Aaahhhh.........Backpacking! So I'm walking down the street looking to buy a pair of sandals when I see this guy just sitting on the corner having a beer. He looks sort of familiar and I figure, shot in the dark, what the hell? "Excuse me," I simply stated, "but are you Steve Mitchell?" No sooner had the words come out of my mouth did he jump up and give me a huge bear hug. Steve was the first backpacker I met travelling 5 months ago in the north island of New Zealand!!! This was so random we couldn't believe it, Steve had continued on travelling through NZ and had gone all over the world only to end up in the same city on the same street as I was 5 months down the road! And guess what? It was his 30th birthday that day!
The next few hours were a hazy blur and I remember vaguely waking up in my room sometime later that night with a huge headache and some sort of stomach flu that was later diagnosed as caused by a lethal combination of whiskey and whiskey.
And my problems were compounded the next night since we had all decided a few days prior to go out for Caley's 24 th birthday dinner.
Thank God Caley had more restraint than I did and a pleasant meal and a few glasses of red later we were all home in bed, continually nursing out hangovers from the previous night.......well......that's what I was doing anyway.
Heh, heh! Caley's turn! As it was her birthday we decided that it would be appropriate to do a booze cruise with the infamous "Funky Monkey"
Despite the rain we all had a great time!
This is a picture of the floating bar where one of the mates served us something that could only be described as a combination between pineapple, sweat, and urine.
This is the longest oversea gondola in the world, it takes guests to a hotel where they pay anywhere between $1200 and $4000 US a night. Think that's extravagant? The hotel behind this island goes up to $6000 US a night!!!
After a long day of boozing and snorkeling we'd finally had enough and went home to prepare for our Easy Rider bike tour!
This classic tour put us on the back of a motor bike driven by a guide who would journey with us all the way from Nha Trang to Lak Lake, Dalat and finally arriving at Mui Ne Beach.
Our first stop was a temple.......I have a feeling I will be seeing a lot of these in the months to come. The people here seem to WORSHIP them for Christ's sake!
You know Apu who works at the Kwiki Mart in "The Simpsons?" Well that's a carving of his god Ganesh.....who says TV can be educational?
Some bad-ass broads.
Along the way out of Dalat we passed many rice fields and fishing villages which gave us some amazing insight into the local economies of the country.
I promised myself I'd put this picture on the blog because Caley promised me she would kill me if I put this picture on the blog.
This is the guide who I entrusted with my life for four days. My faith didn't waiver once....except at night when I saw him down enough rice wine to fell a small elephant.
The head guide Huy made many stops along the way, including this one where he showed us how Vietnamese bricks our made by clay in a kiln.
14 hours a day doing backbreaking hard-labour in heat that would make Satan sweat........yeah........no thanks!
And back on the road we went!
This tour was amazing! We saw so much of the country side, it was incredible! The guides would stop whenever we needed a pit stop and took us to parts of Vietnam that were well of the beaten track in order to experience how they put it, "The Real Vietnam!"
This was a pepper plant. It probably still is.
This is what you'd typically see along the countryside as you went. There would be nothing for miles except rolling green hills and the occasional farmer.
Then once in awhile Huy would make a stop to show us everything from how coffee is dried in the sun....
....to a rubber plantation!
This is me having a moment.
On the second day Huy took us to a national park where we went on a bit of an excursion in order to find a watering hole to take a swim!
While it does look sunny in most of these pictures it also did rain quite a bit! Luckily the guides brought rain gear but I'm talking torrential in terms of rain here! Apparently there's some sort of tropical storm in the area and even as I'm sitting here in Saigon writing this the weather hasn't cleared up since!
Luckily the rain didn't spoil the scenery, in this picture a couple of local children are fishing for crayfish in the rice fields to eat for dinner.
Other than the Australian Zoo this if the first Elephant I had seen in SEA!
We stopped briefly at a tribal village to take a boat ride around the lake and have a quick game of pool.
This kid beat me six games to one.....and I only won that one time 'cause he scratched on the eight ball.
Everyone here was so friendly, I have NEVER seen a kid so happy to get his picture taken!!
The great smiling Buddah!!!! Legend has it that he's smiling because he did a favour for a woman by making her crops grow but she didn't give him the pig that she promised. The same scenario repeated itself but this time she promised him a cow. Again she didn't pay the Buddah his due and when she came to him for help for a third time she promised him an eight legged animal. Thinking the animal must be huge, the Buddah agreed again to help the woman and she in turn produced a crab as payment. The Buddah laughed really hard and then ripped the woman limb from limb and ate her appendidges like chicken wings while she was still breathing. No just kidding, he thought the joke was funny and left her alone.
How silk is made....who knew?
This was the scene that greeted us on our arrival into the mountain town of Dalat!
It was gorgeous. Period.
Before we left Dalat we stopped at this very strange hotel that looked like Louis Carol's wet dream. Imagine rolling over in the middle of the night and waking up groggy eyed to this thing?
Then again I'm sure some of the guests that stay there are pretty weird too.
We finally arrived in Mui Ne and after saying goodbye to my beloved travel companions, (Jenna, Katherine, and Caley,) I headed by bus to Saigon! I'll miss them, we had some great times! Later surfer babes!
