Buckle up because this was a huge day! The night before Eddie/Khoa had told me he'd be at my hotel at 9:00 the following morning with the Australian couple (Jacob and Emma) who had also signed up for the trip. Emma and Jacob had just joined the day before. For a little while Khoa (a.k.a. Eddie - I'm transitioning to using his real name) had kept me up in the air regarding when we were actually going to depart. When I'd contacted him about the trip initially I'd suggested leaving on Sunday but said I was flexible because I was traveling solo so if there was another group who wanted to leave at another time I'd be happy to join them because I realized it would be more efficient (and profitable) for Eddie to lead one large group rather than one small one (myself) or two separate ones. Anyway, long story short, he suggested Monday would be a good day to leave and I reconciled myself to spending the first day exploring the Nha Trang area solo which ultimately turned out to be a good experience. I had also planned to scope out other possible Nha Trang accommodations which might be closer to 'the center of things' (the only negative aspect of "Little Home..." I'd read on the internet) for later in the week but as things turned out I was completely happy there and ended up spending all my Nha Trang time there. If it ain't broke don't fix it!
I had sent Khoa a deposit on my trip around the beginning of February and had made my Little Home reservations booked on the Monday departure plan (not that forfeiting that was a huge deal at about $12/night) but then when I actually showed up and started communicating with Khoa by What's App (which worked great, by the way -- it was my first time using it) he started talking to me about leaving on Sunday instead of Monday. So I said that was okay but then at dinner with him that first (Saturday) night he said we were going to leave on Monday after all like the original plan. What had happened, apparently, was that a trio of women from Austria had asked to leave on Sunday with Khoa on the same trip as me and one would be riding on the back of his bike and the other two would be driving in a car. So he wanted me to leave on Sunday with them. Then the Australian couple materialized (I'm inferring the exact timeline of all this) and wanted to leave on Monday so he handed the Austrian women's business off to one of his 'brothers' (friends who work in the same guiding business) and we were back on for a Monday departure with the Australians, who were going to be riding together on one bike. Moral: It's good to be flexible and it all worked out in the end. In addition Khoa told us that he'd sent the Austrian women off in the opposite direction around the same 3-day loop as us so they'd be spending their second night (Monday) in Da Lat where we were going to be spending our first night (also Monday) and we could all go out to dinner there together.
I came downstairs at 8:00 Monday morning and had my breakfast (this time with one softboiled egg, which I found less efficient to eat) then went off to find an ATM. I had located one in walking distance the night before but it didn't accept my Korean debit card. So I'd Googled the location of some others and I planned to go out on my own test drive on the motorcycle to get some more local cash for the trip. It was pretty exciting to ride the motorcycle in the traffic by myself and kind of difficult to look for the bank while I was doing so so I ended up going past it and having to make a U-turn (which I did too loosely, and nearly got nailed on the inside by another biker (henceforth 'bike' will mean 'motorcycle' as I didn't do any bicycling in Vietnam) who was making a simple left. Note to self: when you make a U-turn stay very close to the median and don't let anyone get inside of your turning radius!
Well of course that bank didn't take my card either and I was starting to get nervous but I remembered another one I'd seen on the map so I motored off toward that and that one worked. So I was back in business. When I got back to Little Home... Eddie and Jacob and Emma were there waiting for me.
