I was very keen to visit the Po Nagar Cham tower (temple) as it appeared to lend itself to very good photographs from what I had seen on the Internet prior to my trip. as with just about anything in Vietnam there was a fee to look after my motorbike and a fee to enter the grounds but likewise in Vietnam as is always the case it was cheap.
As is usual with me a funny thing happened here at the temple, I was happily taking photographs when I was approached by young Japanese couple, strangely the girl wanted a photograph with me and the guy took the photograph, then she wanted other ones with me as well. I thought this was getting kind of strange so I offered to take a photo of the two of them together with their camera. They seemed quite reluctant, but when i forced the issue a little, I managed to get them to allow me to do this. i suggested to them that they pose with their arms around each other even to look into each others eyes. They were getting more and more uncomfortable with this I could not work out why it was. Only after walking around the temple further that i noticed he was explaining much of the stuff to her about the temple it turns out he was her private tour guide ... no wonder it was awkward for her perhaps I made a romance!!
Laughing to myself, I was soon back on the bike and decided to head north hugging the coast north of Nga Trang.
Another strange thing happened as I rode along.A Vietnamese man had broken down with his bike and as I approached, he flagged me down. I pulled over to see if i could help him. His not existant english made it differcult , but it appeared that he could not start his bike I guessed he had run out of petrol. He reached over and turned my key off and tried to ask me to get off my bike to help. I was concerned he would jump on my bike and take off so I refused to get off my bike. I made some signals to him that I could offer him a lift to the next town but our communication was pretty bad and he did not understand, so I was quick to take that opportunity to restart my bike, and just leave him there.
Who knows how that may have ended if I had not had my wits about me.
Continuing along the coastal road I was overjoyed to come across a number of small fishing villages with lots of bright,y coloured boats anchored in a gorgeous bay. There were also many fishing nets set in the water I stopped 2 or 3 times to take numerous photographs I was very happy that I had taken this particular route as an alternative to the main highway.
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I soon continued northward onto the Saigon to Hanoi highway. I spotted a small pond which had a nice reflection to it, and I thought I would take some photos.
I started to walk around and take some photographs of the farm (at GPS 12.40543,109.15941) as it had a nice lake next to what appeared to be a restaurant or something like that the owners invited me in and even caught some shrimps for me. They had some nice cold drinks there (I had a Heiny) which I was certainly in need off. So I sat and had a meal of shrimp and cabbage soup . While I sat there, I read my rough guide to vietnam book and discovered that there was a waterfall nearby.... so after eating, I backtracked a little down the highway and up avery muddy track where I came across a bridge and what appeared to be a parking area for bikes. There was a small fee of 17000 vnd ... which I had to pay. I then began to hike up the track. Amongst the boulders a family of vietnamese people head set up camp with a box of cold beer ... miles and miles from anywhere! ...they really do never miss an opportunity. In this case I had just had one not so long ago, so I passed them by... soon I got to a very nice waterfall with nice clean water. It was so enticing that i was so enticing that I decided to stay for quite some time I must have been there for 3 or 4 hours swimming jumping off the waterfall and the high rocks. This is Ba Ho falls and it is about 20km north of Nga Trang. I highly recommend this.
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The trip back was quite amazing several times I would see a truck speeding along and then it would pass a bus so the truck would be completely on the wrong side of the road with traffic coming on to it. That does not sound that amazing, however when another truck goes to pass both of them and is literally on the footpath on the wrong side of the road that's another thing altogether!!!
The shrimp farm (below) was also a bit of a highlight for me today.
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That sort of thing tends to make your scooter feel very very small indeed.
