Suoi Cat Hotel Dalat

hello everyone i am now in a place called dalat which is in the mountians its much colder here but the weather has been realy good ive not sean skys this blue in a long time + theres no polution here so the air is clean.<br><br>on the first day i had a wonder around the city its not so big but most of the stuff is pritty spread out i manged to see ...

... been completely removed. Did we mention it has been raining a lot and non-stop since last night? The dirt under the asphalt had turned to mud, a LOT of gunky, funky, red mushy mud.<br><br>Our minibus faced a larger bus going into the bend and normally, with the law of the largest to the smallest on the road in effect, we should have let the other bus pass. But machoism flared its nose and both buses went into the curve at the same time, at the ...

... bottom too which adds a bit to the adrenaline rush! <br><br>We kept trekking (taking in the gorgeous scenery of forests, waterfalls and the river... very pretty) until our next slide. This was muuuuch scarier as the rapids were shorter but looked a lot angrier. The first slide was on the right and was fun; the second slide was on the left and was scary as you go backwards! We did the backwards one twice though as it was brilliant fun! Drew managed to hurt himself on every slide, but ...

... before heading to another part of the lake to do a quick elephant ride. Massive mixed feelings about this one as it was cool and the elephant was so lovely to pet but we both felt more than a bit wrong riding on the back of a animal that is supposed to be wild. The fellas assured us that they are well treated and are taken to a'jungle' enclosure for the night but it still felt wrong and is not something that we will repeat. Anyhoo we then travelled a long way ...

... up a four piece band - drum set and all! Our extremely charismatic host (he could have doubled for a Jungle Cruise tour guide at Disneyland with his plethora of hackneyed jokes) played the part of lead singer and had a surprisingly accordant voice. He sang a couple of Western favorites along with a Vietnamese song just before stopping short to ask the audience to volunteer to accompany him onstage to sing a song from his or her homeland. Immediately Tom shouted Belgium ...

... clutch, I guided<br>Greg through driving a clutch motorcycle which was hilarious. Regardless<br>of how ridiculous the situation was, it worked and we got to see all<br>kinds of cute fishing villages and saved a ton of money going to the<br>sand dunes. The daily monsoon poured down on us during our ride back to<br>town and we were completely drenched by the pelting rain drops. <br><br>There<br>wasn't much to do in town since everything was mostly closed up. I ...

... several rows of chairs, and partitioning off a large rectangular sitting area. Oooh, this is exciting! Maybe there's a celebrity on board, or even royalty! <br><br>Moments later, passengers begin to disembark the plane but are held behind a glass partition separating the waiting area from the ramp leading to the plane. Hmm...no one appears to be of "star" quality...Passengers begin to pile up when finally the ...

... but they'd put bloody lights everywhere so it wasn't that hard!! There was a shooting range where you could shoot machine guns if you fancied but I'm anti-gun so avoided it. It wasn't a great experience as I learnt more about the tunnels in my Lonely Planet book than from visiting the site... so I blame the tour guide... although to be fair it was raining so he probably rushed us around more than he normally would have?<br>All in all felt more like a tourist than ...

... a much bigger operation, a silk factory. <br><br>Again this was surprisingly interesting. The first process was to collect the silk skins when they are softest, which is just before the moths break out. <br><br> <br><br>After this, they're unceremoniously chucked ...

... don't worry xxx. <br><br>Hopefully we'll get some good weather tomorrow to enjoy the ride because most of Vietnam is currently under moody rainclouds, so fingers crossed... <br><br>The day after tomorrow we'll probably either head straight to Ho Chi Minh City (the old 'Saigon'), or visit a coastal town on the way there if the weather's good. When we get to HCMC we've booked a flight to 'Phu Quoc' island to chill ...