Dalat (28/2/14)

I awoke today with the intention of doing quite a few of the sites around town so as a result this blog is going to be pretty long with loads of pictures. You might be here a while. Get comfortable.

I started with an american breakfast in the hotel which consisted of an omelette and bread followed by a croissant with butter and jam, with the bakery's choice of  pastry to finish it off. Washed down with a Vietnamese coffee. All extremely tasty and very filling. My first stop after breakfast was a walk to the lake that I had passed yesterday. It was a beautiful sunny day so I decided to walk to the places in Dalat I wanted to visit. I sat for a while and enjoyed the view before planning my route on the map to my next stop, the "Hang Nga Crazy House" just south east of town. The architect has designed this house in a very similar style to Antoni Gaudi's buildings (just in case you've ever seen any of them). The photos tell it better but it's a mystical, spider webby, viney, twist of a house that's almost grown from the trees and bushes around it. Although I'm sure it's meant for kids, 99% of people there were adults. You can even actually stay there. It's awesome in a very weird way. Think Alice in Wonderland. It was supposed to be finished in 2010 but will apparently now be finished in 2020. This was good though because the building works can be seen and so you get an idea of how all the shapes are created using the building materials. I spent ages walking the many different corridors, walkways and ladders and didn't really want to leave but time was pressing on.
My next stop was a waterfall just outside town for which I'd need the bike so I returned to the hotel to change and pick it up. The waterfall was only about 15 minutes away but would have taken much longer to walk. After getting a small amount of fuel in the tank I made my way there. There are loads of waterfalls around Dalat but this one was the closest and it had one big perk that the others didn't. A bobsled ride down an elevated track that snaked through the trees to the bottom and somehow back up after. I had to see this. I arrived without any problems and parked my bike in the bike park before purchasing my entry ticket. I checked out the bobsled track before buying a ticket just to make sure it was at least partly safe and was surprised to find it very well maintained and organised. With the ticket bought I queued up for a spare bobsled to come round and jumped in when instructed to do so. After a very brief instruction on the controls it was down to me. By brief I mean the supervisor pointed at the handle and said "up stop down go". Right that's me qualified then. The handle is sprung loaded up to slow the bobsled so to get going you hold it down and gravity does the rest. After leaving a gap of at least 25m between you and the sled in front you're off. Camera on video mode and record. Ok lets see how fast this thing can actually go. Whoooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh. SHIT it's fast!! I soon caught the sled in front. After letting that sled get ahead again I'm off. This is amazing fun, I could do this all day. After catching the other sled a couple more times though the fun is over and the end of the track is nigh. I'm now right at the bottom of the falls and so hop out the sled to walk around. The falls are a raging torrent of white water which is more than I was expecting as it's not the wet season at the moment and the spray was a welcome break from the heat of the day. I get as close as possible to take my photos and wait patiently for people to finish theirs. It wasn't overly busy but could imagine it gets completely packed at weekends. I play around for a bit with the settings on my main camera to see what effects i can achieve and then head off to the secondary falls a little further down the river. It costs more to go to the very bottom of these so I settle for a view from the top which also looks down the valley. It's all a very relaxed atmosphere and I'm overcome with the need to have an ice-cream. I return to the bottom of the bobsled run where there are stalls selling them and relax with a fake magnum in the shade. Whilst having my ice-cream I realise the time, about half 3, and gather my bits together to head back up as I also want to do the flower gardens in town on the way back. Just as I'm leaving my phone beeps. Stephanie has arrived in Dalat and she's just going out to have a walk around town. I ask her if she wants to meet me at the flower gardens but she says she'll probably just walk around the lake so we arrange to message once we're both back at our hotels to sort meeting for dinner. I wait in the bobsled queue for my turn intrigued about how the track will get me uphill. In no time at all my questions are answered. The track heads up at a very steep angle straight up the hill, and a system similar to the start of a roller-coaster just takes you up. At a very fast speed I add. It all seems incredibly well thought out for Vietnam. Maybe it's the French influence. Once back at the top I find my bike, pay the 6p parking fee and head back to town. I know the route for a change so get to the flower garden with no problems. I check to see what time they close, pleased to hear