Da Lat Botanical Garden

The funny thing about paid gardens in Asia......it's not so much about the different types of flowers, it's about how the flowers decorate the giant ceramic statues of Snow White and the seven dwarves.....or a woman loading a canoe with watermelons....or a creepy version of Mickey Mouse.  I didn't take pictures of those things, but I had to take these.  Please take special care in noticing the giant banana leaf square of sticky rice shown above next to the watermelon. These must be special foods for this region. 

The pony let me pet his ears. 

This photo is the perfect example of how Da Lat wants to appear to be kind of a little Switzerland.....but if Switzerland was in Disney Land. 

I think I ended up having more fun at the jumbo Costco like grocery store at the local mall after than I did at the garden....but if you know me, this won't surprise you at all. I bought jackfruit chips!!! It's also hard to enjoy an outdoor park in mid day sun without shade from trees. It was pretty, but made me miss and appreciate my beloved Brooklym Botanical Garden.  I promise BBG to visit more when I'm back!

Shrimp flower

Weird flower of the day!  In honor of walking to the botanical garden later this morning. Da  Lat has a flower festival every year because they love flowers so much!  So I'm excited to go flower hunting.

Da Lat

Well, I went from Russian Miami to Vietnamese Switzerland. DA LAT is my kind of town with easy city walking, local fresh fruit and veggies and lucky for me I've finally made a couple of friends here, had a lot of fun adventures and conversations and I'm starting to feel at ease.

Here's some pics of my last few days of adventures taking a monolith to a zen Buddhist monestary, walking the streets with new friends, eating delicious food and staying in a really fun little hostal full of other solo travelers just like me. Things are going really well.

Birds of paradise

Nha Trang

After a 12 hour night bus and an interesting one night stay in Nha Trang (Russian Miami), but a very very nice sleep in Tobala Hostel where I slept in a cubby box and room that opened with a wrist bracelet, then a 5 hour mini bus drive thru the mountains into a Vietnamese Version of Switzerland where the temp is 70-80 degrees, the air is cool and fresh and little kids grab your hand and say hello in English en masse. 

Here's some pics from my time in Nha Trang:

My awesome hostel Tobala

A store near my hostel....now I know where the Russians go for winter,

Crossing the train tracks 

My dinner!  Banh Mi. She's cooking eggs down below, then she added meatballs, aioli, herbs, chili sauce and pate. $1

This strawberry bubble tea was insanely delicious!  There were blueberry flavored bubbles that exploded in your mouth like real blueberries, plus half of it was little chewy gummies!  A refreshing drink and a snack!  50 cents. I also made a friend who I shared a room with at the hostel from Malaysia. We had a wonderful time talking and walking around. 

If a tree falls.....

So I'm just going to get this pity party out of the way now....part of the challenge of my confidence building exercise 2016 here is being here and doing things on my own. I'm already getting sentimental and weird in moments where I should just be like.....ahhhh....yes indeed life is good!

Every time I see something cool, I wish I had someone there who I could share it with....and sitting here sipping cold water by the beach I realized two things..

1. I'm not a beach person, and for those of you with limited beach experience, here's the thing...to have a good beach experience, you need...
- a tiki hut/shade
- a cooler of cold things to drink
- snacks
- a good book
- the ability to chill out easily
- to have skin that's not delicious to sand flies
- not mind jelly fish

Yes indeed it's beautiful and sunny and warm, but if we could just combine that with a little cloudy cold front here and there, perfection. Of course my next town is Nha Trang followed by Mui Ne. Two beach towns. Here we go!

The second thing...
I guess this blog can be my company when I'm alone...really let's face it, if r man were here, he'd be bored as hell and wouldn't be at the beach in the first place, instead, hunting down caves or crabs or a cool sinking boat off shore.

I do need to work on first words....the cold open....the hard sell...the "hello, my name is....I'm a desperate lonely almost middle aged women on a crazy escapade...mind if I join you?  Ok....I'll work on it!  Needs some tweeking I think.

Cau Lau

There's a few delicious specialty dishes in Hoi An. Shrimp dumplings in the shape of roses. Cold noodles. Hot noodles. Pho. Rice with chicken. Banh Mi of course. All or them are particularly unique in flavor and texture. So so good! 

I think Cau Lau is my favorite because of the chunky thick noodles and the square delicious bits of crispy wonton squares on top.

Hoi An alleyways

Well, I'm back on my feet with my fever gone at last. I'll spend two more days in Hoi An though to make certain I'm fully recuperated.

Hoi An is super touristy in all the best ways, lots of clothes and shoes to buy, quiet streets to walk, old buildings and museums to look at.

So even though it's touristy, it's also charming and fits under the description of: it's touristy because there is something people want to experience and see here unlike anywhere else.

 

But I've been wondering, where do the locals live amongst the hotels and restaurants?  I found out this morning!

Alleyways!  A whole system of back alleyways just big enough to walk or bike thru which run thru the entire city. Local stores, restaurants, day cares, and just people living there lives washing dishes and sitting reading the newspaper.

Some of them are dead ends, which you don't know til you're stuck and have to turn around with surprised looks from on looking older women, but that's fun too. My plan today is to walk as many as I can and enjoy the quiet surrounded by brick walls, houses and people being people.

Speaking of local, I attached a pic of a sign up where I had breakfast.  Soccer fans are everywhere.

It's officially begun.

A mere one hour ago R man left for the airport. It is done. 

I'll be honest I couldn't keep the tears back once he was out of sight and my heart hurts being in our hotel room without him. When it comes to travel, we make a great team and the last week has been no different....I haven't had time to blog because we have been having too much fun climbing mountains, catching trains, hopping taxis, we even bummed a ride on two mopeds from some fellow travelers in the middle of nowhere. So yes, a little justified heartache seems appropriate at this moment. It was very confusing to explain to both hotels....no, no, just me staying!  Not two!  But alas, my jumpy bunny is NYC bound.

On top of this I've come down on my first day solo with a lovely tummy problem and a light fever. Luckily whining to my parents about my trouble in paradise, they reminded me of the PEPTOL BISMOL I'd packed for just this moment. I can already feel it kicking in sitting up right at last without pain. 

So where am I now?  Hoi An!

A gorgeous tourist friendly biking/pedestrian friendly small town with delicious delicious food. It's a great place to just settle and rest and be and get myself together. I literally made no plans beyond this point, so now it's up to me. 

Here's our last photo together before he left.  So....time to buck up and move on.  But first, nap!

Taking the train to De Nang!

Hue

Rodolfos in a giant coffee cup!  If you look in the background there's a group of people cuddling a giant teddy bear.

Places like this make travel awesome!