<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->

20 June: Dalat

Today was more of an in transit day than anything else. The bus would leave at 07h30, so we were up at 06h15 just to make sure everything was as it should be. We arrived at Sinh Cafe at 07h15 and boarded the bus after our ticket had been checked. I decided to get off and head to the nearest bathroom knowing that it would be at least 2 hours before I would get another chance. Entering the closest hotel, I found the bathroom occupied, waiting for 5 minutes I returned to reception to inquire as to whether anyone was occupying it. They just waved me away telling me to wait, after another 5 minutes a lady emerged, leaving me seconds to finish up. As I left the hotel the bus pulled away into the street, I had to run a few meters knocking on the door for them to open up.

Inside Leanne was standing talking to the bus driver, who had been told by another operator to just go, even if I'm not on the bus. He had not even listened to Leanne's protests, that I was still not on board. Sitting down we settled in with our books, Leanne was still in the beginning stages of her new 1500 page book while I finished off the last few pages to my 650 pager.

We stopped for the first time 3 hours into the journey only to watch as everyone swarmed to the bathrooms. We had to take off our shoes putting on slip slops lying there, it wasn't very appealing, but we had no choice in the matter.

We continued for another 2 hours before stopping for lunch. We first made our way to the bathroom amidst a horde of people. Afterwardswe headed to a restaurant advertising that they had fast food, we ordered rice, vegetables and chicken. True to their motto, our food arrived not more than 3 minutes later. After lunch it was time for our first Avocado shake, one well worth while! We wandered through the shops, before noticing that the locals were receiving free coffee or so it looked like. It didn't take long for me to test this and sure enough the lady handed me a cup of coffee filled with ice blocks, Leanne also got one for herself as they weren't very big. On the bus again it was time for the last 2 hours of the trip.

The drive was extremely scenic, especially when we started driving up the escarpment to reach the central highlands. The roads meander along the mountain ridges, often exposing itself to shear cliffs, creating a sense of insecurity for most onlookers. A factor that only accentuated this was that our driver and many others would have fitted in well with the term "hell drivers". They would swivel round the 90 to 180 degree turns, accelerating rather than slowing down, only hooting at oncoming traffic in an attempt to justify their hideous driving. Most other drivers would act in the same manner, which would make for fearful, yet comical stops, as the driver would slam onto his brakes as hard as he could causing bags, bottles of water and anyone without secure footing to fly forward. A few of the French sitting in front of us even gave out a few whimpers of despair, lets just assume they were all girls.

At last we reached Dalat! It could only be Dalat as we were already 1 &frac12; hours later than they told us we would be, but then again like African time we have heard often enough about Vietnamese time. On the way to some of the guest houses on our list, a girl informed us that the Pacific hotel has rooms for $7. We stopped at two along the way but all were above the $10 mark. We decided to go look at the room in Pacific Hotel, we instantaneously decided to stay. The room was huge almost twice as big as our room in Saigon, two double beds, a TV and huge bathroom, but more importantly it was clean.

We settled in for a while, before heading for the central market. The market was built in almost a amphitheater, huge walls enclosing it on all sides. Walking down the steps we were greeted by vendors trying to sell their goods, either farming utensils, sweets, fish, poultry, fruit or clothes. We ended up buying some sweets, bananas and a very sweet pineapple while discovering the new market. Heading back the evening we bargained for water and walked back to the hotel. The weather here was severely colder due to the higher altitude and in the cold evening air we had only thin tropical clothes on. Needless to say on our return both of us felt a little under the weather - but we had a hot shower - something we haven't had a lot of in Asie...