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I'm in the honeymoon capital of Vietnam, Da Lat. A strange town way inland, which has a cooler climate than the coast and is known amongst backpackers for offering some of the best sights on the Easy Rider motorbike tours.
Hopping on another sleeper bus from Na Trang I bumped into Kelly, who I used to go to uni with, and her boyfriend Joe, so we had good company for the eventful trip ahead! The floods in Central Vietnam have meant road closures and landslides, so our coach slipped and slid around the roads, and had to turn around and go back at one point because of a severe landslide. Taking the secondary roads meant that tourist buses aren't best suited to, and our big bus headed up around the winding hillside roads, veering dangerously close to the edge of the steep slopes and making us exchange worried glances. Arriving about 4 hours late we were all glad to get off the bus in one piece, but were less pleased to discover that our bags were sopping wet! The flood water had drenched everything in the hold, so another round of hanging clothes, hair-drying shoes and wringing out backpacks commenced...
We stayed in The Pink House and signed up to their tour of the local countryside, we had a great day! I hopped on the back of a suitably pink scooter, and we were taken around the hills, stopping off at various points to leanr about the local produce, try out a local delicacy (crickets! - they're actually quite tasty), going up to the village of a hilltribe and chatting with one of the villagers, eating lunch made for us by Buddhist nuns, and generally loving larking around Vietnam on a scooter! My new waterproof passed the test with flying colours and we arrived back to Da Lat happily exhausted.
We'd read in the guidebook that Da Lat isn't frequented by many Westerners, and that was proven by the stares we attracted in the town... and the lack of anything edible! The next morning Cords and I set off to find breakfast (a breadroll had to do) and to take in one of the main attractions - The Crazy House. The brainchild of the daughter of one of Vietnam's presidents, it's an Alton-Towers-esque Escher-style oddity; a maze of pathways and steps around a garden, hotel and log cabin. Very odd indeed, but funny - I took a winding staircase which turned out to lead nowhere, and we giggled at the bedroom decor - giant plastic bears and tiny dwarf-sized built-in beds. It was definitely worth seeing, but the walk through town confirmed that Da Lat didn't have much else to offer... and it was still raining. A swift exit was planned, and I embarked on yet another crazy bus journey. 23 people in a minivan built for 18, slippery winding hillside roads and no loo breaks. Was I glad to get to Mui Ne! The beach holiday starts here...
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