Vietnam Adventures

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When I read in the guidebook about Dalat, it called it Bizarro Vietnam. After visiting there I have to agree! Not only did we visit Crazy House (mentioned in the last blog) but also the Sun Palace - where attractions include dressing up in Royal clothing and having pictures taken, riding ponies and having more pictures taken with men in extremely scary masks! The Sun Palace was a royal retreat for a Vietnamese King built in the 1930s so you can also wander around and look at a snap shot of life at the time (in the furniture left behind) - as much as I liked doing that at Versailles just wasn't as impressed in this case! Bizarro Vietnam is also home to waterfalls, the one we visited had a luge which you could drive yourself down on (I just don't know about health and safety in the country - driving down a mountain controlling your own breaks!!) and then ride back up, and more men in scary masks that you could have your picture taken with! So far we're nil from 2 though on that front. In the defense of these 'attractions' they were very reasonably priced. Though we did pay for this by having to walk out of these places past the endless rows of tacky souvenirs!

I really enjoyed the cooler weather in Dalat (though perhaps the rain was a tad much) and the freedom of cycling around. It was nice to be in hilly town - reminded me of my time in Germany. The markets were very impressive, loads of fresh produce. The standout was the avocado which was absolutely everywhere! Phil had great fun doing his 'shopping' buying a range of known and unknown fruit and vegetables. The locals also found it quite amusing. We think we discovered the cause of their laughter when the 'tomatos' turned out toe taste quite horrible! We also ran into a portable pet shop! A woman on a bicycle which held goldfish, guppies, and turtles in bags! The baby turtles were perhaps the cutest I've ever seen!

I was quite ill when we arrived so I enjoyed an evening just watching the footy! Felt like being at 'home'! Go Pies!!

It was only a short bus journey to our next destination - a mere 4 hours but as usual we had an adventure. The bus was full and full of locals except us. One poor local had to sit next to me and was given MANY sympathetic looks. The man in charge tried in vain to find him another seat. Alas for both us it was not to be! 😊 The road down the mountain was hair pin turn after hair pin turn and we stopped after a couple of hours for a well earned break for the bus. The tyres were actually smoking! It was also a break for all of the bus sick locals - we finally worked out why they give out small plastic bags on all the buses! We had our usual taxi annoyances on arrival in Nha Trahn. We were given the tourist route and the man didn't like it very much when he realised Phil had a map and pointed out what he was doing. Naturally there was an argument, and naturally we won. We're are getting better at it.. BUT SO SICK OF IT...

We could only allow 24 hours in Nha Trahn and it was so beautiful! An amazing beach! The schedule was tight so there was some relief when the first museum was closed for a conference, the ancient ruins were filled with locals celebrating something so we were able to give culture a tick by 10am and head on to the fun stuff! Mud baths and waterparks! Mud baths are self explanatory but the water park was amazing!

You get in a Swiss/French ski resort standard cable car which carries you from the mainland to an island with a hollywood-eske sign proclaiming VIN PEARL. You get out the other end to find not a queue in sight, hardly even a person and that in fact there is an amusement park AND a water park! After a couple of quick goes on the rollercoaster (quite short but nonetheless there was screaming) it was water park time. Again not a queue in sight. The only limit to the number of rides was how fast you could climb the mountain (no joke) of stairs! There was one and two people rides - my favourite being the Tsunami (again a lot of screaming)
The wost one was called family tube ride, the concept being that you get one ring for 5-8 people and gently go down the large water slide and have fun when you hit the pool at the bottom. The reality is a fear-inducing ride where you ride at silly speeds around corners that take you well over the edge of the slide, and turn you horizontal to the point where skulls are meeting knees or other skulls. That was our last ride for the day.
We met an Israeli friend on the trip around the water-park, who seemed to take great pleasure in running up the stairs and flinging himself into the slides. Unfortunately he took a couple of head shots after a couple of the more dangerous slides, including the before-mentioned family ride. He also demonstrated to the girls what happens when you hold a lizard by its tail, which left the poor thing swimming away with a stump and the girls screaming and swimming in the opposite direction as he held the swinging tail with a big grin on his face.

After Nha Trang we voyaged to Hoi An, which is one of the better preserved cities in the country and managed to avoid the majority of the damage inflicted during the war.

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