Up and out at 7am, we had breakfast at the family restaurant and both went for the Vietnamese noodle soup - we are obsessed. Scott more so than me, especially when having it for breakfast! He claims it's the best breakfast he's ever had!
We left about 7.40am so we were twenty minutes early for pick up, god job we left when we did because as we literally walked out of the restaurant the bus pulled up and pointed at us "Dalat Dalat!" What! Where are we!? Who are these people!? This never ever happens in Asia, I mean buses and trains are never on time let alone 20 minutes early!!
We got first dips on seats, god job because it became packed with people and cases. We were sat right next to the slide open door so we had extra leg room! It was boiling on there even with the so called air con that blew hot air! After stopping for a pee the driver left the door open for a good hour before realising it was open, the Chinese people were nearly fainting seeing specks of dirt fly in! They were trying to 'shoo' them away even though they had masks on that I think they believe prevent them from catching diseases and purifies the air their breathing in, silly people. Dust and dirt and bacteria is in the air - the same air your breathing in with the mask on because it's getting under the mask in the gaps between your nose and cheeks!
It got even hotter once he closed the door but soon enough I think the door broke and it jammed open half way, still flapping about a little so I wedged my foot in between it to stop it from closing! The breeze was good, and the steeper we climbed the cooler it got. (Not a great deal but enough to cool you down) Scott started to feel ill half way through because he's been reading his book. He did well to read the length he did before feeling ill!
I expected Dalat to be a quiet little mountain village with nothing much going on and very few people living there. Wrong!
The roads going into Dalat were better than the cities! There were monkey trees every where, as far as the eye could see and fur trees! All sorts of flowers lining the main roads, hanging baskets and the roundabouts were full of flowers aswell. A lot of the buildings were French architecture with the boxed windows and French/New Orleans balconies, well maintained in all sorts of subtle colours like pinks and yellows. It already seems a lot wealthier here; there aren't as many little shabby apartment blocks that look really run down and dirty, the majority of buildings look really well kept. Perhaps it's a cheaper sort or province to live so it's easier to get a nicer house?!
We pulled up at the little bus station down an alley, a man in an 'easy rider' jacket came up to us and asked us where we were staying. 'Dalat family hostel' so off we went on two motorbikes with our rucksacks and little backpacks on because there aren't any tuk tuks in Vietnam so it's a motorbike or taxi; and a taxi was expensive in HCM so we opted out of that!
This was fun and surprisingly comfortable because I have my bag to lean on! I don't think Scott found it as nice though haha! We pulled up at the top of a steep alley, the motorbikes weren't going down to the bottom, I didn't blame them, it was steep! The family hostel was near enough at the bottom, as soon as I looked through the window 'muma' (as I found out her name afterwards) started clapping and singing and shaking her booty, a young Vietnamese girl came up to us hugging us and kissing us on the cheek, we didn't know what to do at first, a little startled at the booty shake! But it was such a warm welcome, we sat down with a bunch of other people that looked just as nervous as we did, we were all given noodle soup and Vietnamese tea which is lovely!
We soon got chatting and ushered into doing the tour that the operate - canyoning! The photos looked really good and it was only $25 each with lunch included, that at home would cost at least £100 for the day I expect!
We could already tell this hostel had a fab atmosphere, the family took away all the awkwardness by dancing and singing and being genuinely happy all the time, hugging you and chatting to you as though they'd known you forever; muma made you feel like part of the family as she just handed me and Scott a pair of gloves and a plate with a packet of rice paper on it and she was making the filling, she wanted us to help make the spring rolls for dinner! (The family put dinner on for the guests here every night for $2 each all you can eat near enough apparently and there seem to be a lot of people the amount of spring rolls we were given to make!)
Me and Sarah took over and Scott and Mike were sent outside to help muma peg the washing out! It was such a lovely place! We felt at home straight away! (Muma by the way can't speak any English, she's short and loud and shouts all these funny noises! A bit like daddy on Stella and everyone knows what she's on about! Haha)
We checked in, managed to get a double room because the dorms were rooms or 10-20 people and the beds were right next to each other with curtains separating them. Our room was still only a box room with a mattress on the floor and two poles above us acting as a washing line or clothes hanger. It wasn't anything special but it was nice enough for $5 a night and you didn't mind as much because you had hot water and positive energy surrounding you!
We met with Sarah and Mike who has had a rough two days by the seems, their bus crashed off the road and into a ditch yesterday and was close to toppling over and when they managed to get out safely apart from the driver who was taken in an ambulance, the replacement minivan over heated so they had to wait for ages to fill the water up and let the van cool down, their journey to Dalat took 8 hours rather than 4 hours, and this morning they had been looking for a hotel the rent motorbikes, the hostel had sent them there but they had been walking around for 2 hours not able to find it. Only to realise when me and Scott looked it up on google maps that they hadn't gone down the right road and missed it completely when it was only 5 minutes away.
We didn't think there was much point getting a moped this late in the day anyways because tomorrow we won't use it as we are all canyoning for the day.
Me and Scott went into a bank to draw a big amount of money out because none of the ATMs would still only allow you to draw £60 out so we went into the bank and drew a big amount out of the counter which was a pelarva because she was a newbie and had to read off papers ring people to understand what she was doing!
They grabbed some market food whilst I was still full from breakfast, Scott is decided he needs to learn how to use chopsticks because you are only given chopsticks at the hostel for dinner, no cutlery! He hasn't quite got the hang of it yet but I'm sure it won't take him long, he picks things up fairly quickly!
We caught a taxi to the crazy house because they're on meters here and are actually cheap so between the four of us they are about 10p each!
The crazy house is weird and wonderful, it's nickname is the alive and wonderland house, the stairs go up and over the roofs of the buildings and the handles are made into vines, this little kid started following us around and copying everything Sarah was saying, we thought it would be funny to hide from him so we all ducked down behind a wall until we ran out of wall and he found us again, we didn't know where his parents were until he directed us straight to his mother's shop. This was a perfect opportunity to run and hide from him, only we ran straight into an unfinished part of one building running up the steps he was closely following, these windy steps with tools everywhere took us back to the place where we were trying to loose him in the first place. We had so much fun running away from a 5-6 year old kid! Haha.
We shared a box of fresh strawberries between us which were delicious, but not as good as aunty Lynne's allotment beauties! Got a taxi to the lake in the middle of town, it was beautiful there; flowers and horse and carriages, there were pedalos which we wanted to have a go on but had to wait a while for and would mean we wouldn't have enough time to get back in time for dinner, so we opted out and wanted to walk back by the boys decided it was too far to walk (it wasn't I think they're lazy) ha!
So another taxi, good job they're cheap!

