Dalat & Saigon, Vietnam over and out.


The bus ride to Dalat was painless. It was a small bus, however, it wasn't very crowded so we could all spread out. It was raining gently and lovely and cool, when we arrived in Dalat and continued to rain gently pretty much off and on, for all of our three days. 

We had a fabulous room at the Ngoc Lan Hotel, massive, comfortable and with fantastic views of the Lake. We spent a lazy few days walking around Dalat, strolling along the lake edge. I had a work Skype session one morning and spent quite a lot of time gearing up for my upcoming India trip, but apart from that it was pretty chilled few days.

Xuan Huong Lake

View of the lake from our room

The best thing we did was visit the crazy house. Designed by a Vietnamese woman, with a PhD in architecture from Moscow. It's a weird and wonderful house - kind of Salvador Dali meets Gaudi. Words can't really describe it, you wouldn't believe me - pictures will have to do. 

Dalat Crazy House

Dalat was a pleasant, cool interlude and it was nice to go somewhere in Vietnam, we haven't been before. Very cute, relaxed kind of town. The only downside was the food - very bland and not full of love - not bad just not particularly good.

Dalat Train Station

Ngoc Lan Hotel Dalat

We flew from Dalat to Saigon (sounds so much more romantic than Ho Chi Minh City), again very painless and only took a morning door to door.


It was great to be back in Saigon, lots of changes but still the same at heart. We had to start our visit with two of our favourite places - The Reunification Palace - such a grand and fabulously retro 60's building and so well preserved. We loved it 10 years ago and it didn't disappoint - it was still just as charming.

Reunification Palace, groovy baby!

home theatre, 60's style

Our other favourite place was The Rex Hotel. We had spent many pleasant evenings, drinking cheap wine and requesting songs from a groovy mariachi band, on our previous visits. Sadly, The Rex has gone upmarket and very middle of the road. The roof bar still had the crown and the elephants, yet it was missing its old charm.

Still fabulously tacky!

We dragged our sorry selves around a few museums, The War Museum, was, as depressing as remembered from our last visit, but still interesting and worth a look. Oh we posted some stuff home as well. Not sure why but our luggage seems to have grown, I swear we haven't really bought anything, maybe it all just needs a really good wash!

Apart from a bit of sight seeing, it was mainly a food fest again - we had another slap up Indian (or course). However two months into the trip and we succumbed to the urge for junk food. We spent a lovely day in bed and only arose to stagger around to KFC and get a take away. Our last evening we went the Hard Rock Cafe route - just noodled out, I guess.

Cathedral, Saigon

Central post office, Saigon

After a pleasant month in Vietnam we flew back to Penang, via KL. We few with Vietjet, perfectly acceptable airline, except the flight attendant uniforms! Ugh ghastly - who though tweed shorts was ever a good look?

Tweed shorts, not so groovy

Vietnam was somewhat surprising  - overall the food wasn't as fabulous as remembered, the great dishes - salad, pancakes, dumplings and noodles get a bit same-ish after a while (oh dear that sounds like a first world problem). 

Na Trang which we expected to be naff, turned out to be great, whilst Hoi An, remembered so fondly from our previous two visits, wasn't nearly as charming. 

Anyway off to Penang for another eat....athon and get ready for my work trip to India.

Last word - early days of Western Security