Beaches and Easy Riders

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Nha Trang, Mui Ne and Dalat

Nha Trang and Mui Ne is the beach section of our time spent in Vietnam which was great for aiding Peters recovery from Giardia. A lot of our time in Nha Trang was spent inside because it was raining but luckily we had perfect weather whilst we were in Mui Ne. Not much can be said about what we did; it involved a lot of swimming, sitting under a palm tree and reading.

Dalat is located in the highlands of Vietnam which meant a dramatic change in the temperature and the landscape. Lonely planet described the city as feeling like a European mountain town, I could understand how one may draw this conclusion but it is not true. Its too crazy to be anywhere but Vietnam. The scooters and constant buzz in the town means thay instead of being a relaxing psuedo-european getaway it is another example of vietnamese hussle and bussle. This however doesn't seem to deter the hordes of Vietnamese honeymooners who flock to the city after thier wedding to get away from it all.

When we got off the bus in Dalat we realised that we were quite far from any accommodations but luckily we were offered a ride to our hotel for a small fee by the easy riders. The Easy Riders are something of an institution in Dalat. After the end of the Vietnam war the North Vietnamese made all the people work on the land. This meant that highly trained people such as lawyers and accountants who had no idea how to farm were forced to farm the land. As the government became more relaxed a group of these guys got together and decided to take tourists around the city on motorbikes rather than work on the land. The idea worked so well that they are now the cities main tour guides and have a unifom and id cards as success seems to have attracted imitators. After they drove us to our hotel with all our bags, we booking a day trip with them for the following day. It was one of the best tours that we have taken during our whole trip. Being on the motorbike allowed for a whole new perspective on the country and our guides were very informative and taught us alot from thier own personal experiences. Our guides were called Scimitar which means the sword and Tai. Talking to them we found out that Tai was a soldier for the south Vietnamese in the war. At the end of the war he was imprisoned in order to retrain him in the ways of communism. As a joke they called the prison the thousand star hotel as all the holes in the roof made it look like there was thousand stars. We found out that Tai was 62 but he didn't even look fifty!! He later showed us how agile he was for a 62 year old by scaling a 4 metre high cliff which he told us would be "Fun" and an "adventure". Neither of us had much of a problem following him but were more worried for his safety. After we got to the top he then took us down via a cave which Peter barely fitted through and we had to climb down about 6 metres to get to the ground. Tai proved himself to be more than capable and seemed to think that our cautiosness was a bit unecessary. (the thought of trying to explain to our insurance company that we broke something following a 62 year old over a series of cliffs made us abit more careful)
The entire day was great and as guides they were really knowledgable and very good motorbike riders. As far as tours go anyone heading to Vietnam should try and team up with the easy riders as they do tours all over Vietnam and scimitar told us he took a British guy on an 18 day tour from Hanoi down to the Mekong delta.

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Photos

Highlands of Vietnam
Farming land near Dalat

62 year old champion
Our guide climbing up a cliff, he is 62 years old.

Its a hard knock life
How to spend your time in Mui Ne