Another 6 hour drive was ahead of us so we started early and had to get breakfast on the way and darwin´s law showed it´s best side… Street food and little shops are omnipresent in the whole country, except when you are hungry and would love to grab something to eat. So we just stopped at a gas station and bought a pizza sized rice cake with caramel and nuts.

 

 

As we continued driving we came closer and closer to those deep dark clouds and at some point we saw cars having their wipers on and we decided to dress up to get wet only to drive moments later right into the rain.

 

 

Luckily it was only for a short time and we dried up quite fast 🙂

 

After arriving in Nha Trang we checked into our hotel. Yes hotels are more expensive as hostels if you travel alone, but because we would have to pay for two hostel beds, hotels are most of the time cheaper. In fact the most we´ve spend so far for a night was 12 dollars on an airbnb room.

 

The early start into the day left us with plenty of time to spend on the beach and enjoy the sun and a beer.

 

 

The difference between those 8-10 dollar hotels and the local street food which starts at 1 dollar and what we spend today to eat the best food so far in Vietnam while sitting at an extraordinary place is not justifiable but we survived a taifun which hit Nha Trang only 2 days prior to us and we wanted to treat ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But wait there´s more must Petrus have thought when he sent the second taifun right after the first one faded. This meant we had to start driving in the rain to get to Dalat.

 

The road had to be one of the most spectacular ones we´ve encountered on this trip, but the rain, fog and falling temperatures made it hard to enjoy. We had to drive almost 1500 meter of elevation up into the mountains.

 

We just passed the half point when the blue bike stopped working again. After pushing it a bit for a while we quickly gave up on that because there was no way getting it uphill.

 

 

Don´t ask how we always manage to find mechanics that fast no matter where we are but they just seem to appear when you need them. We got a new generator which has been mounted within 10 minutes, paid 9 dollar and were off again only to stop after about another 10 minutes.

 

Driving 90% of the time uphill full throttle makes your bike consume more gasoline than usual. Took me 2 seconds to put the switch for the reserve tank and a few km later we found a small gas station to fill the bikes up.

 

At least the rain stopped as we got closer to Dalat and we were able to walk around the city after a warm shower and an hour cuddling to get Fabienne warm again. Temperatures dropped from 30 at the beach to under 10 within a few hours, too much for the body to adapt…

 

 

 

 

 

We wanted to visit a weasel farm to see how the coffee was made but we were not able to find it. The starting rain did not made it better and so we decided to book a bus to get from Dalat to Saigon ( Ho Chi Minh ). This company did not want our bikes in the bus so we had to send them ahead. 24 dollar to send two motorbikes over 300km away sounded too tempting compared to driving 10 hours in the rain.

 

We booked the bus for the next day and wandered around town the rest of the day until we ended up at the street food market where we had dinner before going to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The organization of the bus company was ridiculously bad. They were supposed to get us from the hotel at 7h15 but we ended up calling a taxi at 7h45 because the bus was leaving at 8 and we did not want to miss it.

 

 

It literally rained the whole way from Dalat to Saigon which ensured us that we took the right choice. The second Taifun hit Saigon right when we arrived and the streets were flooded. There was no way of walking the 30 minutes to the hotel so we had to get a taxi.

 

As we unpacked our stuff we booked another hotel for the next night because this one was to far outside from the backpacker area and it was by far the worst one. No toilet paper, no towels, the power went of about 15 times during the whole time we were there and they cancelled the booked breakfast.

 

As we tried to make ourselves comfortable it got dark outside and we went out for dinner.

 

 

At least we tried too, two ponchos we barely enough to keep us dry and the streets were flooded up to the sidewalk. With every car of motorbike that passed us we got our feet wet and wetter. Apart from a small shop and and even smaller restaurant where they just served beef noodle soup we were not able to get anywhere without swimming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we left in the morning to get our bikes the streets were dry.

 

Unbelievable how quick they dried up, because we heard the rain hammering on the roof almost the whole night.

 

Getting the bikes was not problem, but they somehow managed to brake the throttle…

 

 

After letting them try to fix it for almost an hour we just left with two broken – but running – bikes to drive to the new hotel in the middle of the backpacker area.

 

We immediately went to look for a mechanic for the bikes after checking in but ended up driving around town for about an our running from on scam into the next before a guy approached us while I was looking at my phone to find out where to go for a mechanic. He was literally buying our bikes from under our butt on the street within 2 minutes knowing that they had to get fixed and not checking what exactly was not working.

 

I was so frustrated with the blue bike that I was about to just leave it on the street and he offered us a reasonable price. We lost 100 dollars per bike which I think is more than ok to have them for a month compared what we would have had to pay to rent them. And most important we got rid of them without a lot of effort which was badly needed to stay motivated 🙂

 

We wandered around town, tried a lot of food, got another massage and went to meet a couple who wants to hike the pacific crest trail someday. Brianna just randomly messaged me on Instagram as she saw that I did the trail and was in Vietnam right now.

 

We had a great talk about the trail and what we have to do and see in Saigon for the next days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As her boyfriend manages a hostel in Saigon which offered tours we decided to take a day off and just go shopping without buying anything, trying one of the better spa´s in Saigon and to go to the Backpackers hostel to book a Vespa-tour around Saigon for our last day in Vietnam.

 

A standard massage costs from 5 to 7 dollars per hour. We now paid 20 for 90 minutes of full body, hot stone, back, neck, shoulder, butt, everything you can imagine and cucumber on your face. Awesome deal and definitely worth the money 🙂

 

 

We haven´t done a single organized tour because we´ve had our bikes and were able to do everything on our own. The tour was 50 dollars each, which is about 2 times the budget we set ourselves per day together. But this being a once in a lifetime experience money should not hold us from doing awesome tours!

 

 

A few beers on their rooftop bar later we went home, grabbed some pizza and spend the night in our room watching some Netflix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleeping in, taking our time to check out before booking the bus to Phnom Penh and then heading to do the Vespa Tour.

 

Awesome thing to do 🙂  Me driving motorbikes for about 15 years its only been the second time riding on the back of a bike so it was kind of unusual to me but this way I could take pictures while riding.

 

 

 

 

Apart from seeing so many different places in such a short time we were able to take a look behind the scenes and saw how they make their coffee so strong, tried to make our own street food and I dared to eat a living coconut larvae.

 

 

Right after we got back, we just had enough time to unpack our stuff before the free beer started where we met people from all around the world. The main reason why we should stay more frequently in hostels!

 

More street food waited for us with a free guided tour organized by Rob, the manager we met two days earlier to talk about the trail. How small can the world be?

 

 

When we got home and tried to sleep a guy sleeping next to us kept trying to speak with us about Luxembourg and as we spoke for more than an hour he ended up showing us exactly where we had to go in Australia and what to avoid because he was living there.

 

 

 

 

The bus drove of at 8 am and it took us about 7 hours before we reached Phnom Penh in Cambodia and checked in into our hotel.

 

We ended up spending the rest of the day at the roof top pool enjoying the good weather 🙂

 

 

As we got hungry we went to grad some food but ended up buying ramen from a small shop. It is strange, everything here is so similar to Vietnam but somehow we both did not feel very safe around here without really knowing why…