Central Highlands

Random:

That leashed monkey just attacked that little boy who was playing with it. Gotta stay on your toes when playing with monkeys on leashes.

Saying my farewells to Natasha and Amy as they road the local bus home to Ho Chi Minh City from the beach town of Mui Ne, I loaded my pack, donned my helmet and mounted my steed. Heading north I rode the gorgeous and little-trafficked mountain roads up to the hill station of Dalat.

Built by the French Dalat is a beautiful, if touristy, city full of gardens, colonial architecture, and motorcycle tours. I met up with Brad as he had arrived the day before and met some other couchsurfers and travelers in a backpacker cafe. One of them, a young Canadian, Adrian, had just bought himself a Honda Daelum 125 cc motorcycle and he and Brad were leaving the next morning to ride through the highlands.

I expected to like Dalat, hoping it would be the vietnamese equivalent to the mountainous paradise of Darjeelng, my most favorite city in India. However I decided to just stay one day as the mountains were significantly smaller and less impressive than in the Himalaya (no surprise) and in an effort to catch back up with Brad and Adrian at some point.

With my one full day in Dalat I decided to skip all the normal tourist highlights and rode out to the nearby peak, Lang Bian, standing at 2200 meters. There is a road driven by tourist jeeps all the way to the summit, and plenty of Vietnamese tourists still on their Tet holiday to hire them, but there is also a trail.

Road up to Lang Bian from the nearby villages.

Taking off quickly I realized that riding a moto through the mountains of Vietnam is not the same as hiking them. I was short of breath after the first 45 minutes and had to sit on a rock, feigning good health so as not to embarrass myself in front of the two Dutch women were I had passed earlier. I mean they are Dutch, they don't have any mountains, I should be able to climb faster than they can!

Taking a break on my hike to the summit of Lang Bian. I realized I was not in the trekking shape.

In an attempt at saving face, I chatted with them as we walked slowly together the other hour up to the summit. Atop was a cafe, local ethnic minority villagers selling handicrafts and dozens of Vietnamese tourists. What was lacking was foreign tourists, and the two Dutch women and I became an attraction in and of ourselves.

On the summit of Lang Bian.

As I was chatting with one Vietnamese man I felt an arm across my shoulders and turned to see a beautiful young Vietnamese woman looking straight ahead, away from my face. Following her smile's trajectory I realized she was posing for a picture, and I was to be the other subject. I quickly capitulated, threw on my borrowed smile and allowed my picture taken. It was a very unique experience as that doesn't really happen in India as much. At least not with women doing the posing.

That night I had dinner with the Dutch women really had a great time. The conversation flowed smoothly alongside the Saigon beer until it was 1 oclock, and we had closed down the last open cafe in sight. Promising to see each other in Hoi An a few days later, we went to bed.

The next days ride was again gorgeous. Twisting through more mountains, skirting along acres of rice paddies, and fighting a side wind that threatened to push me off the road, or worse, into the sparse oncoming traffic, I made the 6 hour journey up to Buon Ma Thuot.

A roadside view from the ride from Dalat to Buon Ma Thuot

Another roadside view. This small girl found me fascinating as she watched me eat lunch from a foot away. No matter how hard I tried, however, I could not maker her smile.

A large and city, I found BMT not especially appealing and so after the customary time wasting of eating alone and using the internet I retreated to my cell of a room with one unusual comfort- satellite TV. I had planned to read my book until I fell asleep early, but alas, my weakness for western movies got the better of me. So ashamed as I am for the movie that I did watch, I can't even tell you here.

(Not quite as) early (as I had hoped) the next morning I set off for Kon Tum, again seeing similar scenery along the way and enjoying the ride more than the ultimate destination. (Perhaps that is because Evan's Journey IS the destination?)

A not-so-great shot of the ever present fields of rice paddies.

But that is not to say that Kon Tum is not a worthy place to stop. In fact, Adrian had stayed an extra day in the town, allowing Brad to get a day ahead of him, and allowing me to catch up. Arriving in the afternoon, I got a call from the Canuck and we drove out to a neighboring ethnic village before heading back into town for dinner.

A view out along the countryside from my hotel balcony in Kon Tum.

