Days 63-67 Dalat, Vietnam (Part One)

The road to Dalat started out ok and then became rough, winding, riddled with potholes and piles of gravel too high to drive over to fill the potholes; roadwork machinery that we drove around and under; little in the way of line markings, crazy traffic and our even crazier bus driver who barely slowed down to take the many hairpin turns! Better to have my head down writing website posts than to look ahead of me at times! Once I did call out to the driver to slow down because my children were going to throw up. Yes Patrick felt ill but I felt more ill thinking we were going to plunge to our deaths! I didn’t take any photos because I really didn’t wish to remember the experience.

Central Market area of Dalat.

We finally arrived in Dalat safely with 4 nights ahead of us and no set plans. Another taxi ride to our guesthouse – YK Home Villa Guesthouse; a little out of the way but a welcome quiet spot. We were greeted by our hostess who was a delight after our horrendous bus journey. We were shown to our lovely large room with a small sitting room and balcony.

Outside the villa wearing their 'new' 2nd hand market purchased jackets - one for $2 and one for $3, because Dalat has cool evenings.

We then headed into Dalat to find a place to eat and suss out another new city. Dalat is quite a bizarre city, hilly with little houses, hotels, restuarants and shops everywhere – like a crazy patchwork quilt. We walked around the central market and large lake in the middle of the city and discovered the swan boat rides.

The swan boats, 60,000 VND for 1 hour on Xuan Huong Lake.

A little squeezy for four in one swan boat!

That evening we found the Groovy Gecko tour company and Steve and Harris booked an adventure for the next day – canyoning, watersliding and abseiling. Harris has plans to write about that in the post ‘Down, down, down’. The day the big boys sent out on their adventure I spent four hours investigating and booking accommodation for the next 4 cities and then Patrick and I hit the streets of Dalat in order to find lunch. We walked and walked and basically got lost. Found a little restaurant with another tourist family in it; we had seen the mother and 2 daughters the evening prior. As it turned out we then spent the next fews hours with the Swedish family walking to the Crazy House and a church. The family have been travelling for 6 months and are due to return to Sweden in a few weeks. When we are in Sweden we hope to visit them. Thanks for spending the afternoon with us Sandell Family!

That evening we went into town again and booked a hiking tour for me for the next day and the boys had plans to return to the Crazy House. Before we had dinner though we had a special invitation to attend to. On our first walk into town we met a lady who stopped us because she said she liked Harris. When we got talking to her we learnt she was an English teacher at a primary school. She invited us to come along to her apartment the next evening to meet the students in her private English class … which we did. We had a very entertaining hour with her and her 6 students and it was certainly a highlight of our time in Dalat and Vietnam so far.