We got there and had the job of finding a hotel...the part we all hate I know. Luckily there was a guest house right across the road. I did the usual, running over to ask prices while Sar stayed with our heap of bags. 5 minutes later I returned with great news, we had found somewhere so easily!! $8 for the night, 3 huge double beds (they apparently didn't have any smaller rooms) but we didn't mind and a balcony where you could watch the sunset...a good find.
We made ourselves at home and went to see what was around,on our way to the Market we bumped into 2 Easy riders, Thau and Phuc who offered to take us into the highlands to visit various villages,waterfalls and factories where the local Vietnamese made their dongs!
We weren't keen on their premade trips so we reeled off all the places we wanted to go and they agreed to do it for the same price....that confirmed it, we booked for the next day...8am!
Off we trotted with a skip in our step,both of us now couldn't wait for the trip...we got to the central Market and it was mayhem!! You could buy literally anything you desired. Chickens alive, chickens dead, whole fish, half fish, fish heads and fruit...so much fruit! It was so fun to see all the locals buying their food for the day. We headed back for some pho and ended the evening with sarie's new all time favourite, orangina! Mmm mmm.
So the next day up we got ready for our easy rider trip, we grabbed another Vietnamese favourite, baguette with cheese and fried egg. It was so tasty. We had literally lived off these crispy, warm baguettes since hoi an. They were delicious and for 20p we managed to eat our fair share.
We met Thau and Phuc, donned our helmets, jumped on and flew off around Dalat. I remember cruising round the mountains, Vietnam countryside to our left and a huge forested area with private French style mansions to our right and thinking what a place. We couldn't quite believe what we were doing, it was definately up there in our top 10 things we have done to date.
We spent the whole day rolling around for miles on our bikes, we visited so many different pagoda's, a silk factory, farmers fields, 2 waterfalls,which were so impressive and got to go under 1. We got soaked!! Also we visited the crazy house...it was a bit crazy! And a rice wine factory...I obviously loved that, Phuc pours me a shot of the 65% poison in a glass from a huge container, I think its fair to say its what we use back home for petrol!! Best of all was the minority village. We pulled up to be greeted by 6 young children shouting in their language and waving us in as if we were famous (back to how it was in India!). They were so cute and so happy. I stood there snapping away and after a while they posed for us, I think they loved it. It was so good to see, Sarah wanted to take them all home, haha.
When we said to Thau we wanted to go to a minority village but not one full of tourists, he definately nailed it taking us to a village with the K'ho minority people....it was strange,they didn't speak English or even Vietnamese, just their own language....apparently a few lucky ones got to go to kindergarten but they don't learn how to write,just how to speak their own language...so they can't read either!!...bless them...by the time we left they were just repeating what we said....'hello' and 'goodbye'!!
Around 2 o clock we stopped off at a local restaurant recommended by Thau and Phuc so we agreed,pulled up on the bikes (yep now officially in the Honda cllub :-)!!) and grabbed a table...we were sat floating on the river and it was so calm and chilled out!
They ordered for us and the dishes came in their masses!!every type of meat and seafood you could imagine!
Sarie had her own vegetarian dishes...about 7 seperate dishes!!
Thau and Phuc found it funny that Tom in Vietnamese meant shrimp (they thought that was my name,everyone we meet who asks my name doesn't get Dom, just Tom, so it's easier to just agree now!!) Sarie didn't get the joke so I had to explain that a shrimp in Vietnamese is called Tom and Tom is my name right!... wink wink nudge nudge!!
Around 5.30pm our trip came to an end and we were back at our hotel in Dalat...we chilled out with our OWN tv....I know what ur thinking....yep we have moved up in the world....what's more, we even had mickey mouse and tom & jerry sheets!! So cool!
When we headed out for tea we saw our first major moped crash and it was a bad one...a moped had caught another and the guy went down sliding along the floor...just the noise made us cringe! The worst thing was the guy rolled and then never got up,he just lay there....a load of people ran over to pick his floppy body up and put it in the sitting position (not sure that's he right thing to do when someone is either unconscious or dead) and still he just flopped forward.... A taxi stopped and a few guys picked up the body and lay him across the back seat....hopfully he is ok...
That shook us up big time and we lost our appetite... Also we had planned to get a moped out the next day but after seeing that we weren't so sure, well sarie was a definate no no....
Our last day in dalat was a pretty chilled out day. We didn't mind not getting a moped as dalat was a pretty cool place, and as we had made our own easy rider trip we had seen everthing we wanted the day before....so instead of riding around the little city we walked!!! The temperature was soo cool so it wasn't a problem! I was in my jeans and sarie in her ankle swinger hareems!!
We found such a cheap place for brunch it was crazy,5 dishes for less than 2 pound and headed to the summer palace....which we never actually found, we got the Vietnamese village idiot telling us completely the wrong way! Cheers pal!!
We ended up walking round the lake and goin to some markets down some backstreets which we got a funny look but it was fun, chillin' with the locals away from the dirty british!!haha
We loved our time in dalat and the following morning we were heading back to Nha Trang to then get another bus that evening to Hoi An to spend a bit more time there before getting bus through to Laos xx
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