Vietnam Trip Day 5: Third and Final Day of Motorcycle Tour

The last day of the motorcycle tour followed a similar pattern to the first two.  Because we had arrived at our hotel after dark the night before I hadn't seen the beautiful lake view until the morning.  Khoa offered us the option of riding on an elephant (which they were set up to do at our hotel) and/or taking a boat ride on the lake but we passed both those up (Emma said she'd ridden an elephant before and it was very uncomfortable, whereas I just didn't have much interest, having ridden a camel in Morocco once which turned out to be a very tame experience, with the camel being led around with me sitting on its back - as opposed to me going all Lawrence of Arabia on it - so I feel like I can imagine what the elephant ride is all about.)  There was also a big snake in a cage near where we'd parked our motorcycles the night before.  Khoa said they feed it puppies.

Lak Lake from the hotel parking lot.

The hotel parking lot.  My room was the one you can see on the ground floor on the right side of this picture.  The bananas hanging around the perimeter of the dining area were available to be bought to feed the elephant(s? We didn't see any elephants, but apparently they were scheduled to come by after we left.  Another couple we talked with that morning, he an older French orthopedic surgeon, and she a younger Russian, who had arrived together on a scooter with him driving and no guide, went off to meet the elephant somewhere and ride it back to this stop.

In the plastic bag on the table (on the right) are the leftover sweet potato fries from the night before which I insisted on saving and continuing to eat because a) they were delicious and b) I didn't want to waste food.  Originally Khoa had suggested we only get one order of those the night before but Jacob and I talked him into two orders but that turned out to be too much after all.

Why am I the only one holding a cigarette in this picture?  I don't even smoke!

There was also some leftover passion fruit for breakfast.

The large puppy-eating snake.  Large snake, that is, which purportedly eats regular-size (presumably) puppies.

Mounting up for another day in the saddle!

First stop: another ethnic settlement with another long house.

Once again Khoa egged me on to "sit on the highland taxi" (as they're called because it's a tractor which can pull a trailer loaded with people).  These things are really loud.  We passed several of them on the road and I don't think they have mufflers because they're just really really loud.

A long boat under the eve of a long house.

This long house has a satellite dish, and just after I took this picture and was getting on my bike to depart a woman came out on the porch and lowered the end of a broom to the ground and leaned it against the porch.  Still the other end of it was higher than her head.  The broom was at least 10 feet long!  A long broom for a long house too!

Next stop: brick making factory.

Khoa explaining the economics and technology of brick-making.  The bricks stacked behind him are the finished product.

One of the kids at this place.

These are the freshly-made bricks just coming off the production line.  The backhoe in the background is scooping mud into a hopper, then the mud gets extruded through a machine and onto a conveyor belt where it's sliced automatically before the bricks are stacked and loaded onto carts by hand then taken off to be set in the sun to dry before getting fired.

We're working our way back up the process in reverse.  This is the machine that slices the bricks with a wire as they move down the conveyor.

This is where they're coming out of the extruder.  They're actually extruded in two separate pieces side by side, so each slice of the wire creates two bricks.  The little roller is putting a stamp (presumably the company name or something) along the top edge.

The hopper and extruder.

After they're sliced this woman picks up a pair of bricks and sets them on top of the next pair so that when they arrive at the woman further down the line she can pick up four bricks at once and set them on the cart.

When the cart is full they wheel them out into the sun and set them to dry, as you can see behind her.

Closeup of the logo stamping process.

After they've dried in the sun for some number of days (they have to cover them with plastic when it rains) they bring them under a roof here where they don't have to worry about the rain anymore and load them in the ovens you can see behind these ladies and that's where they're fired.

Lots of kids at this place getting their ration of candy.

Finished bricks coming out the far side of the kiln, where we'd started.

Next stop: picturesque rice field.

A rice plant.

As we're enjoying our cigarette break on the side of the road some locals came by to check us out.

All of these are kids except the woman with the helmet who was the mother of the toddler on the scooter.

Khoa had a way of stripping out the inside of the rice plant to access the interior for eating, which was very tender and delicious (kind of a milky taste).

The woman wanted to take a picture with us.

Her cute kid!

I had assumed these two guys were with the mother and her daughter too, but then I started doubting that since they left separately (I think) and it wouldn't make sense for them to be on bicycles and her on a scooter, in retrospect.

We decide to purchase a watermelon to enjoy later.  The seller was nice enough to slice it up for us.

More rice fields.

Next stop: pepper plants at a pepper farm (pepper corns, that is).

