Central Highlands

I am officially a biker chick. It is just the best feeling to ride a motorbike. I am deffinately going to miss it!! It was just 3 amazing days. Although we had sore buts, they tried to help a little with many walking brakes to stretch our legs. We saw amazing waterfalls, even baded in one (which is something i will miss on return to denmark, the lack of waterfalls!! and rivers). We saw small villages, even the one with the original population of Dalat, before the French made them move. "Da" meens their dialect and "lat" meens stream. Originally there was a small stream going through Dalat. But the French thought a lake would be much more romantic (since they wanted to make Dalat into a recreation area), so they buildt two dams. Now making a big lake in the center of Dalat. And one can say many things. But the french had great tast, it does look beautifull. Dalat is even called the second Paris. It even has an "eiffel tower" which is actually a post office tower, originally built to keep contact with the world (since dalat lies so high up and surrounded by mountains), that looks alot like the original thing (though the colours are a bit different).

Anyway the leader of the Lat people tolled us some things about their culture, and things. Though many now are catholics or protestants, he still had a small totem for show and tell. He even sang songs for us, and gave us a taste of rice-"wine" (the percentage of alcohol makes it a bit more than just wine).

The first night we slept in long-houses in a village. But before getting that fare we ate dinner. Which was authentic Vietnamese with a million dishes, steamed rice and an empty bowl for everyone (and for this occasion also a small barbeque). Now all you had to do was take whatever you wanted. Although most of the time you didn't get the chance as Yang (Yang and Mr. Bin where our drivers, I drove with Yang) in particular kept throughing food into our bowls. They where deffinately not trying to starve us! We had to try every single thing on the table, and it was all good. I was so full in the end, i couldn't believe i had eaten that much! But even before the food arrived Yang mixed Central Highland Cocktails, and both of them started a party. Mr. Bin found a guitar and started playing and we all joined in with our own rhythm by beating (with our chopstick which are ideal for the purpose ;-) ) on the nearest available object. It was so much fun!! Even so we went quite early to bed because...

And you will never believe this, but we got up BEFORE sunrise to see it!!!around 5-5.30 am. This is not easy, since i am not much for early mornings, to say the least! But it was worth it, because we also got to see the village get started. Things like cooking breakfast, feeding the animals (which for the record just ran around, pigs, chickens, dogs), whatever their morning ritual contained. After walking around for a while we went back to our house which we had conveniently marked with a danish flag, since every house looked the same to us, and packed our stuff.

Breakfast the same place as where we had dinner, but again as so many times before, all we could get was empty bread with butter or jam. Anyway the view was great from where we sat!

Second day lunch was a picnic in the forest on the road. Okay it was a dead end but still. It was just next to a waterfall, although when sitting down we couldn't see it. We got what could be described as make-yourself-spring rolls. We simple got a piece of ricepaper and could then fill it out with salat, vegetables, meat and something crunchy (i think it was deep fried rice paper). This was also really good. This was also the day we went swimming at the waterfall! Awesome. Also it was EXTREMELY hot. Even our guides where knocked out. When we arrived at our hotel everybody was so beat.

The last day was mostly driving, we must have made some stops but i cant really remember. Other than one thing, Mr. Bin's bike got a flat wheel!!!! So we had to wait a while in a small city for him to find a shop that had the right wheel, but of course that couldn't be found (probably due to our luck, or lack of it), so we just sat waiting on the side of the road while they had to fix the wheel on their own. While we sat their i think an entire high school walked past us. They just kept on coming. And we where diffinately the topic of conversation (Vietnamese have not learned the meaning of subleness. Which is why, without exeption, everytime we walk by a street "restaurant" everybody stopes talking and the second we have passed they start laughing. It really isn't that nice since we dont know what they are saying, but we don't put to much into it, it is most likely harmless comments on either our hight difference, my hair or Leby's piercing. At least thats what we figure).

Arriving in Nha Trang  we where tired  but happy.