Dalat

We imagined ourselves on holiday in Europe rather than backpacking through South East Asia as we sat outside a small hillside restaurant eating breakfast, the mild morning sun warming our outstretched legs under the table. However the ethnicity of passing locals snapped us back to reality and we watched as a group lifted a large refrigerator onto the back of a buckling scooter before being driven off. It reminded us of when Keo pointed out a similarly loaded scooter in Laos and joked how the rider must have been Vietnamese as a result.

Down hillside roads and through flowing scooters we arrived at the long calm Xuan Luong Lake, where locals squatted on the grassing banks with short optimistic rods in search of fish. We hired a swan -shaped pedalo and zig-zagged our way around the western side of the lake. From under the shelter of the pedalo’s parasol we gazed out from the lake’s quiet centre at the city moving around us. The Eiffel Tower radio mast continuing to attempt the illusion of a European setting.

Once returned to shore we shared a Belgian waffle (accompanied with peanut butter and the world’s smallest scoop of ice-cream) at a lakeside restaurant until Poppy and Dan joined us. With the taste of waffle still lingering we took a taxi together to the ‘Crazy House’, an architectural showpiece as well as private home and hotel. Begun in 1990 by its owner, Mrs Nga, an architecture doctorate and daughter of ex-president, Truong Chinh, it is still being expanded and constructed. Its outlandish surrealist design made us feel like we were walking through Gaudi’s version of Disneyland. The narrow twisting corridors and stairways that led to bridges and tunnels, took us up, over and through molten shaped rooms of quirky animal and human designs. We would have stayed longer but the rains forced us into the shelter of a small grotto under the complex.

Kim did not sleep well due to having a cold (god forbid Alex catches it and it mutates into Man Flu) so after lunch and shopping for pharmaceutical drugs, which involved hand signals and a calculator, we returned to the hostel so Kim could try to sleep.Read more