While we stopped and chatted along the one road village, local children began massing on the steps of a nearby building. Eyes fixed on the strange tall newcomers, the children whispered amongst themselves and a few became braver and braver until they were calling out to us, "Hello! What your name!?" apparently exhausting the group's English vocabulary.

Funny enough, a few even mocked us playfully by opening their eyes wide with their fingers demonstrating a foreigners large eyes. Adrian and I thought this a little shocking, yet innocent and hilarious so we called back playfully that they were horrible racists.

After some time the curiousity of the village rose to a point that a few adults came out to see what the buzz was about. And soon were being invited into a nearby house to share a cup of tea with an older woman who was the mother of the two girls who had tried to take pictures of us with their camera phones.

The older woman's sister spoke English and so she translated for us all night. After one small cup of tea we were asked to stay for dinner and politely accepted. While the one sister cooked, we were escorted to the English speakers house, met her grandson who lived with her and, oddly enough, watched the first half hour of the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston, completely and loudly dubbed over by one Vietnamese man doing all the voices. A very strange and surreal experience.

After we ate a dinner of rice and, well, I'm not sure what the other stuff was, while sitting on the ground in the first house, we chatted some more. Adrian and I gracefully steered around comments about us marrying the 17 year old daughter, and asked about their families.

The sisters were two of 5 girls and 3 boys in the family. All the brothers have died, as have both of the womens' husbands. We were struck by how matter of factly people in Vietnam discuss the death of loved ones. I think it is just one more cultural difference that we were not expecting.

The English speaking woman told us of her daugther whose husband ran off with another woman and how she remarried a man from Dalat, moved there, and left her son to live with his grandmother. At some point during the night, the 17 year old pulled out her phone, dialed and handed the phone to the child. A huge smile materialized on his little dirty face and his eyes lit up with the life of love. His grandmother confirmed our suspiscion when she whispered to us that he was speaking to his mother. For the rest of the night, the brightness of that full and innocent smile never faded.

Eventually the night had worn on too long, and although Adrian and I were appreciative of the family's hospitality and warmth, we were ready to escape the long awkward pauses in conversation due to the language barrier. We thanked our hosts and promised to return if we ever came back to Kon Tum.

The next day Adrian drove north and east back to the coast and I stayed an extra day to rest in Kon Tum. I read for hours, slept for hours, spent hours on the internet, and only minutes driving through other adjacent villages. Truthfully I didn't return to the village from the night before because I didn't want to brave the inevitable awkwardness of the encounter alone.

Getting up at dawn the next morning, I made the long drive out to Hoi An on Vietnam's coast. This day's ride was the longest and most incredible of my journey. First the road wound us through a number of villages each with a large steep-roofed town hall staring down at me as I cruised by.

Typical village town hall. This one is near Kon Tum.

Then I ascended up into the clouds of a high mountain pass. For half an hour visibility fell to a dozen feet and I weaved slowly around the switchbacks honking my horn to warn nearby motorists and pedestrians of my presence. After the slow descent out of the cold fog, and long after I had donned both my pairs of pants, a hat, my new gloves and many layers of shirts and jackets, I turned east onto a small road that would take me to the coast. The scenery only became more spectacular.

The foggy haze gave way to vistas of high mountains encased in a thick shell of lush green jungle. Grey rivers flowed swiftly nearby, racing me towards the lowlands of the coast. As I descended lower, the narrow road itself eventually became enveloped in the jungle. For kilometers on end I cruised through the cool shade and moist but quickly warming climate of the surrounding greenery.

View from the Ho Chi Minh Road north of Kon Tum after I had descended from the cloudy mountains seen at the top of the picture.

Penelope posing on the side of a bridge on my way to Hoi An.

Another landscape from the same day's ride.

The town where I ate lunch. "Com" means rice and all I have to do to eat is stop at a small place with this sign outside.

Varied and sustained views ruled the day and won me over. A smile firmly rooted on my bearded face, I cruised the Ho Chi Minh Road and its tributaries, in search of exactly nothing else. This ride was to be the climax of my motorbike trip through Vietnam.

Random:

A fat dog in Hoi An. Don't worry. It was still alive at the time of the picture.