After another night in Saigon we hit our open bus tour ticket up to Delat. The bus tour is quite a touristy route, but is a bargain at 12 quid for the whole country. 'oh no, what if I don't get to see the real Vietnam', cost and convenience take priority, especially as our time is a little over cooked, due to the extra time in Cambodia.
More buses, but a relatively painless journey, we arrive in the honeymoon capital of Vietnam, just before Valentines Day. The beautiful city (180 000 people), sits amongst rolling hills, and sits at around 1500m altitude. When the sun is out in the day, the cool breeze makes the temperature perfect, and not humid like Saigon, but it's much cooler at night, jumper weather. One of the guys we were talking to had seven layers on!
Our guesthouse is full of smiling people, and our room is pretty sweet for the extra buck that we paid. Before we come to Vietnam, people always talked about the Vietnamese being cheating people, always after your money. So far the service has been incredible, and I find in general that they always wanting to laugh and joke about things with you and that are quite industrious money wise, but I don't see anything wrong with that. The average Vietnamese earns around 400 pounds a year. I think I mentioned before, don't listen to anyone else or me for that matter.
On our first night we took a stroll around town in the rain, and just soaked up the atmosphere (boom boom). The second day, we wanted to take in a bit more of the place on our own, rather than being led around with a lead, so we hired a moped. Was a little worried about the dangers on the road, but with me at the wheel, Kate never looked worried. First we visited the Lam Ty Ni Pagoda, which is a pretty little place, but really famous for the man who runs the place called the Mad Monk or Mr Thuc. He showed us out the back through his gardens to his art work, which there are literally thousands of, all painted by him, it was a little weird, but very impressive all the same.
Next we drove to the king's summer home, again in beautiful surroundings, the building itself was not much to speak of. There wasn't any information regarding the king, or when the last one was head of state, I don't think they have one now. we then made our way to the Hang Nga Guesthouse also known as the Crazy House, which has kind of a weird fantasy design, and rooms which you can stay in, although probably expensive, and a little strange, it was still a lot of fun, and is still being worked on. I would have loved its mazy interior when I was a kid (and a little now).
With very very little help from Kate's map reading, we happened upon the Thein Vuong Pagoda, which was pleasant enough, which was itself situated next to a man made lake called Quang Trung Reservoir, which was very breath taking, but once we got down to it, we discovered that the boat trip was a little out of our price bracket, so settled for an ice cream.
After a terrible lunch (terrible dinner to come later), we made our way to oldest train station in Vietnam called Cremalliere, which still has some old steam engines running, just for tourists, but you had to be in a group of at least 4, so after playing around on the platform, we made our way to two less impressive pagodas out of town called Minh Nguyet Cu, and Sy Lam Pagoda the drive was relaxing, and really felt good to be out and about, really good day.
Feeling like we've been taking it easy (belly's gonna get ya), we signed up for some adventure the next day, and after much discussing, we end up just doing some mountain biking, which I wanted to do, but Kate wanted to go by horse, cost won the day. About an hour into the journey, Kate is giving me serious evils, and generally looking thoroughly pissed, despite cracking scenery, and good company (me). We cycled 40km, and it was a tough day, off road, and I managed (whilst showing off) to stack it over my handle bars twice, with only my poor poor ego being hurt. The main reason for these lapses, was that I switched to Kate's dodgy bike (before she threw the thing off the side of the hill), the bike only had front brakes, and therefore on a steep decent, I was only ever gonna see grass.
After lunch, there was a lot of downhill, and Kate really started to enjoy it, cruising through forest, down to the 'valley of love', allegedly the most romantic spot in Vietnam. I think we both found it the tackiest spot in Vietnam, but I've never been much for romance, couple of pints and a curry would suit this Casanova. Anyway the views at the top were again fantastic, and we then made the long journey back to the hotel.
A little achy, a few scrapes, and some greasy hands (Chain kept falling off), we settled for a quite meal in the cafe next to our place, with incredibly friendly staff, and 1950's decor. This is also the easy rider driver hanging about in there, we unfortunately couldn't afford to take one of there tours, but they were great to chat too, good English (And French), and lots of local information, and mainly were just happy to chat, and loved telling jokes. If they weren't talking to us, there was always the illegal card game in the corner to keep them interested. We retired to bed, with a cheap bottle of rice wine, and an old film. The bottle of rice wine cost a quid for a litre, 30%, and had a bit of a kick to it, needless to say I went to bed early and kates still feeling like a pair of soiled y-fronts today at 4 o'clock. Tomorrow, 'we're on the road again'.
Sorry for the thousands of pictures, technology here is wicked, and just keeps piling them on. Hope your all well, and we aren't boring you too much. It is such a bloody beautiful country.
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