DaLat

I'm a bit behind with updates, so I'm trying to get a bit caught up :) Last weekend, Jemma (another volunteer living at the house), Cecelia (orphanage volunteer), and Sach (a Canadian guy I met a while ago in Saigon) all decided to go to Dalat together. After an 8 hour bus ride, which I had mistakenly told everyone was only 5 hours, we drove into the beautiful city of Dalat. The drive in reminded me of driving up into the mountains in Colorado in summer...narrow winding paths up the mountain, greenery everywhere, cliffs overlooking vast valleys, etc. Right when we got dropped off by the bus at the Sinh Cafe office, people from nearby hotels all attacked us saying "good price for you. come take a look at my hotel. you stay there miss." Normally, I get annoyed by those people and tell them all no, but one lady seemed really nice and said "6 USD for 2 people room." Really? Since we were travelling on a tight budget, the other 3 jumped on the offer, but I said we needed to take a look at both rooms first. Much to my surprise, they seemd just fine - each had 2 double beds with mosquito nets, a mostly-functional bathroom, working locks on the doors...what else did we really need? So I'm proud to say I only paid $3 a night for our hotel room :)
We started our trip off by walking to the crazy house. I got put in charge of the map, and the streets of Dalat are really confusing to say the least (and don't actually match the maps). Regardless, we made it there, and the "crazy house" was certainly nothing short of "crazy." Apparently the lady who designed and built it spent 12 years in architecture school in Russia just to design this non-sense structure and hotel. It all looks like a giant tree house, and you feel like a kid climbing through a dangerous treehouse in order to see the various rooms. They can be booked for $100 per night, but a guy who works there says they're alomst always completely vacant. I wouldn't stay there...no AC, no fans, tiny rooms, kinda creepy, not my style. Some people in the group were fascinated by the ornate architecture of the place, but I was much more interested in going up and down the staircase that morphed a giraffe's neck with a tree trunk. Different strokes for different folks.....
THe next day, we hired "easy riders" to take Jemma, Cecilia, and I (Sach had already been to DaLat and done a similar day tour) around to all the areas of the countryside not typically visited by tourists. THe easy riders were really funny, and "My Eagle", "Dr. Hung," and "Professor Hoang" as they liked to call themselves gave a great tour. We saw tea and coffee planations, a silk weaving factory, a rice wine production site, learned how they make brooms, climbed a beautiful waterfall, ate lunch at a local streetside cafe with our drivers, visited a pagoda, buddah statue, and French church, and enjoyed the day riding around on the comfortable (as compared to in Saigon) motorbikes. Riding through the mountains on the back of a motorbike was really one of the most relaxing and peacful things I've ever done, with the crisp mountain air offering much needed releif from the unescapable heat and humidity of Saigon. That afternoon, we met back up with Sach and another guy he'd met a week earlier in HCMC for dinner at the Peace Cafe with the most high energy owner and waitress I've ever seen. She never stopped. I couldn't decide what to order, so she ordered for me and told me "not to worry." I ended up with a very nicely done mango chicken breast and rice dish...yum! After dinner we found a rooftop bar on the top of a big hotel and enjoyed the beautiful scenery below.
The next day, we'd enjoyed the Easy Rider tour so much, I wanted to do another one! Cece and Sach weren't interested, so Jemma and I called our drivers from the day before to organize another tour for us. They were both busy, but sent their son and friend (new to the easy riders group) to take us around. We wanted to visit Lat Village, an ethnic minority village we'd both read about, but when we got there, the drivers said there wasnt a whole lot to see because while the villages used to be poor, they've recently gained economic strenght and have become very "Vietnamessed" by clothing, house styles, etc. Disappointed by not seeing much, we asked the drivers what we should do, and they ended up taking us to a waterfall and a different ethinic mornity village. THe waterfall was cool, but the best part was the "roller coaster" we took down to the falls. It was basically a small seat/cart on tracks with a handle to control your speed. Hard to explain but really fun!!!! THe village we visited translates to "chicken village" becase there's a giant statue of a chicken in the center of the village. I'll spare you the hour long explanation we got, but basically, two lovers weren't allowed to marry because tehy were from different villages unless tehy could find a certain kind of chicken. They never did and both died, so the statue commemorates their lost love. Or something like that....
We had to take the bus back that night, so we walked the streets abit more, grabbed dinner on the sie of the road, and hopped on the bus for a long trip back. Jemma and Cecelia both got a bit sunburned, and I was so impressed that I didn't (wait for my Nha Trang stories coming soon though! haha). Overall our weekend in DaLat was wonderful! I still describe the town as feeling like a hollywood movie set though...it's either French trying to create a Vietnamese city or maybe Vietnamese trying to create a western city, but it's an odd combination of both and neither. When I get to it soon, I"ll post some pictures and see if you agree by the looks of it. It's a common honeymood location for locals, and although we didn't have a romantic weekend, we had a great one! I already miss the cool, dry air!!!