Dalat

Xin chao! (Jeen-chow!) Aka, hello, in Vietnamese. The epic journey continues north through Vietnam. I arrived this afternoon in Dalat, a fantastic little town with a very strange atmosphere. More later... first updates.

Mekong Delta: The Mekong Delta is about a two hour bus ride south of HCMC (also known as Saigon.) I did a Mekong Delta day tour with Jayne (the Canadian girl I am now traveling with) which was amazing. The Mekong Delta is this massive area centered around, what else, the Mekong river. There is huge amounts of rice that is cultivated in this area. There are not many roads, people travel everywhere by boat. I was amazed at the way people live. They have their entire lively hood on these tiny fishing boats. It seems as though most people who do not grow rice are fishermen/women. Highlights:
-Being on the boats. We had to switch boats about 6 times. We had one boat for the more rough waters, another through the winding mekong waterways, and a very small boat paddled by this tiny Vietnamese woman through extremely narrow canals.
-Coconut candy making factory: There is a coconut candy making factory on one of the islands. We learned the whole process of the candy making, and of course got to try all different varieties including durian candy. It was.... interesting. I think durian is an aquired taste.
-Python: At one of our first stops on the tour we all got to hold a massive python around our necks!! It was surprisingly heavy, and was slithering it's tounge out on my hands.
-Fishing boats: The Vietnamese fishing boats are spectacular! Very bright colors.

Phu Quoc Island: I spent 5 days and 4 nights on Phu Quoc island, which is on the southern end of Vietnam. Compared to Saigon it is a very quiet place. Alot of honeymooners. Highlights:
-Boat trip: We took a boat trip for a whole day. It was definetally one of the best things I have done in my whole almost 7 months of traveling. From the boat trip:
*We went fishing. Number of fish I caught: 4
*Number of friends I was with 3: 2 Canadians and 1 Brit
*Total number of people on the boat: 8
*Number of times we went snorkeling: 3
*Number of times I jumped off the boat: 1
*Number of jelly fish stings I got after jumping off the boat: 7- 8
*SPF Sunscreen: 50
*Number of bottles of rum we brought for the boat trip: 1 (what is a pirate boat trip with out rum?)
*Number of beaches we stopped at: 3
If anyone is in Phu Quoc Island, i HIGHLY recommend the boat trip. Grand.

Mui Ne: Mui Ne is a small beach town about 6 hour northeast of Saigon. We finalllly left Saigon as our visas are running out. Let the journey continue! Highlights/stats of Mui Ne:
*Traveling with Jayne (Canadian) and Dan (English)
*Price of our room: $15 divided by three people, included hot water (wow!!) and mosquito nets
*Number of Swedes we met at our guesthouse: 2, both named Frederick
*Shells collected from the beach: 10 - 15
*Number of days we rented motor bikes: 2
*Red sand dunes: Massive dunes made of amazing red sand. I felt like I needed a camel or something while walking through them.
*White sand dunes: About a 45 minute motor bike ride out to the white sand dunes. If you can imagine, the white sand dunes were even more amazing than the red sand dunes. We drove our bikes out through some spectacular countryside and had lunch at a small road side place. Then we rented a tiny wooden boat for the three of us and paddled into this beautiful lake covered in lotus flowers. We paid 100,000 dong for 1 hour on this tiny wooden boat, more than we paid for motor bikes for the whole day (80,000 dong.) I think the villagers were laughing straight to the bank, but it was ok because we had so much fun. Jayne and I did the hard paddling while Dan sat and enjoyed the view. Before we left the shore one of the locals handed us an orange plastic jug. What for? For bailing out the leaky boat. Dan manage to bail out the boat continuously so we didn't sink.
*We paddled over to the while sand dunes which are breathtaking. Climbed all over them, it seemed as though I was in Saudi Arabia or something. There are alot of small kids with "tobogans," big body sized plastic sheets and they walk around to tourists and you can pay 20,000 dong and sled down the sand dunes! Since we were the youngest people there, the kids took us to the highest and steepest dune possible. You run and jump on to your sled on your stomach and sled down the dunes and if you want, can fly into the lake. Well, of course we flew into the lake. It was a lung pumping walk back up the almost vertical dunes, but was so fun! I had so many gos on the sleds.
*Number of herds of sheep passed while motor biking to the white sand dunes: 1
*Number of herds of cows: 2
*Number of herds of goats: 1
*Price of 1 liter of petrol: 18,000 dong
*Number of people in our biker gang the second day of motor biking: 8 including the Swedish Fredericks, me, Jayne, Dan, Ebony (Australia), Alex and Ana (newlywed Russian couple.) We felt almost as badass as if we were riding Harley Davidsons.
*Hours from Saigon to Mui Ne: 6
*Number of mosquito bites I recieved in Mui Ne: 10ish
*We stopped on our first motor bike trip in a small village. The village children were fascinated by our sunglasses and my rings. We stopped to apply some sunscreen and then they of course wanted some too. This hoard of children took the bottle of sunscreen and rubbed copious amounts all over their body, including their eyes. They were delighted to see how white they looked (because they did not properly rub it in.) The whole scene was quite hilarious.
Recommendations: Thai Hoa resort. It is quite a nice place. It is expensive but if you are with one or two other people it is not too bad. The food there is not great but there are good restaurants right across the road. Also, Thai Hoa is right on the beach so you can wake up and go straight down for some sand and surf.
-If you go to Mui Ne, renting motor bikes for a day or two is an absolute must.
-Sand dunes are beautiful. Red is good, white is better. See both.


