Coffee & tea plantations at large, a literal church replacement, pineapple, cashew, guava & passionfruit farming were to be seen & tasted along the way. weddings were taking place in several villages as it was sunday & were well attemded by the villagers. bathing with some of the local kids was great fun, watching the locals spreading out magnok chips for sundrying in hmong villages & 2 road accident with min. One person dead were the days main events before spending the night at quang scn. The landscape on the central highlands was great & more than made up for the bumpy roads.
the day after was again good fun, consisted of passing by More plantations, mostly coffee, cashews, some bananas that were situated close to the way we took. Waterfalls, then more rice paddies, old IFA trucks still in use on rough roads, river crossing by a hand-towed boat, then followed by trying to find our way to the next bigger road through the rice fields.
Hotel was almost on the waterfront of lak lake as was found out next morning. There the fishermen were going on about their business, rice paddies were being looked after, a funeral held along the main road. We stopped at a hmong village, which had been resettled there by the governement, providing free schooling, healthcare etc in exchange for the villagers giving up their nomad lifestye of burning, farming & moving on. The ride continued through mountainous scenery with lots of coffee plantations, as well as cashews, later sugar cane and other crops. The road was great for the places we passed, one hmong & an even bigger dao wedding, a collapsed bridge replaced by a hanging bridge on top, the amazingly sweet smell of blooming coffee trees. In the afternoon the coast was in sight, lots of red flags with yellow stars & fishermen heading out for work in tiny vessels. Nha trang itself seems quite touristy, signs in kyrillic language & announcements for keeping the beach clean in english, a gondola connecting town to one of the islands in the distance. Another nightbus ride to hoi an, feels almost like sleeping on a couch.