The Long & Winding Road

Our second day in Mui Ne was last Saturday the 10th, we booked a jeep tour to see all the sights around town.  It was a really fun day with the highlight being trying to sled down huge sand dunes on krazy karpets.  Our attempts failed and we ended up eating large amounts of sand.  We got some really good pics though!  The next morning we booked a bus to Dalat which is a town up in the mountains of Vietnam.  We arrived to find it colder than we thought it would be.  We had arranged a place to stay over the phone when we were in Mui Ne but when we got off the bus it was so cold that we just stayed at the Peace Hotel which was right where we were let off.  It turned out to be areally good hotel even though our room was so cold!  Monday morning we rented a motorbike and I drove the two of us around town to check out some of the sights.  Matt still has a motorbike phobia since the accident so now I just double him.  We went to a place called the Krazy House which was the weirdest tourist attraction and I can't even really explain it but I'll try.  It had different themed rooms with giant bears and kangaroos inside of them.  It felt like something out of Dr.Suess or Willy Wonka.  After that we cruised over to the Dalat Palace Golf Club to enquire about playing but it was way too expensive so we just hit some balls at the range.  We then drove over to the cable car which was pretty cool.  It took you over the city of Dalat and the views were pretty amazing.  Then we proceeded to get really lost and ended up at a place I had read about called the Valley of Love.  For lack of anywhere else to go we paid the 15,000 Dong entry fee which is $1 CDN to check it out.  It was pretty frikin hilarious walking around that place.  It was all Vietnamese couples taking pictures and falling in love along with Disneyland-esque tackyness all around.  We did some unnecessary male bonding and took some hilarious pics of the twop of us at the Valley of Love.  The funniest part of the day was when we were returning our tandem bike we had rented.  We had asked the lady we rented it from to get anaction shot of us riding by but as she was taking the picture, Matt leaned left and I leaned right and somehow the whole back rim totally bent in half causing the bike to fall over along with us laughing in hysterics.  It was all caught on video as well by an elderly guy who was filming us for some reason.  I would love to see the footage!  We felt bad but she knew it was an accident and not our fault so she didn't charge us anything extra.  The next day we embarked on our canyoning trip we had booked the night before.  This was definitely one of the best days of the trip so far!  It was just Matt, the 2 guides and I for the day but we had a great time.  The day involved hiking, swimming, abseiling down cliffs and waterfalls, jumping off cliffs and a really good lunch.  It was really slippery abseiling down the rock of the waterfalls and I slipped twice banging my knee pretty hard both times but I made it down eventually.  The best part was jumping away from the rock at the end, letting go of the rope and falling into the pool below!  The evening was spent freezing our buts off at the bar across the street from our hotel playing pool, scrabble and a very long game of poker that the owner of the bar ended up winning.