Batu Caves - Kuala Lumpur

I only had a day or two in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia while I wait for my flight to Melbourne to start the next part of my adventure. I heard the Batu Caves were unmissable so thought I would go check them out and see if they compared to other places I had seen on my trip like Marble Mountain (previous post) The Batu Caves were incredible the most sacred Hindu temple in Malaysia, the ornate statues and the size of the cave itself was like nothing I have ever seen, like a whole other world. The temples themselves are Hindu temples protected by statues of their Deities, the largest being a 140ft statue of the Deity Murugan whose sheer size is mindblowing. The caves are definitely worth a visit the biggest cave and the one worth seeing above the others is free entry which is a bonus! One of the smaller temple caves is 5 MRP to get in and was worth paying to see the statues inside of the cave. Outside the caves are monkeys hanging about, you can buy bananas from the nearby stall holders to feed them if you dare but they do jump and they will bite if they feel threatened not that it stopped me going and hanging out with them but consider yourselves warned! if your in Kuala Lumpur for a day or two get to Batu Caves there only half hour away by train and was the only thing I found worth doing in my time here.

Ha Long Bay

Our last stop in Vietnam was to the world famous Ha Long bay, a Unesco world heritage sight and one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It was so incredible to see in real life and the pictures look terrible compared to how beautiful it actually was like stepping into the film Avatar. We booked a 2 day 1 night sleeping on a boat with Golden Dolphin Tours, the first day we went from the harbour out into Halong Bay for around four hours cruising around all the islands and then went to a small village on the water and borrowed some kayaks from the locals and kayaked around the amazing limestone cliffs it was very surreal after we went back to our boat to watch the sunset and have some drinks, followed by karaoke of course, we then went to our cabins which had air con and were really cute and old fashioned, waking up on the water and seeing Ha Long bay out my window was probably one of my most incredible moments of this trip the next day we sailed around the islands and stopped at a pearl farm where they showed us how they cultivated the best pearls and the process behind it. 

pearl farm - Ha Long bay

Ha Long bay - at night

 

view from our cabin on Halong Bay

Pearl farm worker

I thought the tour we did was pretty great and I loved sleeping on the boat, it was around 70USD but I had friends that did their own thing minus a tour and said it was pretty easy to get around on your own, we didn't manage to get to Cat Ba island as we ran out of time but i'd recommend spending 4 days doing both.

Hoi An to Hue by bike - Marble Mountain, Hai Van Pass, Elephant Springs

Inspired by my brief ride on the back of someones motorbike, I decided it was about time I tried to drive my own. Clearly a massive error of judgment considering I don't have a driving license and haven't even had one lesson but hey its Vietnam what could go wrong? Paying a woman outside our hostel 300,000 Dong (£10) I was able to borrow a bike from her from Hoi An and drop it off in Hue (8 hours by bike with sightseeing) and they would take my luggage up in a bus for me and meet me there which was a great deal. A little bit put off that they just asked for my name, no identification or proof I could drive just a demonstration of how the breaks work and handing me a helmet. So with this information understood, we joined a group we'd met in our hostel and started the journey to Hue (I'd recommend making friends and doing it in a group especially if you have no sense of direction like me). I'd already driven a little of the distance by bike the previous day to see the beautiful Marble Mountain next to Da Nang which I would massively recommend going to see, the stairs are really steep and you will sweat buckets but the temples and caves in the mountain are incredible.

on the edge of the mountain

the view from the top

Buddha garden

The White Buddha  

Back to our roadtrip, the way to Hue from Hoi An is so beautifully scenic driving through paddy fields coastal roads and up through the mountains, its crazy how diverse the scenery is as you go along. I didn't take that many pictures as I was driving the whole time and was already a bad enough driver but we made a few stops along the way. The best part of the journey which was towards the end of the trip was Hai Van Pass which is a long winding road up into the mountains quite steep but easy to navigate, it was the best view down into the bay with loads of viewpoints to stop off at, again not many pictures as we wanted to keep going to Hue in good time. 

new friends

Hai Van Pass

Clifford the big red bike  

Hai Van pass viewpoint 

we got pretty lost after the coastal road trying to find a place called Elephant Springs, eventually we found it but had lost most of our group and ran out of time there but it looked really fun and if theres tours running there from Hue I reckon its worth a day trip.

Elephant Springs was basically a collection of pools going down the mountain with wooden shacks built alongside where the locals would cook food or lay down on mats they had brought with them, it literally looked like a place out of the Jungle book.  

Not my photo but a better view of Elephant Springs, after we left here it was pretty much straight motorway to Hue for an hour and a half all of us pretty tired and not looking forward to navigating the city traffic.. 

Hoi An - town by Day & Night (photo post)

Truc Lam Temple Da Lat

On our last day in Da Lat, our group decided to try and kick our hangovers and get some culture, so we took the cable car from just on the outskirts of Da Lat to Truc Lam Temple at the top of the mountain, it was so ridiculously peaceful up there with all the low playing traditional music and the incense burning, we got there just as they were closing down for the day so we didn't get to go inside many of the temple buildings but the architecture itself was incredible. The best thing about the temple is that it was so easy to get to from the town so if your just on a stopover in Dalat and have a few hours to kill you should come here. 

Da Lat Waterfall Canyoning

Finally have semi decent internet again still not great but enough for this post, so Da Lat was our next stop after the sand dunes of Mui Ne, Da Lat is basically a giant forest area north of Mui Ne and its significantly cooler there (17-18 degrees) and lots of rain this time of year. The town itself is pretty basic although one place I would definitely recommend at night is the 100 Roofs Cafe, it was designed by a student from the crazy school of architecture, and is basically a massive skinny building with loads of hidden rooms and narrow tunnels and staircases that you can play hide and seek in, and the drinks are cheap, if you've ever been to Budapest its basically like a mad ruin bar on steroids, people go missing in this bar for several nights at a time. 

one of the rooms of the bar- not my photo

from the outside- not my photo

So in Dalat the main things to do are trekking to see the villages and waterfalls and Canyoning, we chose the latter as we heard it was one of the craziest things you can do in Vietnam. We went with a tour company called Viet Action Tours (£40 equivalent) who I would highly recommend they had all the right safety gear etc and some of the cheaper tours don't. We left our hostel at 8:30 and were driven in a minibus up to the hills where the waterfalls were, here we learnt how to use the guide ropes got given our helmets (and nicknames I was Rambo) and practiced scaling down a few steep hills. Once we got the hang of it we then moved on to the actual sheer cliff faces, starting with a cliff not a waterfall (20m) we scaled one by one down the face, not gonna lie stepping over the edge of a sheer cliff with just a rope is pretty terrifying and it takes quite a lot to scare me. After this was scaling down the 25m Waterfall, the rocks are super slippery and it is pretty difficult to get down and stepping over the edge again you think the guide is joking when he tells you you'll be fine, but hands down one of the best experiences of my life, you then trek through the forest to the last waterfall which is trapped in canyon so you basically hang most of the way down and drop into the waterfall (nicknamed the washing machine you'll find out why). After this was cliff jumping (optional) and a zip line down to the bottom of the lake followed by a lunch in the town (included) and then we were dropped back to our hostel. If your in Da Lat and a bit of an adrenaline junkie you must do Canyoning, 100% recommend. 

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293922-d7987929-Reviews-Viet_Action_Tours_Day_Tours-Da_Lat_Lam_Dong_Province.html