Cooling off in Dalat

A badly taken picture of us at the waterfalls
see all photos »

Dalat is a stunning 7.5 hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City - a long time in a bus but made shorter by the views of the central highlands as we passed through them.  The town itself is very touristy - reminded me of Taupo, and Rach of Queenstown, so you get the idea, but this isn't neccessarily a bad thing as it is very pretty!  It is also much cooler climate in the mountains, we had our first hot showers since being in SEA.

Most of the sites of the town are in the surrounding countryside, so we hired two motorbike drivers to show us around.

Baby silkworms munching on mulberry leaves
see all photos »

Our first stop was at the 'crazy house' of Dalat, a guesthouse that looks like an adult version of noddy town, designed by the daughter of the second president of Vietnam.  It had themed rooms, giraffe stair cases, large spider webs, a bit hard to describe.

We saw alot of the industries of the central highlands, such as silk manufacturing from the baby silk worm stage to the weaving of the fabric, coffee and tea plantations, flower and fruit plantations and bamboo weaving.  As Dalat is known for its scenary we also saw some waterfalls, clambering over rocks and tree roots to get to the bottom to be blasted by the spray and wind.  One of our favourite parts was visiting a newly opened pagoda - which had the happiest buddha that I have ever seen.

Silk worm cocoons which will soon be turned into silk
see all photos »

Our drivers tried their best to sell us a five day trip to Hoi An on the back of their motorbikes through the "real" Vietnam, including the Ho Chi Minh trail.  This would have been great if we had unlimited time and budget.  Maybe it was just as well we didnt agree - by the end of the day Rachaels driver was serenading her with love songs about how he didnt want to be alone that night...