A rather sureal place

Dalat is a very strange place. At about 1400m above sea level, it is blessed with a pleasant climate, still warm, with hot days, but not the unrelenting, sweltering heat of most of the rest of Vietnam at this time of year. As such, it is a popular tourist destination for the Vietnamese.

This makes for a distinct holiday vibe, which is stengthened into something quite sureal by the town's physical features. It has a lake lined with perfect green grass and adorned with swan-shaped paddle boats. Vietnamese tourists are dressed in their winter woolies (beanies, gloves etc) even though it is 30 degrees. The buildings are generally colourful and many are very European in design, reflecting the town's French influences. There are flower gardens everywhere and at night the city centre comes alive with markets and food stalls. There is also an Eiffel Tower. (So far in South East Asia, we have also seen an Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame!!??!!). In the first picture, you can see construction in the foreground, followed by flower gardens, then little shack houses, then colourful highrises.

So, because of the Vietnamese national holiday, it was with some trepidation that we left Mui Ne for Dalat. When our bus dropped us at the hotel they get commission from in Dalat, rather than the hotel staff's usual show of falling over themselves to offer us rooms, they told us that they were full.

For the next hour, we trudged around town looking for somewhere to stay that we could afford. For the hour after that, we trudged around town looking for a place to stay, whether we could afford it or not. "How dare they have a public holiday - what's with that?" "I want to go back to Mui Neeeeeeee."

Finally, we settled on a hotel for $35US for the night. This might not sound bad by Australian hotel standards, but when our budget for the day for the two of us is $40US and the most we'd paid for a hotel before that was $10US, it hurt. What was even worse was that the hotel wasn't even nice. "I want to go back to Mui Neeeeeee."

What was nice was a little restaurant next to our hotel. They had the best noodle soup we've had so far for less than $1AUS. That made us feel a little better.

What also made us feel a little better that evening was grazing the night markets. Little stalls are set up selling skewers with meat, roast sweet potato, hot corn, dumplings, warm sweet soy milk and bagettes filled with all sorts of good (and usually unidentifiable) stuff. There was some good entertainment when Carolyn was having a glass of soy milk and someone spotted some police. The stall or its seating was obviously an illegal set-up because we've never seen such pandemonium, and a stall pack up so quickly. We're sure the pack up was unnecessary. From what we've heard, such illegal matters can usually be solved as easily as giving the cops a couple of smokes.

On our second night, we changed to a much nicer and cheaper hotel. That made us feel better too. We were entertained by the owner's stories about how his wife was pregnant, yet he was getting morning sickness (he told us this to explain a dash to the toilet).