Dalat - City of Flowers

Hi again,

No photos right now, but will try to come back to the computer tonight and put some up.

The drive from Nha Trang to Dalat took about 5 hours - through some beautiful countryside and areas inhabited by ethnic minority communities - tiny little kids herding cattle and goats along the roadside!

The drive up through the hills was scenic, if a little hairy - long, winding roads with not much between us and the valley below. I had to laugh when I saw a road sign up the top, informing me that we had passed through a place called "P.Rang" !!!!

Driving into Dalat is a bit surreal - the rainforests make way for pine forests, and once you pass the huge vegetable plantations, it's like driving through a town in Europe - French villas everywhere, and a totally different approach to town planning than we've seen anywhere else here.

It's much cooler up here - we're wearing jeans today, but still warm enough to need beer!

We went for a wander around the local markets - the flowers especially are amazing (and cheap - I bought 9 or 10 roses for Rach and it cost me 10,000VND - about $0.80 AUS... Didn't help my cause of course!!!)

Lee and our driver have taken us around to see a pagoda/monastery above a lake (name escapes me right now, but will check it when I post some photos), from which we caught a cable car back over the hills to Dalat. We've been for a look through Bao Dai's palace (the last emperor/king here, who lived with his royal family in a big art deco place on the hill), and had a look through the Dalat Flower Gardens.

Tomorrow we're off to see some more sights around the area, then the next day we're off to Saigon. Have been warned that the drive could take between 5 and 7 hours!

As long as the computers at the Novotel here hold out, I'll come back and post some more later...

Til then

Steve