Dull-at

The view of Da Lat from the lakefront
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Having secured $22US bus tickets to traverse the entire south-north route of Vietnam, our first place of departure would be the hill station of Da Lat, seven hours east. Da Lat had been sold to us with its promise of cool mountainous temperatures, its slower pace of life and a idyllic lake setting. This sounded like us and by 7am we were again on the road. The bus ride was at its annoying horn blowing best and the frustrating trip was not helped by the fact that I was now feeling a tad below par.

The central market
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As the 7 hour trip turned into the usual 10 and we took to the hotel with gusto. We managed to creep out to force the world's worst ham and cheese toasties into us before rekindling our spirits a little with a banana split of NZ Natural ice cream. As we sat that night we both noted now that the travelling was starting to get us weary so as we fought of the touts on the way home we had already planned that the next day was to be the laziest possible.

Da Lat itself was nice. Nestled around a Nike swish shaped reservoir it had a sense of cleanliness and I suggest wealth which draws the Saigon hordes there. There is apparently an excellent motorcycle trip around local villages, farms and waterfalls but our mojo wasn't there at all. It took all our effort to pull ourselves out of bed at midday and circle the 7km of the lake before crumbling back into a lunch spot. As expected we retreated back to the hotel to flop out in front of the cricket (fantastic!) and relaxed.