same people randomly! Sally and John facebooked to say they were in Dalat also and then we met them randomly on the street on the Wednesday morning. And it's not a small city!
It started to rain so the 4 of us decided to do lunch and drinks while the shower passed! Ran into a random cafe to get out of the rain and as we were looking around I realised there were photos of my friend Linda and the 4 girls she did the easy rider trip with last year EVERYWHERE!! So random as they didn't even know they were the poster girls for the easy riders! That evening we did dinner and more drinks with Sally and John before getting the night bus at 10pm.
 |
| Settled in for the night! |
All good and well until we saw they dropped us at a bus station outside the town where conveniently there were motorcycle taxis everywhere to help us and bring us to our destination! This is another scam between bus drivers and taxi drivers so the stubbornness in us won out and we decided we weren't paying a tenner! With the help of google maps we figured out we had a 2km walk with our bags to get to our hotel so off we set!
Of course we couldn't check in at that time so we went to an all night bar and sat there watching while it turned from late night bar to breakfast restaurant around 5.30am while slowly the prostitutes were replaced by street food vendors! We sat and had brekkie before going to our hotel. We couldn't check in there until 10am (the room was ready but they wanted us to pay a half day room fee to check in early) so we trotted off to walk around the town a bit and hung around another cafe until 10am. You would think that 6hours hanging about at that time of the morning would be tough going but it wasn't too bad. We have become experts at killing time efficiently and it was actually grand. The only reason I got these 3 blog entries done actually! It was funny looking around at other backpackers with really cross heads on them waiting for their hotels to let them in and me and Ronan in great form laughing away!
Feeling a little sad that we have reached our last stop in Vietnam, the time has flown and we both love it so much, don't wanna leave!
No comments:
Post a Comment