Easy Rider

Trip Start Sep 19, 2002
1
95
129
Trip End Sep 22, 2003


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of Vietnam  ,
Tuesday, May 27, 2003

27th May - Arrived in Nha Trang after our over night bus and were told we had time for breakfast before we caught the bus to Dalat. We sat down at a restaurant by the bus stop and ordered. As we were waiting for our food a huge rat ran across the floor and hit me on the leg. As you can imaginemy brekkie didn't taste too good after that. The bus then turned up early and LJ had to go without her food. The trip to Dalat took about 4 hours, stopping off at an ancient Cham palace on the way. LJ was desperate for the loo but we didn't have any change so a lady on the bus paid for her which showed us that not all Vietnamese people are aggressive and impolite (by Western standards anyway). Dalat is up in the highlands of central Vietnam and so is supposed to be cooler. It was but it was rainy and looked quite a miserable place. The hotels the bus took us to were pretty grotty and expensive so we set out on our own to find something better. Walking down the road we were approached by a chap on a motorbike who took us to a nice new family hotel. This meeting was to change our plans for the next week quite considerably. After checking in, the motorbike chap (Chung) told us he was Easy Rider and did we want to do a tour of Dalat the next day. We decided to give it a go and agreed to meet him and his partner the next morning. Later we went out for lunch and got excited when we found a bakery selling sandwiches but these turned out to be horrible as the sliced bread was actually sweet. In the evening we went for a nice meal where the waitress couldn't tell us if an item on the menu was wild boar or bear. We decided to order it anyway only to find they didn't have it, so we will never know. That evening we met a vietnamese guy who spoke really good english. We sat drinking vietnamese tea and chatting with him for ages. This was the first time that we got a sense for the bad feelings that still exist between the south and north of the country. He told us how in the war his family had been quite wealthy living in Hue. His mother and the children had fled to Dalat but his father was taken by the north vietnamese and was buried alive! He went on to tell us all the bad things that the government do and the corruption that exists.

28th - Awoke to more rain and cold and set off on our motorbike tour with Binh and Chung around Dalat. It turns out that Easy Riders is a name for a group of about 30 biker guides in Dalat. Binh and Chung are both 50 but look a lot younger. The bikes were 125cc which is about as big as bikes get here. In fact if you have a 400cc bike you have to tell the government and join a sports club where you have to take part in rallies and processions (what's that all about?!). The tour started with a visit to The Crazy House which is a sureal bit of architecture in Dalat. It is a guesthouse made of concrete shaped into strange animal shapes. All the rooms have themes of the different animals and were quite bizarre. Next up was a visit to a monastry built overlooking a lake. This was one of the nicest we had seen in Vietnam with immaculatly kept gardens and children shouting "hellobubbye!".

Our next stop was Chicken Village which is an ethnic minority village with a huge concrete chicken in the middle of it. Chung gave us a really good tour of this village going in and out of the peoples houses and showing us how they lived and what they grew. The children got very excited to see us and took a special liking to LJ's rings which they tried to pull off her fingers. We then moved on to see some silkworm farms and mushroom farms, again with excellent commentary from Chung and Binh. After lunch we were taken to Dalarat waterfalls where I very almost fell in. Without time to catch breath we went on to Bao Dai's summer palace. This was the summer retreat of the king back in the 1950s. We were expecting something quite grand but were shocked to see that it looked like a large 1960s council house. It had obviously been built in a very modern style at the time but has not aged very well. I did note that the king had a western style toilet so why not the rest of the country! From the palace it was on to a convent where they make incense sticks. We managed to meet some of the nuns (all with shaven heads) and through Binh we were able to chat to them. They were making clothes for buddhist monks and nuns some of which they send to England. From here it was on to the old train station and finally the Valley of Love which was a really tacky park (the vietnamese love their tack). The boys then took us to a cafe for a few beers to try and convince us to do a further tour. We had had such a fantastic day we didn't need much convincing and were soon signed up for a 4 day tour all the way from Dalat to Saigon. The cost was very expensive at $150 each and we had to ditch our already bought bus tickets but what the hell!
Print this entry Dalat hotels