Dalat

---

---

This will be a pretty short entry as it is only covering Dalat which is in the Central Highlands. It is so different from the rest of Vietnam that it didn't make sense to include it with another entry on the blog. Plus we have free internet so figure we may as well update it.

We went to Dalat by a bus and were told it would take us 6 hours (although we were expecting 7) but it actually took us 10.5 hours so we were very fed up once we got there as it was already dark outside. The worst bit about our journey was that there was a 50ish British man with a young (maybe 16-20 years old) Vietmanese boy!!! It looked extremely dodgy and we had to listen to him speak to the boy thoughout the whole trip.

Even though the journey was not the best Dalat was beautiful. It was much cooler than Saigon and very scenic. It had fantastic markets for fruit and food--perfect for us as that is all we can buy. There are some fantastic banana chips/crisps which we have been a fan of since Laos which we bought loads of. The people were all really nice, again a lot of people did not speak english and did not really negotiate. If you tried to negotiate they seemed confused and thought you did not understand them so repeated the price previously quoted.

We had two full days here and spent most of the time walking. The first day we walked the "Three Peaks walk" which includes the highest mountain in Dalat. Becuase we were not extremely confident of the path we took a guide from Groovy Geckos tour company who was excellent and made us a fantastic picnic lunch. The first peak was hard work but the second two were easy enough. The third peak was very touristy. Dalat is a very popular tourist destination for Vietmanese and there were loads of jeeps that did the Chevy Chase tour... drive up to the top, take a pictures (maybe sitting on a horse with a cowboy hat..seriously) and then go back down. I think our technique of walking for 5 hours to get these is much more rewarding.

Because we were so happy with the tour we had done we decided to go with the same company again to do another walk. We did not have our own personal guide this time as there were 4 other people in our group. They were all really good fun though and we all got on really well. There was one couple with a 6 month old baby doing the walk which was very impressive---it was an 18 km walk with a few hills. The walk was pretty long but not nearly as steap as the previous day. We went over some dodgy bridges which were swinging back and forth as we walked. While walking you would look down and see an old piece of wood hanging down (that was once part of the bridge) and hope nothing you steppend on decided to snap.

It was the eve on their Independance day when we were in Dalat so lots of people were celebrating as they had a day off work the next day so it was fun to watch the excitement.

---

Photos

Rob Crossing Dodgy Bridge
The scariest part was trying to take the picture as we could then only hold on with one hand!!!

River we crossed
so if we fell off bridge this is where we woud land!