Central Vietnam: Dalat, Nha Trang, Hoi An and Hue

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First stop on Geckos: the highlands of Dalat

The bus ended up arriving in Dalat pretty late due to the 8 hour bus journey and I was very suprised to step off the bus and feel cold, a feeling I have not felt in a while! We checked in and got settled into our rooms and I was a bit miffied to find I was one of the few people that did not have a balcony in my room (because I was on my own in a single I would always be due to get the worst rooms!) That evening we went out for dinner and had a wander around town to see all the night markets and the hustle and bustle of the city. However, it was an early night as the following day was to be our big motobike tour day around Dalat and would turn out to be one of the best days of the trip so far.

That morning after brekkie, we headed down to the lobby where Minh (our tour guide) had collected all the keys from the motobike drivers and put them into a large glass bowl. We thus had to pick out a key from this bowl and go outside and find our driver. I got a cool older dude with his leather jacket on though unfortunatly he could not speak any English. We then set off to our first destination: the Chicken Village. Now, it may sound very strange but it is actually quite a famous Koho minority people's village, a good 30/45mins outside of Dalat, where a huge concrete chicken stands above the wooden houses (hence the name). The ride there was incredible. In our group, it was many peoples first time on a motorbike so that was exciting in itself, but the scenery was just stunning through the mountains and seeing this group of 16 motorbikes all riding along together was great fun. At the village itself we were given a little tour and talk about the Koho tribe and then we climbed back onto our bikes to visit our next stop: Datanla waterfall.

We parked up in the car park of the waterfall site, in the top of the valley and I started wondering to myself, surely you usually view a waterfall from the bottom of a valley. However, purely genius idea, they had inserted a tobogganing ride to get people down to the bottom of the valley to see the waterfall. And then another ride to bring people back up. It was fantastic and truely inspirational. The waterfall itself was not anything amazing but the ride very much made up for it! It was then time to head back into town for a quick lunch stop at a restaurant before going to have a look around the old french colonial railway station in the city which was being used for a wedding at the time. Next, we headed back out of town to experience the cable car over the pine forest down to a hill top pagoda based on Zen Buddism. And our final destination of the day turned out to be the weirdest one yet. In town (yes, we did keep going in and out of town) there is a place known as the "crazy house" which is a fantasy house designed by Dang Viet Nga, the daughter of an independence war hero. The house has unexpected twists and turns at every corner and the misshapen windows make it look like a fairy tale house, with stone animals, such as a bear, giraffe, and spider—linger around the premises and small ponds and mushroom statues adorn the outside of the house!

And so, our first motorbike tour had come to an end but for having such a fantastic day it was worth every penny. We then headed back to the hotel, had some dinner and an early night ready to catch our short bus journey the following day back down to the coast and to the beautiful town of Nha Trang.

Welcome to Miss Universe

And so we arrived in Nha Trang, home at the current time to the Miss Universe 2008 competition (much to the delight of the men on the trip). We checked into our beautiful "Rainbow Hotel" where yet again I did not get a balcony and we headed out to a famous restaurant in Vietnam, 'originally' called "Good Morning Vietnam" which despite the name, was in fact an Italian. The food though, in my opinion was to die for. I had the worlds' best lasagne (other than yours of course mum) and I was so happy not to be eating another rice dish! After lunch, Kate and I went for a walk around town, having a look at some clothes shops before heading back to the hotel to shower and change before heading out for the evening. Minh had decided to take us a bit out of town to what is apparently a very famous local Vietnamese restaurant called Lac Canh, though it looked a bit like a fast food diner with the plastic everything. It was completely packed though and people seemed to be enjoying themselves so I thought I would give it a chance. I ended up sitting down the bottom end of the table with Ange and Pat due to us three being the only ones not having the set menu (it was mainly seafood). However, very stupidly, we did not understand the portion size and ordered way beyond too much food. So our mini BBQ table sets arrived with all our meats, fruits, vegetables etc, all raw and we had to cook them ourselves. The food would have been really nice had it not all be drowned in hot spices and chillis. After my second bottle of water, I promptly gave up. It was then time for the party to begin with what was essentially a drinking game with dice! We then headed back into town to a bar where we had a fun evening dancing the night away and I spent a lot of time talking to a random but incredibly sweet Korean couple at the bar!

Attack of the Jellies

The following morning, most of us feeling slightly worse for wear, it was time to head off on our boat trip into the South-China sea. We had a little boat to ourselves and the journey out to where we were to moor was about an hour and a half long. Naturally I slept the whole way thinking this would be a way to cure the seasickness (it was one of those tiny fisherman style boats). Once we arrived and moored everyone naturally jumped straight into the water. Except me. By this point I was crazily thinking why I had bothered to spend the money on a trip which involved swimming in open water. Hmmmm. Anyway, after threats of being thrown in by Guy, I soon changed into my bathers and for good reason when 10 mins later I was promptly pushed in. As soon as I surfaced, I swam straight to the ladder of the boat to cling on for dear life when all of a sudden, Nic swims up to me and tells me to get up the ladder. I, thinking she was joking as the previous night the group had stated they would tease me as much as possible about sea creatures, did not move. It was only when Ange started getting panicky too that I jumped up and saw what was a huge jellyfish float straight past where we had been floating, with tentacles so long that the ends were not even visable in the crystal clear water. Suffice to say, I did not get back in after this event. The rocking to and fro whilst moored soon got to me and I was not the only one to have seasickness strike with three of us lying down on the seats. After lunch we headed back to the mainland and I went for a lie down.

