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So the motorbike tour began! We each had a driver and our backpacks were strapped on the back. Our drivers were brothers in their 30's and 40's both were really friendly and spoke good English. The driving felt really safe too, well as safe as u can feel in the crazy traffic and dodgy roads here! It seriously is the best way to see 'the real Vietnam' (as they market it), you take the back roads where the buses don't go so you get to see lots of villages and people working, and lots of cute school kids. They got really excited to see you and would wave and some would even try to high 5 you on the way past! We stopped at some nice places on the way, a fishing village, pepper farm, cocoa bean farm (even more appreciative of chocolate now and got to taste the raw beans) and eventually got to the little village we were staying at for the night. Along the way we saw lots of interesting things on bikes and mopeds- ducks, 5 dogs in a cage, table and chairs, piles of bamboo- pretty much anything! We also stopped at a brick factory, very hard work, and no doubt they get paid peanuts. The village we stayed in was very cute, called lak village, most of the houses were made from bamboo and built on stilts. The one we stayed in had cows, chickens and pigs living under the house so we could hear them all during the night! You could see through the floorboard cracks too, very noisy with lots of dogs barking all through the night! So different to our way of life.
We had dinner with one of our drivers, he was a fan of 'happy water' (rice wine) and shared a litre of it with Chris! I could not stomach it! Had a dinner of mostly duck and pork, another tour guide who also had a lot of rice wine and beer enjoyed telling us all about the differences in killing and cooking ducks and chickens whilst we were eating it- not very enjoyable! He was a bit crazy, he also at some live geckos off the wall (!). I made the mistake in commenting that I've seen lots of dogs and not many cats- it's because they eat them (both dogs and cats) apparently dog is quite similar to pork and sometimes they switch them!!! I'm deffo not having ANY pork! Also our tour guide told us that only about 50% of the population eat dog, those who believe in Buddha do not, as Buddha believes in being friends with dogs. He also told us he (and many people) think that eating dog makes you go crazy in the head. I don't want to find that one out myself!
The next day we got up (woke very early, the people in the village get up at 4 and start their work for the day so impossible to sleep- along with the roosters crowing!!!) and did an elephant ride. I wasn't to keen on this but they insisted it helps the community as the money for the elephant rides goes back to the village and they won't accept money otherwise- not sure how much of this is true! Anyway we did the elephant ride, it was ok. We sat on a seat on its back and the 'driver' sat on its neck. The elephants seemed to be treated better and were very healthy- a lot nicer than others I saw in Bali before. We went for an hour around te village, our elephant was hungry and kept stopping to eat trees and hay! It also went through part of the river, it went so deep our feet got wet and it used its trunk as a snorkel!
After that we got back on our motorbikes and set off. Went through some really nice scenery, cute little towns, over a bridge with a water village underneath, and some different farming areas. The landscape really changed as we got further in the hills closer to da lat, there were more fruit and vegetable crops rather than rice paddies, and the weather started to cool off very quickly. It even started raining just as we were driving in, lucky out guides were fully prepared for rain! We did a couple more stops before getting dropped at our hotel, we went to elephant waterfall (was ok) and also so a silk factory was amazing to see how they get the silk from the silk worms! We then got dropped at our hotel in Dalat, was fantastic doing the motorbikes, deffo consider an easy rider trip if you get the chance!!!
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