Dalat - an experience I'll never forget!
Trip Start
Apr 01, 2008
1
3
20
Trip End
Jul 24, 2009
Dalat,
Vietnam
Saturday, April 19, 2008
So up bright and early yesterday morning to catch the bus at 7.45am. This, in my humble opinion and I must admit somewhat limited long distance bus experiences, was the WORST BUS TRIP EVER!In true chaotic HCM style, we ended up doing a few (of the same) blocks, changing buses (which also involved waiting in a cafe doing nothing with no idea what was going on) and then taking about 2 hours (at least) to get out of the city. I actually fell asleep at one stage and woke up about 20 mins later to find we'd moved about 50 metres. Was supposed to take 6 hours for the approx 300 km trip to Dalat... instead took 9 1/2 hours - yup averaging about 30-35 kms an hour. It also involved temperamental air conditioning, an erratic driver who took joy in driving on the wrong side of the ride and overtaking on bends with the horn as a warning, but the icing on the cake was the fact that we had to stop along the way so that the driver could borrow a hose to cool the engine down with water
The Kamikaze Bus
! Near the end we were going so slowly through the mountains that I think pedal bikes were overtaking us. But what can you do... I was pretty patient for the first 7-8 hours, but got pretty whingy and irritable nearing the end!But nevertheless, we got here eventually. Hopped on the back of an Easy Rider motorbike and staying at the Dreams 2 Hotel which is fairly sweet. Nice rooms and great breakfast (recurring theme here). However, it was pretty amusing when Paddy woke up in the middle of night with a pressing urge for the bathroom (had a few Tiger Beers the night before) to find we had inexplainably been locked out of our own bathroom. Of course by this stage I needed to go, so Paddy had to find his way down 4 floors in the dark to get to reception where he promptly walked into a glass door and woke up two of your local lads just panned out snoring on the lobby couches... I guess you had to be there, but it was a stunning end to a somewhat frustrating day!
Today ended up being a big one though. We employed the services of 'Tran Cao Cuong' (called him 'Gong', pretty funny guy with broken but understandable english) who took us mountain/road biking, elephant riding, and mountain climbing. To be honest, a 45 minute spin class is my own personal hell, so to spend a good portion of the day biking..
View from our Hotel Balcony early morning
. well that was just insanity. But I'd been swept up by the 'adventure attitude' of the mountains and couldn't back out now. The elephant ride was decent enough, but that was until monsoon rains decided to downpour on us. I'm talking tennis ball raindrops (ok maybe slight exageration but it was bad). I felt pretty proud of myself for buying my raincoat in NZ and packing it in our daypack against Paddy's scoffs - but still got pretty soaked everywhere else! We then climbed Mount Pinhatt which is 1969 metres high... I was wet and totally knackered. I was pretty much cajoled and dragged up this stupid hill and after all that it was covered in bloody mist! Still, the sense of achievement remained! A 1 hour bike ride through the mountains back to Dalat and I have to admit even though I may have lagged behind the boys, I'm glad I did it. So yup, pretty shattered now and after a few bottles of Saigon Beer... well bed looks good! Dalat is pretty nice, much preferred to the city. It's likened as the Vietnamese equivalent of the 'Swiss Alps in Springtime'. It's definitely a cooler climate, the scenery is very impressive (Tuyen Lam Lake was beautiful by boat and bicyle), and we think the people are happier. Tomorrow we have a bus ride to Nha Trang, which is 'supposed' to be 6 hrs but I will remain constantly skeptical of quoted times for the remainder of this trip and am a strong proponent for flying! Anyway fingers crossed, keeping positive!
