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Published: February 16th 2014
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16feb - Saturday
Woke early to glorious sunshine, but can feel the slightly cooler air of the mountains. Still revelling in the near luxury of our hotel and had a lovely breakfast
at 7am. We have map and off we go, first destination is the lake.Had an easy stroll around the Ho Xuan Hong lake, which is has a paved path, so boots not required and took in the pleasant Flower gardens at the bottom end, some beautiful flowers and well worth the about 50 cent entrance fee. We did notice the lake had many dead fish ( more on that later).
There are several Restaurants on the Lake which all looked worthy of a visit but it was too early to break the walk, arrived back at our start point 3 hours later feeling thoroughly relaxed and a little red from the Sun. We noticed that all around the lake people would lay fresh flowers and burn incense sticks, which presumably has some Buddhist connotation.
In the afternoon we decided to walk to the nearby Cam Ly water falls. We walked through the back of the town to reach the falls from the top and were
very impressed by the many colourful houses all showing influence of their former French occupants. The Falls themselves are not very big in local terms and forms part of a ornamental gardens and on first sight look very nice. On walking down by them however there is a quite unpleasant odour, to return to our hotel we decided to go via the river.
This revealed the source of the odour and probably the dead fish, all along its passage untreated sewage was being pumped into it from the surrounding town! A great pity as the lake and river are a major feature of this other wise clean and well landscaped town.
We returned to the Pensee Restaurant on the lake for a well earned beer and relaxed in the sunshine and people-watched for an hour (or maybe two). The location of our hotel is fantastic and overlooks the lake and the bustling markets, so we returned there to refresh ready for our next sortie, finding a nice restaurant for dinner.
Unfortunately we had relaxed too much and didn't set out much before
8pm in search of gastronomic excitement. The road in front of our hotel
is closed to traffic in the evenings and therefore is a delight for adults and children alike to stroll, skateboard and generally enjoy the freedom of a road without 2, 3 or 4 wheeled vehicles.
We failed miserably in our quest. Gung Ho style, we took no maps with us and sadly over-confident in our knowledge of the streets, we were still wandering round two hours later and made a mad dash back to the Pensee to catch 'last orders' where we quickly placed an order for 'dish of the day' - stir fried beef and sticky rice, washed down with a glass of Da Lat Merlot. That 'll teach us!
Certainly back to the map for
tomorrow evening's meal which will be our last, we are desperate to 'go French' before we leave.
Tiip of the Day: Don't overestimate your ability to navigate strange places, or you could go hungry!
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