Today marks the first day of a multi-day trek through the rural districts of the central highlands. I've been doing some reading up about this area, and I'm surprised to hear it described as a long, boring slog. Descriptions range from "a tourist dead-zone" to "most people skip this area by taking the train or ferry between Nha Trang and Danang". Well, that sounds like a bunch of nonsense. We're overlanders at heart, so we want to see *every* part of the country. French composer Claude Debussy once said, "Music is the space between notes". Listen to Clair de Lune and you can feel the emotional breadth and breath lingering in the long pauses between the notes of the piano. There's life and breath in the long distances between the fortissimo of the big cities and expensive tourist attractions; secret numerology wedged between "Top 10 Things To See In..." lists. Sometimes you'll find it in the simple calm of a lazy river beside a small village. Moving in tempo rubato. Other times, it's hidden beneath the beautiful struggle of being a stranger in a strange land: having to learn and adopt foreign customs and attempting to speak in tongues, instead of expecting the strange land to bend to the notes of your dollar bill.  One last glance at the coastline before we dive headfirst into the interior We're anticipating the temperatures will remain beach-weather hot for the next few days. Cross our fingers for no rain, though. Prior to leaving the big urban centre of Nha Trang, we've checked our engine oil levels, lubed our chains and I'm keeping a watchful eye on the patch job on my rear tire. We've been warned that where we're headed, mechanics and moto shops might be hard to come by. Neda is keeping a watchful eye on her stomach. She's been warned that clean toilet facilities might be hard to come by...  Peee-AAHHH-Hey!!!! Being two-wheelers, we're not permitted to ride on the highways near major cities. But the upside is that we don't have to pay the tolls that four-wheelers do. These toll-booths have special toll-free paths on the right, just wide enough for a scooter or motorbike. It reminded us of the peajes in Latin America. Every time we'd go through one, we'd yell gleefully at each other over the coms: "Peee-AHHHH-Hey!" Simple pleasures... :D  "M'drak!" The city of Ninh Hoa is the last of the coast that we'll see for a while. We turn off the busy, main QL1 highway onto a smaller, less trafficked regional road, QL26. The green-forested mountains ahead beckon us. Good quality pavement beneath our wheels allows us to take the twists and turns at the max speed our little bikes and skinny tires will allow - well under triple-digit speeds, yet spirited enough to earn some "coffee money" for any police officer waiting to flag us down... :) Now that we're out of the city limits, I'm able to use my GPS once again. Our route that we're taking is one that neither the GPS nor Google Maps would ever willingly send a traveler on, instead insisting on always re-routing back to the quicker, main coastal highway. So I have to manually program our first waypoint, a town called M'Drak. I like saying "M'Drak" out loud. It doesn't sound like a Vietnamese word at all. Sounds almost Klingon! "Peta'Q! Be quiet and eat your Gagh or I'll bash you over the head with my M'Drak!" I hear a voice in my ear: "You know the comms are still open, right?" "M'Drak!"  Swarmed by schoolkids on bicycles! At M'Drak, we turn off on the even smaller QL19C, heading north into the mountainous region of central Vietnam. The asphalt turns to concrete slabs and all of a sudden, we're surrounded by schoolkids on bicycles. I check my clock, it's 11:30AM, school must have let out? We ride alongside these kids for a couple of kms. They are all looking over at us with curious amusement as we slowly pass them, some of them giggle, some wave, all of them stare... Until we pass the last bicycle and the buildings at the side of the concrete road disappear and we're back out into the countryside again. I feel like we've just swam past a school of fish or something!  Workers tend to lush green rice paddies outside of a Buddhist temple  My bike stares wistfully out to the waters  Neda's bike is having some fun in the twisties Surprised the pavement is so good for being a rural, secondary road!  Conical straw hats floating above a green ocean of tall, rice stalks... so iconic for SE Asia!  Goofing around on Cau (Bridge) Krong Nang. Proof that I was there... on a bike! We get hungry at our usual time of 2PM. Unfortunately, all the restaurants and food stalls that we pass by in the towns and villages are closed - only open around lunchtown and dinnertime. We really need to conform to proper eating hours, otherwise we'll be eating nuts at the side of road every day in the mid-afternoon. We manage to find a place that would serve us!  Bun Dau Mam Tom: Vermicelli noodles, shrimp paste, pork slices and tofu. Very, very spicy chilli sauce! Tasted great! Back out on the road, we watch as towns and villages of different sizes move past our bikes.  