After a night in the bus terminal, we went into town to find a place to stay. We were walking around the main town at around 6:30 in the morning like zombies with backpacks, wandering into every open door asking if they had a room for us. Worryingly after about 5 or 6 places, we still didn't have a room, having being turned away by all of them. Finally we found a place, and it's safe to say I have never fallen asleep so quickly in my life, and we all slept till about 12 or 1pm. Deciding that the day was done for trips to see Dalat, we just took a stroll around the lake there, watching the pedalos and the many kites flying (another thing I've managed not to do it my 19 years alive). After dinner we decided to call it a day, plus we had to be up at 7 the next morning to go on an Easy riders tour of the surrounding area.

Easy Riders tours are old Vietnamese blokes who own a bike, and want to show you the surrounding area, slightly off the beaten track and in your own way. Many of the tour guides are ex-Vietnamese soldiers (guessing north Vietnamese), who now have turned into guides, and very good guides as well (ours was anyway). As our guides two brothers had already been conscripted into the army, he was not allowed, for the obvious reason to minimise the mothers grief if both of them perished in the war (whether it would save it, I don't really know). Anyway we had Jack on the back of the guides bike, Eva on the back of Adams moped, as he had experience from riding in Thailand, and I was on my own, having never ridden before. The bikes we used were semi-automatics and had 4 gears that you changed up and down with your feet, which once you got the hang of were unbelievably good fun!

Anyway we started off in the middle of a busy junction, (being thrown in at the deep end I believe is the term) but I got through unscathed and filled up half a tank of petrol for just over a quid. (Suzy Harvey, who took us in for a week in Kuala Lumpur, said she could fully fill up her Renault people carrier for 20 pounds in Malaysia).

Our first stop was the Dragon Pagoda (see photo), a Buddhist temple that has a big dragon statue that winds its way around the courtyard, with a face that is meant to look menacing, but really looks like that weird giant flying dog from that film the never ending story. After getting a photo with the locals (they love us whities) and getting some snaps of the pagoda, went on a longer drive through the mountains, stopping at a couple of viewpoints, and then on to a Vietnamese silk farm.

Here we got shown the whole process, from the Cocoon to the final silk product, and saw the machines that made it all happen, and they looked like they had been started back from when the French colonised it, so over a century. Anyway after getting a lovely silk embroidered picture we moved on to the next stop, elephant waterfall.

This waterfall was undeniably a cool sight, with strange rock formations intriguing Adam and Geology Jack, but I wouldn't recommend doing the climb up and down in espadrilles, and had it not been for Jacks strong arm, I would have fallen in the water. Unfortunately it was kind of in vain as we got bloody soaked by the waterfall anyway. Nearby was another pagoda, and the happy Buddha who looked like a jolly fat man, but I reckon after a while you would get tired of his jolliness, and think it's all fake; no one can be that jolly. On the way back we stopped off at another viewpoint, and our guide told us that upon getting intelligence that Viet Cong were staying in the town at the bottom of the valley, B52's came in and bombed the hell out of the whole valley.

Our last stop was another waterfall that was overrun with Chinese tourists, who had no qualms with getting completely in the way of every single photo you took. Had it not been for the amount people, these waterfalls would have been better than the Elephant waterfalls, but that seems to be the what happens with many beautiful things. Our last stop was the old railway stations, which to me seemed to have literally no purpose whatsoever: there was only one stop on the line, and that was a small village not that far away, and this village didn't have links to other towns either. To be honest I think the main problem with this station was that I wasn't listening.

Anyway we got back and the tour was over. We happily paid our guide for the day, which for me was one of the best things I have done on this trip, and seeing the sites by bike tops a tour bus any time; especially after the tours we did in Hue, they weren't good, and you get a sense of honestly from the Easy rider tour guide over the bus tour guides.

The next day we took the day bus up to Nha Trang, which was a massive disappointment. The place is full of all inclusive resorts so the streets are deserted, there was lots of water sports there, but it was 30 pounds an hour to rent a hobiecat out and that's a way over our budget, so we decided to spend just one night there, and move up to Hoi An the next day.

We are now in Hanoi and are going on a 3 day trip around Ha Long Bay tomorrow, were we stay on a private island with around 30 other backpackers, and can do rock climbing, wakeboarding and so many other activities! Unfortunately we all have had to go a little over our budget for this trip but it seemed worth it! Thank you and see you soon.