100 days in Southeast Asia | Part 11 | Vietnam: Da Lat & our authentic experience!

Viv and I arrived first by bus at the terminal from Ho Chi Minh City and waited for the free shuttle van to take us to our hotel. 

Checked in to our hotel, which we were gonna stay together, the 3 of us.

We stayed 3 nights at this place called Pizza Tet and paid about $15 per night for the room. Quite good considering the room was huge, 2 queen beds, balcony, good bathroom and very clean. Staff was lovely too! And also they had pizza there!!! Hahaha Winning.

We all went to the night market there is near the fountain where they close roads and have all these beautiful clothes and delicious food. It was actually quite cold in there, I guess because it is kind of up in the mountains a bit.

And we walked a lot. Like a LOT. haha

Viv’s brother killed his phone somehow and he had to buy a new one, which was good as the price wasn’t bad at all.

We finally found a motorbike for us, our Sukiita, a Suzuki Hayate 125cc, which worked out really well to carry both of us and our total of 20kg luggage also.

Check out our short video here :)

While it was getting ready for us, new tires, belt etc.. we went up to the ‘clay sculptures park’, which was quite interesting, the ride was nice and the park as well. It is not expensive also, so all good.

We didn’t see as much as we wanted to. Since we were again busy looking for bikes. But we saw enough to say that it is such a cute city! Worth a visit for sure!

There’s a lot to do and see there too, there is a cable car Nha ga Cap treo Da Lat, Da Lat Flower Garden, parks, waterfalls, pagodas etc...

Oh… I almost forgot to mention. We were supposed to stay only for 2 nights, however, guess what happened to me? 

Yes, you guessed right, I got sick hahaha I think it was food poisoning. Diarrhea and vomiting the whole night before leaving. 

Oh gosh such a scene seriously, I was about to die, almost hahaha I’m not sure what it was that made me feel so bad like that, but I think it was a fresh spring roll dinner which didn’t taste very good but I ate it anyway.

Anyway, Viv’s brother wanted to keep going since he only had 2 weeks in total in Vietnam and needed to end his trip up in Hanoi, where he had his flight back to Australia.

So he went and we stayed behind so we planned to meet him up in Buon Ma Thout 1 day later, while he was going to spend that day in Nha Trang. 

Because of my sickness we had to skip Nha Trang, but it’s all good, I really had to stay in bed a FULL day, terrible, but I took a lot of medicines and hydration things and got better really quick.

Also the staff at the hotel knew I was sick and sent me some porridge as my stomach was super upset. They were going to send some chicken soup but I’m vegetarian haha so porridge was perfect! It help a lot, they were so nice to me, really carrying people!! I couldn’t thank them enough.

So in the morning we left quite early to try to catch up with the brother in Buon Ma Thout, and this is when our adventure started haha… It really started.

Viv is genius right, so he zoomed right into google maps and found a ‘scenic route’ which was supposedly a shortcut too, via this Chu Yang Sinh National Park.

Oh well, the first 2h were simply amazing, so worth it! Beautiful and smooth ride through amazing nature and no traffic AT ALL, literally a ghost road haha

All the thousands of coffee plantations and green houses and beautiful weather.

  

Until we started going into the National Park and also loving it as it was beautiful… but then the road started getting narrower and narrower and muddy and wet and then we got to the end of the line basically. 

There was a little lake or perhaps just a massive puddle of water where no way we could cross with the motorbike. Water up to the thigh. 

So we found this little village nearby, where no one could speak English and obviously we were so deep in the National Park that we didn’t have signal in our phones, so no Google Translate hahaha

So we were trying to get help to cross the lake or to find out if we could keep going after crossing the water.

It was nearly impossible to understand but then they were showing us money, so basically if we paid them $30aud they would help us get to the end of the national park hahaha That was quite interesting, didn’t think they would try to take advantage of the situation, but I guess they need money…?

Anyway, we decided not to accept since we were on a budget right. And so we left, and just before getting back to the river another guy tried to get our attention and he was drawing pictures on a piece of paper, showing that after the water there was another 10km of really bad roads and they could help us if we paid them too.

Then we understood why they were charging so much, to take through this crazy road apparently. 

But again we refused and offered the 2 of them $5 each just to lift the motorbike to the other side of the water and we would go by ourselves from there.

They accepted and helped us… 

Well, I guess they kinda helped us haha I’m pretty sure they let some water into the exhaust… but anyway, the bike worked fine so perhaps not.

All good, everyone happy and off we go again…

And how much I regret for the first hour not paying them to take us to the end of the park and back to the road. Hahahaha Seriously, I basically had to walk most of it since the bike couldn’t make it through the mud and clay with both of us on the bike. So Viv went slowly as it was awful the road, and I walked… and walked forever…

I guess 2hs later it was starting to drizzle and we were so blessed then! 3 Vietnamese guys in 2 motorbikes where in the same situation as us… Well, they knew the area but they didn’t know how bad the national park was to ride a motorbike. 

And they notice how much we were struggling and decided to help out! Gosh and this saved us BIG TIME. Without them I think it would’ve taken us another 5hs just to get out of the park and it would be night time!! They literally saved us. And we could not be more grateful for it.

So, have I mentioned they didn’t speak any English either? Haha it was so fun to not understand wtf was going on… hahaha But we managed well.

So Viv jumped on the back of one of their bikes and I did the same to the another one and the 3rd guy took our bike as he was more experienced in this situations I guess haha…

And there we went… Rescued by angels.

At the end the most amazing thing happened. Well, first we got back our connection so we could use google translator to communicate better. 

We offered them some money, they didn’t accept. We insisted so much. Nope, they refused. We offered to pay for their dinner and drinks. Nope didn’t want as well.

We were so confused. And then they said that they wanted us to come for dinner at their family’s place. Wow. Seriously, I felt so bad and happy at the same time. Such generous people.

Well, if this was the only way to show how grateful we were, all right. We went 30 more minutes opposite way from Buon Ma Thout, where the brother was waiting for us.

But it was fine, we had to do it, since it was already getting dark and we were still 4hs away from the brother anyway.

We got there and we were treated SO WELL, wow. How generous there were. 

Even shower they offered! Well we were quite dirty too.. Full of mud. Haha

There was a wife and husband and 3 kids plus the 3 guys that helped us out.

Very simple house and family, but with a great heart.

They showed us their home and they crops and fruits, and pets etc etc 

They cooked us dinner too, more like a banquet I would say, as they even killed a chicken! Well, I didn’t like this chicken part too much really.. Since it was quite sad. And I wasn’t even going to eat it… but anyway.. That’s how they do it.

We all sat on the floor, with all that food and all the rice wine and had a big feast.

They were all super excited to have us and the translator saved us haha the only one who could speak a few words in English was the younger girl (6 years old I think).

But we managed really well and all of us had a great time and such an authentic experience!! Thanks to that awful situation we were in haha

So that’s why I believe everything happens for a reason!

We had to go to bed and they got the girls room and left it for us to sleep there. 

It was so kind of them to do this. We didn’t accept, we felt bad! But they insisted.

Top treatment, you see... 

And that was that. At sunrise we woke up and got ready to leave.

They gave us some breakfast bread and water to take on the trip and off we went.

Lovely family and wonderful time spent together.