I am sooo behind on my blog, in fact i'm already out of Vietnam as I write this. Gonna try to use the next couple of days to catch up.
The ride to Dalat is a real baptism of fire into how shit the traffic here is. We actually left at 5.30am in order to beat the traffic and still it was bloody heavy. The Saigon bikers were there to escort us all the way, which was a good thing coz up to us we'd take forever to navigate. Without boring you with minute details let me summarise Vietnam traffic out of the city for you.
1. They have no sense of right of way. If they want to come out or turn they'll just do so. People actually cross the road without looking.
2. They loooove their horn and make all possible attempts to have the loudest and use it ALL the time even for no reason at all. I think it is to appease the horn gods who will actually bless them with stupidity the more they use it.
3. Nobody cares if you horn at them, so kinda like defeats the purpose of point no 2.
4. There's people all along the way, i'm not talking sporadically here, I mean many, many, many people all along the highway. Which does make you wonder, if everyone is on the road, who the hell is working?
5. The road condition is also atrocious, there's potholes big enough to swallow small airplanes.
6. Motorbikes are second class citizens, they'll honk angrily at you when you overtake the lorries and buses.
7. Oh ya, btw we also share the main highway with cows, dogs, chickens, goats, ducks and pigs.
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| Husref - Made the right choice |
It's only 310km to Dalat but it still took close to 8hours, as a point of reference, it's about the distance from KL to Taiping. This place has all year round cool weather, very similar to our Cameron as there's plenty of veggies being planted here, and of course strawberries.
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| This was along the way to Dalat, no idea what it is though |
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| You know coffee is good when THIS guy makes it. |
Dalat is not that big, so after lunch we had a walk around. It's definitely a change from the hustle and bustle of Saigon, but there's still plenty of people and of course those damn horns.
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| What the French gave Vietnam |
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| Start em early - btw this is a pretty common sight |
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| Market behind us |
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| The guys tried the pancake |
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| Fruits and veggies |
Another thing I noticed, Vietnamese men (well the bikers especially), when they shake your hands, they literally crush it, so much so if there's more than 3 of them I would actually dread having to shake hands coz it'll be damn sore after one round...ya ya....call me a wimp, but i think that's why the Americans ran away in 1975.
Colonel: "General, the VC's are lining up their final assault..., they're gonna shake our hands, what do we do?"
General: "Run damnit, run for your goddamn lives and don't look back!"
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| Dalat at nite |
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Fuel Consumption
1. OTW to Dalat 186.4km 120,000VND 6.968liters
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