We picked up a couple of banh mi just outside our hotel as we left this morning. The lady first tried to charge us 15K VND each. I gave her a big scowl because we are normally charged 10K for a bahn mi but still passed over 30K because we wanted to get on the road. The lady at the stall next to her appeared to give her a bit of an earful (I kept hearing the word falang) and she suddenly handed 20K back to me ! I guess 5K per banh mi is the real local price.

We ate our breakfast about 6 kilometers out of Da Lat at a Buddhist shrine just above the dreaded adventure park from yesterday. Here we picked up another lifer - the Da Lat sub-species of Black-throated Bushtit aka Gery-crowned Tit.

The road down to the plateau is not that great, being bumpy and narrow as it winds through the forest, so you can't really use the 10% slope to build up a good speed.

At the bottom of the hill, the road splits off onto a toll road where motorcycles (and we assumed bicycles as well) are not allowed. The old road, which we took, is under major reconstruction and we travelled through roadworks for about 35 kilometers. On a bridge in the middle of this stretch we picked another lifer - Vinuous-bresated Starling.

Another really good bahn mi, a couple of cupcakes from a bakery (no icing and not sweet at all - lovely) plus a pho bo for me and com thit heo (rice and pork) for Leigh meant we were as full as ticks and under no danger of running out of fuel. Just as well because we had rough roads, a headwind and a few hills to deal with before we got to Juliet's Villa about 5 kilometers out of Di Linh on a side road. Nearby is a forested mountain where we plan to bird tomorrow.

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