Day 18 - Dalat to Phu Lam

The rest day in Dalat was certainly worth the extra cycling to get there. At 1500 meters above sea level the temperatures were in the low twentys with blue sky's. Dalat is the capital of Lam Dong province in Southern Vietnams Central Highlands and has a huge lake in the centre of the city and is surrounded by pine forests, golf courses and lovely manicured gardens all over the city with hydrangeas and roses growing. Known as the "City of Eternal Spring" for its distinctive temperature and climate, Dalat was developed by the French in the early 1900s, and many reminders of its colonial heritage remain with beautiful ornate buildings and villas. We walked around the city in the morning and in the afternoon taking in the sights and generally resting as today's ride would be our furthest of the tour so far. Myself and Alex discussed that we both really enjoyed Dalat and we were so glad we made the extra effort to get there which was in fact a lot extra kilometres and climbing in the wrong direction that we didn't really need to do.

After a lovely stay at the Hotel Du Parc which was an old colonial style hotel built in 1932, we ate breakfast & checked out and were cycling by 07.32. We were already at 1500 meters above sea level so we were treated to the first 10ks of an -8% decent down a twisty pine forest road followed by another 20ks of -2% back to the junction were we came up previously. After this the road continued rolling with a few short climbs through villages & towns with the usual coffee cherries drying on the front of houses and premises. The scenery was rural with the occasional village and what was notable was the temperature was now back up to 30c within a few hours of riding. This was totally different from yesterday in Dalat were most of the locals were walking around with coats and scarfs and laughing at us in shorts. We were pretty focused on the ride and eating up the kilometres and the only thing we did stop for at around 50ks was a guy pushing a trolley down the road with a large amplifier / speaker system on singing his head off. I know the Vietnamese like Karaoke but he was taking it to the extreme.

We stopped for a quick coffee at 70ks with our minds focused on a guest house in a town west of Bao Loc, this was around another 82ks away so we didn't stop long and pressed on. At around 95ks we came across a large wedding party. We have seen this several times on our tour from literally the first few days out of Hanoi all the way down the country and when we have stopped we have nearly always been dragged in but we have resisted. The weddings gather at the side of roads under makeshift marquees all done out well with coloured ribbons & flowers and usually you hear the loud music before you actually come across the event. We stopped outside and we looked in as the bride and groom were parading around inside greeting all the guests. All the congregation and the bride & groom spotted myself and Alex and invited us in, how could we refuse! Chairs were quickly reorganised for us, beer was brought over and the grooms sister who was Indian decent could speak English and came over talking. We had a really good chat about our tour, was offered food and had some photos taken with the bride & groom but sadly we had to leave as we still had a fair distance to go.

We had covered 100 kilometres within 3hr 55 minutes, and on a fully loaded bike with plus 30C temperatures we were making really good progress. We stopped for some chicken and rice at about 130ks and discussed were we would end up tonight because we both felt good after the days rest and knew we would push past the agreed stop off point for tonight. We cycled on and on and to be honest it was only fading light that stopped us today. We have ended up in a small town about 60ks west of Bao Loc after spending just under 7 hrs riding & covering over 165 kilometres today. The guest house we are in is really basic but it's clean and we are now only 129 kilometres from our final destination of Ho Chi Minh City!