Well I will start this post (Gran-I know you'll be worrying otherwise!!) by letting you know that we all made it from Nha Trang to Dalat in one piece, and Eddie's passport was returned to him as promised in exchange for a safe delivery, but we had an adventure or two on the way!
We got up early, and were met by Eddie and his team - consisting of Titi, and Pipi. I was riding with Eddie, who seemed to be their leader - and a very chatty one at that! He didn't stop talking for the entire 2 days! Titi is a very charismatic guy, who speaks great English, and he was Astrid's bike mate. Caz however, drew the short straw with Pipi, who speaks no English, didn't know the way to Dalat, and whose bike was no better than a hairdryer on wheels!
The guys strapped our backpacks to the bikes, handed us our helmets and we were off! Even the short journey out of Nha Trang along the beach was stunning. It took barely any time for us to get comfortable on the back of the bikes and before long we were all relaxing and taking photos of the beautiful scenery. We were scheduled to stop regularly along the way, and the first stop was small fishing village. We watched the locals making round fishing boats, out of leaves and what seemed to be wattle and daub! Other stops of the morning included a brick factory and a number of viewpoints. The bikes wound their way up towards the highlands, and the baking hot sun of the coast started to give way to cooler weather. We knew within a fewm minutes that we had made the right decision to take the tour. The guys were great bikers, constatnly looking out for each other and checking we stayed together, and there is no doubting that motorbike has to be the best way to see Vietnam! We really felt part of the local life, zooming through villages, waving at the locals and high fiving the children as we sped past. We rode alongside bikes with baskets full of live pigs, ducks, chickens and small tractors piled high with local people and bags of rice! It was all quite exhilarating!
After a quick lunch stop, we got back on the road, and the afternoon's itinerary involved trespassing a number of huge plantations - of sugar cane, coffee beans, cocoa, corn, peppercorns and rice, at each stop, one of the guys gave us a run down of how they farm each crop. It was fascinating and so far from the tourist trail it was a far cry from our experiences in Sapa and Halong Bay. Vietnam is apparently the world's second biggest producer of rice (second to Thailand), and as we sped past miles and miles of paddy fields, we could see the locals collecting and drying the ricein the sun. It seems fairly common place up here to spread the rice over the roads to dry, and in places, the only way through was over the sheets of rice!
As we got higher into the mountains, the sky clouded over, and suddenly a torrential downpour began. Quite an experience on the back of a bike speeding along at 90 km/hr with no waterproof gear! Once we were completely soaked through, the bikes stopped, and Eddie wrapped our boots in plastic bags, and we put waterproof jackets and trousers on, just to be sure that we had no chance of ever getting dry even if the rain stopped. Eddie spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone to god to find out when and how long the rain showers would last each time - he is a complete nutcase!! We stopped at a petrol station, where the owner had a number of pet snakes and scorpions which she gave to us to hold, including a HUGE python, that the three of us even struggled to hold between us!
Eventually, soaking wet, and with aching bottoms, we arrived at the homestay. Despite a (possibly ironic) sign welcoming tourists to the village, this homestay seemed genuine. There were no showers, the toilets were a short walk away from the house, across a cow shed full of cows, pigs and chickens full of slurry and the M'nong tribal people were sleeping in the same room as us.
We went straight to the local Ca Phe (you don't need to know any Vietnamese for that one!) for a beer and chatted to Titi for a while before dinner. We were having dinner in one of the neighbouring longhouses, with a M'Nong couple called Y'Cor and H'Ban. We arrived at their house, which was one large room, with bamboo mats and chopsticks laid out for us on the floor. The easy riders were there, and we kicked off the evening with a card game before dinner. We went to see H'Ban cooking in the very smokey kitchen out the back of the house, and it seemed that she did all the cooking over a single fire. We didn't really know what to expect - they guys had been teasing us all day about BBQ rat, dog curry and various other local delicacies - but we assumed they were joking. Even when Titi (who is a bit of a joker) asked if we wanted to go and see the rats on the BBQ we laughed it off. It wasn't until we were each presented with our decidedly rodent shaped piece of BBQ meat that we realised! They were complete with all internal organs, testicles and all. Not girls to shy from new culinary experiences, we all tucked in. We were maybe a little too enthusiastic, as they brought round a second rat each! The rest of the meal consisted of rice (!), bamboo shoots, fish, vegetables, more passion fruit than we could eat and, of course much happy water!
The M'nong people have their own happy water, which is a brown liquid that you drink through a bamboo straw. Much drinking and drinking games ensured - including spin the chilli and card games in 3 languages (English, Vietnamese and M'nong). Eventually, 2 hours after the M'nong's usual bedtime (8pm), we headed back across the cow shed, via a quick toilet stop undeneath the longhouse with the animals (!), and then headed to bed for a sleepless night of children screaming, dogs barking, roosters crowing and pigs grunting very loundly, all directly beneath us.
The next morning we woke to cloudy skies and rain. We had a quick breakfast and left early to make to 140km to Dalat.
We rode through village after village all living off the coffee plantations - resulting in some extremely plush looking houses! We drove past all the local vehicles, including a Huyndai lorry (not Hyundai!! Fake car brands?!)and a Yahama (not Yamaha!) garage and dodged the many local dogs that seem to lie around in the middle of the road, deliberately to get in our path. Eddie then told me one of the most disgusting things I've ever heard - apparently the dogs deliberately sit in the middle of the road, because the Vietnamese are such bad travellers that they often throw up out of car and bus windows, and the dogs just wait for it ....dinner!!
We waved at all the local kids, Eddie beeped at all the lorries, cars and buses, and despite the intermittent rain, it was great fun.
The roads into Dalat were extremely windy, and Eddie amused himself by leaning the bike so far over that we were practically touching the floor on the corners! It was fun, if a little scary!
We made it to Dalat without great incident, stopped off at the Crazy House, a bizarre house designed by some mental architect, and then say our sad goodbyes as we caught the bus on to Saigon (Now Ho Chi Minh City). In true Vietnam style, the supposed 4 hour bus journey took 8 hours. We stopped off at a roadstop for some snacks, but all of the food on offer were completely unrecognisable fruits, that we had never seen before! We ended up with some small egg shaped fruits, some chinese cherries and some dried maybe strawberries.
We checked into a hotel for Caz's final night in Vietnam :( and got a good night's sleep.
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