Cold strawberrys and stew

Dalat is in the central highlands of Vietnam - high in the hills so the temperature is a lot cooler. It rained a lot while we were here, but we enjoyed the cool weather and winter fruits that aren't available elsewhere in the country. English stew to keep us warm as well!

One day we walked around Dalat's lake and another we did a tour on motorbikes. Dalat is an ugly city really and if it wasn't for the climate, we wouldn't have come. It has some good history and was left relatively unscathed during the war although lots of the minority tribes made trouble for both sides. The photo above shows a minority woman (75) in her kitchen cooking bamboo roots - very basic (open fire) and very smoky!

We saw the old railway station (see photo), tiger falls (see photo) and a few amazing pagodas.
One of the most disturbing things we saw in this area was the process by which silk is made. First a family gets some silk worm eggs, puts them on racks in their house and wait until they grow and roll into a silk ball. The family then sells them to the factory where girls stand all day in hot, noisy, stinky, filthy conditions unravelling the silk. The machines then make the cloth.

We visited a 'crazy house' which the 2nd president's daughter had built (see Garry and the spiders web). It was a bit like being in Alice's wonderland.