Da Lat

On the second day in HCM (Ho Chi Minh) Tu and I went to a Viet travel agency and booked a 5 day 4 night trip to the North. 2 days later we took off by bus to the beautiful mountain town of Da Lat.
This town was founded back when Vietnam was a French colony and has been the home of many French and Viet leaders thru the years. DaLat is known as the city of eternal spring as the weather is perfect all year around. Every flower and vegetables you can imagine grows here. The bus ride was 7 hours long and along the way I saw the small towns and countryside from the South towards the middle of the country. Our hotel was a building built by the French and was very fancy with a big double bay window the opened up to a great view overlooking the city. This was Tu's first western style hotel visit and we both enjoyed our stay here. The next day after our arrival we were picked up in a small van with our quide, a driver, and 2 French ladies that were guests like us. We were taken to the highest peak in the city that overlooks everything and climbed into a cable car for a 20 minute ride to a Buddhist temple by a lake with these incredible gardens. After seeing and taking in as much as we could we were driven to the Chicken Village where indigenous people live a life like they have for many years and now protected to maintain their culture. They had some great crafts to sell and had the biggest smiles you have ever seen. Next we went to the sacred waterfall and got to go on an elephant ride thru the jungle, into the river, then back to the waterfall. This was quite exciting and after the ride I fed the elephant a stalk of banannas that he really enjoyed. We saw some other site seeing places and beautiful crafts before making it back to our hotel late afternoon. We saw the Kings Palace and gardens the next day and then it was time to leave the mountains and head for the beach. I will tell this story with pics in my next post.