Easy Riding

Dalat has lived up to its coolness factor in both the weather and the amazing scenery. I took the midnight bus which arrived at 6 in the morning - I was so grateful to have met two other travelers on board who led me through the winding and hilly streets to a recommended guesthouse. We dropped our things and headed to a local spot for breakfast. I tried the Bahn Mi, Vietnamese fillings on a French baguette - very popular here. Something inside (not sure what it was since I couldn't identify many of the ingredients) didn't agree with me and I hung out for the rest of the morning and watched BBC (it was thankfully the first room I've had since January with a tv, only 2 English channels but still quite a novelty).

Having recovered by afternoon I hopped on the back of one of the motorbikes the guys had rented and we went around the lake and up to a viewpoint to check out the town. The weather was a bit rainy but the temperature was amazing; I even needed a sweatshirt on the bike!
The next day I went on an incredible canyoning trip. Our small group, four Brits and me, were driven through the hills and dropped off on a random roadside. We trekked for half an hour down narrow trails, through streams and over slippery rocks (I mean really slippery, I fell a couple of times, luckily not down any cliffs but this was the scariest part of the day). We arrived at the practice cliff where we rappelled (or absailed, depending which country you hail from) down a small drop to make sure we had the technique down. Two rapels later and we were heading down a huge cliff face; so much fun! On the next descent I really got in my stride and even started doing little jumps down the wall. In between rapelling we did some more hiking, cliff jumps and got to slide down natural waterslides.

The next absail wasn't a cliff at all but a huge waterfall. It was more than a little bit intimidating with slippery rocks and water that pounds your legs and sprays your face. When you get about 15 feet from the bottom you just let go and fall into the water. Little did we know that this huge falls (literally the size of ones that tourists swarmed to in Laos - not too shabby) was just practice for the next fall. While not comparable in size, the finesse needed in this absail made it a perfect last of the day (although the big one was more fun). We stood on top, not able to see the cliff or the people at the bottom. The directions that we received were something to the effect of, go down a bit, the wall will end, go through the air, then you will be in the falls, go a bit more but you won't be able to breath and at some point you have to let go and be pulled under the rapid for some amount of time before you will be spit out downriver - sweet! This was all in not quite accurate English so we just went and hoped we'd figure it out. It was awesome and scary (mostly because we had no clue what we were doing) but we all definitely felt like we had conquered something when we emerged at the bottom. One more cliff jump and 20 minutes of wading down the river in the pouring rain and we were at the end of an incredible day.
That evening the five of us met a few other travelers and took over a restaurant for dinner followed by a pool bar - I guess this was the great end to the incredible day.

Da Lat, in addition to being known for it's cooler weather, is famous for its Easy Riders. A decade or two ago, there was a group of ex-military guys and some younger men who liked to ride motorcycles and were looking for employment. They formed a tour company called the Easy Riders and take tourists around the countryside. I hired an Easy Rider original with shoulder length grey hair, a huge bike and tough guy exterior. He was an absolutely amazing guide and pointed out parts of the landscape that I would have missed, answered my questions about life in Da Lat and Vietnam and took me to some great sites. We saw a huge waterfall (yes, it was bigger than the ones the day before), silk worms and then the factory where the silk was processed, rode in a cable car across the valley and he even showed me a little hike to the top of a mountain with amazing views! We were going to visit a minority village but when we arrived at we were told that it wasn't a good time since the husband was drunk... oops. I ended my day with a strawberry shake and dinner with friends and am off to the beach for some more heat tomorrow.