After a week of big city living in Saigon we finally decided we'd better get out see some more of Vietnam. Our flair for timing with big public holidays continued and instead of going straight to Dalat as we'd wanted we ended up having to spend a couple of days in Mui Ne while Saigon invaded Dalat for the Liberation Day/Labour Day long weekend.
Mui Ne I could take or leave. Its literally a town with one road - straight along the edge of a beautiful beach for ten kilometres. Thing is, the beach side of the road is lined with resorts ranging from the stupidly expensive to the crappy-but-still-overpriced, and to get to the beach you have to go through the resorts. If you're not staying in a resort (and guess who wasn't) you'd better be ready to buy some expensive lemonades if you wanna be going anywhere near that water. We hired a motorbike and found the beach around the headland where the locals swim (much to their amusement) and explored the sci-fi looking red sand dunes with the help of a local kid who claimed he was David Beckham. Weird.
Dalat, however, was a real gem. High in the mountains, its a windy sprawling little city set around steep hills with the cool weather and the improbable roads of our beloved Wellington. We spent an awesome day hooning around on the back of some pretty sweet big roadbikes with two Easyriders - a Dalat instution reknowned for their mix of tour guiding and comedy - who took us on a stunning trip around the area visiting all kinds of silk factories, flower farms, waterfalls, coffee plantations and even a mushroom farm. Mainly we just enjoyed riding on some sweet motorbikes around mountain roads and our guide had some hilarious stories and did a spot-on impersonation of an old kiwi farmer he'd taken a while ago. "I loike ut" he'd say, and so did we.
Mui Ne I could take or leave. Its literally a town with one road - straight along the edge of a beautiful beach for ten kilometres. Thing is, the beach side of the road is lined with resorts ranging from the stupidly expensive to the crappy-but-still-overpriced, and to get to the beach you have to go through the resorts. If you're not staying in a resort (and guess who wasn't) you'd better be ready to buy some expensive lemonades if you wanna be going anywhere near that water. We hired a motorbike and found the beach around the headland where the locals swim (much to their amusement) and explored the sci-fi looking red sand dunes with the help of a local kid who claimed he was David Beckham. Weird.
Dalat, however, was a real gem. High in the mountains, its a windy sprawling little city set around steep hills with the cool weather and the improbable roads of our beloved Wellington. We spent an awesome day hooning around on the back of some pretty sweet big roadbikes with two Easyriders - a Dalat instution reknowned for their mix of tour guiding and comedy - who took us on a stunning trip around the area visiting all kinds of silk factories, flower farms, waterfalls, coffee plantations and even a mushroom farm. Mainly we just enjoyed riding on some sweet motorbikes around mountain roads and our guide had some hilarious stories and did a spot-on impersonation of an old kiwi farmer he'd taken a while ago. "I loike ut" he'd say, and so did we.
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