Easy Riding Day 2: Georgie & Aaron’s motorcycle diaries
15/08/08 Day 2 of our easy rider adventure… We slept like logs and getting up and ready for 8:30 check out was a bit of a killer, our easy rider chums packed our bags up and tied them on to the bikes and as we climbed on we both looked at each other with a pained expression on our faces, our bums were still bloody tender and at that time in the morning we could both feel every mile we had done the day before and some! We only went half a mile into the town for coffee and breakfast which was at the same local restaurant as the previous nights dinner and in the daylight it looked even worse but again the food was mighty delicious and the people nothing but amazingly friendly, we had a Vietnamese breakfast which consisted of noodle soup, beef for me and vegetables for Georgie. lovely! Now back on the bikes and away we went. We didn’t have as many miles to cover so more stops for food and drinks but as the morning turned into the afternoon and we got further into the stunningly beautiful hills the rain came rolling in, luckily our boys had waterproofs so we pulled over and got suited and booted and they kept us surprisingly dry. As the rain came and went it opened up the most stunning views of massive sprawling patchwork hills with small farmer houses clinging to the sides and rice fields on the lowland beneath being tilled buy bulls and people in traditional conical hats. We passed big sweeping hills which make up the Cambodian border no more than 20ft and even joined the Ho Chi Minh trail where it comes from the Cambodian border and followed it north the same way the American soldiers did when they were off to cause trouble with the V.C’s all those years ago. We could have been comfortable on a bus, we could have made the journey in a day and we could have done it cheaply but even in the pissing rain and with sore bums the views and the people we met made it so very worth it. A real experience that greatly outweighs any endurance we have to go through. After a few hours of beautiful highland roads we arrived at Dray Sap Waterfalls, first we saw a “small” waterfall or that’s what our biker pals said but it actual turned out to be fucking massive, the biggest I have ever seen by far set amongst lush green hillside with a fine mist in the air and a giant roar from the crashing water. The swell at the bottom was insane it looked like a giant hot tub and you tell from up where we were standing that if you went in you wouldn’t come out again. We didn’t stay too long because we were back on the metal steeds and off to Dray Sap falls the bigger of the two. We pulled up at a small visitor centre and as we did we saw the first whit face we had seen since we pulled off the highway near Saigon, also and easy rider going south to Sagion. We had to trek for about 15 minutes before we came to a massive suspension bridge which takes you over the river about 100m from the falls and it was just awesome even from this distance we could feel the mist coming from them. Another 5 minutes on foot brought us right to the edge of the falls and this close you we had to really shout to hear each other, in dry season the water is low enough to be able to walk along a walkway behind the falling water but unfortunately there was far too much water for us to try so we just took some pictures and gorped at it for a while… By which time we were well soaked for the spray. We climbed back up the trail and into the forest to a small natural pool coming off the main river and flowing much slower, our man in the know assured us it was safe to swim so we figured we are already soaked why the fuck not… Stripped off to our cossies and splashed around for a while… Not too long though in case he was wrong about the crocs… We set off again for the final 10 miles or so of our 99 mile day and finished up quite nicely in a town called Buon Ma Thuot, a small, friendly quite quiet town famous for its Vietnamese coffee and a very very nice hotel courtesy of our riders. We had had a pretty gruelling day and after a short wander through the town and grub we hit the hay hard…
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