Most tourists tend to follow the coast down from Hoi An to Nha Trang, but we decided instead to head into the highlands for a change. We booked a 'sleeper' bus to get us there but what we weren't aware of was that it was a local sleeper bus. This meant that when we got on the bus at around 9:30pm there was much hilarity at the fact that Smithy was a good foot too tall for the beds since Vietnamese people are considerably shorter. I was 'fortunate' enough to be almost exactly as tall as the length of the bed which meant I actually managed some sleep, but once we got over the humour of the situation it was actually a pretty horrific journey. Smithy spent most of it dangling over the edge of the bed...
Eventually it came to an end as we arrived in Pleiku at 5am before taking a minibus on to Kon Tum which was our destination. Surprisingly we weren't in the best moods when we arrived, but we took motorbike taxis and found a remarkably good (and cheap) hotel before heading out to try and find lunch and a way to travel onwards to Dalat. Both proved harder than we initially expected, there aren't a huge number of restaurants in Kon Tum and there wasn't much street food at 10:30am and even though we spend a few hours waiting outside, the tourist office didn't seem to ever be open. Suitably miserable, we headed back to the hotel in the heat for a snooze before dinner.
Having asked the woman at reception where we were staying about getting to Dalat, we discovered there was a normal local bus at 5:30am every day, however since we had had no sleep the night before we decided to extend our stay in Kon Tum for an extra night and get the bus the next morning. Fortunately from this point on our stay improved considerably. After a bit of sleep we all felt a bit better so we headed out and had a great dinner of pancakes on the street followed by food in a nice restaurant.
One thing we had definitely noticed is that there were almost no other westerners, so we got quite a few stares as we walked along the street. The locals were also incredibly friendly and we didn't even seem to be paying a 'tourist tax'. Kon Tum itself wasn't quite what we expected; it was a bigger town than we thought, but it was surrounded by countryside and was actually remarkably quiet (especially once you left the centre of town). We got a good night's sleep that night and resolved to try and get out and about the next day.
Next day we had a bit of an explore and visited the Catholic Seminary which has a hilltribe museum upstairs which talks about how the tribes used to live and how the French missionaries came and converted them. We also walked out to the edge of town to a traditional village where we met some very friendly people. This include a group of children who kept trying to have a conversation with us but unfortunately we shared very little common language. It was entertaining nonetheless. We grabbed some street food on the way back and ended up having a relaxing afternoon (which included watching the Royal Wedding, which is quite a surreal experience when you're in a place like Kon Tum) before grabbing dinner in a restaurant across the road and turning in early.
4am is always an early time to be waking up, but especially so when you know you have a long bus journey ahead of you. The journey actually turned out to be relatively painless and simple, just LONG. We were up at 4am but didn't reach our hotel in Dalat until around 5pm. We have again been really lucky with hotels, this one is a bargain, with lovely rooms and a steamroom and jacuzzi! Breakfast is included and what a spread it was! There was even Marmite, Peanut Butter and Cornflakes!
We had a great long sleep last night and a lazy day today exploring the market and sitting by the lake. We may visit the jacuzzi tonight before dinner and then tomorrow we are off on a motorbike tour of the surrounding area which should be a blast!
Then the day after we will be off down to Mui Ne and the beach. Loving it.
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| The 'sleeper' bus aftermath... |
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