After successfully surviving a long but picturesque drive up into the mountains (including lots of bum slapping pot holes and a minor crash!) we arrived in the beautiful hillside town of Dalat. Instantly we found that the rumour that Dalat is really cold is indeed true! - at 1,500m above sea level we are back in our jumpers and fleeces already!

On arriving we wasted no time in finding a local bar/cafe and were instantly greeted by the "Easy-Riders" that we were hoping to track down. They are basically a group of sweet middle aged men with even more middle aged motor bikes that act as tour guides/drivers. We managed to hook up with two dudes named Ba and Hiep (which he took great delight in telling us was prounanced "Hip - as in hip hop" - but being a 65 year old Vietnamese guy with few teeth looks more hip replacement!).

First we booked an "Around Dalat" day trip with them for today (new years eve) and spent a great day cruising around the hills and countryside as well as taking in mountain lakes, buddhist temples (we surely must be on course for nirvana by now!), local flower growers, waterfalls, pine forests and a random "crazy house" (designed by a nuts Vietnamese MP's daughter that thinks she is Gaudi on acid!).

As we had such a good day and the old dudes were so cool (combined with the fact that we did not want to get back on the bus and wanted to see more of Vietnam)...........we have booked them for the next four days for a tour through the central highlands and all the way on to Saigon! We are really looking forward to it and it has cheered us up after the disappointment of not getting to Phu Quoc for more beaches and scuba diving.

It was with mixed emotions that we were in a country on new years eve that follows the lunar calendar. Partly a shame as it is non-event to the locals here and also a relief that we don't have to worry about our easy riders being too beered up tomorrow morning!

Just as we were thinking of writing off this year's new year celebrations we managed to bump into Paul and Kelly again! This meant that in an otherwise relatively tourist and bar free town we had some good company to see 2008 in with!

We started with more delicious Vietnamese food and, for the first time, Vietnamese wine from Dalat (actually not bad - very fruity and light!). We then moved onto to a couple of bars and joined up with a German/Swedish couple that we had bumped into earlier in the day. We saw in 2008 in a bar called "Saigon Nites" which was just our kind of place - small and dingy in a Vaults bar kind of way (apologies that this will only mean something to you if you live in Stony!). They even managed the whole TV countdown thing and, at midnight, the owner bought out sparklers, party poppers and cake for everyone with Abba's Happy New Year sounding it's way around the town!

We managed to roll in at about 2am and were regretting the fact that we had booked to start our "Easy ride" at 8am on New Years Day!

Happy New Year Everyone!

xxx