Hilltop Dalat

   Our bus to Dalat was delayed by hours. After waiting at one bus station for a couple of hours, we were mysteriously taken to another bus station. A short wait there and we were away – my theory is that they forgot about us entirely and had to engage some quick thinking to get us on a bus to Nah Trang. The bus, however, was very high class – we were given bottled water and towels during the bus trip. The trip over the hills to Dalat was beautiful, with waterfalls cascading down the mountainside as the road winded through heavily forested ranges. We were left a bit worried at one point when the bus had to drive on the wrong side of the road for a period – a glance out the window let us know that there was no longer a 'right' side of the road – it had broken off and fallen down the mountainside. Hopefully they'll get that fixed up soon, although I'm not sure if anyone knew about it, as there were no warning signs or witches hat to mark the danger. I'm just glad our bus driver was properly alert!

The reports about Dalat were right – all the buildings look heavily European inspired, and the prevalence of bakeries and cafes indicate the french influence on this Vietnamese holiday town. Unfortunately, only Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk is available in these cafes, which is nice only on occasion. We rented a scooter and rode down to the lake around which Dalat is built. Paddle-boats were being rented for 60 dong for an hour, so we acquired one and spent a nice hour paddling around the lake. After that we headed to the Datanla waterfalls 5km from town. When we arrived we found that a rail-luge had been built to get down to the falls. It was great fun speeding down the mountainside and rocketing around hairpin corners – the best way to get to a waterfall that I've ever experienced. The waterfalls themselves were nice, although the walk back up the mountain was a lot more tiresome than the luge down! We stopped off on the way back to town for a coke at a cafe overlooking pine forests, after which we returned to town with the plan of catching a vintage steam train to a village. The train turned out to be 90,000 dong, and after the luge and waterfall entrance fees I felt I could spend my money better elsewhere. So instead we headed to the flower park on the north site of the lake, which was beautiful. A myriad of differently coloured flowers surrounded us, as well as large bonsai boganvillea and ficus. We will soon head to Ho Chi Minh, as I feel we have done all that Dalat has to offer.

Nah Trang

   After another sleepless night on a 14 hour 'sleeper' bus, we were lucky to find a hotel that would allow us to check in at 5 in the morning. Tired and grumpy, we slept for a few hours before heading down to the famous beach at Nah Trang. It was absolutely wonderful, in a bay with small waves and coarse sand. While the touts on the beach return to try and sell you the same thing too often, the beach is a nice place to hang out for an hour or so.
The rest of Nah Trang just seemed like a normal city. After a lazy day, I had designs on finding the mexican restaurant in Nah Trang so that I could have some Chilli Con Carne.

   I miss it as it is one of my favourite meals at home. We walked three blocks to get to the mexican restaurant, where we were greeted by a labourer who let us know that the mexican restaurant was no longer running. Bad online reviews of the place (El Coyote) may have had an effect on the popularity of the place. Chilling on the beach gets boring quickly, so we were ready to catch a bus to a french-inspired town in the highlands of souther Vietnam called Dalat.

Back in Hoi An

   After an uneventful few hours on the bus, we arrived in Hoi An. Hoi An was my favourite place in Vietnam from my last trip in Vietnam. Last time, I had my first suit tailor made, discovered mango lassies, and chilled out in floating restaurants on the river when I wasn't down at the beach. Sadly, the floating restaurant has been removed in the time since I left (either that or it stopped floating). The Hoi An I found when I arrived was much more kitschy than I remember.
It is clear that Hoi An had undergone a massive cleanup to make it more touristic. 

