Phan Thiet

We transferred from Dalat in the mountains to Phan Thiet on the coast by taxi, arranged by our travel company. It was a local Dalat lad with an old but clean Subero, but with no seatbelts that the driver know of. However we weren't going to sit for 4 hours in a car on the Vietnamese roads without a seat belt so we stopped by the side of the road and had a good haul at the seats and managed to extract 2 seat belts - phew! He had never known they were there.
Anyway onwards from Dalat through lovely rolling countryside, filled with lakes and hills covered in coffee plantations.

Then finally to the end of the hills and we thought it would be a relatively short drive to get to the coast...

.....it seemed to go on forever on what seemed to be off road rather than the highway it was supposed to be. However the scenery was great and we got some interesting shots of...guess what, Claire, drgaon fruit...Yes this is how they grow them. Trained up on top of concrete posts!

Our hotel was close to the beach - but how strange. It is 960 kilometres as the crow flies from Miri staright across the South China Sea to Phan Thiet - and it was as though we were at home. The beach, the vegetation, the weather, not surprisingly I guess, was as it is in Miri. The only difference is we were on the 5th floor of a hotel rather than sitting at the boat club.....!


We took a couple of bikes from the hotel and set off to explore the town of Phan Thiet. It's a fishing town with an extensive fleet, but...

...some obviously work harder than others.....!

Our exploring was cut short by heavy rain so we took shelter in a closed cafe. When the waitress came out to check if we were OK we thought we'd better order some coffee to pay for our shelter! It arrived complete with condensed mik, filters and ice and we had no idea what to do. So she sat down and showed us what was what. First you filter the strong coffee into the glass below (with a large amount of sweetened consed milk in it) ....



Then you add the ice and mix it very thoroughly. And there you have Baileys Irsh crema coffee without the whiskey! Great! Once the rain stopped we bought some bread from this very French looking bread shop.