Dinner was so much fun, we had tonnes of vegetarian and meat dishes, it just kept being passed out! There were two rows of tables with about 20 people sat around each of them, all cramped up but it was nice and everyone had to speak to one another because you were forced to in a way but again with out the awkwardness because the family took that out of the equation.

Crazy Annie introduced herself, she was one of muma's daughters, she was the owner of the business and who set it up a year ago. To be fair to her she's done well to get it up and running this fast! But now it's easy because word and mouth in Vietnam is how you know where to go and stay because people are either travelling south to north or north to south and recommendations by word and mouth go a long way!
She was bonkers, standing on a stool teaching us all how to say '123 cheers!' In Vietnamese. She said that after dinner at about 10pm she would take us all out to a bar because she doesn't want the neighbours to be woken up with their children, on the way there we weren't allowed to laugh or talk just kissing. Haha! She is hillarious but so lovely! You just want to squeeze them! They're always hugging you and leaning on you as if your family and you know each other super well, muma is dancing and singing! She's barking mad! I can't explain how good the atmosphere is here.
We went out to a rock bar, Vietnamese band singing western rock songs like red hot chilli peppers and nickleback. They were good and near enough all the words were correct but after a drink we were ready to go!

I burnt my lips yesterday so I have a blister on them and they feel bruised so I'm in a bit of pain!