   The shops down the main street are all freshly painted in a lemon colour, and on the main street, cheap tailors have been replaced with boutique clothing stores and up-market cafes. One of the cafes stocked a delicious range of desserts, including chocolate mousse cake, tirimasu and apricot tart, and also provided a large choice of crepes. I made it my home whilst in Hoi An. Apart from the kitsch, the general feel of Hoi An hasn't changed. Down side streets there are still the cheap tailors, although they weren't as cheap as last time. I had a red wool-polyester blend coat made for $43 US, two shirts made for 12.50 US each, and a light grey casual blazer made for 30 US. They all fit splendidly, and the tailors seemed to do a better job than the last time I was there. Hoi An still boasts the best lassies I have ever had, and was a lovely place to spend some time in relaxing. After four days and many fittings, my new clothes and I were ready to continue traversing the Vietnamese coastline, down to Nah Trang.

Which Hue to go?

   Two boring days in Vientiane were the end of our trip in Laos. There was little to see: a half-finished Laotian version of the Arc de Triomphe was the only major landmark. Although it was a very well-clipped city, capital cities in general don't have a great amount to see. There was, however, a strong french influence. We stayed on Rue Francoise Ngin. The street we were on and the one parralel to it to the west were both filled with french patisseries and small cafes. I ate more cake than was healthy, banoffi pie, blueberry cheesecake, and tiramisu amongst them. The lack of cake everywhere else made me go into a frenzy at the sight of the delicious desserts. Our main task in Vientiane was to decide the next path to take – we could either head down to Phnom Penh, Cambodia via Bangkok, where we have already been, or pay money for a 55 USD visa and travel down southern Vietnam. As I don't like backtracking and was excited to see vietnam again since my last trip here when I was 16, we chose to head east to Vietnam. The bus trip was supposed to be a 22hr trip to Hue.


This didn't seem to make sense at first, as geographically it's not that far, but considering that it always leaves 2 hours after the reported time, stops at the border for 3 hours and includes various other meal breaks, this time frame made more sense. In reality, travel time was around 14.5 hours – a 7.30pm departure and a 10am arrival. After shaking myself out of a trance-like half-sleep which was the best rest I was able to get on the bumpy bus, we had to pay a exit fee for Laos – 30,000 kip. No worries, I thought, getting out my wallet, which contained 340,000 kip. At least, it used to – right at that moment I discovered that while I had been trying to sleep, some sticky fingers had snuck in and removed all the cash from the wallet. As I got over my dismay, Bec had to pay for us both. The amount stolen was about 40AUD, the equivalent to a day and a half travelling in southeast asia. To be honest, I was just glad that they hadn't stolen my travelex cards, or anything else, like my camera, from the bag. However, it heralded a poor end to my stay in Laos, and reinforced my disinterest in visiting Laos again. After receiving back our stamped passports, the border crossing itself got a bit hairy - we had to disembark from the bus and walk across the border to get the Vietnam border stamp. As we were getting our stamp, the bus drove off without us. Negative reports we had received of cross-border buses had us worried that we were to be left at the border. A little confused, I found the bus 700 metres down the road over a hill. I don't know what the purpose of this little sojourn was, I was just glad it was still there. Another few hours drive in freezing drizzling weather brought us to our first city in Vietnam: Hue. Hue is the famous location of the Tet offensive in 1978 – the only city that the North Vietnamese army held for more than a few days. Visiting the citadel was much more interesting now that I wasn't a supercool teenager with more interesting things (like texting and facebook) on my mind. I now had space to be amazed at how it was that a ramshackle army of guerillas were able to overtake a fortified town from a much better equipped and trained army.

Vang Vieng!

Vang Vieng is a beautiful town, surrounded by limestone cliffs carved by a river. First up when we arrived it was quite late so we hit the bars, where I bought too many buckets. The next day we continued the drinking while tubing down the river. I was still feeling a little under the weather from the night before, so didn't drink too severely, although most of the bars offer free shots of lao-lao, the extremely cheap ethanol-like Laotian liquid. The whole idea was absolutely awesome, with really high rope swings into the river everywhere, and tubing down the river was great fun. I didn't realise beforehand that the focus was mainly on drinking in the bars along the river rather than the actual tubing - I had more fun floating sedately down the river rather than the doof-doof bars filled with highly inebriated teens. Guess it's a sign that I'm getting old, although if I was in the mood I think it would have been a great experience and I would have joined the ranks of over-drunk party-goers. Also I couldn't get past the feeling that drunk tourists were scarring what would be a beautiful town. The locals seem rightly unhappy at what has happened to their once-pristine town.