they don't close till 6, and bought a ticket for 60p. I park my bike for an extortionate 9p and head over to the entrance. My first thought.....the entrance looks like a giant penis....balls and all! Am I the only one who can see this?! Through the penis I go and am greeted by some very nicely kept gardens with a good array of colourful flowers. I venture further into the gardens and I'm surprised to feel that after the entrance display there actually isn't really much there. It's almost like I've stumbled into the area where they grow the flowers before planting them. There are a few stands with individual pots placed on top of them but I could have done that. There's also an area of bonsai trees in the same vein and yes they are hard to look after but it all seemed a bit thrown together. You can see what I mean from the photos of the hedge animals. They've had to put pieces of paper on for eyes so you know what it is. Still it's not bad for 60p! I'm just looking at a Hansel and Gretel type shed when a voice says "You like this?" laughing. It's Stephanie. She ended up walking past the entrance and decided to come in. Her thoughts are the same about the décor. It's just not very well done. The most impressive thing was the tower of empty wine bottles wishing everyone happy new year. After a catch up and arranging where to meet tonight we head for the exit and Stephanie continues her walk and I head back to my hotel. After a snooze and a shower I watch some more TV and wait for Stephanie to message to say she's left. We end up meeting about 8pm and head into a restaurant nearby that's been recommended to Stephanie. After spending about 10 minutes looking through the extensive menu and picking a meal the waitress takes our order. Only to return 2 minutes later to say our options aren't available. So we choose something else. And she then returns to say they only have noodle soup left. So out of about 30 options they've run out of food before 8pm! Good restaurant. We ponder over the menu again and decide the noodle soup sounds very appetising and order that. After our meal we take a walk to a bakery near my hotel, which is actually much better than the one in my hotel, and then onto a bar that was also recommended to Stephanie that is apparently good for backpackers. We get to the entrance and are ushered inside to seats at the bar only to find that we're 2 of about 10 people already there and we are totally under-dressed for this type of place. The décor inside is really stylishly done, with the bar and most other places lit up with various lighting effects. This sort of place in London would be really expensive to get in. We look at the drinks menu and the cost of drinks agrees. Fortunately the beer is still well priced so we stick with that. We'll stay for one we said. But after sitting and chatting we actually start to feel a little less out of place and no one else seems bothered by our typical backpacker attire and order another. The music is good and and the DJ mixes are brilliant. The decks are actually on stage all lit up, as if the DJ is a show, not hidden in a darkened box like they are in clubs at home. But they're playing all the latest tunes. Towards the end of our second beer a couple of bottles of Corona are placed in front of us with a lime wedge and a pot of salt. We look up confused and the barman says they're from the Vietnamese couple further along the bar. We look over and they raise their glasses as a cheers to us and we raise the bottles thanking them gratefully. What a nice gesture. You don't get that in the clubs at home, it's usually the same bottle but empty and being used threateningly. The customs here and general demeanour are so much politer. So we finish those beers, after the barman put the salt on the bottle rim to show us what to do with it, discussing whether we should return the favour and decide it's probably best to, unsure what the custom is. I don't think the salt enhanced the flavour much but it's obviously how it's drunk here. The club was quite a bit busier now but still not packed out. We'd ended up having a really really good time, despite initial reservations, so after one more round and feeling very merry we left and walked up the street towards our hotels. Mine was the first on the route so we stopped outside and hugged and said our goodbyes knowing it would be the last time we'd see each other as our routes from here on wouldn't coincide. It was actually tougher than I expected. Stephanie had been the common factor and my friend in most of the last places I'd visited and her company, along with Barbara and Sylvia's was really nice to have. After this it was back to being on my own again. But this is what travelling is about. I'm sure it won't be the last time I see her and she invited me and Jade to visit her and her boyfriend in Amsterdam at some point and I said the same about London. After making sure she would message me when she was safely back at her hostel I went to my room. But feeling a little peckish I left again to grab some food from the bakery over the road and ate it before going back to my hotel. With Stephanie's message received, thanking me for the evening and saying she was back, I replied and called it a night. It had been a busy day.