Oh what a Ride (to Da Lat) #1

We had a 13 hour bus ride in a sleeper bus to Nha Trang & then a transfer for a 5 hour ride to Da Lat. And what a ride it was. Thankfully we had back bottom seats on the sleeper bus to Nha Trang-which translates into extra foot room & the ability to stretch out into the aisles. 

We had beautiful views of the full moon as we traveled. 

The bad news-this night bus also contained a toddler. For a good two hours he would yell out-on & off, just enough that no one slept. Finally one of our Korean bus mates told them "Be quiet." I could elaborate, but I fear that someday I'll have the yelling child on public transport. 

On top of it all, the bus arrived in to Nha Trang early, at 5:30am & we then had a 2 hour wait as opposed to the scheduled 1hour. Needless to say it was a short & sleepless night. I used the restroom & kept nodding off in my chair as we waited in the Sinh tourist office. 

The Sinh tourist bus station in Nha Trang had a real bathroom, toilet paper, sinks, and multiple stalls. Historically the Sinh tourist bathrooms at the agencies have been some of the worst we've seen. We later realized this bathroom was so nice because it was connected to a high-rise hotel. I took full advantage of it. 

Chris ventured out in search of breakfast & coffee. He noticed that signage was in Russian as well as Vietnamese. As our bus left the Nha Trang station for the first time while in Vietnam, I could read the signs!! 

Our bus to Da Lat was a traditional bus & our driver was on a mission to get us there as quickly as possible. The road was incredibly windy & required a horn-and he laid it on. We braced ourselves around every turn to keep from falling out of our seats. We arrived into Da Lat 5 hours later & quite exhausted. 

We found a taxi-again we were fortunate enough to find an honest one with a meter & paid $1.50 to get to our hostel. We were so exhausted we didn't even get a photo before we climbed into bed. What was supposed to be a 90 minute rest turned into a 3 hour nap. I took my first warm shower of the trip & we headed out to see the city. 

Fun fact: during the war, both sides agreed not to bomb Da Lat and leaders from both sides would come to rest & play golf at the gift course. (The difference in temperature is about 30 degrees and it's lovely.) I didn't notice anything different about the structure or buildings city, having not been rebuilt after the war except that the city is quite spread out-and there were some massive hotels. 

We headed out about 4pm to see our first sight. It was sprinkling but we'd only allotted two days-and we'd slept away most of one. We got caught in a torrential downpour. We hid under a tree with our umbrella until the storm let up. Then we retreated back to the hostel after getting soaked. 

We stayed at Backpacker's Paradise which includes family style dinner. At 6pm everyone comes downstairs for dinner at long tables and there are communial dishes to pass (we paid $13 a night for a private room with bath). At first, we felt a bit old as we watched people flirt & compete about who was on the road longer, but then we settled into dinner and got some really great travel advice as well as great laughs with some really cool people. Family dinner ended up being a highlight. 

Dinner was always rice, a salad vegetable, soup, and a meat/potato dish. 

This dinner included quail eggs and fish balls. The fish balls are the round bits in the soup. The fish balls were my favorite part-and I thought they were mozzarella balls until our last night. Clearly I have a developed palate. 

Dinner ended with a shot of a digestive-sorry for the label of photos in this post. 

We headed up for an early night. The bad part about this hostel is that it is loud. Our room is right next to the stairwell & with all the stone & concrete-there isn't much to absorb the sound. We're on the 3rd floor (American 4th) and we can hear the communial space on the ground floor. We also shared the floor with a group of guys who played rap-finally at 11:00pm I asked them to close their door & turn it down. Thankfully they were sweet & apologtic about the noise-because at this point I just needed a good nights sleep!! (Chris was asleep by 8:30pm. I have a love-hate relationship with his ability to sleep.)

It's a post with a whole lotta nothing as the day was a whole lotta nothing. Best of all is the cool Da Lat weather. We went to bed snuggled in blankets, listening to the rain. After sweating profusely for the past week, we joyfully welcomed the cooler temperatures, even if it means enduring rain.