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Published: July 14th 2008
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I was really looking forward to getting to Dalat. Located in the Central Highlands, the climate is cool and not humid. Finally, I could sit still and NOT sweat like crazy. Our bus from Nha Trang was an uneventful 7 hour trip. The bus was comfortable, but in Vietnam, tourist bus companies are given money if they make stops at certain restaurants or tourist shops - so we stopped quite a bit making our journey a lot longer.
As I had anticipated, Dalat was nice a cool. Finally I could breathe! I was picturing a small, quaint town but Dalat is actually a fairly large city settled among mountains and valleys. The first afternoon, we checked into the backpacker hotel in town and wandered about. The market was really interesting - it was huge and full of really neat fish, seafood, meats, veggies, fruits, etc. Since the highlands is home to much of the country's agricultural land, you can buy almost any fruit of vegetable. I even hunted out dried strawberries which actually turned out to be dried cherry tomatoes but ah well, they were still good!
Our touring of Dalat began the next morning with the help of
two Easy Riders. Easy Riders are a group of men who take tourists around the area (or even on extended trips up to 20 days around Vietnam) on the back of their motorbikes. They started up business back in 1992 when tourism started to take off after Vietnam's borders opened up. Since then, they've become infamous thanks to the Lonely Planet guidebook. My guide, Phillip, was a middle aged man who spoke great English and claimed to be one of the 'originals'! He and his buddy both sported these sweet jackets marking them as TRUE easy riders (not the fake ones, obviously! haha).
Anyway, we jumped onto their bikes and off we went. Our day tour took us around the city of Dalat, first to a Buddhist temple - the Dragon Pagoda which was (like most things in Vietnam) over the top in terms of scale and grandeur. Then we headed out of the city and up into the highlands where we saw wonderful views of the mountains and valleys. The original jungle in this area has pretty much been completely destroyed - either from fire from bombs during the American (Vietnam) war or cleared later for agriculture. Regardless,
the mountains are now covered in terraces that grow every type of vegetable as well as flowers grown in greenhouses. All products are taken to Saigon to be sold in the markets.
Something I didn't know was that Vietnam is second only to Brazil in coffee bean exports. The highlands are full of coffee plantations and so we got to see how coffee beans are grown and processed (the coffee btw is AMAZING - so yummy and VERY strong). We also got to see up close how silk is produced from the worms right up to the finished woven silk. It's amazing what goes into it! In the factory, I never realized how they got the silk thread from the cocoon. It was really neat to see!
Basically, the day was so fun just cruising around on the back of this sweet motorbike. It was a great way to get out and around. I wish I had more time, I would definitely have booked an extended Easy Rider trip all around Vietnam. That way you'd really get off the beaten path!
Next up, we'll be trading in the cool breeze for sunny beaches and sand dunes in
Mui Ne!
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