We were both very excited about today. Xuan had told us that this is his favorite part of the ride between Dalat and Hoi An. We will be spending a fair amount of time on the new Ho Chi Minh road. Well, like many things so far, it delivered. The first stop was at a family owned taro factory. They dry and grind them into a powder to sell to others that then use the powder in combination with rice powder to make a batter. The batter is then used to make rice paper, like Emma has tried making. This area has a lot of Vietnam war history and it…
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Day 4 – Easy Rider – Deeper
We are pretty deep in Vietnam’s central highlands and easy riding has become a bit of a routine. After yet another incredibly tasty breakfast we set off on another day of riding. Our first stop was a tea plantation and to much of the women’s amusement we were able to spend some time with them on the field. Meanwhile a newly wedded couple were taking photos next to us. It seems traditional to take very elaborate wedding photos in Vietnam, which may be why you sometimes see a bride in her dress climbing over rocks near a waterfall to get that special photo. Later we pulled into a small shed…
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Day 3 – Easy Rider – The Longest Day
In the morning we stopped in a minority village, where Xuan knew a family that allowed us to see their home. The houses were raised off the ground and while basic, they are very sturdy. It was really great to see this and not feel like we were walking through their house uninvited. Today was going to be the biggest stretch, about 220km north to Pleiku. I knew this would be a challenging ride as it included some of Vietnam’s interesting traffic. But knowing Xuan would stop frequently to take breaks was good. He stopped and would tell us about Vietnam’s war history, which was very interesting to learn about…
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Day 2 – Easy Rider – Around Lak Lake To Buon Ma Thout
The next day we set off to explore the region around Lak Lake. First stop was the giant lake. The people in this area are incredibly friendly and relaxed. They all turned to wave at us as we passed and always had beaming smiles, yelling “Hello!” We stopped near a rice field to get up close and personal with some rice plants and Xuan explained to us how they plant and harvest the rice, which is very hard work. Our next stop was a brick factory. The workers there get the clay from nearby construction sites and mix it by hand before feeding it into the machine that shapes the…
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Day 1 – Easy Riding from Dalat to Lak Lake
We’ve now finished our six day tour from Dalat to Hoi An with an Easy Rider guide. Lionel rode his own bike while I rode on the back of our guide, Xuan’s bike. Amazing experience with lots of cool stops along the way. We did a bit of a loop around Dalat which was good as we hadn’t seen anything around Dalat in the previous two days on account of me throwing up from food poisoning. Â It was a very popular route with other Easy Riders and we kept bumping…
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Easy Riding from Dalat to Hoi An
As we have both been sick as of late, we’ve ended up already spending ten days of our 30 day visa and feel we have barely ‘done anything’ in Vietnam. It’s actually been a lot of hotel rooms, hotel bathrooms, Discovery Channel, and Nat Geo. So we’ve decided to skip Nha Trang as we’ve heard it’s mostly a beach resort (we’re beached out at the moment), with sub-par diving, and stories of being a party town (too poor for that shiz at the moment). We are now heading to Hoi An from Dalat but instead of the horrendous sounding journey (5 hrs bus to Nha Trang, then 12 hours on…