I got my backpack from the lobby and Eddie put it in a large plastic bag and strapped it on the back of my bike for me and we set off with Eddie leading the way. The first part of the trip was through town but we were headed west and a little south and as we approached the outskirts of town the roads and buildings got smaller and narrower and more winding. It was picturesque and relaxing to get out of the city traffic. Soon we made our first stop:
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| First stop - probably after about 20 minutes of riding west from the beach to the inland edge of town. |
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| This is just to the left of the last picture. This place looks like a little roadside cafe and it may be but Khoa said the roosters were also used for fighting sometimes. |
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| And this is further left from the last picture, or about 180 degrees in the opposite direction of the first one. It shows the little wooden bridge we're about to ride across the river I mentioned in an earlier post which flows through the middle of Nha Trang. |
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| A selfie before we cross the bridge |
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| A boat being built just to the left of the bridge. |
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| After crossing the bridge we rode a short way through some more small winding city streets on the other side but soon stopped again at a noodle factory, where Khoa explained the noodle-making process. |
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| Noodle-making factory interior. |
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| Jacob in front of noodle-making supplies. |
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| Some sort of noodle product drying on racks. I don't know if this is its final state or if gets sliced or something from here. |
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| Noodle maker in shop. Having a smoke break. |
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| Outside the noodle shop, about to start riding again after a quick smoke. Khoa smoked prodigiously as did both Emma and Jacob. Consequently I gamely tried to keep up. Happily I've had no urge to continue back in Korea. |
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| Now we're starting to get out into the country a bit and we stop for gas. It amused me that there was a smoking table set up near the gas pumps! |
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| Just as we were about to leave the gas station I spotted this flowering tree. |
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| Eddie went over and picked two flowers off it. He gave one to Emma and one to me. I found a place to put one out of the wind on my steering column and it lasted there a while but eventually disappeared. |
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| We went on a little further then it was time to stop at a roadside cafe for coffee and tea... |
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| ...and more cigarettes. |
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| Back on the road again we soon stop again to admire the view and I spot a milestone. One thing I was really excited about doing on this trip was getting to the town of Da Lat. Not only was that the name of the Vietnamese restaurant on Federal which my friend Vi's family owned and ran until fairly recently (which is how I first heard of Da Lat) but I'd since discovered when reading about it on the internet that it was supposed to be a beautiful city in the mountains and have great food. 113 km is around 75 miles. That's where we're planning to stay tonight. We probably had about 20 miles behind us at this point. |
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| The view we'd stopped for. Khoa is executing a partial "chicken-power" pose which you'll see more of in pictures to come. Basically it's that pose from The Karate Kid where you stand on one foot with the other leg drawn up and your arms held out like your about to launch some kind of martial arts attack. |
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| The view on the other side of the road. |
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| I wanted to show everyone that I was being safe and wearing a helmet! |
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| Ready to take off again. Emma is sitting on Khoa's bike for this shot. She always road behind Jacob. |
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| See? Helmets! Safety first! |
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| Soon the road began to climb up into the foothills and we pulled over to see a wood-carving shop (and smoke). |
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| Some raw material |
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| The first of many Happy Buddhas we'd see. I don't remember any other kind of Buddha in Vietnam. |
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| Eddie is pointing out that this piece has some rocks trapped in the wood. |
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| What's over here under this blanket? Oh, it's Happy Buddha! |
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| You know who... |
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| This place smelled really nice. |
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| Bye bye for now, HB! |
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| The road ahead winding up into the foothills. |
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| Another stop for the view. This shows a valley with some farms. |
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| Jacob, Khoa, Emma |
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| ...and Chicken Power! |
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| And another try at chicken power where I'm about to fall backward into the ravine. |
