1 – 2 August 2011
Man what an epic climb up to this city. Something around 3 hours of solid climbing reaching a saddle of about 1600m. From there it was a bit of descending then undulating along to the first signs of civilisation. My water supplies by now were about three more mouth fulls then I was out and that was after going through two rounds of my drink bottles. The great benefit of being so high was the cooler climate you could tick along without needing much water as you wouldn’t be dripping with sweat. Just when I needed (and finally) I came across a small town with a couple of stalls – water, fizzy and even some bread rolls!!
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| snack stop about 600m alt. and through first lot of drink bottles |
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| Climbing, climbing, climbing |
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| Very high and well through second and last lot of drink bottles |
A couple more hours of undulating along the nice new road in the highlands passing through both native and pine forest and enjoying the generally peaceful area I approached Da Lat. Roads quickly became narrow and increasing traffic. The roads curved off in all directions over and around the hills surrounding Da Lat but somehow I managed to pop out at the head of the central lake with the city rising up behind it.
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| First view of Da Lat, greenhouses everywhere - horticultural centre of Vietnam |
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| The Lake with the city in the background |
While walking the streets for food a guy (Stephan) from Easyriders approached me. I had actually read about Easyriders and so listened to what he had to say. A lot of the same story you hear everywhere – promote and try and sell you their tour then they head into the guilt trip of being poor and needing money to pay for their kids to go to school and university. I was pretty keen to do the tour anyway as I had only read good things about it so didn’t need much convincing but it seemed hard to stop Stephan talking once he started. Anyway he was super happy to get me for a tour “Now is the low season and it is hard to get work every day so I am very happy you booked with me. I now have money to help pay for my son’s university.” Think he might have been reasonably legitimate about it too as he ended up saying how happy he was quite a lot, maybe, you never know. He showed me a good cheap place for dinner so we were both very happy now!
The tour itself was good but nothing to brag home about. He had a lot of knowledge to share: war, culture, the natural landscape, horticulture and maybe the government… A couple of the stops however, seemed to be at his mate’s places. Suppose you may get to know people pretty well after doing the job for 17 years!
“Now I will show how bamboo baskets are made.” and we would sit down over some green tea and talk Vietnamese with the odd bit translated for me.
The classic stop was learning about coffee beans. We pulled over to the side of the road alongside a coffee tree plantation
“you can take a picture now” and he walked about 10m down the road and took a piss. He did then give a bit of an explanation of the process. Grow, pick, dry, roast and blend something into it.
Man what an epic climb up to this city. Something around 3 hours of solid climbing reaching a saddle of about 1600m. From there it was a bit of descending then undulating along to the first signs of civilisation. My water supplies by now were about three more mouth fulls then I was out and that was after going through two rounds of my drink bottles. The great benefit of being so high was the cooler climate you could tick along without needing much water as you wouldn’t be dripping with sweat. Just when I needed (and finally) I came across a small town with a couple of stalls – water, fizzy and even some bread rolls!! 
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