Day 55

New Alpine Coaster

I woke up in time for a nice breakfast but as it turned out Alfie and Daisy stayed up too late to wake up in time. I had a little emergency of my own, my phone was on 1% and my portable charger had decided to stop working. Honestly I couldn't be too surprised with the water damage, sand everywhere, and me throwing my bag around without a care it shouldn't have been such a gut punch as it was. Luckily the lady at reception loaned me her phone charger and we chatted for a while whilst waiting for Alfie and Daisy to get out of bed in time for checkout.

Eventually we all paid, and had our bags packed and left at the hostel. Our plan was to go straight back to Datanla for the Alpine Coaster but they hadn't had breakfast so we had to spend a while searching for the right place then eating. Luckily we found a nice place that served these yummy egg Banh Mi and we were good to go. We got a Grab over to the park and paid for our tickets for the Datanla New Alpine Coaster - a 2400 meter track through the forest and passing waterfalls, making it the longest in Asia. This was one of the manually controlled ones so you could go as slow or as fast as you wanted. Obviously I wanted speed so I held the brake off for as long as I could before the track slowed me down by itself.

At the bottom we could hop off for a while and explore the waterfall. There was a little archery setup so I gave it a go, where I would win a bottle of wine if I hit the centre. Unfortunately I'm trash and so were the bent arrows so I had no chance. After saying hello to the massive dinosaur model (who for some reason had been given to scale testicles), we grabbed a smoothie and went for a wander back up the stairs. We could have grabbed the coaster back up but we went for an adventure instead. This turned out to be a massive mistake as without much warning the heavens opened up and rain hurtled down towards the ground. I have no idea how it went from sunny to torrential downpour in a matter of minutes but here we were sheltered under a roof with everyone else. Unlike everyone else their guides had ponchos ready for them but none of us had our ponchos on us. Wishing I had brought mine, we tried to out wait the rain. Unfortunately this lead to nothing but heavier rain. Luckily our tickets were valid for the other coaster that went up to the top so we braved the rain and made our way up. The staff looked at us very funny and I tried to protect my bag as much as I could. We got the top and ran for the entrance where I decided the best thing to do would be to leap onto the wet smooth tiles in my sliders with 0 grip. I proceeded to slip over like a cartoon and smack my back on the tiles. I was absolutely fine but definitely caused a stir with everyone at the café as it looked like I may have hurt myself.

Our next mission was to order a Grab back into town but after 5 minutes of searching, no cars were available. We weren't really sure what to do so we tried searching again and luckily a car magically appeared right outside. We ran in soaking wet, apologised for being soaking wet and made our way back to Da Lat. We made our way back into our hostel (with me being much more careful not to slip on the wet tiles) and got changed into some dry clothes. Whilst Alfie and Daisy went for some more food, I charged my phone and played some more pool again the local master - losing every game I played. I head out for some lunch too, getting some more Banh Mi with meatball soup from a local place right next to our hostel.

With that, it was time for all of us to get to our stuff and head to the bus station for our over night bus to Hoi An. It was somewhere between a 12 and 14 hour bus so we decided to pay a bit more and go for the VIP experience (an actual bed instead of the ones we had been on recently). However, when we arrived fear struck me as we weren't sure whether it was 1 bed each or between 2. We had to wait around for a while and anxiety slowly crept up. This would be the difference between a wonderful comfortable experience and me getting to know a stranger super well. As we boarded I saw some people sharing beds. Uh oh. Surely they're choosing this I tried to reason. Between the 3 of us we were shown to 2 beds. A small wave of relief struck as I wasn't sharing with anyone yet (unlike Daisy and Alfie who were squeezed together). Slowly everyone else boarded and no one else came to join me. We departed and I prayed we had no more stops to pick anyone else up. There were still some beds left so one of the staff gave us a 3rd bed so we were luckily able to all have our own private pod. Thank fuck for that.Read more