Da Lat is this kitcsh mountain town located in the central highlands of Vietnam. It is where lots of honeymooning Vietnamese couples come and they can be seen on paddleboats shaped like enormous swans on the town lake or cycling about on tandem bikes - so romantic!

Da Lat has also pulled itself back from a darker side. Being at the end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail it's surrounding jungles and mountains became the storeroom for armaments from the N Army ready to be passed on to the Viet Cong in the South. The US military realising it's importance set up a camp there.

We expected a really small town so were more than suprised at the size of the place but we did manage to eventually find our accommodation after only getting lost once in the maze of streets!

Da Lat is quite famous for its 'Easy Riders' a group of local guys who drive you round the vicinity on their motorbikes acting as guides for the day. They are a bit in your face and harrassed us from the minute we got off the bus, even trailing us to our accommodation! Over lunch another one sidled up to us (there is no peace - even when you're eating!) thrusting his book of recommendations into our hands. We have discovered that Da Lat is very keen on recommendations, they are everywhere, restaurants, guest houses, cafes and easy riders - some are serious but some are so tongue in cheek it is unbelievable! Anyway to cut a long story short we had every intention of using these guys so we agreed that we would go with this guy and his mate the next day. Job done, pick up at 8.30am, now please go away and leave us alone. All was well and we continued in peace with our lunch until....another easy rider comes in throwing a magazine at us and yelling his head off! He was so angry he was shaking - at first we couldn't actually understand what he was going on about but as he calmed down a bit it transpired that he wasn't happy because our guide had not chosen him to be his co driver - and that's our fault? I told him that he was doing nothing but scaring me by shouting whilst David told him that really this was not our problem so could he back off and go and sort it out with our guide. The guy then flounced out but did come back in to apologise a few minutes later. It was really horrible but we did get lots of support from the other travellers in the cafe!

After the commotion of the previous day I can report that the day with our 'Easy Riders' was great! They were knowledgeable and willing to tell us anything we asked. Both men had been children during most of the war but the minute they hit 16 they were automatically conscripted by the S Vietnamese army who were fighting against Communism. Just after he'd been conscripted the US army withdrew leaving the Southern Army to fight alone, within 2 years they had been defeated and Vietnam became a unified communist country. At that point all men who had fought in the Southern Army were placed in 'Re-education camps' where they were used to rebuild the countries destroyed infrastructure, schools, hospitals and homes. It was very hard work!

We visited a shell of a house surrounded by colouful new houses and a pink primary school right next door. This was a house which North Vietnamese troops took hostage and which the Americans shelled killing both the troops and the innocent families inside. That is why the shell still stands as there is no surviving family member to reclaim the land and build a new house.

To help us to understand the difference between the 2 fighting forces our guide told us to imagine that the Northern Army were like Rambo whilst the US forces were like Terminator. The former fought in the jungle, the latter destroyed everything in its path.

We went out to the farmland where we could see small fields, little wooden huts and big colorful houses. Many rural families around Da Lat supported communism so were often the target of attacks from the US and S Vietnamese forces so many people escaped from the country to the towns. After 1975 families were selected to go back to the land to be farmers. The men from the 'Re-education' programmes would build them their wooden homes then the families would start to farm. Each family would be told the crop that they had to grow - usually just one thing. They all belonged to a collective and anything grown was given to the collective - in return they were given food to eat. One of our guides came from a farming family and they lost everything under the communist regime - he became quite upset when he was telling us. In 1990 the government changed their policy so now these farmers own their land which they can buy and sell as they choose, they can also grow whatever crops they desire and sell these on the open market. This is why many are now building big houses as it is quite a profitable industry! We also went to a coffee plantation - it is a similar story here with these farmers now being amongst some of the wealthiest in the country as the land is of a high value and the coffee is exported overseas.

We went high up into the jungle so we could see the damage caused by the Americans. As I mentioned above the jungle was used to move armaments around so we saw one side of a road where the US had burned the jungle down and another side where they had used napalm and agent orange to clear it. After the war there was a massive reforestation programme introduced - we actually visited a village who had originally been a nomadic hill tribe but who the government, after 1975, forced to settle. The men from the re-education programmes built the houses for the village and the tribe people had to plant trees in the destoyed jungles. They have planted Pine trees and on the side where the jungle was burnt down the trees are growing nicely but on the side that was destroyed by chemicals the growth is sporadic and thin.

We have been told now by a number of people that the Southern Vietnamese following reunification were treated quite harshly and denied the equal opportunitites of their northern counterparts. Today the situation has vastly improved though I do sense a North/South divide even though they don't admit to it!