Biking it to Saigon

We arrived yesterday in Ho Chi Min (Saigon) after 3 days of traveling across the country with motorbike guides (calling themselves "Easy Riders"). It was great fun. The drivers were experienced and very good. There were four of us traveling: Me, Jo, Dan and Sarah, so there were 4 bikes and each of us had a driver/guide. It was a lovely way to see the countryside.

On the first day, we went from Nha Trang to Dalat, the drive to which is amazing. There's a great new road that winds up around mountains and you get spectacular views for hundreds of miles around in some parts. The drive was about 3 or 4 hours. The scenery around Dalat was good, waterfalls, lakes and so on. At the moment, it's the Vietnamese holiday season and a lot of native people visit Dalat (partly because it's cold). The town itself is a bit tacky with a lot of bad market stalls etc.

The next day we made the journey down the mountains to a small beach town called Mui Ne. One of the main attractions there are massive sand dunes that people slide down. Unfortunately I was feeling pretty sick after a dodgy omelette I had for lunch. What we saw of the town was nice, it's a fishing town and the seafood was very fresh and cheap. We had a good laugh with the guides who were anxious to try out their English phrases. "Aw right, mate!", "Why not?!!", "Gorgeous, mate!".

Then yesterday, we made the 5-hour journey from Mui Ne to Ho Chi Min. This went smoothly enough, the traffic got busy as we got near to the city, but the drivers were very careful so we weren't worried too much. After 3 days on the back of motorbikes, we were all walking like John Wayne.

After we checked into our guest house and said goodbye to our guides, we went to meet up with Dave and Moninne, who we were traveling with earlier and had a good night out. Resting up today, and hopefully going to do a good bit of sight-seeing tomorrow. Hope you're all fine and dandy.