April 6 - A Super(man) Day

I was up with the sunrise, around 5 am, on the road before six. The view into the valley was impressive.

Sunrise

My tent hidden on the side of the road

I was closing the gap towards Da Lat, it proved to be a lot longer than I thought - not only due to the distance, but I spent quite a lot of time chatting with people.

The first encounter was relatively short, a completely drunk guy came up quite close to me.

Illuminated

Then I stopped at a school, where the students were having P.E. I made everyone laugh when I stood in the last row and started doing the exercises. Then I substituted the teacher, to even more laughter. The school caretaker (not the teacher...) spoke good English and we chatted for a while.

Schoolchildren doing P.E. - they got more motivated when I joined them

I saw a bike coming from the other direction and was in for quite a surprise. The rider was wearing a Superman costume! It turned out he was from England and had been riding for 3 years already, with the plan to ride through each of the seven continents, including Antartica. His mission was to collect charity donations for his father, who had Parkinsons disease. The trip was financed by him giving lectures at schools to the kids. I made sure he stopped at the school I did - guess the kids will not forget the day when two bikers popped by on a single day. We exchanged stories for about an hour.

Getting close to town, it became evident they grow a lot of flowers in the area and these are kept in glasshouses...these glasshouses were to be seen all over, until the edge of the horizon.

Glasshouses EVERYWHERE

Flowers and a baby (not in a glasshouse)

It was not until noon that I reached the town itself - WOW, it took me six hours for 40 kilometers, not quite sure how I did that. I recall the last 10 kilometers were utterly frustrating, I think I rode on a hill next to the city, which was in a valley, and made a half-circle around it, at least that is what it felt like. The city was very European (well, it was founded by the French), had a nice lake and a pretty buildings - so rather uninteresting for me. Not so for the international tourists - there were dozens and dozens of these to be seen.

Lake in Da Lat

There was a large market in the middle of town, where they sold flowers, flowers and flowers, but also dried fruits - that was quite nice. I had lunch, Pho and some stir fried beef, next to the market.

Flowers

I decided to leave town, there would have been a couple of other highlights, such as a cable-car and some interesting houses, to be seen, but I was not happy with my performance that morning, so I rode on. I did find a barber's shop, where I got a haircut and left my sunglasses.

As mentioned, the city was in a valley, on the hills surrounding it, were a number of houses turned into large coffee shops, filled with young people. I joined them for a good iced coffee.

Café overlooking the city

Not far from town was a very pretty lake, here I felt, again, close to home. Wedding pictures were taken around it by couples.

Attersee (or so...)

A pleasant lake

Young bride

No idea how it happened, but I looked at my watch and it was already close to 5 pm, meaning I only had an hour of light left. With something like 60 kilometers, this was not meant to be one of my best biking days, so I searched the Internet for a hotel - and found a 5-star (!) hotel for $50. Yes, I could have found something less expensive, but, mathematically speaking, this was just $10 for each star - and after sleeping in a tent and in quite run-down motels before that, it was time to get in shape.

First, it meant getting there. On the edge of the lake stood two horses, apparently wild ones, one came up to me, real close, its nose sticking in my front bike bag (which had some food), it looked as if it wanted to read my map.

Where the heck am I?

I then saw a busload of people, they were birdwatchers, with their guide coming from Seattle. They did show me a pretty bird - one they had been looking for days, maybe I brought them luck.

Birdwatchers

I reached the hotel, which was really impressive. In a huge private ground, with a kilometer-long drive, it was a golf hotel, filled with all luxury. I quickly changed and went in for a nice swim in the pool. In the evening, I pampered myself with a 90-minute hot-stone massage.

View from the hotel - onto the pool and the golf area