Da Lat

The bus up to Da Lat wound it's way up through some very pretty, mountainous countryside taking us to another 'larger than we'd thought' city.  I guess with 90 million people in a long but very skinny piece of land, they've got to all live somewhere.  It proved to be quite cool so we were back into our warmer clothes again.

We'd originally booked into a hostel as all hotels had doubled their prices for TET and all indicated that they were full when we checked on Internet, however, when we reached the hostel, it was appalling and certainly didn't live up to its advertisement.  We demanded our money back and trotted on down the road to find something more suitable which turned out to cost considerably less than the hostel.  We're all getting too old to put up with what would have been perfectly acceptable in our old backpacking days.

Mission accomplished, we dropped off our bags and had a good wander around the city market where we savoured the season's fresh strawberries; delicious.  The fruit and vegetables here were amazingly fresh, the best we've seen in months.  

In the middle of the city lies a man-made lake where, due to the holidays, the locals were out in their numbers paddling swan-shaped peddle boats.  The roundabouts and roadside verges were covered with flowers making the entire city look very festive.  

We also visited the oddest building one could imagine, appropriately called The Crazy House.  It had originally been built as a house but has been added to over the years and is now a guest lodge and a tourist attraction.  It would have looked quite at home in the Hobbit's Shire.

We joined a tour the following day to take us to some of the local attractions, one of which was a cricket farm.  A cricket farm?  Yup, they actually breed the things for food and even I tasted one; just one mind you.  They deep-fry them and serve with chili sauce - not that bad but I won't rush across the road for another taste.  The tour also took us to a silk factory, a rice wine factory, the inevitable temple with a huge laughing Buddha and a beautiful waterfall which involved quite a clamber to get down to it.  By the way, the word 'factory' for the silk and wine manufacturers is a bit of a glorified term for what really wasn't more than a backyard operation.

Da Lat primarily survives on growing flowers so many many covered greenhouse-type structures can be seen for miles around.  It also has a modest wine industry but we learned that the wine is made up from some imported grapes mixed with local mulberries and strawberries. The wine wouldn't win any prizes but it's palatable enough.

No time to dawdle so farewell Da Lat, we're now off to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the morning.