Step 8: Canyoning in Dalat

The dunes are basically the only thing you can really do in Mui Ne so after to night, we continued to Dalat, a city in the mountains with a very comparable climate to an average German city. The top tourist attraction here is the canyoning which consists of a mix of sliding down waterfalls are down sail on a rope while the water is falling on you plus some jumps from cliffs in murky water.
Everything takes place in a beautiful rainforest overgrown deep valley that is only crowded with tourist at the stop where everybody has lunch.
The same night the people from our hostel, Mr. Peace Guesthouse, took us out for karaoke in the next karaoke-bar where you can rent a full room with TV-screens on every side and disco lights.
Saying that the Hosts were really into karaoke would not describe it right, it was more like an addiction to sing in every song and make a complete foul of them self in a funny way.
Next day we went to see the Elephant Waterfall which is one of the bigger waterfalls of Asia and really pretty because the rocks it falls over are made of basalt pillars and everything is overgrown with plants.
In the afternoon and after riding 30 kilometres back without noticing that I had a flat tire we went to the so called “crazy house” which is a hotel that only has got a few rooms was build by an artist that made it look like it grew itself. Everything looked like I was in a farytale and even the people working there were wearing a coat that made them look like elves. A really fake, weird and beautiful place.

Family Dinner at Mr. Peace Hostel

Elephant-Waterfall

Crazy House

Sliding Down Rapids backwards, only problem was that I am to tall to not hit my back on the last rock, but still great fun

Jumping from a 12 Meter Cliff into murky water

The so called washing-machine, the rope ends one meter over the water surface but none knows that before

Step 7: Mui Ne and it's Mini-desert

Mui Ne is very, very touristy in high season but when we came there it was completely empty, the only part that was really busy was the fisher village where all the Vietnamese locals lived and where you could get a awesome noodle soup.
Mui Ne is famous for it's sand dunes which are located about 30 kilometres north of the city and big enough to make you feel being in a desert. The Heat made the impression perfect and while Olli was cruising around on an Quad, I was strolling around in the dunes further away from the two ones that are always taken over by tourists.

Olli in his element, short after almost loosing the ATW to the dunes

Footsteps in the sand

Different colours of sand for wonderful patterns where the wind blows away the loose sand

Beautiful sunset, seen from the fisher village o Mui Ne

Step 6: Attempting to buy motorbikes in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon), Vietnam

After a few days at the beach I continued my trip and went into Vietnam, to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). I really liked the city although I had quiet some bad luck there cause my phone got robbed on the way back from a soup kitchen. Still the city is great and has a lot of history to offer with the War Reminiscent Museum, that shows the history of the Vietnam War and what it left the country with, and the Chu Chi Tunnels where the Vietcong were hiding out from the American GI's during the Vietnam war.

Additionally the city has some great bars and although it was far out of my budget the Heliport-Skybar high up on the Bitex Tower was one of the coolest bars I have ever seen the sunset in, plus they had a life jazz band and all sort of fancy things that I normally never see in the budget hostels and bars I go too.
A lot of people buy motorbikes in either, Saigon or Hanoi and drive the distance between those cities before selling the bike in the opposite city again without even loosing much money except of fuel costs.
Olli, a guy from Norway I met one evening in Saigon had the same plan so we together spend a morning locking for a good deal.
In the end it turned out that Olli's Visa would run out earlier than he thought so time was to short for the trip. So we decided to to the trip like the majority does, by bus.

Display of a prison cell of one of the many prisons that both sides had for the other or anybody who would
speak about the government

Saigon just at dawn

The Head-Quaters of the Vietcong Leaders, also underground with traps in every corner

The picture was taken before I entered the museum, after leaving I just felt disgusted of the whole war-machinery that was
laying around outside

The Effects of Agent Orange

Bomb-craters where soon transformed to fish-ponds, shortly after the war

Especially the dioxin in the Agent Orange (the most poisonous chemical known to mankind) lead to miscarriages and disfigurement of babies

Inside the Chu CHi Tunnels

They had everything they needed to withstand the Americans

Step 5: Otrez Beach, Cambodia

After visiting the temples of Angkor, we all just wanted to chill out at some beach so we went to Shianukville at the short but beautiful coast of Cambodia. Shianukville itself is almost completely just resorts, hotels and bars for tourists but in the Hostel we stayed at, on Otrez Beach was outside of town, less crowded and a little quieter than the party shaken city.
Just two days after we arrived was the last one of a party, that is always Thursday nights in the jungle, for this season. Before we were told that the party starts early but isn't worth going before 3am and goes till 10 am. We took a Tuc Tuc over the bed of a new street that was still in the build and got let out in the middle of nowhere but already with the distant bases of the party in our ear.
The Party itself was great and pretty much what you would expect of a jungle-rave. So not to many people, one DJ-stage that was on an really old broken down truck and other old cars just laying around. They had a “Cambodian-improvised” Fairy-Wheel that was powered by a motorbike and went so fast that the passengers must experience a lot of G-force on themselves. The people there where the nicest ones I have ever met on a party, not trying to fight you when you run into them, like I experienced it a few times in Germany, but apologizing themselves for standing in the way and inviting you in their conversation straight away.
The Hostel on Otrez Beach, Done Right, was the perfect place to just relax for a couple of days under the trees and go swimming every now and then.

A small fishervillage we found on a long peninsulla we expected to have a bridge to the other side

The Bungalows in Done Right Hostel looked like small iglus