Most of the poorer ethnic minorities in Vietnam live in the central highlands Similar to the hill tribes in Thailand, the M'nong, the Ede, and the Bannar live in the mountains, mostly in thatched roofed houses, though there were quite a variety of structures that we saw, some a bit more basic.  This one was quite nice! We stop so often to take pictures of houses, I feel like I'm shopping for a place to live! This is an example of the traditional Vietnamese stilted house, built to withstand flooding and to provide cooling for the living area as air circulates beaneath the house. Livestock is often kept in pens below the house. Or in this case, a scooter...  Neda loves the layers of rolling hills in the central highlands We are crossing over several different provinces on our route today, from the Dak Lak, through Phu Yen and finally, ending up in the province of Gia Lai. Each province is home to different set of ethnic minorities. In Gai Lai, there are more Jarai people living here.  More stilt houses alongside rice paddy fields. Our real estate agent told us this one has great curb appeal!  Communist propaganda? Riding by, we see a lot of these colourful signs with cheery Vietnamese faces. I just assumed this was propaganda extolling the benefits of the communist system. As we pass each sign, I provide a running commentary with my own real-time translations: "Capitalism is evil! Work hard for the good of your country!", "Peace to the people! Land to the peasants! Death to Capitalist Swines!", "Peta'Q! This Gagh tastes like M'Drak!" Neda switches off the comms. Later on, I run this sign through Google Translate and discover that the messaging is a bit more progressive than I thought. It's addressing the agricultural community, urging them to seek vocational training in order for them to be more productive farmers. Okay, fine. So I'm guilty of using both hands when I blog on the keyboard. I Stereo-Type... We pull into Ayun Pa in the late afternoon, our stop for the day. We are checking into our first Nha Nghi. Although the direct translation is "motel", it's more of a guest house. We were warned that some Nha Nghi's are actually love motels, where rooms can be rented by the hour - just like the ones we saw (and stayed at) in Latin America! This one felt like a large family house with bedrooms converted into motel rooms.  It was a nice place! This one charges per night, not by the hour! As we were checking in, the receptionist at the front desk started speaking to me in Vietnamese. I shook my head, "Sorry. English." She looked extremely confused, as if the words coming out of my mouth were not syncing properly with the movement of my lips, like in one of those badly dubbed foreign movies. "Oh. You look Vietnamese." No problem. Universal Asian, at your service.  Heading out for dinner We explored a little bit of Ayun Pa on foot while on the way to dinner. Most of the stores were closed, the only places open were restaurants, ca phes, pool halls and KARAOKE! The Vietnamese *LOVE* KARAOKE! There's one on every street corner!  Streets are mainly empty at night in this small town  Shooting pool  KARAOKE! You have to spell it in all capital letters... it's that popular! At night, the streets of Ayun Pa are devoid of the usual Vietnamese sounds of traffic and vehicles honking. Instead, the noise is replaced with the amplified sound of really bad singing over pre-recorded music. From what we've heard so far, tone deafness is as commonplace in Vietnam as it is in North America... and pretty much everywhere else in the world. But just like everywhere else, this lack of musical ability doesn't stop anyone from having a great time. An unceasing playlist of unfamiliar songs and horrible, out-of-tune warbling fill the air. As soon as we pass by one KARAOKE place, one song tapers off and is replaced by another as we approach the next KARAOKE place, as if we were moving out of range of one radio station and into another. Each new chanteur just as tone-deaf as the last one... Sweet baby cheeses...  We find a nice place to eat, just out of earshot of the last KARAOKE place we passed  At least the food is good: Rau Diep Cuon Thit Bo - Beef strips wrapped in lettuce What a great riding day - some twisties on good pavement, amazing food, interesting scenery! We got to see how people live out in the country as opposed to the big cities... and got to listen to their horrible singing! LOL! It also marked the first time we were able to relax on our motorbikes, not worry about traffic, stop anywhere and everywhere to take pictures and generally goof around on two wheels. "Tourist dead-zone" my ass! Music may very well be the space between notes. Except when it's Vietnamese KARAOKE! Then it just sounds like a bunch of M'Drak... :D Looking forward to seeing more!
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