Wet Feet

The beach town of Mui Ne was a bit of a letdown. I guess the problem with it is that it's really just one long road down the coast that's surrounded by low grade restaurants and small beach resorts and lacks any kind of cohesive charm. Each bar along the strip is separated by great distances so a motorbike is the only practical way to get around town but it turns into a safety issue late at night. The night after I wrote the last post, I rode out to find a restaurant with a few people in it (none of them have walls so it's easy to spot one) and found myself one that satisfied. I sat down with a Finnish guitarist who was alone and we had dinner and beers over a few hours. We also added a Welsh girl to the crew and went out to the beach bar across the street from my hotel. It was a fun night and I walked back the next day to pick up the motorbike I left behind.

The next day I wanted to make good use of my bike, so after a lengthy sleep in I rode out of town on the very excellent roads that follow this part of the coast. They're mostly flat, very smooth, and free of sand. A perfect place to use a scooter if I ever saw one. Anyways, I stopped for a heaping bowl of pho and then continued on to the fishing village. The locals use tiny round boats made of bamboo and tar to lay nets just off the shore and catch small shrimp. The shrimp is then laid out to dry most everywhere and makes the whole town smell quite pungent. They're got larger boats that can go further out too, but mostly I just saw them using the round ones and sitting around repairing nets.

Most of the people that come to this beach are into kite surfing, so as I went along the coast past the village, I stopped at the windy beach to see how it's done. It's possible to rent the gear for around $50 a day, but it costs more if you need lessons of course. It didn't really appeal to me.

I went past that village and reached one of several sand dune attractions. The sand was kind of reddish and the local children rent out pieces of plastic to use as sleds. They work very poorly and I got sand worked into everything on me in the process. At least the camera didn't break. It's on it's last legs and has trouble turning on some times and looks fantastically scuffed. I rode out another 40km along the coast and was pretty much alone that far out but turned back because the clouds looks threatening. That night I went to dinner and got into a conversation with a Kiwi girl who told me all about how to buy/sell a used camper in New Zealand. I think it's foreshadowing.

Bored of this quiet beach town full of Russian vacationers, I took a bus the next morning headed toward Dalat. It's a mountain town famous for its cool weather, strawberries, and romance. It was developed by the French and today has a few of their old buildings remaining (though I didn't see any) and is the honeymoon capitol of Vietnam. Half way through the four hour trip up the steep roads, the engine gave out and we were stuck on the side of the road for a couple hours. The air was cool and we had plenty of shade and I didn't really mind the break. Anyways, a van eventually showed up to take us the rest of the way.

Like the rest of Vietnam so far, Dalat has no hostels so I checked into some guesthouse close to the interesting bits of town and took a good long nap. That night I met a nice British couple and a couple Slovakian girls at a local restaurant and we shared some beers at a small pool hall. I think that I'm getting better at spontaneously talking to strangers. Of course I've always been decent at that since I'm traveling alone and all, but it's becoming second nature. I hope I can keep it up at home.

The next day wasn't super productive but I did get a few things done. Importantly, I bought a plane ticket from Saigon to New Zealand on January 10th. The plan is to meet up with Diane there for a month and to buy a van to explore the island in. I wish we had more than one month, but she's got a schedule to keep I guess. Maybe I'll stick around a little longer than her to sell the van and maybe I'll do a short side trip to Oz before heading home in March. That makes sense to me. Oh, the picture is of a mobile pet fish vendor.

The rest of the day was aimed at exploring the town. I walked all over the best bits of it and while it is significantly prettier than most other Vietnamese cities, I always chuckle at the idea of this being a romantic getaway. There are lots of restaurants with names like the Passion House and Chocolate but I think the silliest thing must be the Eiffel Tower reproduction that overlooks most of the town. I also visited the market and saw they sell some things here that aren't available elsewhere like artichokes and avocados. They looked good.

I also got to sample some street food. I had a really nice cold noodle dish with vermicelli, raw mushrooms, and thinly sliced pork skin drizzled with a vinaigrette. There was also some kind of quesadilla made from rice paper, egg yolk, green onions, and chili sauce grilled over a bbq. Not bad.

