December 14,

We slept well again! Last night we could hear faint music, but it did not hinder us with our ear plugs. We got up and about having our Javas and breakfast of Muesli, yogurt, and milk and an apple. I have been pleasantly surprised how readily we can find great apples here, and so many places around the world really. We did a load of laundry and took it upstairs to dry. There are two windows opposite each other and open for a nice cross breeze, should not take very long.

Then we set out trekking to explore, get me some coffee, and go to the store – hopefully will be less busy. The sky is very overcast, but not raining. Jeff had found a new place Q Coffee Roasters, so we set out for it first. We arrived to people outside sipping coffee and feeding pigeons. But inside, it is a cute, two level coffee shop with a feel good scene. I looked at what they had available, and found one I thought I'd be interested in. I ordered a cup and Jeff ordered a yogurt that is homemade. Da Lat is great about homemade yogurt (not from the grocery store) but at different restaurants. If we see it we try to get it. Both were great and so I Google translated that I wanted to buy a bag, and I needed it ground for a French press. As always something was lost in translation and a it took quite a bit of different shenanigans, but we finally communicated and he ground it. We paid and left.

It should not be this difficult, but learning the Vietnamese language… well that is difficult. It is so tonal – the Vietnamese people often misunderstand each other. I think I've mentioned that before, but it still surprises me when I see the confusion of them talking to each other and repeating stuff all the time. Anyway, we left and walk on. There are a bunch more flowers about all over Da Lat, then when we were here before. There are also Christmas decorations all about and some kind of festival going on it seems(?). We work our way to the chocolate place we had found last time. The chocolate is like fudge and produced by this company. It's more expensive but so good! We bought a dark Berry, a dark Lime, and a dark Cherry Brandy.

Now we went to lunch. We walked to the five course set menu place – Bun Bo Co Be, that we had discovered last time also. We had pumpkin soup with minced pork; lettuce salad with vinegar oil dressing; stir-fried morning glory with garlic; two different mains: 1) fried pork loin with lemongrass & 2) braised basa catfish in caramel sauce; and lastly dessert – Herbal Grass Jelly. It was all great as we remembered. We are not as big on the morning glory – it's too close to canned spinach taste for me. We also have come around to liking the dessert – it's like a herbal tea taste in jello form. We paid the bill. It cost us 160,000 Dong ($6.30). Our specialty chocolate costs us 515,000 ($20.27), for perspective of local verses touristy.

We went back to our place and unloaded. Then we went back out, walking to the Go grocery store/mall. It spit a small bit of rain on us, but it stopped quickly. We explored outside the shopping area first and discovered the dome structure over the mall area is the Opera house. Huh – we may check this out. We went in the mall and to the Go. It was less crowded, we found a few more things on our list, and checked out. As soon as we were done and ready to leave the mall… it was pouring rain like frog-choking kind! So we stood at the garage entrance and waited for it to pass. We weren't in a hurry to get out there with all our stuff. It finally slowed way down, so Jeff put in for a Grab taxi and we went up to the covered shopping cart area. Jeff followed him on the app, we went out when he arrived. You track them by their license plate number. Anyway we got in and then back to our place.

We had supper of cheese, bread, chili-salted mango, and wine. Then we watched couple of movies on the place's TV through our laptop. Bed around 2330.