Dalat to Hoi An

Right, technology, let's try embedding a map with more-or-less the route we took until Google stopped letting me make changes. Many entertaining small diversions are omitted but this gives you the overview of where we went for this section of the trip.

Open Map in New Window:

We realised that as we headed further north it would get too cold for enjoyable swimming, so decided to hug the beach as we headed up the southern half of the country. Our first day was a descent from Dalat at 1500m to the sea at about 0m, so we had some huge 20 minute long continuous descents where we could switch off the engines and just enjoy the sound of birdsong and the wind rushing past. Or in my case, the sound of CCR and other Vietnam-war-era classics blasting out of my handlebar-mounted bluetooth speaker. (I'm currently up to two USB chargers, one for the phone, one for the speaker, plus LED strip lighting for, um, additional visibility and safety. The alternator is struggling and I'm having to make some hard decisions about which electrics I can afford to run at any one time.)

Bluetooth speaker bungee corded in place, dry conditions phone holder in front of my useless speedometer, waterproofish phone holder mounts to the stalk on the right when in use. Not pictured: sweet LED underlighting.

This was a beautiful stretch of road, and in fact the next few days along the coast were just packed with stunning views. Along the Nui Chua National Park we stopped at Hang Rai, a promontory full of beautiful huge granite boulders and what I think was a fossilised coral forest.

What's over on those rocks?

Much the same as before. What about the fossilised coral forest? 

AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

There were also turtles. I choose to assume they were rescued and not captured for our viewing pleasure.

Then we were off to another of the strangely abandoned large resorts we were frequently staying at around this time. This one had an enormous swimming pool full of dolphin fountains that we never saw anyone else using. We did borrow a kayak from the pool and take it out to the ocean to check out the fishing fleet, but were quickly swarmed by tiny pirates.

I promptly abandoned ship and left Frank to her fate. I think I counted 8 passengers aboard at one stage.

Every time the larger kid in the red shirt started to climb on a chorus of high-pitched Vietnamese yelling arose from the other kids as the kayak rolled alarmingly.

The bay was full of the charmingly blue-with-red-trim painted fishing boats with jauntily angled bridges that we've become accustomed to, and we found a small cluster of street food stalls on the waterfront for a feed of squid pancakes and coconut waffles after we returned.

The next day was, again, an absolutely beautiful ride. We had a short trip along the coast to the Cam Lap promonotory, where there was a rather more upmarket place we'd planned on splashing out for a lunch at but ended up absolutely blowing our budget by staying the night at.

Hitting that narrow zone of wooden bridges exciting enough to be worth photographing but not so exciting that Frank won't follow me onto them.

"Look, the place we stayed at!"

"Be quiet, I'm posing!"

Let's prove we were actually somewhere at the same time for once.

This place was stupidly pretty.

We stayed in the next room after this one. It was 10 times as much as our normal accommodation, or, alternatively, it was about as much as the cheapest motel we could find in Taupo over summer.

Blogger has totally frustrated my efforts to embed these 8 and 15 second videos at a decent resolution, so watch them here: https://goo.gl/photos/uW1QSLz63sPheinw7

Not quite able to pull off doing the splits like one neighbour we spotted posing for how many dozens of photos over a couple of hours, with multiple wardrobe changes...

Holiday mode was fully active here.

We stayed here until the last minute before checkout, exploring further round the coast where they had attempted to expand but apparently run out of money, leaving behind a rickety decaying boardwalk snaking between huge granite boulders over the clear turquoise sea. A few hundred metres away, past some smouldering rubbish fires marring an otherwise lovely patch of beach, was a collapsing concrete villa that looked like the Platonic ideal of a Flintstones house, with an empty swimming pool right on the ocean. If they'd finished it it would have been the most magical spot.

Flintstones house is behind me, my photos failed to capture it.

Finally, the hotel kicked us out, and we carried on North to Nha Trang. We had our usual lunch at a random roadside hammock & plastic chair place where, after feeding and caffeinating us both for about $3 NZD  the proprietor then held us up picking fresh fruits off the backyard tree for us and finally gave us a coconut as we were about to pull away. Yum.

We also stopped at roadside attractions such as the VietSovPetro Monument to Peace and Regional Stability

And whatever this thing was.

And then we started coming across signs for Vietnam's most famous
(among the Vietnamese) attraction. We were pretty excited.

Nha Trang

Nah Trang is Vietnam's big famous beach resort town. Think Honolulu. We were there for Vinpearl Land. Imagine a cross between DisneyLand and Vietnam, and you're pretty much there. We were having too much fun to take photos, so you'll have to deal with my description instead.

