Heading North - The Central Highlands and Dalat

14 March 2017

After battling our way through the traffic in Saigon we headed to Cat Lai port for a ferry across the river and then we were out of the city and starting our motorbike trip north towards Hanoi. 

Like many of the days that follow our days on the bike have a certain similarity to them - breakfast either at the hotel or from a lady selling a Banh Mi sandwich on the street. Drive for a couple of hours, stop somewhere scenic for a coffee, drive a bit more then stop for lunch. Depending on how many stops we make, or interesting things we look at we seem to arrive to our stop for the night in the late afternoon / early evening. We try to avoid driving when it is dark as some of the roads can have large potholes and our headlights are fairly crap. [Most motorbike headlights are "fairly crap". These ones are somewhere between "glow worm" and "hand-crank torch being powered by an arthritic pensioner". -M] and There are also many other road users without headlights, and random people or animals that wander out onto the road. 

We did make a stop on "Mark's tour of how things work". Today the stop was a brick factory. There is no Worksafe or equivalent here so we just parked in front of the factory and wandered on in. The ladies who loaded the finished bricks onto the truck gave us a cheerful wave as we walked past. The place was huge, there were piles and piles of bricks in various stages of production and down the middle of the building kiln after kiln with glimpses of fire through the oven doors. 

Our destination for tonight was the Cat Tien National Park. As we turned off the main route to head towards the national park the skies began to darken. We had 15km to go. We started hooning along the road which was surrounded by jungle. Then the massive thunder and lightning started. We needed some kind of dramatic music playing in the background to accompany us! We arrived at a small guest house near the national park headquarters just as the rain started falling. [Blasting down the narrow, and windy, but new and smooth road, past jungle and farms, with terrifyingly huge black thunderheads building up all around us and gusts of wind whipping around and the smell of imminent torrential rain was hugely exciting, a real highlight for me -M]

15 March 2017
Since we were staying at the national park we decided to have a rest day and go for a hike. Although it was a change from the motorbikes, we didn't really manage the whole rest day thing.

The ferry crossing over to the national park

We decided to do the trek to Crocodile Lake. After catching the ferry we went and rented bicycles from the park headquarters. They were in a fairly poor state. There was then a 9km cycle to the trail head. As we cycled along on the track there were hundreds of butterflies congregating around a puddle every few dozen metres. As you cycled closer they all flew into the air and you were surrounded by butterflies. It was like being in a Disney movie. 

Climbing in the jungle

After a very bumpy ride we got to the trail head and jumped off the bikes. We then had a 5km walk through a jungle way to Crocodile Lake. Once we made it to Crocodile Lake there was an observation tower we could sit in to look out at the view.  

Crocodile Lake - not pictured: actual crocodile!

Once we had looked at the view for a while we turned around and headed back again. It started pouring with rain as we bicycled along. Then the best part of the day - there was a massive bashing and crashing in the jungle beside us. We looked over and there was a troop of wild monkeys swinging through the trees just metres from us!

[Also, Cat Tien national park was full of wildlife, and our accommodation was no exception. We first discovered our nightly frog infestation when Frank was on the toilet and one jumped on her, at which stage we realised there were about 4 of them hanging out in the bathroom. We left them to their own froggy devices, which we hoped would involve eating mozzies but mainly seemed to consist of serenading us in the middle of the night.

Later on when we were leaving, while loading up the gear onto the bikes I felt a sharp pain on the top of my head. Turned out there was a low overhanging tree branch above me I'd been brushing my head and shoulders into, and ants had decided to build a nest there. This lead to a few minutes of some distress.

aaaaaaannntttssss

-M]

16 / 17 March 2017 We had read about some lovely accommodation that was halfway between the national park and Dalat so we decided that would be a good place to stop off. The road there was beautiful country roads through all types of farming. There was a swimming pool at the villa's so we got there fairly early in the afternoon and made the most of that.

Scenic blogging location

Since Dalat was not far away I spent the next morning blogging as Mark made improvements to his motorbike. Once we were underway we got caught in a massive rainstorm. We were a bit optimistic that the rain wouldn't last so we didn't get the rain gears out quite as quickly as we should have. We got saturated before finally admitting defeat.

And why would you not want to wear this fabulous poncho?

En route we stopped for a long lunch, where Mark tried to learn the complicated game that you see many men sitting around having coffee and playing. It seems kind of like chess with some added complexities. [ Xiangqi. It takes all my effort to just work out which piece is which, let alone think about what moves they can do, let alone actually what's going on in the game... -M]

Elephant Falls was our final stop before we got to Dalat. You first see the falls from the top and they are quite impressive. There is then a meandering path over rocks to get to the bottom of the falls. You can take a path to the side and end up behind them as well. 

Elephant falls

After our stop at Elephant falls the last 20km was a bit of a race against the clock to try and arrive before the darkness. It was a fairly horrible drive. But we arrived safe and sound - despite the various hazards on the way and the shit headlights.

18 March 2017

Today we did some sightseeing around Dalat. Dalat was a lovely little town, with a lake near the middle of it that we made a circuit of on foot. The area is renown for its fresh produce so the central market was full of every type of dried fruit and vegetable you can imagine. We bought what we thought was dried mango but ended up to be dried sweet potato. The first mouthful of what you thought would be mango but wasn't was unusual. 

After lunch we walked to the cable car terminus to catch the cable car across from town to a pagoda. The views it offered over the surrounding area were pretty spectacular. 

A photo that doesn't really capture the view but we don't have any others..

 

10 points if you can guess the name of the pagoda we visited

[That night after dinner we discovered "the maze bar." Dalat is famous for "the crazy house", and this place is in the same style: 6 (or more? how do you count all the intermediate levels?) stories of tiny nooks and crannies and winding staircases and ladders and trap doors and mysterious dead ends, with H.R. Giger meets M.C. Escher decorations of flowing organics on every surface and occasional themed sections full of giant octopus and coral and the like. Totally sweet place to grab a drink and then explore and get lost, and such a great environment for striking up conversations with other random backpackers, this place is a must visit if you're in town. Sadly we couldn't have a huge night since we had to be ready for the next morning's activities... -M ]

19 March 2017

In addition to many fruits and vegetables Dalat is also home of outdoor activities. There were a number of options and companies - we were deciding between going mountain biking or going canyoning. I had said to Mark that I would prefer mountain biking but that was mainly because going canyoning would be scary (heights not being my favourite thing). Mark took this as a rare opportunity for Frank improvement and today we went canyoning. 

We had three rappels down rock faces with one of those ending with you being smashed by a waterfall. There were "waterslides" by sliding down rocks in the river, some sedate floating down the river and jumping off the rock face above the river. I managed the 7 metre jump (after a brief false start at the top), Mark also did the 9 and 11 metre jumps [The last one needed a running jump to clear the ledges halfway down, exciting stuff. -M]. All in all it was a really great day and made a nice change from other death defying activities - like riding a motorbike in Vietnam! 

And we still like each other at the end of the day.