“I Love The Smell Of Diesel In The Morning….”

“Smells like mopeds.” (obscure Apocolypse Now reference by the way). We’re in Siagon now, but before I tell all I have to explain how we got here….

If we’re honest, we weren’t fans of Dalat. Apart from a lake and a market, there wasn’t much to see there unless you wanted to go on a tour just out of town. We therefore had to get on one of these – we basically had an entire day to kill in Dalat without falling down one of the gaping holes in the pavement.

So we went ahead and applied for a tour in a jeep, of many waterfalls, which sounded quite nice. When we were waiting to be picked up we were then told that we had to go on a different tour instead (for no reason) and that it was in a minibus with a load of others, rather than the jeep. Sigh.

Our tour took us on an intruiging route to various tourist traps, some of which were not as bad as the others: Truc Lam Meditation center (not bad, quite monk-ey – the spiritual ones, not tree climbing ones, ie. with monks… i’m having to explain this to Jodie); The Datanla waterfall, this was good although Jo came face to face with a snake, which is like me with spiders – not good! Then the Dragon Pagoda, which was a good pagoda, and we’ve seen a few now…. after this it went downhill. We saw….

The Valley of Love (and tourism)

Strange Place

Dai’s Summer Palace. We had to walk around with smurf-feet on so we didn’t make the place dirty. I’ll try and explain later.

The Crazy House. It’s written up as “Alice in Wonderland” house. The architech of this place apparently studied architechture in Russia for 14 years. Probably drug experimentation for 14 years, it was half built and you’ll just have to wait to see the pictures. Weird. You could stay there as a hotel for $35. Hmmmmmn.So, perhaps it was a problem with our tour guide. Perhaps just Dalat. We don’t know. There you go, not big fans of the place.

Another strange place

After that we escaped to Mui Ne, a beach resort with lots of potential. However, we got there and it was cloudy. Next morning cloudy. Without sun, there was not much to do so we planned our route out for that afternoon……. Dammit – sun came out after all and it was super hot. But alas too late for us to cancel our ticket, which means we are now in…..

Saigon!

Saigon

We arrived yesterday, the first day of ‘Tet’. That’s their New Year celebrations, which go on for 3 days. Seems to be good for partying, but not much else since everything else is mainly closed. Ah well. We had a decent walk around the place, and like we say, it’s good for parties! Although all this sounds a like it sucks, we’re still having a great time. Will be working on our tans in Cambodia and Thailand.

Off to bed in a bit – Pompey are playing Liverpool tonight, we need to be at the pub for 2am kick off! Woo hoo! Jodie’s well pleased