Vietnam Cycle Tour - Dalat to Nha Trang

Days 9 to 11 - Dalat

Our first impression of Dalat was that it is a very pretty town - in a slightly sugary, pastel-shaded kind of way. It's famous for its flowers (which are everywhere), candied strawberries and as a honeymoon destination for Vietnamese newlyweds. It reminded me of France a little, as many buildings are European style and the mountains around are covered in pine forest. The fact that the town is gently hilly with curving streets also made it feel pleasantly different to pretty much every other place we've stayed - everywhere is usually so flat!

We stopped at a guesthouse just outside the town centre, which turned out to be run by the most generous people ever. The owners didn't speak any English, but they offered us tea every time we came through reception - along with sweet corn, carrot juice, an avocado milk drink (bơ xay) and toasted yams; basically fawning over us the whole time we were there. They also refused money for laundry and upgrading our room. It got to the point that we were actually a little afraid to go back - perhaps they were planning to keep us as pets..?

Dalat

Thankfully there was plenty to do in the town so we could stay out all day. We went to 'crazy house', a surreal, overblown fantasy building (several buildings in fact) built by a lady who seemingly wanted her own Wonderland. It's all brightly coloured concrete in twisting shapes, with staircases and bridges everywhere (really - even over a third-story roof), and there are plenty of giant mushrooms and spider webs and so on. It took a lot of exploring, at some points extremely cautiously. There is no health and safety in Vietnam.

We took a brilliant cable car trip as well (we felt safe doing this because it was built by an Austrian company, and they have lots of health and safety there). The cars travel picturesque-ly down the mountain to a lakeside Buddhist meditation centre, where there are temples and more flowers and it's all rather beautiful.

Crazy beautiful

Wine is produced in Dalat and bizarrely we ended up having tea with the new CEO of the Dalat Wine company as he is a friend of our lovely guesthouse hosts. He told us all about how they grow grapes near the coast but make the actual wine in the Dalat factory as the alpine climate helps. He also told us how the business was growing, of which we understood embarrassingly little. At any rate they're doing very well. We think.

Jon had ordered contact lenses to Dalat's poste restante, but to an out of date address, so we had to do a fair bit of running around to various post offices, at none of which people understood much English. But, with a couple of lines from the phrasebook and perseverance, we managed to eventually track the box as far as the centre for misaddressed mail, at which one member of staff luckily recalled seeing it in one of the many piles of paper and parcels. Win!

Elsewhere in Dalat

Day 12 - Dalat to Nha Trang (133km down a mountain)

The rest in Dalat meant we felt refreshed for the next stage of riding - down to the seaside city of Nha Trang, 130km away. We decided to do the whole journey in one day so got an early start through Dalat and quickly out into the countryside of the plateau. The map has virtually no villages marked, and although there were a few tiny ones in reality, surrounded by coffee farms and flowers in greenhouses, most of the first 60km is forested mountain road.

The road was the quietest we've ridden, although we did see a couple of other cyclists, all on guided tours doing the same route as us (though they get a support van and are driven part of the way. We're hardcore, you understand). There was a fair bit of climbing to be done, nearly 3,000m, but it's one of those places that's so pretty that you don't care so much.

Forest road

The highest climb was the last one, peaking at 1,670m. We had checked the elevation profile in advance and knew there was a big decent after, but weren't quite prepared for the sheer scale of it. Immediately after we went over the crest of the hill we were greeted with a view right down the cliffs of the mountain, and across the lowlands all the way to the sea. We were looking down to see other hills, way below us! Mind blowing. We hadn't realised how high the Dalat plateau actually was until that moment. After that it continued to be awesome for some distance as we freewheeled down, passing occasional altitude signs (1,500m, 1,000m, 500m) and giggling.

The view from the top!

Near the bottom of the mountain we could feel the change in climate - it was noticeably hotter and more humid. The pine trees also petered out and were replaced by bananas and palms. Up on the plateau the cooler air had definitely helped us on the climbs, but we started to feel pretty knackered once we stopped going down and still had another 40km to ride. We cycled past sugar cane and rice paddies, ate all our emergency peanuts and arrived at Nha Trang after dark, around 12 hours after we had left Dalat.

From the mountains to the sea

Days 13 to 15 - Nha Trang

In Nha Trang we saw a far greater number of foreign tourists (it's especially popular with Russians) and tourist orientated shops, restaurants and bars. Most are concentrated near the seafront, which feels quite like a Spanish resort town with a wide sandy beach, sun loungers and big hotels. It is an easy place to relax for a few days, and to stock up on things like aloe after sun, which can be very difficult to find off the tourist trail.

There's plenty of fresh seafood to be had, all caught in local waters and available steamed, grilled, barbecued and raw. We mainly spent our time consuming as much as possible, but also fit in a day of snorkeling to see some pre-dinner fishies. In the bay there are lots of tiny islands, of which our tour boat visited 3. We didn't land but dived in straight from the boat (well, slowly descended down a ladder - the water was surprisingly chilly) in our masks and flippers. We were startled by the variety of colourful sea creatures and the clear water. The area is top for scuba diving in Vietnam and I could see why, but we couldn't justify the cost of lessons. However, splashing about in a snorkel mask is still a huge amount of fun.

- Kath

Nha Trang