Another Hillstation and Train

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We've booked an open bus ticket to go via several stops further north in Vietnam. Our first stop was DaLat, a hill station in 1500m altitude that was refreshingly cool but by no means cold. (Apparantly it hasn't changed much in the past 50 years as the Americans and Vietnamese had agreed not to bomb it during the war... why couldn't they generally agree this for the whole country???)
On the bus we saw country side how I had imagined Vietnam to look like: Paddy fields and Palmtrees, with Mountains in the background.

DaLat didn't seem as idylic as we had emagined but we think that was partly due to quite a numbar of concrete buildings and an overcast sky and we havn't seen many clouds in the past 2 months (sorry..) There was a little touristy train that was quite overpriced and not even nearly as nice as the one in Ooty but we enjoyed it anyway. At the end of it there was a Dragon Pagoda to be visited and then we went back. Trip over. But wandering around fairly large man-made lake and tying out food at streetkitchens has been good fun.
The food here is of reliably good quality; steamed rice comes with almost anything. Soups with fresh vegetables and noodles are comon too. In DaLat we had fresh strawberries as that is their speciality and we felt decadent having them on the 3rd of Jan.

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Photos

Terry with 2 very sweet vietnamese girls
Children here can all say: Hello, How are you? What is your name? My name is ...! In almost accent free english. and they take great joy in it!

Comments

[jamieandlynsey]

Hello from NZ
Happy new Year great to see you looking nice and relaxed and still enjoying your trip.Looking forward to seeing you both soon Cheers jamie