Thursday November 16th

Today we head into the mountains of the south Central Highlands to Dalat, where the French colonials used to retire in the hot months to their villas. For the Public Healthers in the audience the site for the city was suggested by Alexandre Yersin, a protege of Pasteur who spent many years researching communicable disease in Vietnam and is best known for discovering the causative organism of Bubonic plague (named Yersinia Pestis in his honor). Actually a Japanese beat him to it by a few weeks but we westerners gave him the credit.



The place is a big tourist destination for Vietnamese and other asians and has a reputation for being tacky (think low rent Disney or a very poor man's Vegas without the gambling) but actually we thought it was nicely developed around a lake and the attractive villas from the early 20th century.

The bus journey there was really long, first it took a while to get out of HCM, then the highway is not exactly high speed and finally the bus had to climb from sea level to 5000 ft (1500m) with some real steep ups. The speed limits in Vietnam are pretty strict and enforced, but the drivers of buses and trucks appear to have a set of hand signals warning those coming in the opposite direction to look out for the cops.

Mountain scenery

The road winds for a long way at about 3000ft (910m) passing very many coffee bushes in both smallholdings and plantations (and very many coffee beans drying out in the sun). There was also some tea plantations too, rice in flat areas and many other crops that grow well in the cooler conditions. The final climb to Dalat is eve steeper and takes the road through cool pine forests.

We decided to stay in a guest house in one of the old colonial villas on the ridge overlooking the city, so Tracy was left with the bags in the bar of the fanciest hotel in time while Tim walked over to get booked in. Then we wandered the center of town in search of food (settling on shrimp pancakes from a street stall to start, then a nice family restaurant) before jumping in a taxi for the ride up the hill.

This being the home of Vietnamese wine we had invested in a bottle of their "Export" which we'd not yet tried. We enjoyed a very drinkable glass on our little porch before heading for bed.