Da Lat
After the crazy busy, but wonderful, Ho Chi Minh we caught a 6 hour bus up to Da Lat, a small city nested in the hills of south Vietnam 1500m above sea level. Da Lat is known as the “City of Eternal Spring” for its mild climate, and was built as a resort by the French in the early 1900s.
At first we really didn't enjoy Da Lat. It's an odd little place, really does have that resort feel. It felt very European, it was cold 🤣, and didn't felt very vietnamese to us. Da Lat, tourism wise is known for two main types of things - adventure sports/actives, and its gardens and flowers. Because of its tepid climate its perfect for growing vegetables, flowers and other crops. So as you drive into Da Lat you're surrounded by 100s of green houses and farm land. Which I thoroughly enjoyed, giving me all my inspiration for future allotments ehe.
Da Lat is also, quite randomly, known for adventure sports. Just outside of the town centre is a park full of zip lines, tree top climbing, abseiling and also mountain rollercoaster. We took a visit just to do the mountain rollercoaster, which was fab and terrifying. A friend we made over new year in Koh Rong was in Da lat at the same time as us, so it the three of us took a trip over for the day. At the bottom of the coaster, was a series of beautiful waterfalls too. We were unsure if we'd enjoy it, as it's a big tourist spot, but ot was actually really fun!
In the centre of Da Lat, there's two very interesting and unique spots to explore, The Crazy House and The Maze Bar. The crazy house is hotel and museum, designed by a local Vietnamese women. As the name suggests, it's a crazy house - architecturally very unique and interesting, inspired by nature, animals and the concepts of heaven and hell. Although it wasn't a bit site, it was somewhere very cool to walk around and explore.
To finish the day, we went for (maybe too many) drinks at The Maze Bar with our friend from Cambodia. Nested behind a small street side door, is about 6 floors of bars and seating areas, which you have to quite literally climb, crawl and squeeze through to. We ended up visiting a few times, each time finding a new place, including a massive rooftop garden?!
Nha Trang
After Da Lat, we had two options - an 18 hour bus straight to Hoi An, or a shorter bus to a town called Nha Trang, and then on another day take a 12 hour night bus up to Hoi An. As used to long buses we've got, we couldn't quite stomach a 18 hour bus.. so opted to stop over at Nha Trang. We'd not heard good things about Nha Trang, and that there isn't much to do, so we managed our expectations on the town before arriving.
Nicely though, we managed to find a really nice 4 star hotel for just £14 a night!? So we checked ourselves into luxury for 2 nights, primarily just to rest and relax for a couple days!
We did of course go out and explore, it's a seaside town so we strolled across the sea - which compared to some of the incredible islands we've seen felt tad underwhelming, but nice on one the less. We found a cafe that did the most unreal cinnamon bun, and did have a delicious Banh Mi while staying here!
The hightlight though, was ordering some pizza to our hotel room and just chilling and watching a movie hah. Those kind of chilled nights in is something we've not had in a while. We're so often just go go go, and often quite exhausted. So settling in for the night ordering a take away and watching a film was so needed.
Nightmare travel
After Nha Trang, we got our first night bus in Vietnam up to Hoi An. Which ended up being very eventful. It started all fine, a very nice night bus compared to those in Thailand, however at about 4am things took a turn. We were woken up by lots of shouting on the bus, all the locals shouting and running off the bus. We had no clue what was happening, wondering if they all missed their stop or something. We'd stopped on the side of a motorway, so clueless as to what was happening, we decided to also get off the bus. We stepped off the bus to see loads of smoke bellowing out of the side of the bus and the driver using a fire extinguisher on the bus! Turns out it was on fire. Suddenly all the screaming from locals makes sense hah.
So here we are, stuck on the side of the road at 4am, no clue how we're gonna get to Hoi An. Almost all of the locals had found another way to get to Hoi An, leaving about 15 confused and tired tourists left. We waited and waited, and at 6am a small local bus turned up to drive us, and everyone's luggage (including the locals who has sorted other transport, but left their luggage) onto this very small, very old bus to drive them last 90 minutes into Hoi An. Fair to say that was not the start to Hoi An we had expected, but we were also surprised this is the first time we've had anything like this happen since we start our travels. So not bad going we'd say.
We absolutely loved Hoi An, so despite plans to include it in this blog post, I've decided it needs its own dedicated post! So stay tuned for the next post!
Comments