Blogs from Vietnam, Asia - page 1327

Ah Dalat! The cool climate, lack of hawkers and relaxed atmosphere in this hill town suit me nicely after the intense humidity and annoying shouts of Saigon. I spent my last day there sending out postcards and taking a walk. And thus I went north to Dalat. The main insustries in Dalat and flowers, art, cheesy tourism (fake Eiffel tower anyone?) and coffee. Most tourists here are middle class Saigonese and western backpackers are comparatively thin on the ground. Last night I went into a cheap local restaurant and, after getting a little absorbed in my food, looked up and found that I'd gathered a large audience of small children. Whether they were staring at my skin tone, bizzare table manners was amystery, though it was probably a mix of both. I grinned and waved and ... read more

Today Alastair, Vicky and I took a tour through the hills surrounding Dalat. Minority People Our first stop was to visit a minority village. Here we were able to listen to some rather cool traditional music, taste some rather potent whole grain rice wine and try and avoid buying all manner of souveniers. Thankfully the pressure selling wasn't as bad as in some other areas. Plantatations Our tour then took us to a coffee and silk plantation. Half of the land was used to grow coffee beans while the other half was used to grow mulberry leaves, used to nurture silk worms. Once the worms develop into cysalises these are collected, boiled (to kill the worm) and then spun into yarns. These are then woven my a wooden loom controlled my ancient looking punchcards - very ... read more

Thursday - We checked out of our hotel and waited for our open tour bus to Da Lat. Without access to the pool we became miserable in the un-air conditioned lobby of the hotel and conditions did not improve much on the cramped bus. Piled high with luggage we started out of Mui Ne along the coast before turning inland. About thirty minutes in to the drive the bus driver got a call from a resort in Mui Ne for one of the passengers. As the driver spoke no English a good ten minutes of misunderstanding and comedy preceded the realization that the call was for us and that our hotel had failed to charge us for the very expensive call we made to try and resolve a credit card issue again with Capitol One. The ... read more

We arrived in Hoi An with the Easy Riders around 4 pm. We had a hotel in mind that we found in our guidebook but agreed that they could take us to Thuy Duong 3 Hotel, a hotel that their customers often stay at, for a look. The hotel was very nice with a courtyard pool and rooms ranging from $20-40. We decided to splurge because we had been “roughing it” and were a little saddle sore so we stayed in the $40 room (with the balcony overlooking the pool) the first night and then moved to a $25 room (with the balcony overlooking the street) for the rest of our stay. By the end of our stay we felt like it was a hotel that looked really nice but once you got past the look ... read more

Today I took a coach to Dalat. I was pretty under the weather, so went to bed soon after arriving.... read more