Day 7 follow up and Day 8 Dalat

DAY 7

The bus trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Dalat was a f***ing nightmare! Lonely Planet says 6 hours. It took us 8 hours!! The bus driver was on drugs AND had a very small penis. His small penis was evident from the way he drove as well as the size of the rig he manned. He drove like a crazy man, even by Vietnamese standards. The driving rules here are as follows: The bigger the vehicle, the more right of way you have. Big rigs just honk and every vehicle that is smaller has to move to the side of the road. Any vehicle can go onto the opposite side of the road to get around another, doesn't matter about oncoming traffic - just honk and they are meant to veer out of your way onto the side of the road to avoid a head-on collision.

So we spent a nightmare trip with this maniac honking his bus horn on average 20-30 times a minute for 8 hours. We drove head on towards other buses and then at the last minute a hard right hand (they drive on the opposite side of the road here) turn and we narrowly miss the median barrier and zip in front of a man and 2 children on a moped. That scenario was repeated over and over again with the horn blasting all the time. He overtook down a mountain, kind of like the drive up to Mt Glorious in Brisbane, on a corner without being able to see what was coming around the corner. F***ING NIGHTMARE.

Time wise it took us 1 1/2 hours to get the first 50km. We travelled at 20km an hour through each town, and there were plenty! After 4 1/2 hours we had travelled 150km.

I was scared for us but I was more scared for the people we were overtaking. I instructed the kids to put their hands over their heads if we crashed. Our biggest danger was the bus toppling on its side with the hard sharp turns to avoid head on collisions at high speed.

The drive from HCMC to Dalat is mostly small townships. The closer the township to HCMC the more filthy it was. As we got further into the mountains everything became cleaner. It's very pretty here. Dalat is also very clean. Lots of effort has gone into making the town look nice. I would recommend stopping here to get a taste of the life in the highlands.

We are staying at Ngoc Lan Hotel which is quite nice. Cost $58/night for each room. Normally $135/night but I have been booking hotels as I go from a website: Hotels_in_vietnam.com Tun Travel, which gives a selection of hotels ranging from cheapest to most expensive. Other websites seem to require scanned copies of passport and credit cards. I have copies of these, but not scanned, so impossible for me to book accommodation on some websites. So good idea to bring a copy of those things on a USB or laptop if you use other sites to book accommodation. Really nice buffet breakfast here too!

James spent the entire 8 hour hellish bus journey with his head in his hands trying not to vomit. He was sweating like a pig. I had to give him Lomotil because...well he definitely needed it that morning, but I fear that just ended up corking up one end, leaving only his mouth for "the demon" to exit from. As I explained to him, you can vomit into a bag on a bus, you can hardly poo into one. We even had some Vietnamese "smelling salts" - useless. It's called Dau Phat Linh and it's potent stuff. I imagine it's meant to shock you out of vomiting because it BURNS. Do not hold it too close to the nose to smell, and DO NOT put it on your top lip as we were instructed. IT BURNS! Gus says it's taken his moustache of part of his top lip after he applied it to himself just to test it out.

Everyone was whinging at me by the end, but the prize for the biggest whinger of all time goes to George. His current whinge is that I don't like him as much as his siblings, so just in case he reads this I won't go too much into it. All I will say is that he is now whining that he wants a new skateboard for his birthday in July, and that has escalated into: You said you'd let me buy the skateboard online today. He whined for 3 days about getting some $2 fake Ray Bans. He whined all day today for a soft drink.

We took off from HCMC from Phuong Trang Bus Depot which is in District 1 in De Tham Road. Buses galore here if you want head anywhere from HCMC. We went miles out of town to get tickets to go to Can Tho in the Mekong, and I only realised this closer one existed for this trip. This street is not far from the round about that Ben Thanh Market is on.

To view some action packed snippets of our bus journey, click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlhKFewY5lw

DAY 8

Drew and I spent the evening of Day 7 walking around the markets that are in the central square of Dalat. The markets have a carnival atmosphere with lots of flashing lights and stalls. A bit kitsch, but tolerable. This is the place to buy second hand jackets and shirts. 70's and 80's clothes galore! Great jackets. I bought myself a winter jacket for $4. If I had it in me to barter, I probably could have got it cheaper, but the bus journey had left me wasted and empty. A word of advice, do not try the hot milk drink. It looked to me like hot milk with sugar and cinnamon floating in it. I think it was actually yak milk with herbs and salt.

The highlight of the trip for the boys is the hotel accommodation. They are mesmerised by the TV and bathroom, the beds and the minibar. All they want to do is stay in. I have to force some of them to come out with me.

Today was one of the bests days of our trip. We were approached by an Easy Rider as we were walking map in hand through the streets trying to locate the post office. Easy Riders are everywhere here. They drive motorbikes or drive cars and specialise in tours, both local and extended tours through the highlands. The man who approached us was named Le Quang Hung and he spoke excellent English. He had testimonials recorded in a book he carried around and he's been an Easy Rider for 20 years. He offered us a car to take us to all the local sights. I opted for us to go by motorbike/scooter. I knew the kids wouldn't stand for another tour like the one we took with Ni in a car. Touring by motorbike cost a bit more but it was worth it for entertainment value. It ended up being $20 each to go by motorbike as opposed to $80 all up for a car. We took off an hour later. The Easy Riders drove at about 40km/hr most of the time and were very careful. We all had helmets. The youngest 2 shared a motorbike with one man, and the rest of us all had a motorbike/scooter and driver each. We spend 4 hours driving to all the local sights. Everyone was thoroughly entertained. James did shit himself at one stage, but it was just water, and I was able to quickly wipe it off his legs with my neck scalf. I advised him to wear underpants next time he had diarrhoea. In the meantime, I gave him mine. Hung did offer us a 3 day tour or a 6 day tour through the mountains ending at either Nha Trang or Hoi An. They were pretty expensive ranging from about $600 to $1000, so we decided to stick with our plan to head to Nha Trang tomorrow. He doesn't recommend Nha Trang as he says it's way too touristy. We're tourists, we can live with that. Besides, we had already booked our tickets on to Nha Trang.

I would also recommend not booking too much in advance. Leave your options open in case your really like a particular town, or you get local advice of a better place to head to.

Today I purchased some Weasel Coffee. Made locally, it is made from the coffee beans that have been through the digestive system of a weasel. Apparently weasels only eat the best coffee beans, so once they eat them and then shit them, they then start the process of drying etc. I have sent a packet of this coffee to my brother in Melbourne as he fancies a good coffee in the morning. Apparently weasel shit coffee is the best. Oh, it cost me about $14 to send this 500g package to Melbourne if anyone is wondering about postage costs. Don't expect a post office like ours either. Expect something from the early 1900's. They still deal with telegrams. They package the items themselves in brown paper and string and you need to provide your passport number to send things internationally. Postcards can only be bought from bookstores.

As I write, I am looking out my hotel window into Dalat. We are able to open our shutters and our windows in this hotel so we can look at and hear Dalat. Really very nice. We are 2 minutes walk to the local market area where every delicacy known to man can be found. The moto here is, if it moves, you can eat it. Yum Yum. See photos below.

...some hours later.

Have been out to dinner. The kids demanded western food, so we sat in a restaurant in Vietnam and ate banana pancakes for dinner. James has picked up a bit and was able to pick at his food a little. Probably good to have one meal that isn't classed as 5 star fibre. The extra vegetables and fruit are playing havoc with our digestive systems. Plenty of extra entertainment for Max though. He's young and understandably immature and finds anything to do with the passing of wind hilarious. Me, well I'm a little too old for all that nonsense.