Da Lat
The bus to Da Lat was the fanciest sleeper bus I’ve ever been on, with huge flat beds with privacy curtains, good air conditioning, and an electric massager built in to the seat/bed. Unfortunately, the bus was 5 hours during the daytime, so I wasn’t planning on sleeping and would have preferred to sit up for most of the journey, but I got my value for money out of the massager.
Da Lat is a mountain town with plenty of adventure to be found, and renting a scooter and exploring was a great way to see it. There were beautiful mountain views in all directions, and aside from a little chaos on roundabouts (they’re huge and no-one waits, they just navigate around each other once on the roundabout), it was easy riding. We (Carla and I, at our final stop together before our paths diverged) had coffee with a view, supermarket pastries by the lake and headed to a high ropes course in the woods. I always love swinging through the treetops and 5 out of 6 levels were fun and relatively easy. Before the hardest course, the staff suggested we take a little break as quite the challenge. We didn’t entirely believe them, but they were right. It took a lot out of me to make it round the final challenges, the ropes having very little stability, and I fell off (to be caught safely by my harness) a couple of times. The food and beers afterwards were well deserved.
The next day was my birthday, and I’d pre-booked one of my favourite activities - canyoning. There was less time in the water than previous times I’ve been, however the obstacles themselves were bigger. The highlight was abseiling down a 25m waterfall. At one point I moved slightly too far to one side and had to deal with a lot of water in my face, but I managed to save myself with relative grace and make it down. The same cannot be said for the final waterfall, nicknamed the washing machine. While lowering myself down I hung on for slightly too long and the force of the water caused me to perform a kind of upside-down 360. Even after watching a video I’m still not sure which way I was facing when I fell in to the water, but despite some spluttering I emerged unharmed. To round off my birthday, Carla and I headed out for build your own summer rolls (a speciality of the area) and for drinks in the Maze Bar, an artistic and genuinely maze like series of caverns and staircases that are easy to get lost in.
I had a little time left before my bus that evening, and I’d heard really good things about something nearby that people kept referring to as “Mario Kart”. I decided to summon up the energy to enjoy my final day here, and after a hangover curing breakfast we went to see what all the fuss was about. It was a luge track - a downhill course with turns, bumps and obstacles which you navigate in a lightweight car powered by gravity (and as the rules say, you definitely, definitely don’t race each other…). It was loads of fun, and felt like a bonus bit of birthday fun after the main event. An excellent few days, and a birthday I’ll remember.
After heading back to town, Carla took a bus north, while I went back down south to Mui Ne. It was sad to leave each other after several locations and many hours in each other’s company, but the goodbyes are part of solo travel. I hope we run in to each other again.