Category: Travel

Overnight walking shoe cleaning in incident – Daisy went off early and search about missing shoes which were “still wet” – oy. Rescued – clean and more or less dry!

Breakfast of noodle soup (beef for Ged, chicken for Daisy) Vietnamese coffee without the paraphernalia. Passion fruit juice & breads/Danish.

Off touring circa 9:15. First stop, cable car panorama – we took the panorama without the cable car! [see headline photo above]

Next stop – on to Truc Lam [Zen] Buddhist monastery swarming with tourists again but with admittedly beautiful gardens and vistas.

Then on to see Bao Dai’s summer palace… …

…and then the crazy house, all similarly swarming with (mostly Russian) tourists.

Next to the Dalat railway station…

… then around Xuan Huang Lake before stopping at a place (I am told I described as) “another fucking botanical garden” – named “Flower Park” from what I can gather.

Then a wild goose chase for mosquito tablets and return to base.

Goodbye to guide Chien and driver Minh as the drizzle starts.

Then we venture up to pool and bar, landing at the latter and ordering some beer, nuts and chips just before the heavens open. We witness a French couple drinking and going off to get soaked and then returning for a cocktail!

Janie bought some items in the shop while we wait for the rain to subside. Then back to the room for some R&R and then get ready for dinner.

Dinner of Chinese style marinated beef wrapped in piper lolot leaf served with rice vermicelli (bánh hỏi) followed by a mixed meat and seafood hotpot – too much food but very enjoyable.

Reasonably early night but Ged woke up in the early hours feeling very poorly indeed!

There is a placeholder with links to all of the photos, itineraries etc. for this Vietnam holiday – here.

Took breakfast (beef fried rice “Dalat style” – whatever that might be – for me, boiled eggs for Daisy).

Set off a little later than planned. First stop a nursery, mainly roses [see headline picture], then, after a panorama stop [above], a rice wine distillery where they also keep [civet] weasels in cages to make weasel coffee.

Next to silk factory where we saw jacquard looms for the umpteenth time and bought some clobber.

Then on to the elephant waterfall, quite tricky and more or less worth a scramble on the rocks!

Then to the Linh An Buddhist temple and gardens where our guide Chien explained the basics of Buddhism to us again for the xtieth time.

Next stop the cricket farm (hurray it’s the cricket season) where we did not try the fare.

Then back into town for lunch where we did try the fare and met a solo Belgian girl who was not enjoying Vietnam. Touristic set meal of chicken salad, “deer” on crispbread stuff, fish which was salty but tasty and a decent plate of vegetables.

Then round the town market in the drizzle at a quiet hour and then on to K’Ho Lat village where it was pouring with rain. First into the church (Catholic) named K’Ho Lach, where animist totems share space with Catholic symbols.

Real wet rain by then (thoughts of exploring Langban mountain abandoned). But we went to the village store! (Cultural knickknacks) and then (rain subsiding, mercifully) went to meet the big chief K’Ran Hai. He showed us musical instruments how’s the local rice brew and a and told us all about it in reasonable English and excellent French. He had been a nurse in hallway et cetera et cetera.

Then a walk around the village before exhaustion set in. Back to hotel to try to get boots cleaned!

We tool a lighter dinner of pasta with the local wine while following England’s cricketing fortunes on the phone and reviewing pictures on the cameras.

There is a placeholder with links to all of the photos, itineraries etc. for this Vietnam holiday – here.