Motorcycle trip to Saigon!

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We sat in anticipation in the lobby of our hotel in Nha Trang waiting for Danh and his partner to come pick us up on their bikes. Both of us were cautiously optimistic that they’d show up as we gave them a 2500 dong deposit and had no real way of tracking them if they didn’t show. Standing outside our hotel we heard the roar of two Harley Davidson type bikes and made our way across the street where Danh greeted us with a huge smile and outstretched arms. They sent us off to go have breakfast while they got the luggage secured - it was amazing that we could get 2 big bags and little bags secured on the back of the bikes with rope and bungy chords, waterproofed, too.

Kat started the trip on the back of Danh’s bike while Ed took the back of Hoi’s. We had a 3-day, 900 km bike trip ahead of us and we were praying we would be comfortable and have a great time. The boys knew this route like the back of their hands. Stopping every hour for us to stretch our legs, get the feeling back in our bums and showing us what they kept calling ‘the real Vietnam’. Our first stop was a buddhist temple on the outskirts of Nha Trang, then we hit the country road and we knew within 10 minutes that we had made the right decision.

The countryside was so beautiful, topped off by a hot blue skied day. We drove down single lane roads, through small towns seeing the locals working on their fields, in their shops or performing their trades near the sides of the road. Kids all along our trip were so excited to see us, they would run after the bikes waving and yelling ‘hello, hello’ - it was so cool.

We stopped at a rice paper making hut en-route, and we were so surprised to see the hours of labor that goes into making the rice paper sheets used for making spring rolls. A woman sits by a burning fire, scoops a ladle of heated rice batter, smears it over a drum looking thing with steam from heated water coming from below to cook it, covers it for a few seconds, peels it off and hands it to her husband to lay on drying racks. This process is repeated for around 10 hours a day! This family works very hard doing repetitive tasks to make an ok living according to Vietnamese standards. Their whole property was stacked full of bamboo leaf frames covered in rice papers ready for sale- at what obviously amounted to a pittance. We remembered this the next time we tucked into some fresh spring rolls.

We then began heading for the mountains and were told we were going to be reaching 1500 metres in a jungly mountaneous region. We had no idea! So we hung on tight and the boys skillfully drove us up the switch back roads surrounded by the most beautiful mountains and trees with weeping walls along the way. At one point we were above the cloud level - it was very surreal. Ed’s driver was fairly cautious and conservative on the turns of the road, however Kat’s decided he likes to gun in into the turns and break coming out - a few nail marks went into Danh’s back that day.

We stopped for coffee breaks every few hours - so much cracked out Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk was drunk, both of us were buzzing by the end of the day. We also ate some of the tastiest and cheapest food yet on our travels - shows you what happens when a local orders for you in their local haunts.

We arrived at our first city mid-afternoon, Dalat, supposedly like the Swiss Alps in the summer time. We could kind of see it- the town was where the French intelligencia gathered to take respite from the heat and many of the original buildings remain. The boys insisted on taking us to see a few more sites even though we were exhausted. We went to see 2 amazing temples - see photos. The intricacy and care gone into the construction of the first one was amazing. It was like a giant mosaic of all sorts of different objects, from broken beer bottles to old flower pots. The second one housed a huge bell said to send prayers to the Gods. People would write their prayers on yellow sticky pieces of paper, stick them on the bell and ring it to send them off. Ed wrote one for himself and sent it off with a few forceful rings of the bell. They then took us to a flower garden - we’d had enough at this point - it was essentially a big yard with flowers and bushes and locals dressed as cowboys with guns and horses wanting you to pay them to take their photo with them - time for the hotel!

We started the next morning bright and early - our bottoms weren't too sore at this stage. We made our way through some beautiful mountains again heading to the coastal town of Mui Ne. We stopped at some interesting sites along the way, most notably was the silk making factory. The time and effort that went into getting a small amount of silk out of thousands of silk worms a day was unbelievable! Who knew you had to boil the larvae to get the silk out - there were women manning these boiling vats who were scooping out the larvae carcases by the handfull putting in the fresh ones to boil - the smell was really bad, and we really felt for these women whose job this was day in day out.

About 2 hours into our ride we were hit with a massive rain storm. We stopped at the side of the road put on our rain jackets and tried to ride through the storm only to get caught in turential rain - we were soaked to the bones and the bikes were starting to hydroplane a bit from the puddles forming on the road so we stopped on the side of the road, in the middle of no where at some local family's home. We just walked in, they offered us all stools no questions asked! We waited there for about 30 minutes, it wasnt letting up, so our drivers said let's get on with it...while the journey wasnt very comfortable with the rain pelting our faces the views were amazing. We felt like we were the only 4 people in the world on these small roads twisting and winding through the mountains that were vibrant green with trees and plants.

