Dalat

Dalat which is up 1500m in the south central area of Vietnam was much colder that we are used to. At night it was around 10 degrees which was ok for a time as at least it reminded us of home.

In Vietnam you are required by law to give you passport into the hotel and fill out immigration cards everywhere you go i guess so that the (communist) government can keep tabs. So when i went to give these to the hotel, they were missing. The bloke at the hotel didnt to give them to Servane as she checked us out and because we were rushing for the bus, we forgot to ask. Either way we were 'dans la merde' as the french would say. And as it took us seven and a half hours to get to Dalat, we were not looking forward to going in the opposite way back to get them. But as it turned out, the tour company we booked with regularly does the trip daily so they offered to pick up the passports. Relieved would be an understatement.

We went to the Valley of Love, which was set on the side of a mountain, overlooking a lake in the middle of an evergreen forest, with some ok views. The Trac Lam meditation village which we got to on a cable car. This was at first a bit daunting but once up there it was ok with some spectacular views. We also went to one of the best and biggest waterfalls we've seen.

We also rented an expensive (or at least for us) bungalow which was on the mountainside for 200,000 dong for one night which is roughly 8 pound. There we got the chance to cook our own food which was a change from noodles and rice.