Dalat

We decided to escape the heat of the lowlands and head for the hills inland and the town of Dalat, a peaceful and cool retreat in the mountains – problem was we found out where all those mopeds disappeared to after midnight on new years eve – here!! It was absolutely mobbed with Saigon’ers on vacation during the national holidays! Managed to finally find a guesthouse having walked around town for 45 minutes or so before heading straight out to the supposedly architecturally crazy ‘Crazy house’ the hard work of a clearly bored architect! Having wandered around a little bemused for a while before Shona managed to fall over and cut her knee, then watched another small child fall into a pond and nearly drown, we decided too much craziness in one day would be too much to take so it was time to leave before someone got hurt! Walked back into town and down to the famous lake – it was dry, a small stream trickled through the middle of it but no other water!! Nevermind lets explore the lake bed but that soon ended too when Adele started to sink up to her knees into a not so dry section! Having pulled her out of the mud, much to her and the locals’ amusement we opted for the safety of a glass of wine – something else the town is famous for…this passed off without incident thankfully! After sampling the local vino we stumbled across a fair, in town for TET, it had all the normal fun games like trying to throw balls in jars that are too small for the balls, or a coconut shy with coconuts glued down etc after wandering around for 10 minutes and us becoming more interesting to the locals than the fair games we made a quick exit. The following day it was back on the mopeds and out to a nearby park area, we took a boat ride out to a small island (I know, a risky thing to do going by yesterday’s exploits!) and had the strangest lunch! We sat down and got served by 2 very confused guys who then enlisted the help of another dinner who could speak a little English! A bit of pointing and some random nodding when it seemed appropriate followed, then 15 minutes later we were given a small pot of coals, a plate of raw meat, rice and an omlette – everyone vaguely confused but happy, plus a vase full of some wierd and very strong rice wine and 4 straws – everyone even happier!! It had been a few days since we’d tested our travel buds so it was time to leave Dalat and time for the next stage of the initiation, the delights of a night bus!! Uncomfortable buses, never enough leg room, generally a few travel sick people around you puking in bags and a very long night of 2 hours broken sleep and 7 hours of moaning awaited us all!