BikeDalat.com

After cycling, sweating, and occasionally slogging through over 1,600km of SE Asian roads, we’ve experienced more than a few epic rides. While consistently beautiful beaches, the stunning temples at Angkor, and a myriad of rural towns that we’ve cycled through were all certainly impressive and scenic, it’s the challenging hill-climbs that remain the most memorable.Maybe it’s the combination of cool temperatures and great vista views, though perhaps some sort of subtle self-indulgent pseudo-masochism might be closer to the truth. Whichever, one day’s ride has set our cycling benchmark so ridiculously high that we were literally in the clouds: the 140km journey from Da Lat to Nha Trang, Vietnam.

Da Lat is a famed former French hill-station, now a prime honey-moon spot for the Vietnamese, with the prerequisite cable car, flower garden, and kitsch that such a place seems to require. There’s even a hotel-cum-crazy-house, a former imperial mansion in which tourists can play dress-up, and plenty of coffee-shops to while away an entire lifetime. After three days of relaxation and rain-delayed plans, we were certainly ready for what we got: a real cycling adventure.

The day started typically enough, as our hazy directions to the “new road” — which would save us about 100km — involved going past a train station that we never saw. However, all the people along the way kept pointing straight ahead, so without any current maps or any real certainty we proceeded up into the hills. We’d been told that this was not the primary bus route, so we took the lack of traffic to be a comforting fact, and the enthusiastic waves from passing motorists were encouraging. Plus the road actually was new, which made the terrain much more manageable, reassuring us that while we might be cycling into the unknown, it was at least the correct unknown.
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Standing in downtown Da Lat on clear days visitors can see the Lang Bian mountain range with its highest peak being at a latitude of 2,169m above sea level. Situated about 12km north of Da Lat City, Lang Bian is one of the three highest mountains on Lam Vien plateau, Da Lat.

Da Lat, Vietnam

With its miraculous beauty and wild features, every year Lang Bian mountain, which was named after Lang and his lover Bian in the past, attracts a large numbers of visitors, especially photographers who come to capture the second-to-non fairyland scenery.

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(A French tourist told his wonderful trip in Da Lat and gave useful suggestion to others)

I climbed a mountain today. Probably the oldest, fattest American ever to climb it, and I can hardly believe I did, but I did. We have pictures to prove it.

We went straight up the side of a mountain. No steps, no walkway, just tree roots and dead pine needles to give you traction. Our ever cheerful and encouraging guide Thanh and my companion Joseph both supplied a helping hand or shoulder for balance at times, but I actually made it all the way up on my own legs.

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Syconn described his biking tour in Dalat It made him exhausted but a new experience.

“By the time we got to Da Lat we were all exhausted, wet and cold. We checked into our rooms showered, had a few beers …”

We rose on day one about 6:30 had a breakfast and a few coffees with the rest of the group before getting on our bus which will transfer us to just outside Ho Chi Minh. Once we are outside the city our bikes are unloaded from the truck and we set off. The mood is generally good, roads are nice and clear and the other road users are considerate to the tourists. The condition of the roads is smooth, flat, dry and everyone is chatting in the group and it’s very pleasant. Then the road starts to get a bit hilly. Then the road turns into a hill.

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Windsymphonic described his biking tour in Dalat. The tour really excited him.

Monday, Jun 09, 2008

This is it, the moment that I have been waiting for, mountain biking in Dalat. It was a good day to mountain biking. Clear sky, cooling winds and the sun has just begun to warm up. So I arrived at PTA centre with full confidence and ready to face the challenge. After the small chat with the Famous Five yesterday, I was a little worried about the terrain, it is my first time going off-track to cycle and it is a total different control of the bicycle. Around 20 minutes past 8, Elina (ex-driving instructor from Sweden) and Daniel (soldier from Australia) arrived and we were ready to go.

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Gemme and Matthew told us about their travel around Dalat by bike. They get Vietnamese nature and Vietnamese way of life

Sat, 8 March, 2008.

Everyone had told us that to get to Dalat from Quang Ngai we had to get a night bus to Nha Trang and then change to get to Dalat, so that is what we set off doing. The old man that kept our bags for the day pulled over a bus to Nha Trang for us, it was a really nice bus, but we were sat right at the back surrounded by boxes so we didn’t have much room and couldn’t recline our seats, so we thought we were in for another bus ride with no sleep.

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The motor-bike traveling around Dalat made Crystal and Sean very excited. They discovered the fascinating  Vietnamese nature and  culture  from the motorcycling trip.

November 15th 2007

Da Lat reminds us a little of Banff- the air is so fresh and so clean- a real break from the cities we’ve been visiting. To get there we traveled in-land and made our way up mountains into the hilltops and found ourselves surrounded by rich green landscapes outlined with bundles of trees and fields- it gave a kind of quiet relief we hadn’t experienced in awhile. Da Lat is very pretty and the surrounding area is serene and picturesque. We spent a day walking around the lake which is situated near the city centre and found ourselves caught in one of Vietnam’s spontaneous rainfalls and made our way to a very comfortable French cafe where we had some of the best broccoli soup! So good! It poured rain for awhile and we had tea by the window and listened to the rain.

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Johnbrianmess told his motorbike tour with Phu-his guide through Dalat and then down to Mui Ne.

Friday, Oct 05, 2007

I decided to do this trip completely by chance. I met my guide- an easy rider-Phu, in a cafe next to my hotel. We talked for a while and he told me what he did- basically taking tourists up to the central highlands, through to Dalat, then down to Mui Ne. He show me his book of previous recommendations from previous travelers, and I was soon convinced it was a trip for me- 4 days on the back of a bike, meeting hill minority villages and seeing parts of Vietnam that other travelers do not get to see.

Approaching the dunes.

I met up with Phu on the Thursday and immediately I was concerned- it was a Honda 150 cc. I needed to carry him, me and my 2 big bags up and down hills over 600km over 4 days! Somehow he strapped the bags to the back and we were off- I needn’t have worried as it handled the hills no problem and Phu turned out to be an excellent driver- all for £20 a day including accommodation.
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Erin and Brad’s biking from Datat to Mui Ne was amazing and unforgettable. Let check it out in this entry.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

For New Years, we decided to celebrate in Dalat, a town located at 5000′ in the central mountains of Vietnam.

As fate may have it after our train ride to Nha Trang, the 8-hour bus ride from Nha Trang to Dalat came complete with music videos, no extra charge. When Wierd Al Yankovich’s Like a Surgeon began blasting over the speakers at 7:30am, we knew we were in for a long ride.

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Technotrekker took part in a motor-bike tour visiting a lot of interesting sights, villages and cottage industries around Dalat.

Monday, Dec 04, 2005

The Easy Riders crew is a team of sixty or so motor bike riders that offer tours around Dalat and beyond on their larger than usual motorbikes (well, larger than the standard Vietnamese moped anyway). Originally bikes were either Russian or East German made, but reliability was an issue so most have migrated to 150-250cc Japanese or Taiwanese manufactured machines.

It’s an institution these days so most foreigners who visit take a tour, and many adopt their Easy Rider for a few extra days to get them further afield to places like Nha Trang, Hoi An or Mui Ne. We took an extended Dalat tour and were very pleased with the territory covered and the interesting sights, village life and cottage industries we were able to see.

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