We contemplated renting motorbikes to get from Nha Trang to Da Lat (side note motorbikes scare the crap out of me, something I need to get over given the b/f loves them), but after reading about the fact it wasn’t actually legal for foreigners to ride them despite the number of people that do it (you need bribe money from what we’ve heard) and the road from Nha Trang to Da Lat was dreadful put us off so we purchased bus tickets.
The bus ride was long and not much fun at all if I’m honest. The driving is decidedly average and a little bit scary given you are driving up and over huge passes where it feels as though you are up so high you are in the clouds. All the while your bus appears to be teetering on the edge of the hill about to fall off. Luckily all the traffic was going incredibly slow – although this did make the awful trip take even longer than one would have expected.
The good point about this hilly area is that there appears to be a lot less smog than anywhere else and we actually saw beautiful clear blue skies! Also Da Lat is very much a farming area with terraced rice fields and herbs / vegetables and beautiful flowers planted on the hills everywhere.
Once we got to Da Lat we didn’t do a lot, however the next day we booked a motorbike tour with Easy Rider.
If you’ve done any research on Vietnam I’m sure you would have come across Easy Rider – essentially they are guides who take you on the back of their motorbikes, some take you for day trips and some can take you for weeks at a time going the length of Vietnam.
Given the popularity of Easy Rider you will see everyone try and approach you telling you they are from Easy Rider and to be honest I don’t even know who the originals are – some older guy did try to convince us that he was the person who started it, and perhaps he was but his ‘proof’ was that the name in the Lonely Planet Guidebook was the same as on his business card, so was the e-mail address on the business card. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that anybody can print a business card that says that stuff it doesn’t make it true. Perhaps that is the auditor coming out in me looking for the reasons why something may not be as it seems but hey, moral of the story use your personal judgement.
We ended up booking a tour through a hostel in town (top tip here, book through hostels they are often cheaper than tours through hotels, although naturally not as high class as the tours through hotels). The next morning two Easy Rider Jacket Clad men turned up on their motorbikes to whisk us around the Da Lat Countryside.
I was petrified!
I got even more petrified when it began to rain, luckily we had decent riders and my nerves began to subside once I had been on the bike for a little while.
The best stop in my opinion was the almost tacky temple that is covered with mosaics (one part of it is pictured above)- it is so tacky and massive that you think about the amount of time and effort that went in to making it and you can’t help but be in awe of it.
We also visited the Dantala waterfall which has a ‘roller-coaster’ going from the top to the bottom. It’s not a roller coaster so don’t get too excited, it’s kind of like a luge which is on tracks that look like roller coaster tracks and don’t go anywhere near as fast as roller coasters. I hate roller coasters anyway, that darn fear of heights makes me say no to things like these (wow my two major fears come out in one post!) so we walked down and back up.
The waterfall itself was especially underwhelming if your from a country that has amazing waterfalls! Still a nice little side trip though.
The last stop before we headed back to our hotel was through a Buddhist Temple which was really nice and peaceful (until a huge bus load of tourists turned up!) and is really worthy of spending an hour or so just looking around.
It’s not that clear but the above photo shows some of the snacks we ate while in Da Lat – some amazing dried strawberry type things that tasted like lollies, I’m almost certain they were not very waistline friendly but they were incredible! If you want to try some just pop down to the markets in the centre of town and you’ll stumble across them soon enough.
The second half of the image is a mixture of cashews and dried coconut. Unfortunately we had to eat all of these before we got back to New Zealand or we would have to throw them out (yeah two people with accounting degrees who love food – that was definitely NOT going to happen!) so we made our way through all of these snacks pretty quickly 😉
There you have it, our quick recap of our three weeks in Vietnam. For those of you who don’t care about travel I hope you managed to hang in there – I have some amazing recipes coming your way in the next few weeks 🙂
If you are interested in reading about the rest of our Vietnam trip please check out these posts
Ho Chi Minh City
Hanoi
Ha Long Bay
Hue
Hoi An
Nha Trang