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...

Tuesday 14th Oh dear, I'm going to be one day behind with this blog for the rest of the trip, I can tell. Yesterday we got up early for a 6am breakfast. The gibbons in the primate sanctuary across the river set off singing as we sat gazing into the dawn-lit forest from our restaurant balcony. I was sure I could hear one gibbon answering them from our side of the river, and this was confirmed by a Brit know-all birder we met later in the day who said he'd seen a ...