Dalat

Today we explored the city that is Dalat. The city itself isn't massive and hasn't a huge tourist scene (which isn't a bad thing). Our first port of call was the Crazy House, this house of horrors would make a Health & Safety inspector cream their pants, it has to be one of the dodgiest tourist attractions I've been too and it's only a matter of time before the inevitable happens! That aside it's an interesting place with wacky rooms with animals with neon eyes...you could do alot worse things with your $1.

After this we walked around the city and had a look at the cathedral and onto the flower gardens, and even better the daily hussle bussle and goings on.

The main reason for going to Dalat is to get an 'easy rider' to your next destination, the weather however is a fair bit dodge for this (flash flooding) and I think I'll leave it until another time before I ride across rural Vietnam on the back of some strangers bike. It's not a huge disappointment as we're going to motorbike through the north of Vietnam.

Next stop Nha Trang.

Dalat

Arrived in Dalat and after much hassle from various touts and hotel operators we went on the hunt for somewhere to stay, we looked at a few places along one street and although the rooms were somewhat nice they had a musty damp smell. We passed one hotel and it looked fairly new (the receptionist was outside tiling the ground). He showed us to a room which was more then impressive and I'm pretty sure we were the first people ever in this room, the taps had the stickers still on them! We took the room for the low ball figure of $8 a night.

As far as Dalat is concerned I'm not too sure on the food scene we were walking for a good hour and found this restaurant on the lake, looked abit too plush for my liking but it was reasonable and a great meal with beer for less then a big mac meal back home.

Dalat as abit of a French influence, they even have a radio tower that looks like a scaled down Eiffel tower.

The Road to Dalat

Got the 07:30am bus to Dalat. It's 265kms from Mui Ne but takes over 4 hours on the windiest roads you're ever likely to meet. The bus was a minibus it was a bit too cramped for my liking but I soldiered on. Driving up the mountains your ears start to pop as you climb the hill. Dalat itself has an altitude of 1500m.

We stopped for a break at this cool little village, all types of animals were running around, cows, pigs, goats. Nearly nice rural setup.

Lets see what Dalat has to offer.

Mui Ne - 2

Got a bike this morning, lovely brand new Yamaha, it purred like a kitten, the helmet on the other hand is about as much use as taping a lonely planet book to your head (see picture), I think it's a jockies helmet if anything. We decided to head out towards the sand dunes but got sidetracked along the way (fancy word for lost). We stopped at a nice harbour and it was all go on the fishing vessels. We found a beach by accident and drove up to it, there was a couple of lads kite surfing so we watched that for a while and spotted the red dunes in the distance.

Headed to the dunes and in front of them were all these café's looking for us to park there, I asked how much? 5000dong (about 25 cents) but free if we buy a drink, we left it there as we were sure that a wheel would be missing or something when we got back. The dunes themselves are nice but not breathtakingly amazing, worth going to see at the same time. Arrived back and he wanted 4 times the price of a can of coke, I gave him his protection money and we went towards another harbour we spotted on the bus journey yesterday, it has loads of wooden boats painted very colourfully.

Went for probably one of the nicest (and most expensive [still very cheap] ) in some cool restaurant run by a French guy, had the steak with potato gratton and ratatouille, I was skeptical to the quality of the steak but he assured me it was of excellent quality. We've an early start in the morning as were heading to Dalat, unfortunately we didn't get to bed early as we ran into some guy we'd talked to briefly in Langkawi, Malaysia. One again "Small World"

Mui Ne

Got on the bus today and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a sleeper bus, we met an Australian couple in Cambodia that were heading to Vietnam and had some hassle with their bus, we bumped into them and they were on our bus to Mui Ne, small world.

We arrived in Mui Ne and looking at a few beach huts we found this nice room inside a complex that was brand new and all the trims for feck all money. The place is very chilled out and not completely ruined by tourist traps.

Mui Ne is a big fishing village and it's great watch them out in the sea netting the fish in a bathtub style boat.

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) - 3

Well thankfully it was a 24 hour thing, I've drank about 8 bottles of water and a bottle of flat 7up (my Mam used to give us this when we were ill). I suppose it's mind over matter fighting these sort of bugs, if you throw in the towel, your theirs for the taking!

Went for a walk today around the city nothing to hectic as I'm still recovering. It absolutely poured rain again today, the sheer pressure of the rain alone is like a pressure washer!

We've booked our 4 hour bus ride to Mui Ne in the morning.

Food Poisoning

Well it was inevitable that this would happen but needless to say it's an unwanted additional to my holiday. Had to cancel the Chu Chi tunnel tour for a day in bed / the bathroom. I've it narrowed down to 2 meals but my number 1 suspect is the fried egg at Breakfast.