Here are some ripe ones.

Time for some watermelon!

Yum!

This house is just across the road from the pepper farm and that stuff on the ground is peppercorns drying.

This 'cafe' where we're having our watermelon is basically the garage of the house above.  That device in the middle of the picture is a pump for gasoline.  The guy lighting a cigarette on his scooter had come for some fuel.  I watched him hand-pump the gas from the barrel below into the upper glass tank which had marks on the side so you can see how much he's getting, then he opens a valve and drains that much into his container, which he pours into his gas tank, all in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette!

Our trustee steeds.

And we're off again, over another one-lane wooden bridge.

The next section of "road" was dirt and full of potholes.  It was a shortcut.  Very dusty, and I was in the rear.  So I got covered in reddish dust.  Eventually we reached the end of that section though and stopped for more pho at an excellent roadside restaurant.

Jacob was busy all this day arranging their flight out of Nha Trang later in the evening to return to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, but people called it both) where Emma's brother lived and they'd left the rest of their stuff, then a quick turnaround to meet friends in Bangkok.

The best pho was served with many fresh veggies to add to it and lots of hot sauce options to spice it up.  Boy I sure got tired of sitting on these super-low stools, though.  They were hard on the butt and the back!

The place on the right in the picture above is the restaurant we're in.  I notice it's clouding up!

Ah, luck, a "highland taxi" comes by while I'm off the bike and able to take a picture.  This one is loaded with hay instead of people.  This is probably a good time to mention the variety of things we saw traveling down the roads in Vietnam by way of scooter, motorcycle, tractor, and truck (although we couldn't usually see what was in the trucks).  From trees and flowers to animals and lumber and pretty much anything you could imagine.  I was always driving though and opted not to try to take pictures while riding the motorcycle for safety reasons though that cost me many interesting shots.

More views.  That's the road we're headed down and the little settlement in the valley is the tapioca-making place we'll stop next.

Tapioca farm.

This kid was asleep (out cold) on the hard cold cement floor and Khoa was trying to wake him up with a piece of candy, which he failed to do.  I was afraid the kid was dead because he was so motionless.

As far as I can tell this is where this family lives.

On the hill across the street we could see many people working on the tapioca crop somehow, possibly chopping it with machetes or digging up the roots?  (I think the roots are where tapioca comes from but don't quote me).

On the road again.

Rain in the valley.

Next stop: sugar cane fields.

And Khoa prepares some sugar cane for us to sample.

It was quite tasty!  Crunchy, sweet, and kind of granular.

Almost "home" now; we're back to the coast.

This was a divided highway (similar to an interstate in the US) which Khoa stopped us on so we could dart across and take the pictures you saw above.  Happily traffic was light.  Our side was higher than the side going in the opposite direction which you can see in the first picture from this series.

Just north of Nha Trang now, I had almost walked this far on my first full day in Vietnam when it was so hot.  This is a planned resort which construction had stalled on due to "corruption" according to Khoa.  But you can see the buildings are in the style of the ethnic community house we saw on the first day of our tour.

Home at last, and after checking in to Little Home Hostel again (Jacob got a room just so they could use the shower before taking their flight later that night) we met for a final dinner together at the little street restaurant which Eddie and I had been to on my first night in town.

And proceeded to enjoy another excellent bbq dinner.

Jacob and Emma eventually left to get a ride to the airport.

And Khoa and I stayed for one or two more beers.

So the motorcycle tour portion of my trip ended.  Khoa was clearly trying to drum up more work (this was a low season for his business) and had offered to extend our tour to a fourth day but Jacob and Emma had to depart, and that was fine with me.  As fun as it was I was ready for a break from riding all day and was looking forward to being on my own for a bit.  But then Khoa started talking to me about doing a small trip the next day on my way up to Doc Let and I reluctantly let him talk me into that.  He was going to show me some falls and ride with me to my next hotel, "Some Days of Silence" and show me where the good seafood in that town was.  I made it clear that I wanted to enjoy a leisurely morning and also get to my next destination in the early afternoon so I could enjoy just hanging out and relaxing and he agreed to that so it all seemed like a nice compromise and we planned to meet at 10:00 the next morning, but it wasn't meant to be. (to be continued).

I'll end the motorcycle trip with this panorama, which actually belongs to the first day's scenery but I didn't realize that being a panorama it ended up at the bottom of the collection of pictures.  Anyway, it's a nice representative shot of the mountain views we had on the trip so it's a suitable final image.  Too bad it's so small.  You should see it full size!