Still in Da Lat

And loving it. I could be moving on to the next city, but we've done everything that there is to do here, so now it is really easy to stay in the hotel and work on this paper (which is why I'm here/it's due in a week). If we go someplace new, then I'd want to explore. So maybe it is best to stay here for now.

But really, we've done everything, and it has been so fun. The second day here we rented motorbikes and hired an Easy Rider to take us around the countryside. I'd recommend an Easy Rider tour to anybody traveling here - the guys wear leather jackets, ride motorcycles, not motorbikes, and speak great English, plus they know all the good spots. So he took us to a flower greenhouse, a coffee plantation, a rice wine distillery/oyster mushroom operation (learned a TON there...), a silk factory, a waterfall, a pagoda and the famous Crazy House. That's 5 people being taken around for 5 hours for a whopping $15, and you've done Da Lat in a day.

Plus, we got to drive motorbikes on country roads (shh).

The Nuovo. It's no Airblade, but it's still a beast.

A few days later we went on an 18 km mountainbiking trip through the northern mountains, seeing ethnic minority villages with gorgeous terraced cabbage and carrot patches. Biking was really tough but so fun, and the downhills were a blast. We got muddy, sweaty and full (they packed fruit and lunch for us, banh mi with avocado and tomatoes, all local...). We didn't get pictures because we didn't take a camera, but it was so gorgeous. Little mystical gardens popping out of the mountains... wow.

The food is great, obviously. We've mostly stayed away from Lonely Planet recommendations after a few disappointments early on in the trip, and have been much better off for it. The only rule (Bourdain lesson #14) is go wherever is most crowded. It works every time. The hu tieu is my current favorite, as it has some deep, brown spicy flavors going on that work well with the chilly mornings and evenings here. It's one of those dishes that makes me excited for the fall in upstate New York (here I go with the application again... stay in the present, Gordon!)

Photos stolen from Adam's blog because I don't have any of my own! And I think I've said this before, but the final post on this blog will have a link to all the good photos from the entire trip, so stick that in the back of your head for a rainy day in July.

Actually that's all, but watch this video of the silk factory taken by some other tourist. Pretty rad.