Blogs from Lam Dong, Central Highlands, Vietnam, Asia - page 32

We arrived in Da lat after a shorter bus ride than usual, well it seemed shorter. The travel distance was 6 hours, and of course with some aimless stops. Our last stop was for lunch even though we were very close to Da lat at this point, but then the bus driver wouldn't have got his free lunch at the restaurant if we carried on to Da Lat. This restaurant was quite strange, it had crocodile in a cage and a fake waterfall. The lunch again as horrible. When we arrived at Da Lat we set off to find some decant food. I was very frustrated at this point with the food situation. And by the looks of the restaurant that we chose I opted to order just a banana shake. I made the right decision, ... read more

Happy New Year greetings from Pnomh Penh, where we're hanging out and enjoying copious amounts of chicken amok and banana lassi, washed down with the ubiquitous beerlao! It's been a while since my last update which covered Tiger Leaping Gorge and trekking in northern Laos, but it's been a very busy few weeks since then. Not least as I've met up with Danielle who I met in St Petersburg. Regular readers will know that a group of us travelled from there and through Russia and Mongolia together on the Trans-Siberian railway. Danielle had to fly home from Beijing but she's since flown out to meet me in Ho Chi Minh City - and the plan is to travel through to Australia together over the next few months! So after picking Danielle up in Ho Chi Minh ... read more

Where to start? Maybe with the fact that I can barely sit down right now thanks to a sore butt from 7 hours on a bike....! Anyway, I'm writing from Mui Ne, a lovely beach town on the South-eastern coast of Vietnam. It is a 19km stretch of beach with just one road all the way along it - and hundreds of various bungalows and resorts right on the beach. Somehow we managed to score a room for 4 for $10US on our first night - a cheap 2.50 each! Having spent one night in Delat - the strawberry capital of Vietnam (or so it seemed!) we awoke on Thursday morning to board a bus for a short trip to Dihn Linh where our bike ride started. With awesome mountain bikes we began our 80km journey, ... read more

so i got into dalat at 2pm. 2.05pm i decided to leave. during this brief interim, i jumped into a taxi, met an easy rider and agreed for him to drive me 700 km round vietnam til we got to saigon. i checked into the peace hotel, same people as in hoi an, and as with all vietnam, it was same-same. i wandered down stairs after not being scammed by anyone within 2 mins of stepping of a bus, and met peter, (vietnamese) who told me all about the easy riders and what they do. uh, that would be riding easy. i'd read all about them in the LP and had met one (albeit an imposter) in Nha Trang. unfortunately i'd blown this poor sod off because i found rowan, lan and judith sitting at the ... read more

Well we now know why the waves were so big and why it was stormy for our last day in Mui Ne Beach. There was a typhoon coming. We were sleeping in these little bamboo bungalows on the beach and were woken up by huge winds and coconuts and trees flying everywhere. The power then went out. During the night we had no idea it was a typhoon, we just thought it was a normal storm. When we woke up the next day the streets and houses and buildings looked pretty destroyed. The roads were very hard to drive on because they were covered in sand from the beach that the wind had blown up. Pretty scary stuff! About 9000 homes were destroyed and 50 people died in the towns around us. We then carried on ... read more