We arrived in Dalat- a nice little market town up in the mountains, and immediately appreciated the cooler climate. Jen had booked us into a local hotel, which turned out to have a hot tub on the roof overlooking the town. So that's where we positioned ourself until we got hungry and went out for some grub. Dalat had a thriving evening market which specialised in winter clothing. Wooly just about everything. People were even out and about in hats, jackets and gloves, even though it was no chillier than a typical English summer's evening (positively Baltic by Vietnamese standards). We rented another scooter for our couple of days there and went out and about exploring. We visited a local mountain and climbed up to the summit, which gave us a fantastic viewpoint, and made us realise just how unfit we were getting. It was at the bottom of said moutain that I spotted a zebra roaming on the hillside. Upon mentioning this to Jen she spent the next hour searching for it, the one after that questioning my sighting ("are you sure it wasn't just a horse with a few white patches?"), and the third hour disbelieving it along with anything else that came out of my mouth. She never did lay eyes on the zebra (my sighting was later varified by several other visitors, for all you doubters!). We had more outdoor adventures the next day. These included: a giant cable car to a lake; a walk around the lake spotting butterflies (monty only, jen fed up with the lake by the third second that she arrived); a walk down a rediculously commercialised waterfall; a trek along its not so commercialised, in fact pretty extreme gorge; and finally a roller coaster style car back up to the top (ok, not so much of a wilderness feel here!).
Next stop Na Trang. Not so much to say here. Over touristed beach resort with all the negative impacts of western visitors. More of a stop over really to catch the sleeper bus to Hoi An. The bus was an improvement on our previous night bus in the sense that you had a flat bed. Problem was that this 'bed' was only 5 foot 6 inches long. The metal frame was not so easy on any part of my body at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 6am. I did get to watch the most stunning sun rise though and I felt quite special.
Hoi An is basically tayloring central. We had to visit as jen 'might want to get a dress'. Four shopping days, seven dresses and a lot of fittings later we departed (much to Jen's annoyance as she felt she would have liked to maybe get a couple more)! I did manage to get a last minute suit made for me too. Not that I had any desire to, but my head (in the human form of my girlfriend) told me I may need one in the future, and it was a bargain, as were the dresses, so there you go. Thankfully, our 4 days of shopping were broken up in the middle by a one day-one night trip to Cham Island. This is a small little island which consists of a small little fishing village, many beautiful beaches and a lot of military (in the no-go half)(don't worry, we didn't go). The village has electricity between 1830 and 2200 and running water between 1900 and 1100, and no one speaks a word of English. Needless to say, it did not suit everyone on our two person trip. It was fun while it lasted though. On the boat back (and in preparation for the impending surge of dress shopping) I got invited by some locals to partake in a round of vodka shots. This then progressed into a second round which then lead to the entire bottle being consumed (all before the boat had actually left the dock). Just as I thought I had escaped relatively unscathed, a second bottle was produced and the drinking started again, much to little miss perry's amusement. Funnily enough the sailing back to Hoi An seemed to pass quite quickly (and in a bit of a blur!). Back to our luxury hotel, with a huge buffet breakfast and a picture perfect swimming pool-we did spoil our selves a bit. One of the most memorable bits about this hotel though was standing on the balcony at night watching the breathtaking lightening displays on the horizon. Huge sheet lightening lit up the entire panorama and then fork lightening ran from thunder cloud to thunder cloud. Mesmorising.
We got the train out of Denang (next to Hoi An) and headed North. The trains in Vietnam are a bit of a rarity, and seats onboard are even more scarce, especially this time of year. The journey was fun as Jen was once again quick to get chatting (this time to an American-Vietnamese family). One spectacular sunset later, we disembarked at Dong Hoi station. We spent the next 2 hours (and a sizeable taxi fare) trying to find our Hotel, only to be told that our booking did not exist. It turns out that the website we booked it on gave our hotel's address as the wrong city, and it did exist, just in Hue (about 130km away)! We eventually found a very friendly little guesthouse just where we were.
Dong Hoi is not really on the backpacker route, but we went there as it was the closest city to Dong Phong Nha -Kebang, a national park, famous for its caves (various caving world records broken). After being initially frightened off by the cost of hiring a taxi for a day, we were fortunate enough to meet a local guy with a motorbike. He explained to us what we needed to do to get there, and how we could go about it on the cheap. He volunteered to go with us the following day and show us around. So the following day we set off behind him on a motorbike which he rented for us (not so easy keeping up with a crazed vietnamese who is adamant he will get there in superquick time). Upon arrival we got a boat down the river, which then disappeared into the first cave- so the long boat followed. These boats are about 10 meters long- they manouvre around each other similarly to the motorbikes and people in Vietnam- basically barge. Barge to the end of the cave, drop people off, then barge out again. By the time we had seen the first cave and got back onto the boat, there must of been about 50 of these huge long boats all battling for position. Getting out again down the narrow, underground waterway, we all had to breath in just a tad. The caves themselves were breathtaking- stalagmite and stalagtite heaven- lit up by various colours. Whole ceilings were decorated with beautiful water formed patterns created over thousands of years. A bit of a natural equivalent to the Cistine Chapel I suppose. Hundreds of oddly shaped towers and eerie looking grotoes whereever we walked-and we did a lot of walking. More natural wonders to follow as we head towards Halong Bay.