My girlfriend and I travelled from south to North Vietnam in August 2008.M
What a beautiful country, delicious food, various sceneries, friendly and interested people! Mr. Binh, "easy rider" from Mui Ne became one of our best friends. After Saigon and a boat trip through the Mekong up to the Cambodian border, we decided to chill two days at Mui Ne beach - a relaxed, quiet and always-sunny beach town - before heading to Dalat. We wanted to go to Dalat to take a famous easy rider trip through the mountains. We went to a local travel agency to buy bus tickets to Dalat, but we were lucky to meet Mr. Binh. After ten minutes of talking, laughing and hearing his stories we decided to skip busses and created our own 3 day motor trip from Mui Ne to Dalat, through the mountains and end up in our next (diving) destination Nha Thrang. The next morning we left at 7am on two motorbikes, backpacks tied to the motors. Binh's friend and colleague Tan didn't speak English which Mr. Binh compensated but sometimes it was a pity when you wanted to ask something on the back of the motor. After getting breakfast with our favourite ice coffee up to our first destination: different Mui Ne sand dunes, where you have to try sand sledging, or gape at the pink ones. The first day would take us to Dalat. On the way Binh took us to so many different places so I just name some: small markets where the were really surprised to see tourists, waterfalls, shrines, rice, corn, soy, coffee, tea, honey, silk and brick farms/factories and explained everything! So we found out that peanuts grow underground... Binh took really good care of us, very often we got something nice to eat or drink: fresh sugar cane syrup, boiled corn, fruit, a cold coke or coffee. We had some rain but raincoats and plastic bags for our backpacks were available. At the end of the afternoon we derived at a friendly hotel in the centre of Dalat. We met in the evening to have a nice meal (always more side dishes than we could eat), and ended up drinking together in the hotel room: rice wine from a plastic bag! Next day we travelled through the mountains, along coffee, coffee, coffee, flowers and through mountain people villages! We had lunch at the last stop before entering 'nowhere' and all 'Dalat easy riders' were there and knew Binh. We ended in a mountain people village at a lake, animals were everywhere and children were playing with paper airplanes. Again after dinner we played cards and drunk the local rice whine: put very long straws in a closed barrel and keep drinking and adding water as long as there is alcohol... Great! The third and last day we went to Nha Thrang. Again we have seen so many traditional ways of farming and producing. We ate fox and porcupine! (Tastes quite nice but too much bones) Binh even gave me his own red T-shirt with "Mr. Binh's Sahara Tour" as a remembrance - my favourite jogging shirt! We drunk our last beer together on the great roof of the hotel in Nha Thrang - Binh and Tan had to wake up at 5 am, going back all the way to Mui Ne... Thanks guys we will never forget this trip! As you can read Mr. Binh is a very experienced and nice guide to travel with. He really takes maximum care of you and tells you everything you like to know. We paid $60 per person a day, which is not the cheapest, but everything was included in abundance - 3 nights, 3 dinners, lunches, breakfasts, rice wine, drinks, snacks and fruit. Steven Kraal (28, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) [email protected]
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