Scotts Blog

Well today is the day where I really started to hate lonely planet, but more on that later. After deciding to ride towards Bao Loc, there was a lot to see along the way I headed out of town towards Prenn Pass. The first stop was the Quang Trung reservoir and Datanla waterfalls. This was a nice ride heading down a mountain, there were also absolutely awesome roads around the reservoir, was really good to go almost the whole way around with no other cars. At the waterfalls i bumped into three Italian guys that I met on the boat cruise in Nha Trang which was great, very funny guys. One good thing about the waterfalls was there was a huge Toboggan ride all the way down, (150 vertical meters) and then they pull you back up. When i first arrived i decided not to do it thinking it wasn’t very far, but at the bottom I went back up to do it. The only thing was there was a guy taking down heaps of spare carts that got in my way with about 200m to go  

Next was heading towards through Prenn Pass and towards Lang Dinh An (Chicken Village), it was a great ride through the pass but i could never find the village thanks to a great map and description on how to get there. The main goal of the day was to head to Dambri falls, some of the best in Vietnam. Along the way I ventured to Pongbur falls about 60kms from Dalat and met some cool French guys. The road to Pongbur was a great ride through a whole lot of farms and countryside, which made up for the lacking falls.

After meeting the French guys i decided to head to Dambri, apparently half way to Bao Loc, which wasn’t to much further, so i started hooning down the road, i wanted to get back before it was dark. According to the map it was close, very close. Everyone i asked kept pointing straight ahead so i kept going. The map could not have been further off, it was not half way to Bao Loc, it was 18km past Bao Loc. This was pretty frustrating, i had to ride about an extra 100kms at 50kms per hour that is a long way. This was time to punish the bike and i started to go a lot quicker. I remember when i first rode in Vietnam i thought 30 was pretty quick on dirt. Then in Cambodia i thought 50kms was quick. Then I thought 70-75 was quick. But when you are going 110 down a hill without very good breaks…only kidding this thing maxed out at 80km so that is as far as i got.

Dambri falls were pretty cool, a 90m drop and an amazing volume of water rushing over, it was a sight to be seen. The spray made everything wet and slippery. After spending all day heading there i spent 10mins then had to head home as riding in the dark is not fun from my previous two efforts. I got caught out again over 100kms to go, and it was hard. Only having my dark sunnies the dusk period was particularly punishing. When anything hits you at 60km/hour it hurts, but try dragon flies!! they are huge and really hurt. Then mossies in the eyes, dust from trucks and anything in the air. When you get off you look like a windscreen that has been driving in the country for a few hundred kms.

I ended up doing most of it in the dark getting slowly more impatient and cocky. I would be going 65-70 with a dodgy light then hit a rough piece of road, potholes that would swallow cars let alone a scooter. After a while i started treating it like a mountain bike, standing on the pegs and pulling up the front when the road was rough, this worked well. I arrived home at about 8:30 two hours after dark. I met up with the French guys and one guy from the UK, we had some great street food, then went to find a bar, ended up drinking outside a bottle shop for a few hours it was great.

Well after being told I was crazy to ride to Dalat I thought it can’t be that hard, so I set off about 11am. I had my backpack on, and my other bag tied to the bike in between my legs, it wasn’t to bad, i thought it might not be very comfortable. I knew I had to go down the coast for about 40km then to turn right and I guess follow the signs. By the look of my map (will go into that later) there was one main road all the way to Dalat. the turn off was pretty well marked, and then i kept coming to unmarked cross roads. Dalat was not to hard to say so it was easy to get some help along the way. Although one thing shat me to tears a few times when you say which way to Dalat they would sweep there hands about 180 degrees, all I wanted was a pointed finger left or right it is pretty easy. When i said so that way, they would sweep there hand pointing at every option again. I made one wrong turn down a county lane for about 15kms but then turned back.

Along the way it was getting hot and I was getting thirsty and hungry so stopping on the side of the road at this little house for some drink and food seemed like a great idea. They didn’t do food but I had some drinks and showed them my purchase of the century which was a great little portable speaker for my phone to play music. The guy I was talking to the most was an amazing carpenter, he had some great carvings that were all one piece of wood. The main things he was carving were fat Buddhas or eagles fighting snakes.

I had to keep going because i didn’t want to get trapped in the dark. Soon i came up upon the most amazing mountain that I had to climb over. the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. It was strange looking at it all because there was this pristine mountain side and tropical forest, then there were ugly red gashes breaking up the beauty showing some short sighted man made roads. Saying that they were awesome to ride on, great corners and slopes. I was slowly getting much more proficient at riding, better at taking corners going the right speed, the right amount of lean etc. It is funny they must have started building the road close to Nha Trang, up the mountains was top shelf (much like good roads at home) then it started to deteriorate, and some places really rough dirt where they were still constructing. It was hard going through mud on a scooter, you could feel it sliding out from under you all the time.

