Wednesday 20 May 2009

Mui Ne and Dalat on the Moto!

Morning All

Just a very quick update from Dalat before I get my bus to Nah Trang, its 6:50 in the morning at the moment.

One thing that you realise about Vietnam is that everyone gets up very early. At 5:00 am this morning there was some loud music playing in the street outside our window!

My Breakfast has just arrived; I'll update this once I am finished!

Finished breakfast now!

I don’t think that I am going to have time to update this one properly, I'll have to wait until later today when I am in Nah Trang or tomorrow when I arrive in Hoi An.

Finally I am getting the chance to update this bit properly, this time from Hoi An; a lovely city.

Our first day at Mui Ne we rented two moto's between the four of us for 90'000 dong each ($5 per moto!). That evening Giles and I drove the motos to the 'Red' dunes to watch the sun set, it was nice but these particular sand dunes are too commercialized as they are just out of town and were full of Vietnamese tourists.

The next day we got up at about 4:45 to go and watch the sun rise which was nice as there were not too many people at the dunes at this time in the morning. One of the best things about getting up at this time is that is nice and cool! After watching the sun rise we made our way to the white dunes (30km away + much better). I really like renting moto's as you can just stop at any point and take a photo, have a coffee at a local bar or anything!

The white sand dunes are quite something, as you walked in to the middle of them there was nothing to say that I was not in the middle of a desert! At this point it was about 10 in the morning and it was already getting unbearably hot. So we decided to make our way back to Mue Ne to walk up the 'Fairy Stream', which was alright but a little dirty. This kid decided to follow us and then tried to ask for money as a guide. Guide for what! There is only one way to walk in a river! I suppose that, that is one of my main gripes about Viet Nam; it seems that everyone including the children are out to make some money out of you in some way or another.

Anyhow after seeing all of the sites in the morning we headed back to our hotels for a little siesta to get out of the midday sun. The late afternoon was spent in the sea and sleeping on the beach.

The next morning we got the bus to Dalat, which was the worst one that I have been on so far! We were in a minibus designed for the Vietnamese, 5 people across the back... we did NOT fit. The road was diabolical full of holes!

Dalat was a nice enough city, not the best but still good. One of the best things about it was that it was high up in the mountains which meant that the weather was nice and cool. You could sleep in a room without a fan and for the first time I had top use a blanket!

Again we rented a moto in Dalat so that we could head out to Lang Biang Mountain to trek up to a peak of 2169m. The views from the top over the central highlands were really good, could see for miles! The climb up was a pain though, really steep in places necessitating the use of all four limbs. The afternoon we headed back to Dalat before heading out to Dantala Falls, quite impressive but a little touristy. We got stuck there as I experienced my first proper monsoonal downpour. I have NEVER seen so much rain, got absolutely soaked!

The next morning we headed for Hoi An via Nah Trang!

bye for now.

Jared

4 comments:

Kim said...

WOW! It all sounds so amazing. When will we get to see some pictures????? Can't wait. Are you still with Tom and Nicole? I wish I knew where all these places were. I have looked at your world map on the wall, but I guess I need to look at just a map of Vietnam. Have fun and be safe! xxx

MarkS62 said...

Rather have one amazing downpour than constant shit we have here...still it was a tropical 18 (65) here today and to be fair it didn't rain....your adventures seem to get better and better!!

Unknown said...

So you finally know what a monsoon is. Lots of rain, huh?

World Roamer said...

Yeah I'd though that I had seen some pretty big rains in Talladega when we spent our summers there as kids but no way jose, Monsoon rains in SE asia are ridiculous!