We got picked up at the hotel this morning for our tour of the local villages. Our guide was a young man called Linh who spoke good English, and we had a driver too. They drove us out of town into the pine forests, and our first stop was one of the flower farms. We looked inside some growing tunnels which were all framed from bamboo. They had acres of Gerberas, roses and Sweet Williams inside. At a viewpoint further on we got a good look at a pair of black bulbu...

This morning we got up bright and early at 6am to go to the Tuyem Yam reservoir south of the town for some early birding, but the best laid plans of mice and men... After laying in to the steaming vats of noodles and stir-fries on the breakfast buffet, we set out for a local laundry and to pay the remainder of our booking fee to Groovy Gecko. Whilst there we got talked into booking a tour tomorrow around some local villages and a waterfall, for one million Dong....

Yesterday after seeing the pagoda we got back on the train and trundled back to Dalat. The countryside inbetween is terraced but almost completely covered in agricultural growing tunnels. Not pretty at all, but the crops inside looked very lush and healthy. Every vegetable you could think of, a few you couldn't, and a lot of cut flowers too. Arriving back in town it rained very heavily. We took shelter in a roadside cafe and drank tiny glasses of thick treacly a...

We've had a wacky architecture day. Started off with a buffet breakfast to die for, and I nearly did, here at the Dalat Plaza Hotel, a place that is just too good for the likes of us. The restaurant is a whole floor of the hotel, with a wall-length window through to a bonsai rock-garden populated with kitschy little Chinese figures. I concentrated my attack on the more Full-English type items on the breakfast spread, but I might experiment with the Vietnamese noo...

Wednesday 15th. Waiting for the bus to Dalat. Yesterday morning we went out birding before breakfast again. We walked along the road as far as the Uncle Dong tree, and saw quite disappointingly little considering how early we'd gone out. The gibbons were barely singing. But just before the Uncle Dong we saw a Siamese Flameback c*** with two hens. It's a gorgeous black pheasant type bird with a sickle shaped tail, a funny bobbly crest and iridescent gold feathers...