May 15, 2005 Archives
Not in Dalat, but early in the morning in Saigon, as we were leaving the city.
A delicious Bahn Mi, Vietnamese sandwich, colonial heritage from the French.
My uncle Hoa, and aunt Eliane.
Orchids in a Dalat garden.
Flower from the same garden.
View from the window of our "mini-hotel".
Fields near Dalat.
A lake with boats.
A 50,000 dong bill (worth about 4CAD or 25HKD). And it's got Ho Chi Minh's face on it (well, they all do).
A cabbage field...
Soup, at dinner.
Interior of a palace (built in the 20th century, mind you) that used to belong to the king of Vietnam, near Dalat.
Cakes.
All smiling, but I now weight more than my cousin (slightly more than 60kg)...
The Dalat city center by night.
Small streets in Dalat.
Dalat Palace, now a Sofitel. Most expensive hotel in Dalat (~85USD a night).
Countryside, on the road back to Saigon.
Place selling tea and coffee to rich tourists. The region (Bao Loc) produces the best coffee in Vietnam.
Waterfalls on our way back.
Chaung Chau is a relatively small island, south of the much bigger Lantau Island (where the new Chek Lap Kok International Airport in is located). It's got fabulous beaches, and a walking trail that takes about 2 and a half hour to do. So, every year they have the Bun festival in Cheung Chau, where enthusiasts climb on towers covered with buns (they used to be made of solid buns?). The last time they held the tower-climbing event was in 1978, because that year one of the towers collapsed.
Me on the ferry in Central, in direction of Cheung Chau. The trip will take an hour or so, passed pretty quickly while reading my copy of The Economist.
Harbour front.
Seafront.
More seafront.
Bun tower!
More bun towers!
Yellow flowers.
A bun.
More buns.
Beautiful beach.
More beaches.
The beach with scrubs in front.
The sea, on my way back to Cheung Chau village from the West Bay.
Yesterday, I went to Cheung Chau (長州), in preemption of the Bun Festival. I wasn't interested in the crowds there were going to be today. Funnily the McDonald's had a "vegetarian" menu, of course complete with mayonnaise in the McVeggie (not sold in Canada, so a first-time for me), and ever-good french fries pre-cooked in beef fat. I saw the beautiful beach, and wish I had company to check over my stuff, as I probably would've just bought a new pair of swimming pants for the occasion, on that superb sunny tropical afternoon.
Then I joined my aunt and uncle's families for dinner, and stuffed my face like I never did (it must've been from dejecting and rejecting of myself in the past few days...) with kwa soup, oily chicken, liver sausages, steamed fish, steamed baby bak choi, and three bowls of rice! The pics and videos have the area around which my uncle lives, and my 4 years old cousin (he's not content with being close to 5, that he already wants to be 6 years old) introducing the flat.