Le Petit Paris

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Right now we're in the mountain city of Da Lat. It took us about 8 hours to get here by bus, even though all information, including the schedule we were given, said it was only a 6 hour journey. I think it had something to do with our bus driver, for some reason he would drive excruciatingly slow during parts of the drive, he was an odd one. Oh well.

When we arrived in Da Lat the bus dropped us off in front of a Guest House owned by the company we bought our bus tickets from. This wouldn't have been so bad except for the fact that the place was about 2km away from the city center, where everything is. Now 2km still isn't really that much of a walk, except that I tripped off the curb in Saigon right before we got on the bus, and as a result the right side of my right foot is very swollen and painful, and I could barely walk yesterday. Today I can walk a bit better, but still can't put any weight on the right side of the foot. So we were stuck at some hotel in a part of town we didn't want to stay at, but we stayed there anyways, for the one night, and then checked out this morning and got a cab to where we wanted to stay. The city is very beautiful, lots of small avenues with brick sidewalks and plenty of nice green grass. The whole area is in a mountainous region of Vietnam and right now the temperature is very mild. It's quite nice compared to the heat we've endured everywhere else on the trip. There is also a mini eiffle tower in Da Lat, which is one of the reasons the city is called "Le Petit Paris". We haven't had much chance to explore the region, on account of my gimped up foot, but tomorrow we're taking a tour of the region with an Easy Riders tour guide. The Easy Riders are basically a group of bikers who've left their jobs to become tour guides. They don't have a company or anything, they just cruise around town and will find you. Then they'll take out a little notebook filled with testimonials from previous customers and show you ones from your home country in an effort to persuade you. Should be interesting, and I can't wait to see the area. The scenery is just so different from everywhere else we've been. So yeah, should be fun.

This little internet place doesn't have any USB, so no pictures for now, not that I have much to show.

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