Transfer day. We are on the move for the next five or six days, trying to get a sampling of southern Vietnam. Our van (bus? It holds 16 so the 8 of us had plenty of space and were quite comfortable) picked us up at 8:30 and we crawled out of the busy city.
I am constantly amazed at what people can carry on motos. This woman with a ton of fish and turtles seemed unique, until we passed another moto with just as many fish (probably on the way to Fish Store Street!).
There are "heeps" of sayings we remember from Kylie and Andrew, but one of the funniest was the name for caramel popcorn - "lolly gobble bliss bombs". Soon into the ride, they produced a bag to prove they hadn't been pulling our legs...
We were on the long road to Dalat today - a kind of modern hill station. When I say long, I mean time, not distance, as it is under 300km from Saigon. However, with the speed limits and sometimes congestion in towns, the travel time was more like 7 hours in the van, with an extra two and half hour detour halfway for lunch and to check out the Dambri Waterfalls.
Whoever built the Dambri Waterfall park had big plans - it is a pretty sizeable place filled with weird bronze status of animals and mermaids, derelict carnival rides, unused bungalows, iffy restaurants and souvernir shops (spelled as they spelled it). Maybe the entry fees turned tourists away - it was about 25US for each family which for the average Vietnamese family is a lot.
I have to say, the falls themselves were impressive, though we didn't have raincoats so didn't walk behind or under the falls.
There was another set of falls that we visited via riding a Blue Mountain-like ridge runner ride.
The falls below were beautiful!
Robin and Beth were paired up for the ride back to the top.
Andrew spotted a weird phenomenon on his trip to the Mekong delta - hilarious photos above the urinals meant to.... I don't know. Encourage you? Discourage you? A girl with a camera, magnifying glass, one with a measuring tape, one laughing. Classic. So we went for a bathroom break before our next bus leg, and saw this....
A long, but fun trip today. We got to Dalat around 6, grabbed a quick bite then hit the hay. We are looking forward to exploring this place tomorrow.
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