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| Another recurring theme of the trip was ethnic minority populations being resettled in government housing installations. According to Khoa there are 52 (or 54, I forget) separate ethnic minorities in Vietnam with their own language or at least dialect to the point where they can't understand each other or people like Khoa who speak, I guess, "regular" Vietnamese. Usually these small sub-populations were originally mountain communities though at least one we'll come to later was from a river delta. According to Khoa, either because their original habitat is being logged or otherwise encroached on or else in order to give them better access to services such as health care they're being relocated from their ancestral lands to these government-built camps. I wasn't quite sure whether Khoa thought this was a good thing or not. He certainly seemed to see positives in it such as the aforementioned health care and possibly other services like education but I couldn't help but wonder about how these people's lifestyles would change when they were taken away from their traditional topography and resources and economies. Most of the buildings in this shot are residences but the larger red one on the left of the frame is a school or community building. |
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| Another stop for a view showing the way we'd just come. That white-ish area just to he left of Khoa's head is actually that ethnic minority camp from the last shot. Which I now realize means that in that last shot you can look up in the hills and see where we're standing now. |
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| This shot better shows the road we'd just ridden up. |
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| These shots are a little to left of the previous one. This was the first time I saw smoke rising from the hills but that became a common site. Apparently farmers are burning trash and/or clearing more land. |
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| There was a fire tower at this point and we climbed up in it to see the view. While we were there a couple of Vietnamese guys pulled up on a bike a joined us. Vietnamese people we met were often anxious to take selfies with us and I was happy to get one too. |
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| Still wearing my helmet! |
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| One of many waterfalls we passed by but unless we happened to be stopped I couldn't get a picture of them. |
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| Starting to cloud up a bit as we look back east toward the coast. As we were getting higher up in the mountains it was getting cooler, which was nice. But Eddie had promised us a chance to swim in either a lake or a pool coming up and that had sounded really good when it was hot and sunny. At some point we must have been up to around 7000 feet elevation because we went over some sort of pass and then had to descend quite a ways to reach Da Lat which itself is about 5000 feet high, or roughly the same as Denver. |
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| Note another small waterfall just in front of me in the foreground of this picture. |
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| Next stop: the swimming hole! |
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| Is that a merman? |
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| ...or a manatee? |
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| They were talking about how cold the water was but actually it wasn't bad at all. It was about like L. Michigan on a moderate day, and way warmer than a Rocky Mtn. lake! |
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| Aqua chicken power! |
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| Nature's water-jet massage |
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| By now we've gotten hungry and are ready for lunch. We stopped for some pho in a tiny "blink and you'll miss it" town. Great pho tho! |
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| That's the town. |
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| After lunch we continued on to a recreation of the "long house" and meeting house (taller one) in the style of some of the mountain ethnicities. |
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| Smoke break in a 100% wooden structure? Is that a good idea? By the way, ashtrays are not usually part of the culture in Vietnam. Ash and finished cigarettes are generally dropped on the ground, a habit I found hard to adopt, but when in Rome... |
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| I think the entire ethnic community village, or at least extended families, would live in the long houses. |
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| As we approached Da Lat, which it turns out is also known for its flowers, we began to pass mile after mile of greenhouses. |
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| See all the greenhouses. |
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| Next stop: a temple complex on our way into Da Lat. We got there shortly after 5:00 p.m. and it was in the process of closing down for the night. |
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| Oh, I was wrong, there's a not-so-happy Buddha. This one is made out of flowers. |
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| While not technically a happy Buddha, I'd guess judging from the expression this could be called at least a content Buddha. |
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| The Da Lat train station! Now we've really arrived. Khoa asked me for my camera and told me to go toward the station and "just keep walking". Apparently he meant walk back toward him. He said it would make a more natural picture. But I didn't understand his plan so I just kept walking -- right into and through the station and out the far side where the trains are. Eventually the rest of the group caught up with me. |
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| "Hmmmm, just keep walking, huh? I don't get it, but whatever." |
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| Khoa made us climb over the sign that said "do not climb on train" and pose on the train. |
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| See, Da Lat! We made it! |
