Motorcycle Road Trip - 5 days, Central Vietnamese Mountains

After our 9 days in Da Lat, we signed up for a caving expedition in Phong Nha-Ke Bang national park, home to the world's largest and 3rd largest caves. But we first had to cover the 1,000+km gap between Da Lat and the town of Phong Nha.  After speaking with our friends in Nha Trang (thanks Quoc!) we decided to cover the distance via motorcycle.  We opted to ride along with 2 excellent guides on a 5 day scenic roadtrip through the central mountains and rural parts of Vietnam where the locals have rarely seen foreigners.  Below are the daily notes I took of our experiences:

Day 1: 180 km 

- 8AM pick up, excitement and anxiety runs high as we say our goodbyes to our hosts, meet our guides, see the motorcycles for the first time, and saddle up.

- Temperature management is key, hot sun from clear blue skies contrasted with cool mountain air especially when cloud cover comes: hot, cold, hot, cold.

- Scenery is spectacular, the landscape is otherworldly. Terraced mountains for agriculture transitioning into wild growth jungle. Trees overwhelmed with vine growth.

- Passing through small rural towns, local kids waving, toothy smiles, yelling "Hallo!!!" to Rhonda (they ignore me pretty quick when they see I'm "just a local" lol).

- Energy management also very important, guides gave us many pitstops and breaks for food, water, and most importantly "bum recharge" time.

- First time doing so much mileage on a motorbike, amazing contrast to roadtrips via car.  Wide Exposure to the elements: fresh air, sunshine, cool breezes, connection with the vehicle. Full immersion.

- 8 hours...sore bums...

Day 2: 150 km

- Spring time thru agricultural lands = riding through clouds of butterflies, we manage to catch some...in our helmets.

- The smell of flowers, momentarily taking us to fields of green and colour as we rumble along the asphalt.

- Deafening song of cicadas draw our attention to the exclusion of other senses.  Amazing noise!

- Pigs! Free range oinkers! Big ones, small ones, cute ones, ugly ones!

- We stop at a hidden waterfall oasis. Unbelievable even to our own eyes; something conjured up by in fairy tales. Alone, we go for a swim.

- We ride by a road side cock fight.

- Bums are really sore...

Day 3: 250 km

- Big ride day today, we wake up feeling drained from the sun.

- I smarten up and minimize exposure in order to maximize energy conservation (long sleeves, neck protection, ear plugs, long pants, socks, etc), should've listened to my wife sooner!

- Rhonda's been trucking thru some upset stomach, we try to manage it the best we can, fortunately it's not too bad (that and Rhonda's pretty tough).

- Hammocks at every roadside rest stops, the Vietnamese equivalent to the highway truckstops across North America. I much prefer the hammocks and rice stops vs. diner seating and burgers.

- Check into a traditional looking hotel and we witness the final struggles of an ant war.  Raid-1, Ants-0

- Ironically, we are feeling good despite starting off tired and it being a big day.

Day 4: 140 km

- Slept great, amazing what a long hard day on the road can do to give you a fantastic night's rest.

- Sitting all day being exposed to the sun and wind is a lot more draining than I expected. Get wicked tan line on thighs...good ol'shorts.

- Such beautiful country side, overgrown forests transitioning into mountain valleys.

- Short day, got time for a haircut, comes out to a whopping $1.50CAD incl. 40% tip.

- We have time to rest in our hotel room, basking in the great luxury of a hot shower and A/C.

Day 5: 120 km

- Cool mornings are wonderful, so refreshing.

- With so much exposure to the elements, we are constantly drinking water.

- Stunning landscapes continue, witness more vine covered trees that make you think of green shrouded monks crossing the mountain.

- First day of rain, lucky it was a short shower.

- We arrive in the city of Da Nang (3rd largest in Vietnam) with 10 hours to kill before our train departs towards the national park. Decide it's worthwhile to decompress in a hotel even if only for several hours. First option closest to the train station rents out rooms at hourly rates...why did we even bother looking at the rooms? Second option we decide to splurge and pay our most expensive room rate yet at $40CAD/night (I know...I know...crazy eh???).

- We say goodbye to our 2 guides (father & son-in-law), hugs and pictures all around. Many great memories that we will reminisce on.

- Hot shower and A/C...it...is...glorious!!!

Da Lat - mountain town

A months rest on the beach was perfect and just what we needed.  From the coast we headed inland to Da Lat which is known as the honeymoon capital of Vietnam.  It's a beautiful city set in the mountains and the geography reminded us of Western Canada.  Lots of pine trees, cool fresh air, hills, valleys, warm days, cool nights and surprisingly a significant amount of agriculture.  We learned that the Vietamese construct green houses en masse to protect the agriculture from the heavy rains (monsoons).  

