Blogs from Da Lat, Lam Dong, Central Highlands, Vietnam, Asia - page 9

Another early start, this one with the apprehension that we now feel with any upcoming move from one hostel to another. Mainly due to the unknown quality of the transportation that awaits us, but also to a lesser degree the quality of the accommodation that also awaits in a new place. The start was actually earlier even than we planned in part because of the pain Gregg was experiencing from his right ear. Yesterday lunchtime it started to give him some annoyance which was slowly increasing. As a result he awoke at 6am a full 15 mins before the alarm. We were due to be picked up by the bus company between 7:15 and 7:30 and we also had to get our reception to make sure they were picking our new friends up from their hotel ... read more

What a game the 2010 Grand Final in the Australian Football League was, well the first game any way. I thought it would be pretty easy to find a place to watch the game in Vietnam because of all the Aussie ex-pats over here. What I did find was that once you were outside of Ha Noi or Saigon it was hard to track down a venue that would be showing the game live. Fortunately our hotel had the Australia Network (even though it was very fuzzy and there was a lot of static and I had to keep adjusting the arial) so we decided to stay an extra day in Dalat so I could watch the game. Now as any good Aussie knows, the Grand Final just isn't a Grand Final unless you have a ... read more

8/2/10-Dalat The night bus dropped us off in the middle of Dalat at 5 am. We expected forests or jungles in the hillside, instead we were in a sleepy city without any green in sight. Our initial response was disappointment. We parked ourselves at the only open tea stand and waited until the hotels opened. Once established, we considered our gameplan. Our hotel was the hangout of "the Easy Riders", a group of vets who serve as motorcycle guides to the forest/jungle areas of Dalat. On my first trip to Vietnam, I was both a driver and passenger on motorcycles across the northern countryside. But something was telling me NOT to do this excursion. I don't know if it was the weather, or my weariness from the night bus, but I had a gut instinct that ... read more

We ended the last blog with us heading out for a night out in Nha Trang. It turned into a really fun night, mainly helped by the insanely strong cocktail buckets and glasses of vodka with a tiny amount of Pepsi on top. We met lots of random people and played pool increasingly badly. It was fun though and very cheap, the happy ‘hour’ ran from 4 till 11! Ended up being quite a drunken and late night and somehow managed to stumble back to the hotel. The next day we went to the beach (a little bit hungover) and relaxed in the sun and sea. The beach is Nha Trang’s main attraction and is very nice with lovely clear water spanning more than the whole length of the town. This is however pretty much all ... read more

We arrived in Dalat on the 15th June after a long bus journey from Ho Chi Minh City. I had booked us a hotel online, YK Home Villa, which was a 10 minute drive from the city centre. When we arrived we were greeted by Lys who runs the hotel along with her husband and other family members. Our time in Dalat was made even more special by her and her family, as well of course all the beautiful scenery. On our first full day in Dalat we decided to book ourselves onto a Countryside tour and were picked up at 8am by a lovely tour guide called 'Buffalo', well that's what it translated to from Vietnamese apparently! We shared the comfortable mini bus with 2 other men who we had met the day before on ... read more