Today is our
first day of separated tourism. I’m off
to do a cycle ride, while Anne and her non-cycling buddies are off on a
separate excursion. Out of 23 on the
tour, 18 are cyclists, and 5 are non.
The bikes we
are all using on the tour are all provided by the tour company, and we had
provided sizing details from New Zealand and we’re bringing our own seats and
pedals. We had a fitting and adjustment
session the previous night, and got to check out the bikes. It’s fair to say that they are of a lower
quality than the group are used to, but with a few tweaks, everybody was set up
with a bike and had their various components fitted.
Today’s ride
left from the hotel, which meant that we were immediately thrown into cycling
amongst the local traffic, on the right hand side of the road. Cuong, our guide, set a good pace so we
managed to stay together as a group. I
was expecting a lot of hills today, and a fairly full on introduction to
cycling in Vietnam. The guides however
had different ideas, and the morning was a very leisurely affair with us
stopping for a photo-op 6ks into the ride.
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| And now we're out on the road |
We then had
a 5k down hill, where we stopped outside one of the locals’ houses and had
children running round fiddling with our bikes.
The next stop was a further 5ks down the road at a coffee plantation,
where we had an iced coffee – one of the local specialties, which are drip brewed
into your cup, and you then add in condensed milk and put it into a glass of
ice. Two of the
things that we’d been told not to do before we left New Zealand were not to
have ice in our drinks, and avoid salads, or anything that isn’t cooked for fear
of catching some tummy bugs. As you can
tell, with the iced coffee, we are breaking that rule, and all the meals are
served on a bed of lettuce, and you usually get tomatoes and cucumber, so we’re
basically ignoring the advice, and so far nobody has had any issues.
After
coffee, it was another 5k jaunt and we stopped at a rice wine place – very
small and local. And after that, it was
about another 5k jaunt and we were at one of the local tourist waterfalls which
also had a smiling Buda beside it. And that was the morning done – we’d done
just under 30ks, the weather was hot, but not unbearably hot, and all the
riding had been mostly downhill and at a very moderate pace.
After a
lengthy stop for lunch, we had a 25k, mostly uphill ride, which was again at a
moderate pace. We fortunately weren’t
able to ride the 12k hill because the guides felt it was too steep, narrow and
windy with a poor road surface, so basically it was dangerous. Once we’d been taken in the bus over the
pass, we were all in agreement that it would not have been a good hill to cycle
over.
Our final
stop for the day was at a temple at the top of the hill just outside of Da
Lat. It had very beautiful gardens and
it was nice to be able to wander around there after our day on the bike. At the end of the walk around the temple, we
met up with the non-cyclist group who had had a very exciting day, which Anne
will now tell you about.
The boys
left the hotel - it was great to see them so excited and nervous about the day
ahead. We headed off on our own tour of the city starting first with the cable
car. The scenery could have been in New Zealand. The cable car was so quiet
unlike the city itself which is full of toots and honks.
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| The girls at the gardens |
A trip to a
waterfall where we walked down and luged up (meaning sat on a luge and was
towed up to the top).
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| What better place for a foot shot - being pulled up hill on a luge |
Lunch was at
a local restaurant followed by a visit to the Valley of Love. Picture this -
swan boats on the lake, hearts of various types everywhere, statues of animals
(not real) large butterflies (the size of humans (not real ). This was the place where lovers and wanna be
lovers came - and so did we, but without our husbands, who we all agreed were the most amazing men on earth (stop editing my blog, David).
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| The girls at lunch |
However our guide told us that he had been here
many times before and not found love. That was about to change. We visited the
Sumer palace of the king who abdicated in 1945 and while we were on our tour of
this Art Deco building we were joined by a young Vietnamese girl. At the end
she walked out with us and one of our team suggested that she might be
interested in our guide. The result was our guide got all of the details of the
young girl and gave them to our local guide - the update the next day was that
they were meeting for coffee !! Maybe the Valley of Love worked.
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| Great Selfie - there'll be more of these |
Great photos.
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