July 21st - July 27th, 2024

I arrived in Da Lat after my 14 hour bus ride. The VIP sleeper bus really made a difference. It was both wide enough and long enough to fit me. I just took some extra quetiapine and the 14 hours passed like nothing. When I arrived in dalat even though I slept for most of the bus ride I was still tired so I napped most of the day. After that I participated in family dinner and had some Vietnamese food. It was much like the other family dinners I had had. That night I booked a canyoning trip for the next day. I woke up early the next morning for the canyoning trip. They briefed us for the safety details. showed us how to use the equipment and then we were off to the races. In total the excursion lasted for 6 hours. It was a combination of tracking through the jungle and repelling down waterfalls. We repelled down 4 different waterfalls, some more tricky than the others. We even repelled half way down one waterfall and zip lined down the rest. I’d say this was the best experience I’ve had in Vietnam because it was a combination of lasting a long time and an aspect of adventure. The paragliding was a close second but ultimately is in second place because it only lasted 20 minutes. Next I was off to Ho Chi Minh. This was only a six hour journey and I arrived at 6 am. Apparently I do something different than other travellers and that is booking in the night before arrive so when I arrive at 6/7 am the following day then I have a place to sleep rather than waiting till 2 pm that day for check in. I’d say paying for one more night was always worth it. In Ho Chi Minh it didn’t seem like there was much to do. I’d ask other travellers and they really didn’t have much to say besides the tunnels and the war remnants museum. I went to the tunnels and we had an English speaking tour guide. It was pretty cool. It’s crazy how tiny the tunnels were and how deep they were in the ground. They also showed us all kinds of traps they would use on the Americans too. They were all pretty deadly. Not that war is funny but it kinda makes me chuckle that the US lost to a bunch of Vietnamese farmers. I also shot an AK 47 that day. It was so loud and I only shot it semi automatic. I can’t imagine what it would be like to shoot an AK 47 in fully automatic mode The next day I went to the war remnants museum. I went there at 4 pm and it closed at 5:30 so I only had an hour and a half in the museum. There were tanks and artillery and planes. It also talked about the French’s impact on Vietnam and not just the Vietnam war. I learned about phosphorus and agent orange and napalm bombs. Tragic things. Each night the hostel would give us a free beer ticket to cash in at their rooftop bar. I used it every night. I got to talk to all kinds of people but I especially used this time to practice talking to pretty girls. I met two different German girls that were quite pretty. I think I mentioned this before but I think once I’m back in Canada that it’s going to be easier to talk to women at bars. One of the nights at my hostel I booked what I thought was a group food tour through get your guide. My hostel had a food tour but it was $75 and I didn’t think a food tour would be worth that much. The get your guide food tour was only $30. It actually turned out to be a private tour by motorcycle. My guide named Peter was very nice. He was super knowledgeable about the city and made me feel comfortable as well. We only had 3 food items as it was more a tour of the city than solely a food tour. Over the course of the night I had a pork spring roll, bbq pork, rice noodles and some veggies. It tasted the closest thing I’ve had in Vietnam to what Vietnamese food tastes like back home. I also had a really good bahn mi and a blueberry milkshake. For the tour he took me to a famous flower market that had thousands of pretty flowers. The market also hosted a bunch of food vendors too. Much of them sell the same things so I don’t understand how people know to pick which one. Is it just random or is there a method to it? One thing I will say about Ho Chi Minh is that this city has really good food. I haven’t really been eating traditional Vietnamese food for the last little bit as I’m kind of tired of it so I’ve been eating other cuisines instead. I’ve had Greek, sushi, Italian pizza, and German sausage and sauerkraut. It’s all been rather affordable at less than 10$ a plate. July 27th was just a travel day from Ho Chi Minh back to Hanoi. Since I’m running out of money I’ve decided to return to my place of teaching in Hai Phong for my remaining two weeks because they give me free accommodation and a food allowance. It will be nice to see the kids again and test my anxiety against the teaching.