The road between Dalat and Lak Lake winds over two mountain passes, the first of which we reached on our second day after leaving Dalat. The riding was hard work but worth the effort. The road seemed almost vertical it was so steep but the views over the coffee plantations were spectacular. After a slow uphill of less than 10km we had reached the peak and coasted down the other side. The second pass began soon after but seemed to consist of only downhill. Perfect!
Soon we were in a remote forested mountain area far from any villages or
civilisation. It was only 3pm but we decided it was too good a camping
opportunity to pass, so found a flat, clear spot just big enough to perch
the tent on in the jungle like vegetation. Well every silver lining has a
cloud...and this cloud was a big cloud of hungry mosquitos!
These mosquitos were so fierce that we were relegated to the tent. The mosquito repellant just seemed to encourage them! So we took the chance to do some diary writing and book reading until it got dark. We ventured out only to cook, which went a bit wrong as well because we totally failed to manage to light a fire. We went to bed and slept ok but in the morning things got worse...
We were awakened in the morning by a noise of someone in the forest so got up and found a kid was cutting some branches near us. We started to pack and eat some breakfast, giving a bagette to the kid as well, since he was hanging around and watching us. When we were close to being ready to go I stupidly turned my back on my bag, and the next thing we knew was a noise far down in the forest and no kid and no bag.
It didnt take long for it to dawn on me that it was a pretty bad situation. The bag contained, among other things, my wallet, my phone and worse of all my passport. I made a fruitless search of the forest nearby but it was a true needle/ haystack situation, and to make it worse the forest was riddled with animal traps which I didnt really fancy getting caught in so there was nothing to do but leave.
As we cycled away I tried to focus my attention on the beautiful landscape and on the fact that we were both still safe and well, but I still felt pretty shit, and angry at myself for letting my bag out of my sight. It was about 20 minutes before we reached the first village, but it consisted only of a few wooden houses and not much more. After about an hour we reached a slightly larger place that had a public phone but it didnt work, so we pedalled onwards for about 3 hours to reach a small town. Here I managed to call the embassy, and when we asked for the police station the local English teacher was summoned, who along with the maths teacher, tried to help us.
The teachers were really kind and gave us some food and drink but after visiting the police station they said that the police couldnt help us make a report because they dont know english and it is outside their region. They suggested we go to a bigger town such a Boun Ma Thuot or Dalat. The embassy were quite reasuring too, saying it is common for people to have this kind of problem when reporting a stolen passport, and that we should get to Ho Chi Minh and arrange a new passport. When i told them we were travelling by bike they didnt seem to think there was any rush to get to HCM City. I was thankful we could carry on pretty much as planned.
It was still one and a half days ride to BMC City and I tried to forget the fact i didnt have a passport and enjoy the ride, which wasnt that hard because with everybody smiling and saying hello you cant stay down for too long!
We rode past loads of beautiful wooden houses with piles of coffee beans
drying in the sun out front, and as we were riding down towards Lak we got
a great view of the town and the lake. We got the opportunity to admire
the view and take a rest because the road was just being cleared from a
landslide.
Lak is an area in the central highlands of Vietnam where there are many
ethnic minority villages. We passed streets of beautiful wooden long
houses and went to a slightly surreal place where a real village has been
opened as a tourist attraction. It felt a bit wierd and voyeristic
wandering through this place where people were living but that encouraged
tourist to visit. It would have been more comfortable if there was some
kind of interaction between the tourist and the villagers, but mainly
people were traipsing around with tour guides or like us just wandering
around. We had great fun playing with the really cute kids though.
Also on offer to the tourist was a night in the village in a long house,
and we needed somewhere to sleep, so we enquired about it, but the village
long house was full. The could however put us up in a longhouse at a
nearby resort for the same price. So after visiting the
kind-of-authentic-village we retreated to our totally-inauthentic-resort
(we had a swimming pool to make up for it!) had a swim, and got a good
nights sleep in the longhouse.
The ride from Lak Lake to BMT City was pretty easy and with more spectacular scenery and dramatic sky. We passed the ruins of a church bombed by the Americans in the war, left as a memorial, and stopped for bean drinks at a market where a freak gust of wind ripped a sheet of corrigated steel from the roof and wiped out several stalls and scooters.
BMT City was much bigger and more modern than we were expecting. We were
lucky that our visit coincided with the Gong Festival some kind of
celebration of ethnic minorities. There wasnt really any information in
English so we didnt entirely know what was going on and at one point even
ended up at a trade fair thinking it was the Gong Festival. We saw some
cool vietnamese dragon dancing and some crappy vietnamese soft rock on a
massive stage.
My attempt at reporting my passport stolen and getting a police report (required for insurance) totally failed again, dispite the best efforts of two local english speaking guides, who translated for me. The police were not interested because it was out of their area.
On the upside we did manage to get on TV though! The english speaking
guide knew everybody in the town, and as well as offering us an elephant
ride he spoke to his mate who was filming the festival, and wanted to do
an interview with us.
#We even received unsolicited fan mail
after it got broadcast!
To get to Ho Chi Minh was still 4 days riding on the HCM Highway. The first few days were really scenic, the road seemed to follow a winding path along the very top of the hills close to the border with Laos. There was still very little traffic although it obviously got heavier as we approach HCM.
One night we were supprised to find a hotel with an English speaking host,
a lively 70yr old guy who had fought in the Southern Army and so had been
trained in America. Despite his age and it being so rare he gets a chance
to practice he spoke really well and it was great to have a chat about the
area and its history.
The last night before HCM we even scored a hotel with a swimming pool, the second in a week!