With my wrinkly old-age maturity cast into sharp contrast, we decided to go for a bicycling trip to some caves the next day rather than any more brain-cell destroying activities. The first part of the bike ride was quite taxing because my seat was at the lowest possible setting. After 7kms I found a place to fix the seat. With the much higher setting, riding was easy and I arrived at the caves 13 km from town in a much better mood. The first cave, the Elephant cave, was barely an excuse for a cave - more like an overhang on a cliff with a big buddha in it. The next two caves, Tham Hoi and Tham Loup (Tham means cave) were much better. Tham Hoi burrowed 2kms into the mountain, although it was quite similar for the first kilometre so we turned back at the halfway point. The cave was great and quite spooky, especially with only the meagre light of a torch to prevent ankle-turning missteps. Apparently spirits protect these caves, although I was unable to get the guide to elaborate on this. Tham loup was only 200metres long, although it had much bigger caverns and cool crawl-throughs, as well as a big hole in the ground to avoid.



On the way back I came off the bike on the gravel, grinding up my right knee and elbow and getting gravel deep inside the cuts. After a fun escapade scraping out the gravel from the wound and a good burn from the alcohol, we were on our way again. We stopped by the organic mulberry farm 4km from town. While it would have been tranquil before the tubing, it's right on the edge of the bars now, so doof-doof music rang throughout the place. However they did have delicious food; the eggplant dip was magnificent (maybe better than Baba Ganoush!); as was their goat's cheese. The honey and mulberry shake was a treat for the tastebuds, too!

The Plain of Jars, Phonsavon

The reason for existence of the Plain of Jars is totally unknown - possible reasons range from vats for rice wine to a place of burial. I love mysteries, and this place motivated me to see even more, like Stonehenge and Easter Island. This place was great, although the trip here was very windy. I had no idea it would be so ridiculously cold, we were huddling around fires between trips out into the drizzling weather. Miraculously, on the trip away from Phonsavon to Vang Vieng, the skies cleared and within ten minutes the sun was shining and the weather was warm again. Another mystery to add to the Plain of Jars.

Loving Luang Prabang

A beautiful 100 year old hotel, a hilltop wat, lovely architecture and great coffee. These are all the things that the French have given me through the lovely UNESCO listed site of Luang Prabang. The views of the city from the wat on the top of the hill are amazing. There is also a small cave shrine a little further down the hill, where Bec and I spoke about religion and Buddhism in a hushed tone, overawed by our tranquil surroundings.


The buildings here are all beautiful, and speak of an age when people put their heart and soul into building design, rather than being content with a concrete box as we are now. Even the window handles and door locks are beautifully wrought. The markets are extensive, although you would experience nothing new after seeing the first three stalls.



Laos-style barbecues are also a fantastic aspect of this country. The waiter serves you a hefty stone bucket filled with red-hot coals, upon which he places a metal hat. He then appears with one plate filled with thinly sliced beef and a serving bowl filled with cabbage, mushrooms, eggs and tomato; basically a million things that can be boiled in a soup. Filling the bottom of the hat with broth, you boil your meal over the hot coals yourself, while frying the fat and beef. It's the funnest dinner experience I have had in a long time!!




After appreciating the delicious crepes, coffees, and muffins that are in abundance here, I went out to Utopia with the crew I had met on the slowboat. Utopia is a lovely lounge in town, where the more active can play beach volleyball while the less adventurous can sit and chat, sipping beer in a woven straw hut perched over the river. Drinks kept flowing, and when the bar closed at 11.30, we partied on in a hotel room with a very cheap thinly-disguised ethanol brew and more beers. The night got pretty hectic, so much so that one of the English guys only realised that he broke his ring finger the next morning.