That evening, Nic and I ventured out to a little shop recommended to us by a fellow hotel stayer that did custom-made bikinis. So we placed out order for two and headed back to the hotel where I got a take-away pizza and stayed in with Kate chatting all evening. The following day was check out day, but due to us not leaving for our train until 7pm, we had a few rooms that were booked as day rooms. Unfortunatly mine was not one of them. So I checked out and moved all my stuff into Nic and Kates room before heading down to the beach for an hour or two. We then just chilled out in the hotel room until it was time to leave Nha Trang and head to the station to board our overnight Reunification Express train to Danang.

Party Train

We thus arrived at the train station and it was beyond packed it's unreal. We eventually head out to the platform, only to be told the train is late. Hmmm. It eventually arrives and we pile into our cabins of four and get all settled for the journey ahead. As Guy, Nic, Steve and Alicia were sharing a cabin together, there's automatically became the party cabin, so we put some music on speakers, got all the food out, bought some beers and just chilled out for a few hours before most of us (except the four party cabin people) went to sleep. Though I should say sleep in the loosest sense as I had about an hour in total and spent most of the time on the top bunk looking out and watching Vietnam go by. Around 5am, we all woke up and started getting ready to disembark but it was a good half an hour before we even arrived at the station. I then had the joy of trying to get off the train with my huge backpack whilst new people were pushing and shoving to get on. It was then onto a minibus that was to take us half and hour down the road, away from Danang and heading towards Hoi An.

Hoi An: A world Heritage sight

Of course, when we arrived at the hotel in Hoi An, we were exceptionally tired. So we were slightly miffed when we realised we couldn't check in for several hours. So we faulked up an extortionate 50,000 Dong for brekkie, which however turned out to be amazing and waited for the rooms to be available. Once we had finally checked in, I went straight to bed and did not get up until 2pm and that was only because I needed to have a shower before our walking tour around Hoi An. We set off for the 20min walk into town and once there we had a wonder around all the streets. The city was an important Vietnamese trading centre in the 16th and 17th centuries, where Chinese from various provinces as well as Japanese, Dutch and Indians settled down. Because it is a world heritage sight, you have to buy a ticket to see a lot of the sights including walking over the famous Japanese bridge in town. The other thing that Hoi An is very famous for is tailoring and clothes. Everyone who had wanted clothes made for them (which was pretty much everyone other than me) went out during the morning whilst I was sleeping to get there clothes measured. So on the walking tour, with our tickets we were able to see the Japanese bridge, an old houses that exist in an awkward halfway state between museum show-piece and somewhat shabby residence for the family that lives there and a congregation halls, where Chinese expatriate residents socialized and held meetings. We then had a wonder round ourselves before heading back to the hotel to use the swimming pool.

That evening, Minh took us to an Italian/expensive Vietnamese restaurant called the Cargo Club which I loved but most others didn't! We then headed back and most of us had an early night. The following day most of the group went out on various trips planned by Minh but I wasn't interested in most of them and wanted to save money anyway. So I had a lie in and then wandered into town to do a bit of shopping before spending the afternoon by the pool before the rest of the group joined me along with a crate of sangria!

The following day it was off to our final destination before Hanoi, the city of Hue. We joined yet another public bus but this one was much busier than the others we'd ridden on so I had to share a seat with Kate resulting in a fairly uncomfortable journey as there was also a lack of aircon. Luckily we arrived several hours later and checked into our rooms in Hue.

Old friends and more bikes

As soon as I was settled into my room, I was straight back out again as luckily, my friend Mette who was also travelling Vietnam was doing the same route as us just in the opposite direction! So we met up and had lunch and a good old chat before I had to head back to the hotel around 3ish to join the group for our second motorbike tour that after the success of the first one in Dalat, we were all really looking forward too. So as usual, we picked our keys out of the bowl and went outside to meet our drivers for the afternoon. Turns out my guy was also a waiter at a nearby restaurant that the group went to for lunch and Kate was quite taken with him. So we all set off again in tandem and headed towards our first stop: the town's imperial citadel with a huge gigantic Vietnamese flag in the middle of it. Quite interesting but was a very brief stop. We then set off further afield which resulted in us driving through fields and even graveyards! Our destination was the Tombs of the Emperors. They date from the late 19th/early 20th, when the Emperors had been reduced to figureheads under French colonial rule and had little else to do than build themselves elaborate tombs. Other stops on our tour included a pagoda where the main attraction was watching monks play football, a view point high up on a hill where we could look over the Perfume River (and also where we had the photo taken with us all on the bikes) and a small shop where we were shown how they make those brilliant cone hats and incense sticks. Our final stop was quite a way out of town to a little village which was very pretty but I'm not quite sure why we stopped there! All in all it was a fun trip but the sights and scenery were no way near as good as the one in Dalat. It was then back to town where we headed out to dinner (Mette joined) to a really bad restaurant which was made 10 times worse when there was a powercut.

The following day was a lazy day as we had to hang around until 4pm for our overnight train again but luckily I had one of the day rooms this time. Plus because I slept past brekkie, no one disturbed me and I had the room to myself for the day. Mette came and joined me and we watched Gladiator for a bit before grabbing a last lunch together. Around 4ish we checked out and headed over to the train station in our taxis where once we arrived, we were informed that the train was about an hour late! Eventually the train arrived and we only had three minutes to board so it was a mad rush as once Kevin and Wendy, the elderly couple were on, the rest of us had about 1 minute left! This time Kate and I got to share with Alicia and Steve and the boys cabin of Minh, Chris, James and Maurice became the gathering cabin. We all went to bed a lot earlier this time though and luckily I got several hours sleep before we arrived (very late) into the capital city of Hanoi.

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Photos

Following the leader
Our mototaxis driving through the hills of Dalat

Eating out
Our Gecko's group at a local traditional restaurant

On our bikes
Our mototaxi drivers on our tour of Hue