The (sitting on a back of a) motorcycle diaries

Hello and greetings from Buon Ma Thout, the capital of the Central Highlands.
We have had a funny few days (when is that not the case) and I've swiped Fin's tablet to tell you about all the high jinks, japes and insulting Vietnamese men.
Where did I leave off? I think it was in Hoi An- I know I've said it before but it really is an absolute delight. You could eat there for days and never eat the same thing. That's what I did, and is indeed my intention for the rest of the trip. Scrap that, life! Give me all the animal insides you want-I'm sure they can't be so offal. BOOM BOOM! I hope someone understood that joke, otherwise I now probably come across as slightly unhinged, which is completely uncharacteristic as we all know. We spent our last day waiting 8 hours for a taxi to the train station, which translated into a lot of drinks and pool in various cafés. Not too shabby, especially given that, surprise surprise, it was raining. When the sacred moment finally arrived, we were bundled off to Danang train station with four Kiwi girls. Fin's dream, perhaps? Mais non! They were completely insane and talked so much even I couldn't get a word in, so Fin spent the ride looking bewildered and that he might jump out of the window at some point. Upon arriving in Danang, after breaking the mini van taxi, we were treated to over an hour of saxophone Christmas classics on the loudspeaker in a station which smelt very strongly of artificial cinnamon. Finally, the Christmas spirit had reached us! The train itself was not as luxurious as we'd hoped. Fin even had a lovely gift of what he thought might be half a bottle of wee on his bed, so we were pleased as punch to be spending the next 10 hours in this glorified toilet with beds.
We arrived in Nha Trang at around 7.30am, bright eyed and bushy tailed, as you can imagine. We decided to forego the taxi mafia in favour for a nice stroll to our hotel, and pretty hastily regretted the decision as, even at that time, it was more humid than our Northern European temperature centres were used to. Despite that, we powered through and sweated our way to a café for breakfast, before heading to our hotel (The Ruby Hotel-every bit as glamorous as it sounds, I can assure you). We dumped our stuff, wolfed the rest of the Oreos and peanut M&Ms we had bought as midnight train snacks and ventured out into the town. Lordski, it is weirdski in the extremeski. For those who aren't aware, that was some perfect Russian right there. Translated, it means 'Lord, it is weird in the extreme'. It is like an entire Russian town went on holiday to Vietnam: but literally the whole town, buildings and restaurants  included. Russian is flippin EVERYWHERE and almost every white person you meet on the beach is from Russia. I can tell you with great authority that speedos are still very much 'du jour' with Russian men, especially ones which are a bit on the tight side so their beautifully sculpted bellies tumble over the top like a cascading waterfall of jiggly flesh. It's a sight to behold. Not a nice sight, but a sight all the same.
Close to our hotel we were stopped in our tracks by a mad man on a motorbike who launched into a full scale comedy sales routine, complete with poetry, slang and insults, all delivered in a Vietnamese/cockney accent, if you can even imagine such a thing. Turns out he was an 'Easy Rider'-guys who take tourists on tours (astounding, I know) on motorbikes. Without really knowing what was happening , we were on his bike and in his cousin's restaurant discussing the details of his offer over a free coffee. He (Papa Hanh) was certainly quite a character and his English vocabulary one of the more exotic I've come across, but he seemed like a good guy, so we said we'd have a think about doing a tour with him. We'd THINK about it. Remember that detail.
After wandering around and deciding that Nha Trang is quite ugly and simply baffling, I thought to enquire with another Easy Rider group. Another enthusiastic salesman, who kept calling me Fin's wife (disturbing), but this guy had a licence, which totally sold it to me-obviously it's impossible for people to get fake licences to show to unknowing tourists. After a quick deliberation and google search, we picked the second company and I went to sort the details. Done and dusted, easy peasy. Until I got back to the hotel. Old Papa Hanh had followed me back to the hotel and asked whether we had decided what we were going to do: I was rumbled. The sneaky Papa had seen me sort the other tour and wanted revenge. His revenge mainly consisted of a lot of incomprehensible swearing and hand gestures, probably not very nice hand gestures, and then off he went. Gutted we didn't go with him! The rest of the day was spent marvelling at the weirdness of the town, eating Pringles and watching some English guys try to chat up some Norwegian girls who were are lot more attractive than them. For you nosy parkers, we left so I don't know the outcome of their efforts. I expect they were not successful.
Today we had an early start, accompanied by some rousing Communist music outside, and went to the tour office. After brekkie, Fin was given his bike (because he, apparently, can ride a motorbike) and I was shown the bike which I would be sitting on, holding on for dear life. And that was it, we were off! It was a great trip, up into the central highlands, with regular stops to eat, drink, look at things and say 'ahhhh, interesting' and 'wow, that's fascinating '. They genuinely were, though: here's a fun fact for you-raw cocoa beans are surrounded by a white, slimy covering which you can eat and it tastes like mango! Take that one to the pub quiz, why don't you (although the question would have to be mighty specific for that to be the answer)? We were on the road for about 6 or 7 hours and it was great. Fin looked like a proper dude on his bike and I looked every inch the elegant, exotic lady, swinging my leg over the side and shuffling my arse to get in the right sitting position. High heels would have been ideal in my situation. We are off out for tea with the guide in a bit and then tomorrow it's onward and upward, and onto an elephant. Yes, an elephant. Could be interesting.