Nha Trang to Dalat

Wednesday, March 27th 2013 Dalat Vietnam

 Our bus left Nha Trang this morning at 8 am and traveled west and south away from the ocean and towards the central highlands. On the way, we could see rice being harvested and the grain was being dried on the roads and on the paved shoulder of the highway. Traffic cops in Canada would go nuts.

 Our first stop was a break at a small roadside restaurant by this little river. It was hot and sunny there, even at 9:30 am. From then on our bus slowly crawled up steep switchbacks to get up onto the highlands. Dalat is about 1,500 m above sea level.

 We stopped at a lookout point to take a look back down the valley that we'd climbed up.

While we were enjoying the view, a rock behind the back wheel of our bus was preventing it from rolling backward down the road. That's a lot of bus for one little rock. The driver stalled the bus twice when we departed because the grade was quite steep. Once we got going, the bus helper threw the rock off the road and ran to catch up and jump in the open door.

 In the highlands, there are lots of open pine forests, similar to some at home.

As we rounded a curve on one hill, we could se a fuel truck that had overturned quite recently. Diesel fuel was running down the ditch and on the road. The fumes were intense.

 Fuel is expensive here. Local people passing by all stopped and filled up whatever containers they had with diesel fuel.

Our driver stopped the bus and he and the helper ran back with buckets to get fuel.The helper (in the green shirt) fashioned a funnel out of a bigger water bottle and they spent half an hour gathering fuel and pouring it into the bus tank. Fuel was spilling all over and running across the road by the time they were done.
At first, some of the tourists (Chinese, Russian and Aussie, mostly) were taking pictures right by the bus. Then most of us moved further up the road just in case there was a fire. Diesel fuel isn't explosive like gasoline but the whole affair had a lot of people worried. Plus, none of the Vietnamese people bothered to send someone further up the curve to warn drivers to slow down. Eventually, we tourists did that. After half an hour, people were getting really annoyed by the delay and the danger of fire or getting hit by another vehicle. Eventually, our bus left but the driver and helper stunk of all the fuel that they had spilled on themselves. Luckily we were only 1/2 an hour from Dalat and arrived in one piece but many people, including us, complained at the office about the stupidity of stopping a bus full of people at a fuel spill on a steep curving mountain road. The driver saw that we were annoyed and said he was sorry. Just another day in Vietnam.

That's diesel fuel running from our bus and across the road.

On the outskirts of Dalat, we passed thousands of greenhouses all packed in on every flat spot. They grow lots of strawberries, flowers, vegetables and maybe tea here.
We found our hotel just up the street from the Sinh Tourist office. The hotel is fine. The rooms are old-fashioned, like a Chateau Laurier or something similar but very nice. We ate western food at V Cafe just down the street because we were really hungry. Then after a walk around town we found Lien Hoa, a good Vietnamese restaurant and bakery, so we ate again and bought some chocolate croissants. It's a bit rainy here and much cooler than the coast (maybe around 22C). So far, in this cloudy weather, Dalat doesn't look that impressive but perhaps tomorrow we'll find out differently.