So we left Saigon or Ho Chi Minh depending on who you spoke to and headed for Dalat. We arrived and soon realised that they werent lying when they said this was the rebel city! It was cold! Not just a cool summer breeze but shivering, jumper requiring weather. That topped with rain made for a rather homely experience. Dalat was beautiful, french villas lined the streets and pine trees and valley lakes dictated the scenary.
We jumped on a city tour visiting the King's Summer Palace - kind of like a run down Old Parliament House, we saw Dalat by cable car, the Valley of Love - creepy (for "adult time" but full of childrens rides and cartoon statues), we bobsledded down around a waterfall and visited the crazy house - not quite as crazy as first expected but the architecture was quite "wacky" one might call it. Since Dalat was cold and rainy we spent our night back at the hotel watching movies and hoped our bus would arrive in the morning to take us to Mui Ne.
The bus did arrive - something you can never be quite sure of in Vietnam and it was a 3 hour journey to Mui Ne and hopefully some much needed warmth!
Mui Ne looked promising when we arrived early in the morning, the sun was shining and we ditched our jumpers for our swimmers and boardshorts! We partook in yet another tour that took us to the fairy stream - a source of fresh water running peacefully through the sand dunes, as we walked back to the jeep a storm poured down torrential rain turning the quite placid fairy stream into a raging river! As we headed for the white sand dunes we had our storm chaser faces on and managed to beat it there. For a while we could - I wouldn't say enjoy the painful experience of sand dunes being belted into your bare skin - run around the dunes while almost imagining we were in a desert somewhere in the middle east! There is footage of Ray tripping over and tumbling down one of the dunes - quite funny!
To end the tour we had more rain and a smelly fishing village! That night we embarked on drinking games with a collection of travellers and the next day while sitting outside eating take away burgers in the torrential rain we decided to take our chances and head further north. By the end of our stay in Mui Ne we were ready to compose a letter to the Typhoon up north that would have gone something like this:
Dear Typhoon,
Not only have you trashed the beach so that there is no sand and rubbish floats around in the water you have also flooded the streets and the sand dunes were wet! Please stop your nonsense up north and leave us in peace!
So it was back on a bus in the pouring rain hoping for bigger and better things in Nha Trang!
L&R
