200 days down, 108 to go...

After arriving in Dalat with very sore bums we decided to forgo the offer of a free ride to our hotel with a complete stranger who wanted our money for a trip the next day, and walk there ourselves. Us saying "no" didn't stop him from following us the whole way to see where we were staying though, it wasn't very discreet on a motorbike going 3mph! He even helped us navigate at one point, even though in his words he "wasn't following"!

The hotel that our previous hotel had booked for us was full, so we got on a bike to her brother's hotel, which although was a little way out of town was very nice. That evening we had a very early dinner just down the road... we had arrived at the hotel, tired and in need of a lay down when we discovered a Die Hard marathon playing on HBO. Awesome! We settled in for the night until a power cut struck at 5pm and we were told it wouldn't be back on until 9pm, great that means we'd miss most of number two and all of number three (a film Sion's never seen because a certain parent of hers has recorded over it twice in the past with a certain Australian soap!).

After a lovely meal in a restaurant with no one else in it we headed home for Die Hard Four and sleep! The next day we went exploring and found ourselves a way out of town in the Flower Gardens by the lake. We've both taken to gardens this trip, a little odd for two twenty something's with no previous interest in gardens but it's a nice place to find a little calm in all these hectic places. They were beautiful and the nurseries up on the hill gave great views of this mountain encircled highland town. We were able to do lots of walking as it was a lot cooler than the rest of Vietnam (mid-20's rather than mid-30's). In the market we found the usual colourful fruit and veg stalls, meat and fish stalls and clothing stalls but we were shocked to see wooly hats and scarves for sale - it wasn't that cold!! We treated ourselves to a bottle of Dalat's finest 'Dalat Superior Red Wine', we didn't even know Vietnam produced wine but at 50,000dong (one pound sixty) we thought we'd take the risk. It wasn’t disgusting but we wouldn't have described it as 'red wine'!

That evening we had a gorgeous meal at HNL cafe, we spent the evening working out what HNL could stand for as it didn't say anywhere. The food was amazing; Sion had a local specialty of shrimp paste cooked on sugar cane, yum! For pudding we tried Durian ice cream. Durian is a disgusting smelling fruit which is actually banned from the transport system in Singapore! We'd been hearing that it tasted far nicer so we thought we'd try it in ice cream form... it was a very odd flavour which was hard to like when it smelt like rotting vegetables, but it wasn't the worst thing we'd tried.

The next day was a big one for us 'DAY 200'!! To celebrate we did yet more walking and exploring and managed our cheapest lunch yet. In the afternoon we went to look around 'Crazy House' a hotel that is open to the public because of its architecture, it certainly was 'crazy' and very odd. It was very Alice in Wonderland meets Fantasia. We weren't entirely convinced it was worth the walk. After that we stumbled across a cafe we'd read about online. Stop'n'Go cafe was run by Mr. Viet, a poet that knows it! It was like going round a relative’s house that you don't know very well, it was all very polite. We sat in his front room and he made us Cherry Tea which was gorgeous. His wife brought us some cake and we read some of his poems. We ended up buying a booklet of them for a dollar which he was very happy about.

That evening we had a meal at the ‘Art Café’, which surprisingly had a lot of art on the walls! It was a lovely end to a lovely highland escape. Next stop Ho Chi Minh City where it’s going to be hot and back to the busy side of life…