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The roads slowly rose from the coast, right up into the mountains which helped to make an amazing days' ride. The weather was good and the scenery was even better. With a mountain backdrop, I felt somewhere between Steve McQueen and Ewan McGregor although in reality, I'm not sure I was looking that cool. I was going to say a bit of Valentino Rossi as well but despite how hard I tried, I couldn't get my knee that close to the floor, (only joking mum).
The Vietnamese countryside wasn't like anything I had seen before, let alone anything I had driven through. It was also great to see how the locals lived and how they made a living- from the coffee plantations, the dragon fruit farms and the countless paddy fields. Once again, everyone I spoke to along the way we're all so friendly and so interested in hearing where I was from and what I was doing in Vietnam. For some reason they all laughed when I answered the question of 'how much you pay for bike?', I'm still unsure why the found it so funny but I just laughed with them, which they found even funnier. They obviously knew something I didn't. I pressed on regardless and after all the hairpin turns, once I reached higher ground, the views were amazing and the air was cooler. Such a welcome change from the hot and humid lowlands.
I made good time and reached Da Lat in just over five hours, it might sound like a long time, but I thought that was pretty good going considering half of the mountain road was still under construction. I blame the road but it's more than likely struggling up a the side of a mountain, fully-ladened, on a 110cc motorbike!
Da Lat is a really nice resort-town, made better by the cooler climate, and offers a lot of activities that are only a short bus ride out of town. With so much to do, it's hard to fit it all in and work out some kind of budget at the same time. Today we've been canyoning at some nearby waterfalls. Abseiling down 30m waterfalls and trekking through the jungle and mountains. The guides were fantastic, showing us all the best spots to jump in off some precarious-looking ledges. At around 2pm, we were just about to make our final descent, the highest abseil down the centre of a waterfall, when we were hit by a tropical storm. I've never seen rain like it and it caused the volume of water coming down to double in about 5 minutes and the instructors deemed the abseil unsafe. It was a cold, slightly disheartening, march back through the forests to the minibuses, the first time I've been cold in Vietnam! It was still a great day with lots of laughs along the way and by some kind of miracle, everyone made it off the mountain relatively unscathed.
It's our last night in Da Lat and weather-permitting, I will head to Nha Trang tomorrow. Its only about 90km away so hopefully I will make the beach by lunchtime. I will miss the climate here and it's shame we can't stay for longer. It's hard to judge the distances and the next best place to stop. Everyone's aiming for Hoi An as the next big stop but it's a few days away on a motorbike so I've somehow got to plan a few intermediate stops before then.
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Ma Not only is my hair grayer but I maybe heading for the bottle! Glad I'm only reading about these adventures after you've done them! Please keep safe, love you! XXXX