Motorbiking

So - the motorbike adventure. We boarded our bikes at 7am on Thursday.
Me with Khahn ("Mr. Khanh") and Dmitriy with Liam. Both local guys
from Mui Ne, the beach town. For the first half hour I couldn't stop
thinking about how it would feel to fall off a moving bike. Ouch! But
I soon got over it and really enjoyed the experience. The feeling of
wind on your face is singular. Think about it - riding in the car with
closed windows doesn't even compare! It's the wind that makes it.

We were off on an 8 hour journey. Khanh spoke good english and was a
cool guy. My age. Has been in tourism for 5 years so he picked up a
lot of jokes and slang that made it easy to relate to him. We stopped
at around 8 places and he showed us different types of
farms/industries - peanut, rice wine, sugar cane, etc. We also stopped
by two local villages where the people were so friendly. The kids get
really excited and giggle and say "hello, hello" over and over. It is
so cute. I took pictures with some of them, they loved it.

Once we got to Dalat - the hill town which was built up by the French
- we got settled in our rooms then met for dinner. Both for lunch and
dinner both days, we went to "local" places which was fun, and the
guys helped us order. With dinner we also drank two small bottles of
rum, which is less strong than our rum, about 30% alcohol. Afterward
in Dalat, we went a played pool at a local place and these two french
guys there were chatting with us. The bar was cool - owner was half
French and had cool bootleg rolling stones playing. Great vibe - I was
really happy all night, it was just so cool to be chilling with locals
and really hanging out at night for the first time.

The next day we set off for day 2 - driving from Dalat to Nha Trang,
another beach town. We saw a bunch of awesome waterfalls and drove way
up into the mountains into the cloud line (or something similarly high
and misty). It was beautiful - mist so thick you thought you were on
Mars you could barely see in front of you and from the sides of the
mountain all you saw was complete white with a few sporadic leaf-less
trees. A bit spooky!

We arrived in Nha Trang, checked into the hotel again and paid our
guys for the trip. The original price he had asked for back when we
made the plans with him was 100 a person, but we had talked him down
to 85 a person. Actually at the time we negotiated, I had felt rather
guilty, that maybe the price was too low, but he had eventually
agreed. So that is what we paid him. Afterward, we went out again.
Liam drank too much and was tired, so just me, berman and khanh went
out. We stayed out till 2 and drank beers, tried a few bars and again
played pool. I was sad when we said goodbye at the end of the night,
because we had such a good and genuine time with him.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of an issue in the morning...we went to
check out and they said khahn didn't pay for our hotel which was
supposed to be included. Granted, it was only 10 bucks a person. They
said he stays there a lot with his customers but have never had this
issue. They called him and were talking rather loudly at him trying to
figure it out. I was so bewildered that he would do that to us. They
gave the phone to me. On the phone he just said that 170 didn't
included the second hotel. Obviously, if he had told us this :) it
would have been fine, but since he never made that clear, it was
unfortunately, a shitty thing to do. He asked if I could split with
him and he would have someone in the next town give us half. Obviously not a
solid plan. So anyway, we just paid. I felt kinda bad because Dmitriy
kinda reamed him out on the phone. I wasn't happy about what happened,
but I also felt sympathetic. It's not like he pulled a major scam, and
as I mentioned, I worried that the the 170 price was too low. I think
he was between a rock and hard place, afraid we would pull out if he
didn't accept 170.

For me the main issue was whether he was "duping" us the whole trip,
pretending to be friends. But it doesn't seem like that was the case -
he could have pulled the same trick and have been far less friendly.
So I came to terms with it and still appreciated the experience and
our time together. It's just sad how much 10 bucks means to them, its
a different world. Even though its not right and everyone should be
expected to uphold morals, I cant really say I know what its like to
be him. Most people here make 120 dollars a month.

So the bike adventure - the two coolest days of our trip to far -
was eye-opening in more ways than one.