In the outskirts of this tourism town, we stayed at a beautiful homestay villa (AirBnB) run by a retired Vietnamese couple who treated us like we were part of their family. The wife cooked us a Vietnamese breakfast every morning and it was a fantastic privilege to have such wonderful local home cooked food.  It should be understood that a Vietnamese breakfast takes on a whole different form from that of a traditional western breakfast.  We were treated to vermicelli & spring rolls, an egg omelet packed with seafood & veggies, a congee style oatmeal with chicken, onion & ginger, chicken soup with hard boiled eggs, pasta & tomato sauce and I think there was a fish dish in there too.  Savoury and amazing everytime! 

We so enjoyed being back in the mountains.  We did some hiking, checked out a beautiful garden at a Zen monastery, and did a full day canyoning trip which involved abseiling down 5 waterfalls (the biggest one being 65 metres!).  Another first for Rhonda.

Unfortunately this is also the first place we got food poisoning...Terry suffering significantly more than Rhonda.  However we do consider ourselves extremely lucky since we made it close to 6 months before our first incident.

Our time in Da Lat was one of the highlights of our time in Vietnam with many fond memories, it will be missed!

-Terry & Rhonda

Nha Trang - Getting Comfortable

After Mui Ne, Nha Trang was the next city on our list to explore in our quest to settle down, get comfortable, spend some time near the ocean and recharge our travel batteries.  With close to half a million people, and a significant Russian tourist population, Nha Trang is a larger beachside town which offered us many of the creature comfort amenities we missed while being on the road: variety of cuisines (Greek, Italian, Japanese, etc), movie theater, housing options with kitchens etc. 

The locals Beach

Check out the bamboo bike!!

We started off booking 5 days at a hostel and spent that time getting the lay of the land. On our first day out we stumble upon a quiet little alley cul-de-sac which had a morning mini farmer's market and several mom and pop restaurants (a micro Lonsdale Quay setting...the neighbourhood by our home).  We instantly fell in love with the area.  Over the next couple days we did our due diligence and checked out about 9 other places but in the end we came back to the alley that reminded us of home.

Our little neighborhood

Every morning from 7-10AM

Our month stay was a welcomed change that we embraced fully: meeting/supporting the local street vendors/shop owners and getting into a nice routine of doing yoga, swimming and surfing.

The change of pace was fantastic and it gave us a much needed rest.

Surfing at The Shack made from sticks + tarps, literally.

We were also fortunate to befriend the owners of the hostel that we first stayed at and they introduced us to great restuarants, food, and provided us with a wealth of local knowledge that assisted us during our stay there and later in our travels further abroad.  Thank you Quoc and Giang.

I think it's fair to say that we both became somewhat proficient moped riders during our stay here.  It was a little quieter here (quieter in Vietnamese terms) and a better learning environment.  When renting a moped in Vietnam you have to understand that the bikes always come with a near empty tank, the fuel gauges and sometimes the speedometer rarely work, it may or may not come with mirrors, you constantly use the horn just to let people know you're close to them, you don't worry about what's happening behind you (DON'T shoulder check it will get you into trouble), and you can stop or slow down anywhere, anytime and no one cares. In many ways it's a very free form style of traffic, everyone rides very defensively and you look out for yourself.

Bonnie & Clyde

-Terry & Rhonda

SE Asian Chameleon

Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese or Chinese??  

Our travels through SE Asian has highlighted the fact that Terry seems to be a chameleon of sorts.  Through each country we've traveled, he has repeatedly been mistaken for a local...which I believe has probably worked to our advantage for the most part.  For instance, early on in our travels through Thailand, we were quite surprised by the fact that we rarely got harassed by the local street vendors to purchase trinkets and tourist items and on the rare occassion we were approached it was usually me getting the sales pitch.  It became apparent that at first glance they considered Terry a homeboy and left us alone.  Lucky for us this continued through Cambodia and Vietnam.  I'm also sure that Terry's presence at times helped us obtain local pricing rather than foreigner pricing when purchasing street food, fruit and groceries... that is unless they started talking with him, then our bluff was called.  When renting a moped to get around town, we were continually warned that the local police liked to pull foreigners over and extract some pocket money for what they "considered" to be invalid licenses or insurance.  Again, we passed several of these checkpoints and with Terry driving and me ducking my head, hiding my white skin, we got through undetected.  

It was quite interesting to watch them assess Terry.  You could see them mentally taking in his looks, the clothes he wore, the white, foreign (good-looking) woman on his arm and when it became obvious that Terry didn't speak the language then they would inquire immediately as to where he was from.  Terry's response was always Canada but this answer never quite satisfied them.  Eventually, once they established Terry's Chinese ethnicity, futher discussion was often had about how he looked so much like them. A couple times the locals didn't believe that he was Chinese and outright denied his ethnicity saying that he must be from their country.

There is, however, one downside...I've lost him in a crowd many times!!

-Rhonda