Dalat and Nahtrang

Went from the beach to the hills - which they call mountains - of Dalat. A beautiful little town with surrounded by some great scenery and the opportunity to escape from the tourist trail. We did what we seem to always do and used Dalat as our base and by way of motorbike toured the country side and villages most people don't know of or see. How do we pick them you ask - we don't, we pick a road, drive as far as we can and see where it takes us. Most times we get lucky, in Dalat out luck continued... But before that we had to do the 'tourist' thing and see all the sites that are on the tourist map. This included a number of waterfalls and parks. All nice, but none overly spectacular. They are however on the local Vietnamese tourist's to do list and in turn have been turned into amusement parks instead of a park like we would find at home. Not kidding, below is how we made our way down to a set of falls. You could hike down if you wanted for free (after paying your $.75 admission) or you could pay a little more ($1.50) and ride this roller coaster cart down. Now what would be more fun? So fun we made 2 trips to the falls.

Other funny things the Vietnamese like to do in their amusement parks is dress up like cowboys/cowgirls and get your picture taken with a horse. It is too funny! This horse obviously was as excited about the idea as we were, as he was struggling to stay awake. We've never seen a horse do this before... he couldn't keep his head up and would rest it on this stool then fall asleep. When his legs would give out and he would start as if he was going to lie down he would jolt awake. We love this picture of him sleeping...
Once we had our fun we were off exploring on our motorbike. We made it through some great villages and travelled about 60kms on some 'barely road' to get here.
Coming into another village. You can always tell when you're somewhere most tourists don't go, because the kids are way happier to see you. It is a novelty to see white skin and they go nuts.

This road was a little nicer (just outside Dalat), but as you can see we had to fight traffic. A storm that got us. Doesn't look as daunting as it did in person. And we had to drive through it unfortunately. Never in my life have I got so wet so fast...Next to Nah Trang. A beautiful beach, and a great town to get some more sun. Had to be careful here, it was easy to get stuck here with the great/cheap food, great accommodations, and easy life.
Where else in the world can you get fresh lobster and crab served to you on the beach?Did a four island tour and some snorkeling from Nah Trang. Was a good time and the snorkeling was okay. They treated you right though and as you can see laid out a great feast.They also went out of their way trying to make it a good time. At on stop they put out one of their staff on a little boat to create a swim up bar. People were slow to follow, but as you can see I kind of liked the idea. Jillene was right behind me...