Dalat: Jayne and I have picked up a few more additions to our traveling group. Our friend Dan from London headed back from Saigon fromMui Ne, but now we are traveling with two more people. Ebony, from Australia and Paula, from Argentina (although she has lived in Spain for 7 or 8 years.) We arrived today in Dalat around 3 o'clock PM. Dalat is about a 5 hour bus ride north from Mui Ne, but in Central Vietnam. I think they call this area the "Central Highland." As we were winding up the mountains to Dalat it very much reminded me of the bus rides in Nepal. The roads are incredibly windy and the scenery is fabulous. On the outskirts of town was a very strange scene. In some ways it reminded me of Spray, Oregon. It had a very Western-y feel with alot of abandoned looking houses (even though people live in them), lots of open fields, and donkey drawn carts. The difference (one of the differences) is that instead of cowboy hats, people are wearing the trademark Vietnamese conical straw hats.
Dalat itself has a very interesting feel. It is almost strange that is very French colonial town is just plopped down in the middle of the mountains. The climate is much different than anywhere in Vietnam I have been so far. We got off the bus in our tank tops and flip flops and all shivered a bit. It is not uncomfortably cold, just very crisp. It feels like Portland either in the early spring time, or in the early fall, just when the summer head is subsiding. The four of us got a great room for $12 total and all put on pants, sweaters, hiking boots, and wool hats! It felt very odd to be wearing a woolen hat when the day before I had been in my swimsuit on the beach. We unpacked, settled in, bundled up, and headed out for a walk through town. The town has a very quaint feel to it. There are alot of French style buildings, but it still feels distinctly Vietnamese. We went to the markets and got to try all sorts of dried fruits including dried tomatoes, beets, mangoes, kiwis, strawberries, mulberries, and a bunch of other things whose name I couldn't even guess. There is a massive market in Dalat which sells used clothing. It feels like a humongous vintage clothing store from home with a Vietnamese twist. After wandering the streets for a few hours we went for dinner. So, the four of us from all different countries were sitting at a Vietnamese restaurant each eating steaming bowls of pho bo and artichoke tea, wearing woolen hats and trying to keep warm, watching motor bikes go by below, looking at a Vietnamese version of the Eiffel tower which at night lights up, listening to Celine Dion on the loud speaker, still tan from the day before at the incredibly hot beach. Sometimes these scenarios are just too funny.
*Number of hours from Mui Ne to Dalat: 7 (even though they say 5.5)
*Number of stops along the way: 2
*Number of people in my room: 4 (including me)
*Number people I have seen wearing huge ski jackets: 30-40 (I can't believe this is still Vietnam!)
*Number of Eiffel towers in Dalat: 1
*Most famous wine in Vietnam is called: Dalat (obviously, made in Dalat)
*Number of days I will be in Dalat: 2
*Next stop: Na Trang
*Day my Vietnam visa runs out: 20th of December
*Next stop after Vietnam: Laos

Miscellaneous:
*The stops I have planned after Dalat including (in order, going from South to North): Na Trang, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, Halong Bay, Sapa.
*Planning on taking the sleeper train on the leg from Na Trang to Hoi An
*Number of motor bike accidents I have witnessed so far: 2 (both in Saigon)
*Number of cockroaches that I saw crawling on my toothbrush in Phu Quoc Island: 2
*Number of cockroaches living in our bathroom in Phu Quoc Island: 2, one we named "Roxy"
*Pairs of numchucks Alex, the crazy Russian newlywed, brought on his honeymoon: 1
*Amount of sand I got in my mouth while sledding down the sand dunes: copious amounts

Tam Biet (goodbye) from Dalat