90km from Dalat to the cost and 120km from Dalat to Ca Na, the stopover we choosed for our way to Mui Ne, the place for wind- and kitesurfing in Vietnam (does anyone of you remember “Back To The Future II”? Marty McFly is in the year 2015 and get confused by an advertisement that sais “Surfing Vietnam”, it’s reality!). Thanks to the Lonely Planet Map of Dalat, that indicates the wrong street to Phan Rang from Dalat we had to make a 40km detour on the really most horrible streets you can imagine. It was not just annoying to go this way, it actually was very dangerous. The street condition was very poor, sometimes you had to drive through lakes of hand-sized stones where it was easier to loose the control about your motorbike than to control the motorbike. With insane bus and truck drivers coming towards you it’s not so nice to slip and fall. Really not cool! After about 70km we reached the Bellevue Pass, the name is the program. Dalat lies in an altitude of 1500m and going down to the sea means you go down to 0m and 950m you do in 8 or 10km at the Bellevue Pass. From the top there you can see the ocean 55km away. It really goes down serpentines for 8km with a steady gradient of 7-10%. Going downhill was not a problem, more big fun, but I was
very thankful that we didn’t take this way in the other direction. I guess that really would have been too much for our bikes (and they are very reliable, we had no problems at all with them so far). The last 85km from the bottom of the pass until 5km to Ca Na was an easy cruising, even Highway 1 that we had to take for the last 30km was not crowded and a good chance to drive full speed.
Five kilometers before we arrived our destination my bike ran out of petrol again but once again help was close and a shop about 3-400m from the place I stopped had a mobile petrol station. In Ca Na we booked a beach bungalow for 5$ each, unfortuantely the weather was everything but not good for swimming but it didn’t matter, it already was dark when we arrived anyway.
100km to Mui, just 2,5hours. An easy and cool drive, the last 20km just along the seashore. What to say about Mui Ne? The best things I remember about it is the acquaintanship of Dominik from Witten in Germany who infected us with the juggling game “Pogo-Stick” and the tailor Binh that repaired my backpack (a smaller zipper was already broken since the hitchhiking in Russia) very professionally. Otherwise, the town is pretty much a tourist nest made up just by hotels, resorts, restaurants and shops that sell bikinis and bathing trousers.
The weather, as already mentioned, was not the best so it was not really crowded in town and on the beach, so the time there was alright, swimming was still possible and even enjoyable, the last day there even the sun came out and brought me a nice sunburn. But in total, that wasn’t the beach holiday we were looking for now and decided to go further down the coast in the direction of Saigon, a much less developed area.
