In Dalat

Thanks for the comments on commenting, which we are indeed receiving. We have exactly no idea why this is set up to be so difficult. It should be straightforward and we are trying to make it so but no luck so far. Choosing an anonymous profile apparently helps. Blogger, like all Google products, is easy to use when it works but impossible to work out how to fix when it doesn't.

Anyway, we arrived yesterday in Dalat, in Vietnam's Central Highlands, after a 7-hour bus ride from Saigon. After two days spent drenched in sweat from the mere effort of breathing, it's like landing on another planet: low humidity and temps around 25 C / 75 F, with PINE trees and rather northwest-looking flowerbeds. Also the town is very hilly and had a lot of slanted roofs and spired Catholic churches - squint and you could be in the foothills of the Austrian alps.

I just posted a couple of very cool photos from a smoky Chinese Buddhist temple which we visited in Saigon. In the dim depths, with no light but a few shafts on sunlight through holes in the roof, the temperature plunged to only about 32 C/ 90 F.