On the rails again...

Yes, it's time for another one of these occasional updates. Again I've left it for a while before writing, so buckle up and prepare for another long one.

Looking back, last time I wrote was in Mui Ne, just before going on a sight-seeing trip with a local moto driver. The sights in this case centring largely around the local sand dunes, many of them a rather fetching dark-reddish colour. Good for the colourful pictures, bad for my calf muscles (I hate climbing up dunes) and laundry.

That evening I met up with an Irish girl and an English girl who were staying in the same resort as me, and who had been on the same bus up. After wandering up and down part of the beachfront strip (which goes for kms in Mui Ne) we found a place we all liked the look of and settled in for some munchies. After this, Debbie (the English girl) was feeling knackered and headed home, while Suzanne (Irish lass) and I headed on for another beer or so, ending up in a bar called Wax. Being right down by the beach, this offered the possibility of chilling out on beanbags, drinking beer and looking up at the stars, which is far from the worst way to spend some time.

Our contemplation of the heavens was disturbed somewhat, however, by the occupants of the neighbouring table, who were engaged in that backpacker staple drinking game, Ring of Fire. I'm sure I've covered this before, so I won't go over the rules now (for one thing, they're rather malleable). The upshot was that I was explaining to Suzanne how the game worked, and the players invited us to join them. Well, it would have been rude to decline, wouldn't it? End result, a certain amount of dumb hilarity and accidentally staying up until 3:30am. When I had to leave on the bus at 7:30am. Yes, the curse of Last Night in Town (and my own stupidity) struck again.

As might be imagined, my mood the next morning was less than entirely sunny, and deteriorated significantly once it became clear that I was once again to be treated to the joys of a SE Asian minibus. You've all heard the bitching before about this, so I won't go over it again, but just say that I spent several very uncomfortable hours trying to sleep while scrunched up in my allotted space. And then, joy of joys, we rendez-vous-d with a larger bus coming down from Nha Trang, were transferred to a comfortable, properly air-conditioned coach with space to spread out a little further, and the morning began to improve somewhat.

This was due in part to the greater level of comfort, and also to the fact that we started up the truly spectacular road up to Da Lat. Now, for those unfamiliar with Vietnamese geography, Da Lat was the first "hill-station" the French built in Indochina (as their colony incorporating Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was called) - similar to the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia and once again notable for the high altitude (~1500m - so about a mile) and the cooler climate. In this case, that translated to "Pat doesn't sweat the whole damned time, and actually has to dig out a long-sleeved top".

For this reason, I was quite predisposed to like Da Lat. The gorgeous mountain scenery (especially on the road up the pass to the plateau) and the relative lack of heavy touting from the local merchants etc were definite points in its favour. The fact that it is known as the Vietnamese "capital of kitsch" perhaps wouldn't be such a good selling point. As it was, I arrived there fairly knackered, sorted out some stuff on the internet, attempted to back up my camera to CD before giving up in disgust, had a pleasant dinner at one of the restaurants on the hill overlooking the market and then took an early night.

The next day I had signed up to do a tour around the sights of Da Lat and the surrounding countryside with Quyen, one of the town's famous Easy Riders. These are an originally impromptu (now rather more organised) group of local motorbike driver/guides, all of them capable of speaking decent-to-good English, and all well-versed in the local history and other information. This makes them significantly more expensive than your average moto driver, but much better able to convey what you're seeing, rather than just driving around and muttering monosyllabic responses.

As it was, I had really quite a fun day with Quyen, taking in views over the valleys, the old railway station (the oldest in Indochina, but now sadly connected to pretty much nowhere), ana amazing pagoda with a giant dragon sculpture made out of old beer bottle fragments ("the drunken Dragon", Quyen proudly informed me, sealing my love for the beastie), a local ethnic-minority village known universally as the Chicken Village (due to the presence of a giant concrete chicken in the middle of it - as with many things in Vietnam, there is a local legend surrounding the meaning of this, which is rather vague on the subject of chickens but involves star-crossed lovers doing a bit of a Romeo & Juliet), some waterfalls, the Summer Palace of the last Emperor of Viet Nam (Bao Dai) and the ever-so-aptly-named Crazy House. This latter was designed by the ever-so-hippy daughter of Viet Nam's second President, who studied architecture in Moscow and, I can only assume, consumed some very strange substances whilst there, as the place is like something out of Disney on an acid trip.

After all this, I was hoping to have a chilled-out evening watching the Premier League matches on Saturday night, only to find that hardly anywhere in town was showing the football (an almost-unheard-of state of affairs in SE Asia). Eventually I found a place, where I was the only white face present and many of the occupants were drinking tea and playing backgammon or some version of Chess or Go or something - despite which, the commentary was on in English, and the proprietress was very loudly welcoming "Hey you! You come in! You sit here! What beer you want?", meaning that I got to see at least one game with quite a good atmosphere. After that, I went in search of some food, and then discovered that, even on a Saturday night, pretty much everywhere in Da Lat closed down around 10pm. Muttering at this ridiculous state of affairs, I went back to my room, caught what I could of the following game on the TV (unfortunately with Thai commentary - don't ask) and then crashed out, ahead of yet another early start.

Yes, the usual pattern here of buses leaving at 7:30am was alive and well and I was, as ever, cordially hating it. I dozed through a fair bit of the trip up to Nha Trang, keeping myself awake for the spectacular descent back down the pass but crashing out across the back seat once we were back on level ground again. Though, Vietnamese roads being what they are, this meant I came perilously close several times to levitating bodily off the seat - things aren't helped by a lack of damping in the suspension on most buses here either, or by my tendency to sit at the back, where there's slightly more legroom but any motion of the bus gets exaggerated by a see-saw effect.

Nha Trang is the beach-and-party capital of Vietnam, certainly as far as the tourist scene is concerned. Principal activites include lying on the beach, eating, drinking, swimming, SCUBA diving and taking boat trips to the surrounding islands which range from the fairly serious to the near-enough out-and-out booze cruises. Me being me, I obviously went for one of the latter, where a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis had their usual bad influence on me and got me started drinking around 10am, from where it all went in the predictable way. Highlights, if such they can be called, included the performance by the boat crew as an impromptu band, the "floating bar" (drifting along on a life-ring in the South China Sea, drinking dodgy Da Lat wine dispensed by one of the crew on a big float) and the heartfelt sing-song on the way home.

In and around this, I have briefly sampled the delights of the beach and made more new friends crawling between the various bars in town. I won't got into all the sodden details, but you can safely assume I've had quite a fun time. But now it's time to move on. I get the train (having decided that I really can't face another overnight bus journey) in a few hours up from here to Da Nang, the main port of central Viet Nam, from where I backtrack briefly to reach Hoi An, a UNESCO World-Heritage listed town (it was a prominent medieval seaport) and the home of Viet Nam's most famous tailoring industry. Yes, I get to go shopping. Which is all to the good, as I am now in desperate need of (amongst other things) new shoes, my latest pair of sandals having had an accident and now being held together only by the wonders of gaffer-tape.

All fun, fun, fun. And I'm about out of news here (plus even I've got bored getting all this written down, so I don't want to make it any worse for you lot when reading it!). And I need to get some food before getting the train.

So, it's adieu once again. Until next I commit crimes against the English language via keyboard, take care and have fun!

Pat