Normally I start these posts with a photo of the city that I visited and have a little blub about the city itself. When I got to Nah Trang, I was too tired to explore it so I don't have much to say about it other than that it had an awesome Mexican restaurant/taco stand. It's a beach city that probably has some cool things going on. I only have 3 photos of it and they aren't very good. I'll include them at the bottom of the post. The real highlight of my trip to Nah Trang was the trip itself.
The ride from Da Lat to Nah Trang was awesome. There was a lot of mountain climbing, but my poor little bike handled it without complaint. My bike's engine wasn't very strong and it was old, but it made it up and down the mountains without causing me any real concern.
Right outside of Da Lat are a lot of greenhouses. I couldn't determine what was being grown inside of them. Most of Vietnam doesn't use greenhouses so it was kind of unique to see them in this area.
Like most of the roads outside of major cities, the roads that I took were mostly quiet with light traffic. A popular route for driving to north Vietnam is along the coast on highway QL1. But that highway has so much traffic, I avoided it like the plague. Instead, I mostly took inland routes north. Riding with a lot of traffic is just not fun or enjoyable at all for me.
On the road I spotted this couple on their way to work. It's cool that they can bring their dogs with them. The one next to their scooter is actually on a leash.
It was a nice day for riding. In my Facebook post for this day, I said that it got pretty cold in the mountains. I didn't have any long sleeve shirts to keep the sun off my arms so I was wearing my rain jacket in the heat. It ended up being useful for keeping me warm too. One thing it wasn't very useful for was rain. It was an expensive rain jacket from Europe and it was useless in the rain.
I rode through lots and lots of cool little villages and towns.
I stopped at these buildings for a short break. I don't think I ever saw any other buildings like this in the rest of Vietnam.
After a while I started climbing up the mountains. On this side of the mountain the trees were mostly evergreen (conifer) types. On the other side of the mountain, the foliage was all lush, dense, jungle.
The road going down the mountain was super steep and I really hoped that the breaks on my bike were good. I stopped at a lookout point for some photos.
A van with 2 tourists stopped while I was resting here. Every time I saw other tourists in vans or buses, it always made me super thankful that I was on my scooter. I was absolutely loving being on my own transportation with the ability to stop anywhere I wanted. Or to turn down a road if it looked interesting. Riding the scooter was less comfortable than a van, and a lot slower and more work. But it felt so free. It's hard to explain the feeling of freedom and excitement of being on the bike with an entire country in front of me to explore.
The view of the jungle valley was awesome but my camera wasn't really up for the task of capturing it.
Riding in the jungle was a nice change. I liked it more than the arid climate of the areas closer to Saigon. And the evergreen forest is too similar to the forests in the area that I grew up in, so that type of biome wasn't new to me. The jungle was all new for me and it seemed mysterious and exciting.
Leaving the mountains, there were some awesome views that I had to stop and try to capture.
Scooters that were completely loaded down with things would become a common sight, but I was always impressed by how much stuff people in Vietnam can carry on their scooters.
This lady is carrying a load that would require a pickup truck in America. On one or two instances, I tried carrying some extra stuff on my bike and it was so hard to keep control of the vehicle. It takes a lot of skill to manage loads like this on a scooter. It's impressive.
I passed a bunch of kids that I think were getting out of school. Though usually all of the kids wear uniforms, so maybe this was something else. Regardless, the kids were always quick to yell "Hello! How are you!" or "What's your name!". They always wanted to try out their English. The hello's that I got every day in Vietnam really made me start to fall in love with this country. In Laos, the people would usually smile or say hello, but I would generally have to say hello first. In Vietnam, parents would wave their infant's hand at me to say hello. And lots and lots of people would wave or give a smile. It really started to feel like the friendliest place I'd ever been to.
Everyone walked their bikes up the hill, then they would ride down the other side.
I stopped in a small town for some drinks. You can see how much gear I was carrying on my bike. I had my main backpack that was strapped to the seat. I also had a small "day bag" backpack that wore in front of me or kept between my legs. I had a bluetooth speaker tied to that bag and I listened to music whenever I rode.
The town that I stopped in was pretty typical for the towns that I was riding through.
Coconut water and sugarcane juice are common refreshments at roadside businesses like this.
I got this Recover drink and it really surprised me when I first tried it. It was salted lemon flavored! Not sweet at all, and slightly carbonated. It was great! I tried to find it again, but never saw this drink again in the 4 months that I spent in Vietnam. The flavor is based on a common drink "Chanh muối" which is basically lemonade made with salt instead of sugar. Actually the lemons are preserved in the salt. I loved it and ordered it whenever a place had it.
After leaving the mountains, the road flattened out on the way to the coast.
The area close to Nah Trang slowly became more and more populated and built up.
Finally, I arrived in Nah Trang. I didn't see much that made it stand out compared to other cities.
I checked into a hotel and went out on foot to find food.
This is what I posted on Facebook about Nah Trang.
About an hour of flat, smooth driving brought me into town. The town just seems like another tourist beach town. Nothing too exciting, and I'm too tired to explore. I did get my oil changed and found some food.
The food was great. I had a fish taco, two pulled pork taquitos, and a California burrito which had carne asada, guacamole, and french fries in it. Really tasty.
Food would be a problem for me in Vietnam. I don't think of myself as a picky eater, but I am. I don't like bones or skin or guts or animal heads or feet in my food. In Vietnam, very little gets wasted when animals are eaten. And in my country, we only eat soup when we're sick or when we're getting ready to have real food. Pho didn't seem like a meal to me.
Now that I've returned home, I love pho and when I took a short trip back to Vietnam, I loved almost all of the food that I had there and tried to eat as much local food as possible. But during this first trip to Vietnam, I didn't enjoy the food much until a local introduced me to some amazing dishes in Danang. But I'll post about that later.
That's it for this post about my trip to Nah Trang. I hope to see you in the next post!