Epic Vietnam Journey (Day 3-Da Lat)

I wake up in the morning after a good night’s sleep.  I thought about taking a shower, but when you're motorcycling for hours, there’s not much point to that.  I take off.  Apparently too quickly, because I left my deodorant, hair brush, tooth brush, and tooth paste behind.  Can’t go back now.  

I ride my bike a few hours, enjoying the beautiful mountain scenery, and I am 7 km from Da Lat.  Then Bam!  I hit a few potholes around a tight corner (I have been pretty adept at avoiding pot holes, but these were on a blind corner).  All of a sudden, my motorcycle loses power.  The engine seems okay, but there is definitely something wrong with the drive train.  I thought maybe there was something wrong with the gear box as it wouldn’t go into gear.  After a few expletives, I was like what the hell.  I’m only 7km from Da Lat.  Although it was all up hill, I’ll make it eventually.  I start walking my bike for about a kilometer, and some guy takes pity on me, and stops.  He tries to fix it, and we start it, and chunks of metal come flying out from under the motorcycle.  I’m no mechanic, but I’m thinking that is not good at all.  He gives me a piece of fruit (not sure what it was, but I haven’t had anything to eat all day, and it was around 2pm).  He drives his motorcycle into Da Lat and summons a mechanic to come get me.  In the meantime, I take a couple pictures of the surrounding area (all the other pictures beforehand were taken from my moving motorcycle, which perhaps aren’t the best as I was busy dodging potholes and tour busses).  

The mechanic shows up and takes the chain cover off.  Apparently, the chain was loose and it came off of the back wheel.  The metal apparently came from the housing of the gear box, so I was happy that the drive train was not falling apart.  He temporarily fixes it, and we ride back to his shop.  He and his buddy spend about 45 minutes fixing it for good.  I offer to pay these guys, and the most amazing thing happened.  They refused to take my money.  I mean, it wasn’t like I only offered once.  I took my wallet out and starting taking money out, and insisted that I pay them something.  They still refused.  I was incredulous.  There are Good Samaritans that so expect something in return (like the ones in Hanoi), and there are Good Samaritans who help you out of the kindness of their heart.  These guys were the latter.  When I offered the “Good Samaritan” in Hanoi some money, he said that it wasn’t enough.  Let’s not forget about the first guy who helped me driving back to Da Lat and getting the mechanic.  I wanted to pay him as well (especially after giving me fruit from his fruit basket), and he just disappeared.  I was floored. I guess that’s what religion does to you.

I take off, and shortly get to Da Lat.  It is amazingly quite different from what I have seen from Vietnam thus far. It looks like a town up in the Swiss Alps, with the houses all cascaded against the hills.  Everything is clean, and the houses are well kept up and are painted with different colors.  There is also a lake with paddle boats.  I ride about the town a bit on my bike, and then come across a small hotel (this one is 10 bucks—an equivalent one in California in a resort town like this would easily go for 150 bucks).  I take a much needed shower and head out to wander about the town and eat.  I eat Pho Ga (chicken soup) and a beef stew that amazing had beef that was edible.  That was a first for me in Vietnam.  

I decide to explore the city a bit more, with the expectation that I will probably get lost, because I don’t have a map of the city.  But what the hell.  The best way to explore somewhere is to be at least semi-lost.  The entire time, I saw one white guy, and then an older white group later.  I honestly thought that there would be more Westerners here, but I guess it is mostly a get-away for the Vietnamese. I wander about for a couple hours, attempting to find my way back to the hotel.  No luck.  I am hopelessly lost, it is raining, and I am getting blisters on my feet. I happened to take some pictures on the way to dinner, so I had the bright idea of looking at one of them, which had a little gully in the foreground and an Eiffel-tower looking thing in the background.  

If I found that exact spot where I took the picture, I would be able to find my way back from that point.  Based on the picture, I figured out how far I was from the tower when I took the picture, so I knew what direction to go in.  Also, the picture had some distinctive houses in the foreground along the gully, so I would know that that was the point at which I took the picture when I actually did find it.  I did find it, and eventually made my way back.  I may be navigationally retarded, but I am a resourceful.  

I get back to the hotel, and try to strike up a conversation with the owner’s granddaughter in the lobby as that is the only place with internet access.  She speaks 1% English, and I speak 0.5% Vietnamese, so it was kind of frustrating.  I starting looking at Google Maps on my computer to get my bearings for tomorrow’s trip, and I thought it would be cool to zoom in on the hotel that I was staying at in satellite view.  I showed it to her, and she was quite amazed that I could zoom in on anything in the world.  I zoomed in on my house to show her where I live, and it turns out it was a very updated picture, because it has the Sebring parked in the driveway (which wasn’t parked there until a couple months ago).  Perhaps not too exciting, but it was interesting to see.  

Now, I’m watching Discovery Channel (which is the first time in two months), and will start doing work. Tomorrow, I am traveling from Da Lat to Nha Trang (at the beach), which is a relatively short 120 km trip (assuming nothing goes wrong with the bike).  At least if something goes wrong with the bike, I can coast down the hill.  

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