Hotel Thanh Dat Dalat

... amazing waterfall which we walked to the bottom of getting soaked in the meantime and a few other places. The highlight was defiantaly riding about on the bike watching the stunning countryside, we have never seen such a furtile green place in all our travels. It was clear that our drivers absolutely loved their country and were so enthusiastic when explaining the sights, particularly the areas where a lot of the Vietnamese War battles took place as Hien was a interprator ...

... 000-12,000 dongs and our guide and driver thought it was scandalous to pay that much for a fruit. But pay we did and now we have a mother of a big pomelo sitting in our hotel room. Since we're leaving for Saigon tomorrow, Pierre wanted to give it to the hotel owner but there is just no bloody way i'm letting him off the hook since he INSISTED on buying the beast. We're gonna eat the damn thing even if we have to carry it all the way to Saigon by aeroplane ...

... wonderful monsoon-like downpour, just as we stopped for lunch (it doesn't matter how late we are, or how near to our destination, if it's lunchtime, the bus stops for lunch:)<br><br>After one particularly bouncy section, the bus was clanking and groaning more than usual - a couple of times the driver got out to have a look around it. I stupidly sat near the back, where the worst of the bouncing and clanking was going on...<br><br>Great thing ...

... far the nicest we have met on our travels. We both knew we were going off the tourist track into the mountains but thought it would be nicer scenery and see a few cool things but before we had even left Dalat town we had our first suprise 'activity' as the boys put it. They took us to a house where the people make Tofu. I knew it was made from soya beans but had never seen the process so it was cool to see it being done as a cottage industry in the people front room ...

... far no messing. We loved the place and the views from the top tower over the town and the mountains beyond were worth a dollar alone. Would love to stay in Dalat longer as its a really nice place but as iI said time is of the essence so got to keep her trucking. Yeeoohh! Tomorrow we are taking a two day motorbike tour to Na Trang on the coast with a company called easy riders. They were recommended to us by some friends and having met our guides/riders today it ...

... mountains. We decided not to take the day trips as we were going to Nha Trang anyway, which is right through the mountains.<br><br>We left Dalat for Nha Trang at 10am for the 4 hour minibus journey. The minibus was a 16 seater and was pretty comfortable. Everytime it turned a corner on the very windy road there was another spectacular view. The scenery on the journey was pretty ...

... of the temple and pagoda were covered in broken china plates, pottery and my favorite, beer bottles! How ingenious! Great way to recycle! Like all other tourists sites in Dalat, there had to be something out of the ordinary. In the case of the Dragon Temple, it was the multi-colored, circular neon lights shining behind Buddha's meditative state! Huh? What the? <br><br>I enjoyed the next site, which I knew to be of an odd nature, the Hang Nga Guest ...

... because of Super Furry Animals! And they were even more impressed when I said that my neighbour mate Elin used to lived with Gruff!<br><br>Anyway, the next day, Julian, Kim and I walked to the War Remnants Museum. It was another mind-blowing experience to add to the land mine museum in Laos, and S21/ Killing fields, Cambodia. There were facts and figures..... 3 million Vietnamese killed by the Americans... 2 million of whom were civilians (including children ...

... honest she didn't miss much, unless you REALLY like cabbages! <br><br> <br><br>After that we headed back along the main road, this time stopping outside a few HUGE plastic greenhouses which we were told contained millions of flowers. <br><br>Apparently Vietnam is now ...

... boat in Ha Long Bay. It was good to see them and to compare our travels since then, I'm sure we'll meet them further down the road somewhere. <br><br>The rest of the journey was painfully slow but uneventful, until we reached Nha Trang, a resorty town on the east coast. It rained pretty much the whole journey, so any thoughts we had of maybe breaking the journey and having a day by the beach were banished along with ...