{"id":184,"date":"2005-11-07T21:48:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-08T04:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gregwhitephoto.com\/blog\/?p=184"},"modified":"2009-09-08T17:25:53","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T00:25:53","slug":"dalat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gregwhitephoto.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/dalat\/","title":{"rendered":"Dalat"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hello family and friends.<\/p>\n

I am sitting in a restaurant in central Viet Nam. I’ve been on the road for just over a month now. I’ve had some great times, and I’ve had times like these, when it’s been days since I’ve really talked to someone who doesn’t want me to buy something. Here in Dalat, it seems like every moto driver wants to take you on a tour of central Vietnam on their motorbike. It actually sounds pretty good. You go to waterfalls and lakes and villages and see a silk factory and longhouses and rice paper making, and so on and so forth. The trouble is that they want about 50 bucks per day, and the trips are from 3 to 5 to 20 days long. My budget for asia is “supposed” to be 15 bucks a day, in reality, it’s been over 30. The trip would be cheaper if I was sharing the cost of my room, but not much. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll do it. I’ll see plenty of indigenous people in Laos and Myanmar. Besides, Vietnam is really most interesting when you are meeting the Vietnamese, not visiting toursty waterfalls, and semi-“authentic” minority people’s villages. In case I haven’t mentioned it to everyone, I bought a cell phone in Saigon, and it was surprisingly expensive. But now I have a cell phone in case anyone wants to call or better yet, TEXT message me, because I don’t have voicemail on it. You can text me and tell me when to call you or vice versa…I have an internet phone I can call from when I am online and it’s very cheap for me. However, right now I am having problems with it. My account has been blocked for some reason. I am trying to figure out why. However, I think you can still leave me voicemail at my skype number, which is a Seattle number: 1-425-296-2591.<\/p>\n

My Vietnam cell phone number is: 084 (vietnam country code, might only need to dial 84, not sure) + 090-836-3560<\/p>\n

I’m also not sure text messaging service is international, but it seems to work from local Vietnamese I’ve met who message me nearly everyday! Just text message me and we will find out!<\/p>\n

By the way, Saigon was absolutely great! I met some great local Saigonese, we went out for dinners, bowling, ice cream… really fun. The city has a great energy and made me a little bit crazy…but in a good way. I will definitely go back to Saigon. It’s my favorite city in Asia so far. I will post a blog about my time there later, because I’m STILL processing the experience.<\/p>\n