Kat's guide also decided it was a good time to tell her about the bus load of Russian tourists who were killed on this very road a few weeks prior as we were swerving around during the rain storm. Apparantly the bus driver had decided to turn off the ignition while he was going downhill to safe fuel and when he tried to brake he couldnt as the power was off - dont know what type of bus it was but apparantly one whose brakes dont work with no power!

We finally made it through the storm, out of the mountains. Before too long, the lowlands turned into the sand dunes just outside of Mui Ne. We werent really sure what to expect, but the boys told us to hop off and start walking. So we did and it wasnt long before we were acosted by a group of kids offering to rent us slides and they were some of the most agressive touts we have come across (all about 4 foot tall) One kid was haggling with us so hard over the cheap little plastic slides that he literally turned his nose up at us and walked away with the slides until his mom yelled at him to do business with us! We walked up the dunes to the sliding area - and it was beautiful. As you can see from the photos the color of the dunes against the blue sky was striking.

When we finally got to the top we had to get up the courage to go down the dunes - there were 2 little girls beside us who were shooting down the dunes like bullets and trying to show us what to do. We each had a couple of runs and were very tired - as you can see from the pic one of the little girls is literally dragging Kat up the dune. Ed had a little mishap on the slide and put a big hole through it - as soon as this happened the girls were on us for money - then the penny dropped these girls arent being sweet and helpful they're trying to get money out of us! We said we'll pay the person we rented the slide from for the hole - then they wanted us to pay them for showing us how to slide - oh God here we go again! So we had a very long walk down the dune with these girls swirling between us saying "money, money, money......."

When we got to the rental place we gave the mother of the hard selling boy double what we rented it for and started to head off - oh but not before the little boy sees whats going on and races towards us saying "no you pay more, more, more" - this kid needed a spanking! What was worse was Kat spotted this poor little monkey tied to a pole with a foot of lead on him, so she grabbed an apple from her bag and bit off pieces and fed them to the monkey. The boy spotted this and said no you cant feed the monkey, only food you buy from me and kicked the apple away from the monkey's reach. This little sh*t was seriously about to have some manners taught to him - but Kat kept her cool and turned her back to the kid and made sure the monkey had a few pieces of apple before we left.

We arrived in Mui Ne to our hotel which had apparantly gone up in price since our boys were last there so we went to another hotel. The hotel was crappy, but we were so tired we just wanted to shower - we had sand in every crevice...we had quick showers and headed to a local restaurant and had a really nice meal with the boys. Over a few beers were learned more about them and their families and their ways of life. Hoi had had a bit to drink and proudly told us how they had fought the Americans for 10 years, the French for 30 and the Chinese for 1000 years, and fully expected to have to do it again in the future.

Kat must've ate something funky that night cause in the middle of the night and the next morning she was not a happy camper....we had a slow start, and Danh being such a sweet heart made sure he kept an extra supply of toilet paper on his bike!

The next morning and our last day we were headed to Saigon! It was cooking hot - we were roasted by the time we arrived. We had a few stops along the way, the first were some ruins - and we barely got 5-feet in when a group of Vietnamese tourists surrounded us and took a particular interest in Kat. It was hilarious - I had so many hands on me at once and about 50 photos taken - it was like everyone just wanted to be in contact with my skin. After about 20 minutes though and my dodgy stomach I had had enough and gently retreated. Ed got picked up by a woman in the group saying 'I like you, here's my phone number'...it was very funny!

The road to Saigon was a highway the whole way. We were doing an average of 70km/hr and swerving in and out of traffic - it was not quite as idyllic as our previous two days had been. Lots of breaks were needed to stretch out our backs and regain feeling in our bums again!

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Photos

Rubber tree fields
They slice the trees in a circle aroud the trunk, let the rubber drip into a pot for the day, collect it and slice a few centimetres below to start again

Memorial plaques
areas where people could worship their passed loved ones

Buddhist
Religious man who rings the bell hourly

Ed's one messy pup at a local joint
There was a little dog who came and cleaned up after him

Comments

[emu1]

im jealous
your photos of your journeys bring back the sweet memories of when I backpacked the southeast asia circuit in 93. Nice photos and video. Travel on