Day 20!

I started my day on the late side, but not as late as I hoped with going to bed at 4am.

So around 10:30am I headed to the dining room for a breakfast of chicken fried rice.

I wasn’t super hungry and my new friend Tom was wanting to go to a waterfall so I only ended up eating half of the meal. But the hostel owner asked me if I wanted to put it in a box for later which was super kind and I took her up on it!

While eating I made a new friend Fiona from Tasmania, who we invited along on our adventure! Our friend Michael from the night prior joined us too!

Tom and I met the night before and quickly bonded over that we were both motorbiking Vietnam (unfortunately he’s about to be finishing his journey).

So Tom and I chauffeured our friends to the waterfall!

I’m a big fan of waterfalls and this one was pretty impressive.

It was a bit touristy and had an alpine sled and a few other tourist attractions, but overall it was a nice morning of relaxing by a waterfall and enjoying some very pretty views!

After hanging at the falls for a few hours, Tom and I took our friends back to the hostel so we could take our bikes to the shop together!

I needed an oil change and a few things looked at and I noticed Tom’s blinkers weren’t working so he needed that fixed too.

We only could communicate with the mechanics through Google translate but they understood what we were wanting and immediately went to work.

Tom and I wandered across the street to a Com restaurant that we had spotted. And this was easily the best meal both of us had had in Vietnam so far!

The meal ended up being a feast for 100,000 Dong (we weren’t really sure of the price going into it), so it was a little more than I’d normally spend but totally worth it!

We took a walk back to the hostel and then after napping we met back up to collect our bikes!

When I got to my room for my nap though, it was buzzing with new travelers all eager to meet each other.

So I stayed up for a bit chatting before passing out for 45 minutes!

It was really nice having another biker to come to the shop to kinda show me the ropes!

Even with the language barrier, the mechanics did a stellar job in both of the bikes and on the ride back to the hostel my bike is already feeling much better!

The repairs only cost 180,000 Dong which is around $9!!

After getting back to the hostel it was time for me to finally take advantage of the hostel gym!

There were a bunch of people in it, but I was able to get a very nice workout in! Keeping up with working out is one of my goals while traveling!

When I was in Thailand I neglected it for a month and I don’t want to do that again. And also, how amazing it to work out with such a beautiful view?!

After I finished working out I made my way to the family dinner, but this time I wasn’t intending to pay 80,000 Dong for a meal.

Instead, I got my meal from the fridge and they reheated it for me!

I met a number of new travelers at the dinner which is such a perk of this hostel! And it was even ones birthday so the hostel got her a cake which she shared with all of us around her.

Now my intentions for the night were to have a very early night and make up for the lack of sleep from the night before.

But I ended up meeting a number of travelers who were so fun to talk to that I decided to go out for a bit with them.

So we headed off to maze bar again (and this time I took some pictures) and I let the new friends lead the way since I’d been there already.

Tom and I had a goal of doing karaoke but when maze bar closed, it looked like our karaoke dreams were being crushed.

From what we could tell all the karaoke bars were closed so we started our walk back to the hostel while the rest of the group went to the late after party that we went to the night before.

But on our walk home, Tom got a text from a group of people he had met. They had been searching for an hour looking for a karaoke bar and finally found one near our hostel!

So with our dreams back on we changed our route and went to sing our hearts out with some strangers!

Tom and I ended up singing Sweet Caroline and Country Roads together! The others sang a number of songs too which made for a lovely goofy end of the night!

Tom and I called it quits around 1:30am and the rest of the group didn’t seem like they were slowing down!

It was a great day in Dalat and I decided to extend my time here one more day to get ready for my ride to Nha Trang on Wednesday!

I’m looking forward to seeing what tomorrow has in store 🙂

– Elie