canyoning | Less Thinking, More Doing

MaRrRrRffin here. After HCMC, we were off to Dalat. We didn’t know what to expect. We just knew you do outdoorsy stuff there and it was a much smaller town. We were pleasantly surprised when we got there. It was much cooler which was greatly appreciated cause I had been sweating my ass off in Saigon. It was a lot less busy, a lot less honking, and had a very European feel to it. All the buildings, fountains, and landscaped parks had French influence. They even had a mini Eiffel Tower. Other than the one guy on a motobike asking “you want massage?”, it did not feel like we were in Vietnam. To make things better, we stayed at awesome hotel.

We were greeted by Mrs. Dung and this adorable little girl named Cherry at Dreams Hotel. This little girl instantly won Jeboody’s heart and he wouldn’t stop talking about her. Pedobear style. Jk, she was cute. The best part of staying at this hotel was the bomb breakfast. We had eggs, cheese, fresh fruit, baguettes, strawberry jam (strawberries are a local thing in Dalat), and freakin bacon. We tow that bacon up. Anyways on to our adventure.

We signed up to do some canyoning in Dalat. Oh man was it fun and terrifying. Our trip involved rappelling down 3 cliff/waterfalls, 1 waterfall slide, and a free jump. Let me say, going down those waterfalls was not easy. I thought since I had a little rock climbing experience that it would be a piece of cake. Wrong. The rocks are slippery. There’s water going everywhere and hitting everything. You don’t really feel that secure on that damn thing. Jeboody was slip sliding everywhere. You can see his injury in the picture above.

Between the rappelling, we first stopped at a waterfall slide. There were a couple for us to try. First one, we slid on our backs feet first. The other, we slid on our back head first. I made the mistake of sliding down head first on my stomach but I came out unscathed. I can’t say the same about Jeboody. He got owned hard on both slides. ITB. Thats all I’m going to say about that. Next non-rappelling activity was the free jump.

The free jump is really where we both faced our fears. There were two jumps we could do. One was 6m and the other was 10m. I’ve jumped off docks into the water and higher diving boards before but this felt so different. There just seemed like there was so much more potential to get injured jumping off a cliff. The worst was the 10m. It wasn’t necessarily the height. It was high and I was scared of it but it was the fact that I had to clear the the 6m jumping area to land safely in the water. Our guide had to show me the way before I grew a pair and made the leap.

Anyways, here’s the pics!

Hiking down to the waterfall