About 5pm i arrived at Dalat dirty and tired but it was a great day. After finding a hotel I went to sample some of the famous street food. This was a real highlight of Dalat and for me one of the things that i love about travelling, tasting all the weird stuff that the locals eat. There were lots of people cooking over coals on the stairs leading down to the market. I had some great Kebab things wrapped in banana leaves (some kind of mince stuff inside), some warm bean curd, baked potatoes, some bean coffee, and lots of other little things. For a kebab thingy it was about 2000 Dong or 10 cents so for $1 you were more than full. After this i decided to go to sleep and have a rest. I could tell already that i love Dalat, and still remains one of my favourite places in Vietnam so far.

 b

When I arrived in Nha Trang I was buggered, I had no sleep spent way to much time travelling over the past two days, and felt wrecked. I had to pretty much get straight on a boat that told me of all the delights that were around Nha Trang, pristine waters, Vietnamese lunch, wonderful beaches yada yada yada.

It probably did not help that I was really very tired but I did not have the best time on the boat, it was good to have a swim and look at a few fish but it wasn’t all that. The food was ok, but it was pretty limited. The usual tourist story of this is the best thing since the invention of Scotch so you can’t miss it. The amazing coral and fish was not really there, the huge lunch was huge but nothing that i really wanted to eat, and at every stop to do anything you had to pay. They dropped us off at an amazing beach where you had to pay to get on, pay to sit down, pay for everything. The only thing that was free was the amazing rocky beach that reminded me of Niece. It was a good day though, and they did entertain us with a make shift rock band performance. That night I went out to get some dinner and a few drinks but then went to bed pretty early which was good.

Day 27 

A few of us decided to get some motor bikes and to have a look around, it was a great idea and soon found the freedom that i craved. I managed to get a great deal about $3 per day for 5 days as I thought i would ride to Dalat and around the area. Well after a brief visit to the Po Nagar Cham Towers, a 2nd century Pagoda, we decided to ride to Ba Ho Falls which were meant to be pretty good. It was about 20km north of town and from the group I was the only one who had ridden a  motorbike before. It is not hard and the others picked it up pretty quickly, we were even going on dodgy dirt roads for about 5kms, so they did really well.

To get there proved to be a bit of an effort driving past the unmarked turn off about three times. The directions were the start of my beef with Lonely planet maps and directions. I think Nick Ray author of the Lonely Planet Vietnam just asked some local in a Cafe rather than going to most of the places. The waterfalls were nice but not what i was expecting. It was more like an extended rocky drop with no real big waterfall. We had a swim which was good and very refreshing as it was one of the hottest days that I had experienced.

The ride back was good and I decided to stop at a market on the outskirts of town to get some food and a hat. It was a good market not many westerners so it was cheap and fun. When i was buying the hat, one lady wanted me to get one of hers but none fitted so she said don’t pay more than 20,000($1.30) at the next stall, so they looked after me! I bought two hats and some food, then almost had my first accident on a bike. When i was starting the automatic started was not working so I had to kick start the bike. It was in gear (normally not a problem for the auto start) and i gave it a little bit of throttle, so when it kicked in I took off just missing a stall, and one screaming Vietnamese lady. Quite funny for me not for her .

That night I went out to the sailing club and met some Irish guys who were awesome at pool, they would clean the table in two shots, and had a good night so it was great.

When we got up on Tuesday we were feeling a little worse for wear so a day on the beach doing nothing was in store. I had a swim then some breakfast which was great! After this Frida and I went up the beach and found a place with some deck chairs and fell asleep, it couldn’t get any easier.  

 Wednesday 1^st August
Frida and I decided to rent a motor bike and head towards another beach somewhere along the coast. We managed to get one for $5 and then took off. First we went through town and were going to head to a town called Kampot which was 105km from the middle of Sihanoukville. Frida rode there and I rode back, and we only had a pretty average map to get there, it was a lonely planet map that didn’t really have much or any detail.   The riding was great, it is a really good way to see the country side even though we were on the highway. It got a little hellish when buses and trucks would go by really quickly right next to you, but was well worth it. About 50km from town we took a right and went through real farming country, rice paddies as far as the eye could see. I wanted to check out this place called Borkor Hill station, which was a station that the French built and it is right on top of a huge hill over looking the coast. We made it to the entrance of the national park and decided to get something to eat. There was a family selling food so we went over and sat down.