• Two kilometre cable car supported by miniature Eiffel Towers over the ocean to get to the island the park is on!
• Getting on the first ride we saw without knowing what it was, being moderately buckled in with no common language, then promptly being taken 40 metres up in the air and held upside down and spun around resting on the safety harnesses we had no faith in!
• Yummyland!
• A water park with some genuinely pretty awesome slides!
• Half-naked Russians everywhere!
• A house of illusions that made Puzzling World (Wanaka) seem pretty world class!
• Construction!
• Moderate animal cruelty in the aquarium!
• Dolphin Show! (also, see above...)
• Water and fire show, with an amazing collection of fountains and lighting and flame jets set to a soundtrack of your favourite patriotic Communist songs!
• And some pretty great rollercoasters and assorted other rides.

[F- When Mark says a cross between DisneyLand and Vietnam he really means a theme park in Vietnam that has blatantly infringed DisneyLand's intellectual property - the M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E song was playing and there were cutouts of Goofy around the park.

There was also a hilariously crap 4-D experience, it had a weird redneck ghost miner guy who did an intro which said make sure you don't go in the mine (in English!) - then you went in the mine. The Vietnamese were screaming at the top of their lungs at the "scary ride", cue much laughter from me!]

The next day, we continued north up the coast.

We were invited into some sort of dice-based gambling at a fishing village where we stopped for the traditional Vietnamese coffee on ice. I thought this would probably be unwise.

We went through some rice paddies for a change of pace from all the beautiful ocean views, which we apparently mostly neglected to photograph.

We had to pull over to let this herd of water buffalo past so I got a photo of Frank with them. Frank is the one in front centre, on the motorcycle.

We took a detour out on the Hon Gom sandbar, with this deserted 4 lane highway to nowhere.

The next day we took a shortcut on the way to Da Dia Reef. I enjoyed the drive, which makes half of us.

But it was all worth it once we got there.

 I couldn't convince Frank to follow me out on this bridge.

We had lunch at a small colony of Swedish expats in an otherwise unremarkable town, and stayed the next two nights at "Life's a Beach," an expat-run hostel with about 20 tiny crappy "Honda" Wins like ours parked out front. At night the ocean was lit out to the horizon with bright twinkling lights mounted on buoys and fisherman scurrying between them, pretty magical. 

I took this opportunity to finally install the blue LED strips I'd been carrying since Saigon. I looked up a few online tutorials that were all "make sure you include a fuse for safety," but I figured when in Vietnam, do as the Vietnamese do, and just plumbed it all into the battery with a 30 cent light switch to turn it off. The grand test of the completed product only caused a very small fire, which was no problem since I'd sensibly mounted everything along the outside of the gas tank, so the fire couldn't get in. And half the LEDs still worked, so I count it as a success. Apart from that we mainly lazed on or near the beach all day, before setting off for a day of breakdowns and rain.

Sunrise at "Life's a Beach" from my hammock

Where I was quite happy to spend a while 

This guys shop was contained in that little cube with the walls hinged at the top, so he could let them down at night it would revert to just being his house. Pretty nifty. The guy in white is hammering a bit of rebar into a new foot lever  to be welded to my centerstand. That and welding Frank's broken exhaust together was $4 NZD. Although the exhaust weld only lasted a day or two.

Frank in the rain just after rear ending me and smashing her headlight. I'm not sure she knows I took this photo instead of doing something more useful, so I hope somebody appreciates it enough to outweigh the trouble I'm about to get in.

Random side of the road cockfighting.

We eventually had all 4 of these guys actively trying to work out how to correctly rewire Frank's new headlight. 

We gave up and went to get lunch. Thank God labour is cheap here. Frank came back and had a good old chat with the grandmother in the back of the shop while I worried about the bikes.

They also upsold us on a new chain and sprockets. Fair enough when you see this, and like $15 instead of the $200 + it would have been in NZ. I'm beginning to doubt the guy who sold us this bike took as good care of it as he claimed, and also my own ability to do pre-purchase inspections.

A look inside the RHS cover when we were replacing the completely shot clutch on Frank's bike at another mechanic (lost count of the total number of them). Ditto on my earlier doubts, and also how truthful the previous owner was with his supposed fastidious oil change intervals...

That night we struggled to find a place to eat. Two separate restaurants were 2/3 full and seemed to be doing a roaring trade, but we were politely shooed away when we tried to enter. We naturally decided that this town must be a hotbed of anti-foreigner sentiment, but it was probably just a private function and a language barrier. We ended up finding a place that served mystery-meat mince kebabs next to a truck full of barking dogs...

Then on our final day into Hoi An I tried to do my self-guided tours of an oil refinery and ship yard, but apparently heavy industry actually does care about security, so those were dead ends. I discovered that messily slurping makes Pho slightly more enjoyable, if no more nutritious. For our final 60 km into the city as it was getting dark we managed to find a newish and empty 4 lane highway going right where we needed that wasn't marked on the guide we were following or any of our mapping apps, so I got to try out my new underlighting as we blasted along this empty road through the desert and sunset.