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| Oh, this is what you meant, Khoa! |
Well believe it or not. Only about half the day's adventure was over. Next we checked into our hotel (very nice, price included in trip), got cleaned up, and headed out to meet Khoa's "brothers" and the three Austrian women for dinner and "happy water" (basically any alcoholic beverage, which by now I was well in the mood for). It was a short walk to this restaurant:
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| One of Khoa's brothers in front on the left. The other took this picture. I think the one we see here was named Lam. I think he was driving the motorcycle with one of the Austrian women (the one in the middle of the three on the right) on the back. The other two were riding in a car being driven by the "brother" taking the picture. They had started the day before us and gone the opposite direction around the loop. So tomorrow would be their last day and they would do the ride we'd just done in reverse. We, on the other hand, had two more days ahead of us and would stay the next night in the town where these women had spent the previous night. I'll be darned if I can remember all three of their names at the moment, unfortunately. Hopefully they will come back to me. The only one I think I can remember right now is the one closest to us here who was Matina. |
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| It was funny because I noticed in the course of dinner that one of them didn't smoke (the only one at the table), one of them didn't drink, and one was a vegetarian. I joked that they were kind of like the three monkeys with their hands over their eyes, ears, and mouth. |
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| This was a pretty hip restaurant! Certainly the hippest I went to in Vietnam and hip even by my standards in the US. There was pop music playing and periodically the entire staff would break out into synchronized dance steps which apparently the Austrians knew as well. This would have been a better video than still picture. |
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| After dinner we walked to a night market which the three Vietnamese weren't interested in so they waited for us at a really wild bar called the "Maze Bar". The tourists walked through the night market which wasn't that exciting but was okay then returned to the Maze Bar only to find Khoa and his brothers had left. How we knew that exactly I don't know because I never did see the entire place. It truly was a maze. After finding the bathroom and losing some happy water I made it into the adjacent room, offered to take a picture of a group of people sitting there about to do a groupie and then sat down with them with my drink. I was happily chatting away with them when the rest of my party found me and joined us. The bar was full of foreigners (meaning people like me) and was a really amazing place. It could never pass fire code in the US. It was like being in a cave with tunnels and passages connecting different spaces on slightly different levels. God forbid a fire should break out in there. I'll smoke to that! |
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| At some point I went off to explore the bar a little and after climbing up, over, under, and through several sections (and noticing faux rock gates which could be swung one way or another to block or enable different paths) I came to this near-vertical downward path which I actually declined to plumb further. After backtracking and climbing some more I finally made it to somewhere around the top of the establishment (I think) where I found the main crowd of patrons, about 20 or 30 people. I worked my way back to where I'd left my party and when I got there I found everyone except them had been changed out for new people. So many young people from all over the world traveling around! Kind of reminded me of my Eurail Pass days in Europe in the early 80s, except I'm about 35 years older now, which makes me considerably more than twice my age at the time (sigh). |
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| Finally we headed back to our hotel. It's a good thing these women had waited for me because I don't think I could have found it without them. I think it was the one who doesn't drink who led us. Anyway, we got back and found the gate closed but the padlock was unlocked (similar to that house front gate I'd been let through the week - no, the day! - before) so we unlocked it and were walking up the driveway to our rooms when one of the women asked "Chris, are you up for another one?" It turned out all of us except the one who didn't drink was, so we headed back out and returned to the restaurant where we'd started the evening, which at that point was closing up but they agreed to let us in for some rice wine. We got the kind marked to tourists as "sperm" style due to its milky consistency and one of the waiter/managers (on my right in the picture above) joined us. He was really delightful and spoke English well and explained how he was in college full time (working nights) though he wasn't really academically oriented (like his brother) but job opportunities were few in Vietnam and he was studying hospitality management and had an idea that "whatever the customer wants is what they should get" (sounds like "the customer is always right?"). At some point I remember thinking how privileged I was to be sitting there with two Austrians and a Vietnamese having a conversation in English. Wow, what we take for granted! We sat and drank and talked for a long time though I was mostly listening. Eventually someone from the kitchen brought out two big bowls of fried rice with vegetables and shrimp in it which we all shared. Another guy who had been sweeping up eventually lay down on one of the tables to go to sleep which we finally took as our cue to get out of there. I think we got back to our hotel and I got to bed around 1:30 or 2:00. I was afraid I was going to be feeling as poorly the next morning as I had been feeling fine this evening but (spoiler alert) I actually felt fine the next day. |
Thus, my friends (or should I say my brothers and sisters?) ends the first day of my motorcycle tour of Vietnam! Mote High Bah, Yo! (One Two Three, Cheers!)
