back in Vietnam

We were glad to get back to Vietnam after Cambodia as the poverty is hard to take. We flew to Da Lat and arrived late at night. At 4,500 feet Da Lat was positively cold relative to the rest of Vietnam. The locals had their children wrapped in winter wollies as if they were expecting a snow storm. Meanwhile the weather hardened Wellingtonians were going around in shorts and tee shirts.

Da Lat is known as the Little Paris of Vietnam, the city of Lovers. Either Fred and I thought it was about as romantic as a visit to the dentist. Maybe it did not help that the lake had been drained of water and the city centre was a mud pool, but it did not stir our hearts much.

However we loved the market, probably one of the nicest we have visited so far. The produce and hand made sweets beat any Los Gatos farmer's market day. The range of exotic fruit and veg was amazing. If I only had a kitchen!
Fred was particularly drawn to the selection of little cup cakes. His eyes are bigger than his stomach.
We decided to go for a hike in the local national park, to make room for the cup cakes. The hike was very steep and quite challenging, however it was sad to reach the top of the hike only to find that it was covered in trash. I have never seen anything like it on top of any mountain. What a pity.

Just as we turned around the mother of all monsoons hit us and we hiked down in torrential rain. Everything got drenched and sadly it even blew up my 7 year old cell phone which has stood by me in many countries at this stage. The photo below gives you a sense of the rain that fell.
We decided to leave Da Lat as the romance continued to evade us. Rather than the usual bus ride down to the coast we decided to take a bike. Given that Da Lat is at 4500 feet and we were going to sea level, we reckoned that it could not be too hard. Unfortunately the first section was ALL uphill so we got our exercise in. Here is Fred and our wonderful guide climbing to the summit.

Da Lat is famous for its coffee plantations, in fact we learned that Vietnam is the second largest exporter of coffee in the world. Here are the little beans that make me happy every morning.

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Destination Nha Trang, only another 65K of downhill to go
The road we took is being built through a national park. It was a very beautiful ride down the mountain. This Buddha marks the site of a building accident that killed many of the workers in a landslide.
The end of the ride, lunch overlooking a river and then 40 winks in a hammock.
In the very rural areas you get a sense of the poverty in Vietnam. This house is made of either sugar cane or palm weaved together. It never ceased to amaze me that no matter how poor the house looked there was always a satellite dish or tv Arial to be seen.
On the way to Nha Trang we passed many water buffalo who basically are utilized as we used horses. They seem the most serene animals you have ever come across.

Finally we hit Nha Trang - the beach party town. What a total contrast to anywhere else we have been. This ended up being an oasis right by our hotel. For $1.50 you could rent a lounge chair for the day at a brewery. This beats any brewery I have ever been in in my life. And the beer wasn't half bad either. Not really into the party scene and typical beach stuff we left Nha Trang for Hoi An after two nights.

The best thing we saw in Nha Trang was this massive Buddha which sits on a hill overlooking the city. It was truly magnificent and wins the award for best Buddha to date.

We took an early morning flight to Hoi An this morning and met up with the Vietnamese wife of one of Fred's brother's wife's second cousins (really!). She insisted that we needed to get wheels and quickly supplied us with a motor scooter to go explore the town.
She showed us the locals beach out of town and set us up at her friends cabana for the day. Now this is more like our scene. We we have a couple of more days here being guided around by Huyen.