Day 40 Saturday June 13, 2009

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Day 40 Saturday June 13, 2009

We have been traveling 40 days/ 40 nights. We arrived in Nha Trang at 6am and switched buses to take us onto Dalat, a little town in the mountains in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The roads up the mountain were long, windy, and hot (poor A/C). This bus was way too big to be traversing up these narrow roads! I don't even want to know how many motobikes we ran off the road, but the horns were blaring all the way up the mountain. We stopped twice, once for a potty break and then for lunch. The toilets in the women's restroom as this bus stop were interesting. After consulting with some British girls, we decided that the stalls were for privacy only as there were no toilets, not even a hole in the ground. Apparently you just squat on the floor, then turn on the tap to drain the waste through crack in the wall at the end of the slope. That was the first time I felt that washing my feet was more important than washing my hands when leaving the bathroom, Yuck! Lunch was good though. I had cuttlefish and steamed rice. This place also had some animals that were caged, a monkey and some cute littel things that resembled weasels. They weren't caged in the best of conditions, I will spare you the details. We finally arrived in Dalat at 4pm (3 hours behind schedule) and booked our tired traveling selves into Hotel 171. After a rest, we took a walk around the lake and witnessed the biggest crowd of people (young and old) flying kites I have ever seen (both in real life and on TV). It was amazing! There were tons of local tourists due to summer break. We had dinner at the Viet Hung CAfe and then had the best ice cream yet since leaving the States. Next we took a stroll through the local market. Lots of people and lots of cheap stuff. Nothing for us worth buying though. Our hotel 171 was $10 night for a huge room with 3 big beds. I was halfway concerned they would rent out the rest of the beds on us, but thankfully they didn't.

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