That night I booked an Easy Rider tour for the next day. These motorcyclists take you on the back of their bikes into the countryside for a full day tour for $15. It's a huge business in Dalat and is very popular with everyone that I met. That night I met some more random people at the same restaurant and then went to the same pool hall. I got to bed early for once.

In the morning we met at 8:30 and I found that an English couple was added to the tour while someone else that was supposed to go backed out since it was raining lightly and had been doing so all night. I just wanted to get the tour done so that I could get out of that town and on to somewhere more interesting. Anyways, the riders had rain gear for me to borrow. We stopped at a lot of different places that day though none of them seemed terribly interesting to me so I'm glad that I had good company.

We stopped at a large and tacky Buddhist temple with more sculptures than you could shake a Bodhi stick at. The couple asked a lot of questions about Buddhism in general and the guide referred them to me since I knew half as much as him but could explain it a lot better. We then drove through the countryside in the pouring rain and stopped to look at a couple different farms. We also stopped at a coffee plantation (there's a million of them here) and talked a bit about how that works. I did a better coffee tour in Costa Rica but the coffee is better here I think.

We made our way to a huge waterfall (Elephant Falls) and climbed down some crazy dangerous and slippery stones to get a view from the bottom but my pictures of the place weren't so good since it was raining so much and I had to try and protect my camera with my jacket and umbrella as best I could. It reminds me of a Dutch girl I met in Dalat who said that she swam in the ocean with her camera and didn't realize until the next day. She took it to a shop that sent it to Saigon and they miraculously fixed it for $30. Anyways, the tour and I shared lunch at a small cafe and I remembered how much better the food is when locals order for you. We shared about 10 different dishes between the 6 of us.

The riders took us to a silk factory where the working unwound the cocoons and huge machines spun them into thread and cloth. It was pretty amazing but i don't know what else to say about it. We also stopped at a shop making rice wine and a small mushroom farm. It was there that I made some joke involving eating dogs for some reason and the drivers excitedly announced that we could have that for dinner if we wished. I jumped at the idea since that's how I am and the couple reluctantly said that they may try a bite.

So, on the way back we stopped at a small home on the roadside with a few dogs running around and bought couple dishes for takeaway. The riders explained that the North eats more dog than the south and so down here it's very cheap stuff. It's used at homes as a celebration dish and that you never eat your own dog... just that of the neighbors. Back at the rider's home cafe we tried the bbq dog ribs and some kind of dog curry on rice crackers. The ribs were actually really good so I ate most all of them but didn't like the curry too much. I think that dog tastes half way between rabbit and beef and I gotta say it impressed me. I was instructed that you're supposed to drink rice wine with the dog so the lot of us put down a ton of the stuff. I was crazy drunk by 8pm and went home to bed.

After waking up at 3:30am I made a couple Skype calls and bought a bus ticket to Nha Trang once the sun came up. The bus left at 2 and was the weirdest thing I've seen in a while. It's a sleeper bus and was more or less a series of thin reclining bunk beds in three rows. I guess it could be a good thing at night but i thought it was a little uncomfortable on that extremely rough and muddy drive down the mountain and to the sea. I made a friend of an English guy named Chris and when we finally got to town we checked into a dorm room together (yay, I love dorms!).

We met several other people there and quickly had a large group of friends that we shared dinner and drinks with. I produced the bottle of Jose Cuervo that Erika and Rob generously brought me and it was a big hit. We had limes and also made some Prairie Fire shots. Hell of a night... I was completely wrecked the next morning when Chris proposed doing a 4 day motorcycle tour through the mountains to reach Hoi An further north along the coast. It's cheaper than any other moto tour I've heard of at $50 a day. We're going to have a guide, stay with locals in small villages, and see a lot of things. It's going to be great, and an Alaskan guy named Stephen is also coming with us.

That afternoon we had a short meeting with our driver and we took a cycle skills test. Chris and Stephen are experienced riders but I'd never driven a bike with a clutch before. I rode a 130cc chromed Honda around for 20 minutes practicing shifting and cold starts but I ended up deciding that I'd rather take an automatic instead for this journey. The guys said that I did really well for a first attempt at that kind of bike and I think that I could make it but I'll be more comfortable on these rough roads without all those new skills. Anyways, that's what I'm up to next. I'll continue this blog after that journey. Wish me luck!