I am currently back at school, and doing very well after the first academic week. I have been thinking about the adventures over the summer, and decided that I really owe it to my future, memory seeking self to finish this blog. I also owe it to all the readers who patiently waited to hear about the latter half of our trip. I am sorry this blog wasn’t followed through on time, but it will be completed now.
I will pick up where I left off: Leaving Hoi An.
After taking a bus back to Danang from Hoi An, which took about an hour, we relaxed and caught a movie (Now You See Me 2: It was great, it cost $6 for both our tickets with popcorn, and it was at a very high end theater) and then we headed to the train station. You can recall that we took a train from Hanoi south to Dong Hoi, and we did it in luxury. We had a private room, beds, outlets, and time to relax. This time we decided to do our 8 hour overnight journey differently by taking the cheap, normal seats. This wasn’t necessarily because of financial reasons (although saving $20 each felt good) but because all the sleeping tickets were reserved before we had a chance to book them ourselves.
The seats were great for me, but Bryden, being the giant he is, had a much harder time fitting into the seats and sleeping. With babies crying, lights flashing, and people chatting all night I slept decently well, utilizing my blackout eye-mask and earplugs (thanks EVA Air!), but Bryden struggled. We arrived the next morning in the drunk, Russian populated city of Nha Trang quite tired.
We had originally planned to spend a day or two in Nha Trang, a place known on the internet for beautiful beaches and numerous attractions, but after discovering its poor reputation within the country we decided to skip it, and upon arrival we headed straight for the nearest internet cafe to enjoy some cold coffee and find the nearest bus station. We decided to take a bus to our next destination; the picturesque French-Colonial mountain settlement of Dalat.
We took a taxi to the station, found our bus, and sat down in it, relieved to find that it was air conditioned. Although we had arrived in Nha Trang at about 8:00 am, it was already 95º, and extremely humid. As our bus departed we headed south and began climbing.
As we approached Dalat we began seeing larger and more ominous looking clouds. For a short time the clouds above us were mirrored by fog lying in the valleys below, providing the illusion of being on a road stuck between two white, pillowy expanses, which was quite surreal. The illusion ended when the clouds above us darkened and began spitting rain. The light rain quickly progressed into some of the hardest, loudest rain we had seen, and as we approached our destination we looked out the window, frightened by the idea of our trip being ruined by torrential downpours, but amazed by the impromptu waterfalls created by said rain.
We put on our rain jackets as the bus pulled into the Dalat station, and although we exited the bus under a large and frighteningly loud metal roof we were still pelted by the rain flying at us in all directions. We were ushered into a van, and taken off to our hotel.
Miraculously as we entered downtown Dalat the rain began to calm, and we were greeted by a beautiful and steaming city. We ended up extremely lucky, not seeing any more rain during the rest of our time in Dalat.
In order to keep the rest of the trip manageable to read, I will continue in the next post.