Three Days in Dalat

The town of Dalat is situated on the rolling hills surrounding Xuan Huong Lake at about five thousand feet above sea level. The narrow streets wind around closely packed buildings. My hotel was in the center of town, downhill from the market.

On Thursday I decided to do my own walking tour around Dalat. The weather was beautifully clear all day. First, I walked across the dam to see the quieter side of town which contains the cathedral, several dozen small hotels, and more cafes than I could count. There is a nice trail around the entire lake that I walked next, stopping at the flower park. Dalat is known as the city of flowers because it can grow flowers year round that cannot be found elsewhere in Vietnam. The flower park was impressive but the landscaping was a little gaudy. As the sun set, the air got quite cold. Many of the locals were wearing thick coats and hats, but I enjoyed it.

On Friday, I rented a bicycle to ride around the outskirts of Dalat. In the morning, I saw the two impressive pagodas Chua Linh Son and Thien Vien Van Hanh. Chua Linh Son was very nice but Thien Vien Van Hanh was very different than the other pagodas that I've visited. The pagoda was much wider than it was deep and the whole front opened to a grand view over the city. I stopped to take in the architecture and several monks came over to talk to me.

After the pagodas, I stopped at Dalat University and looked around the campus. I found an open classroom and took some pictures. I stopped at a bakery for lunch on my way over to the other side of town to see the Lake of Sighs, so named because of a legendary tragedy that befell two lovers there.

I continued my circuit around Dalat to the south and headed out of town on one of the main roads looking for several other pagodas, which I never found. What I did find was a huge hill, descending, as it wound south. It was probably two miles later that I gave up on the pagodas and turned around to climb back into Dalat. After getting a little lost on the southwest side of town on top of a large hill that overlooked the farms and flower greenhouses to the west I headed to the war memorial, which sits atop another large hill.

I spent about thirty minutes at the war memorial looking around before returning to my bicycle and starting back to town. A short ways down the long hill immediately outside the monument, I squeezed my brakes, only to find that neither front nor rear were working. I stomped my feet down to the pavement and turned the bike towards the ditch at the side of the road, but luckily stopped before I went into it. I examined the brakes to find that both front and back had been partially dismantled and some of the parts stolen. I stormed back up the hill back to the memorial, wheeling my bike and heatedly talked the the attendant.

Unfortunately, the old man tending the office spoke absolutely no English. He mimed to me that he had seen several children bent over my bike and had scared them off. Then he invited me into the office, telephoned someone, and poured some tea that we shared in silence. I had no idea who he had called until a young boy showed up. They talked for several minutes and the boy ran off as we still sat in the office drinking more tea. I was making plans to walk my bike back into town when the boy brought several other children to the front gate of the memorial, where they left a pile of my missing parts. I spent fifteen minutes reassembling everything by hand without tools. I never got the front break working, but made it back to my hotel safely with only the rear.

When I returned to the hotel, there was a bit of a crowd waiting to get rooms. As I waited to talk to the woman at reception about repairing the bike, I met Tiffany, who had just arrived from Hoi An and was looking for a room. We decided to share the room that I already had. After she settled in and I haggled with the bike mechanic, we went out to dinner at a nice local restaurant.

Many of the sights around Dalat are further than any tourists care to walk or bike, which makes motorbike guiding quite popular. The Easy Riders are a group of guides, sanctioned by the government that speak very good English and have fantastic knowledge of the area. From what I'd read and heard, getting an Easy Rider guarantees a good tour.

On Saturday, I had asked the manager of my hotel to call an Easy Rider for a day tour. Tiffany was hoping to hire another driver for the tour. I was disappointed to find that my guide, although seemingly competent, was not a registered Easy Rider. To make a long story short, after an exceptionally unpleasant thirty minutes of talking to the guide, the receptionist, and then the manager via phone, I took the guide, but Tiffany and I moved hotels immediately.

After a bad start, the tour turned out quite well. Our guides, although not Easy Riders, were pleasant and professional. We drove out of Dalat to the west and toured some flower greenhouses and stopped at some coffee fields before a mid morning stop at a roadside cafe. The road wound through a valley between two ridges first covered by jungle and then by coffee plantations down into a broader valley where we spent the afternoon. We had a fantastic, home cooked lunch at a local house consisting of at least ten different dishes and then went to see an impressive waterfall. After the waterfall we started our drive back to Dalat stopping at a silk factory and a passion fruit orchard. The silk factory was absolutely amazing. We got to see the different stages of the silk worms, the machines that unroll the silk of the worms' cocoons, and the machines that actually weave the fabric.

Today, Tiffany and I took an open tour bus from Dalat to Mui Ne, which is a beach town on the southern coast. The lunar new year, also known as the Tet Festival, is the most important holiday in Vietnam. Travelling in the country is a little difficult these days because Tet is next weekend and many of the Vietnamese are travelling to meet their families. Our bus stopped to pick up people on the way out to the coast until they were sitting and standing in the aisle. Luckily, the whole trip was a quick four hours.

From Saigon to Dalat

I'm never sure whether to call Ho Chi Minh City by its older name, Saigon. Before I arrived in Vietnam, I assumed that the government had changed the name and that was that. Turns out it's not that simple. The map says Ho Chi Minh City but just about everyone I've met, tourists and locals, calls it Saigon. The signs are probably half one and half the other. I've gotten to like the inconsistency. It's a little idiosyncrasy that reminds me there's a lot to learn here.

Right now, I'm in Dalat, which is a beautiful mountain town in the central highlands of Vietnam. The central highlands are roughly the center of southern Vietnam, not the whole country. I arrived last night at the end of what I began to fear was an interminable bus ride. When I booked my ticket, the agent told me we would cover the 300km from Saigon to Dalat in six hours. It actually took nine.

The first part of the bus ride was quite boring as we rode through the regular suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City. Eventually, the bus started climbing into the highlands and rolling hills of forest, orchards, and plantations stretched away from the highway. The last few dozen kilometers to Dalat were even more enjoyable. As the bus crawled up mountain passes, the air cooled, and I started seeing evergreen trees. When we disembarked, a Swiss man I had been talking to said, "Just like home," and I was thinking the same thing. I checked into a nice hotel room with a balcony, ate dinner, tried unsuccessfully to update my blog, and then slept for ten hours.

Tuesday morning I ran some errands: booking my bus ticket and sending a package home. I first tried FedEx, but they wanted to charge me 97USD to send a sub-2kg box. I next went to the main post office, right next to the Notre Dame Cathedral and was relieved to pay less than 30USD. We'll see if it makes it. Jaqi and I met at the Museum of Fine Arts around noon, had lunch at a nearby cafe and then spent the afternoon in the museum.

The Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts is a beautiful yellow and white building, constructed by the French. The three floors contain exhibits on traditional folk painting, contemporary art, and older lacquer, pottery, and sculptures. The traditional folk paintings were interesting, but without any accompanying interpretation, my appreciation remained superficial. Each small gallery of sculptures and pottery on the third floor had a short description posted at its entrance, but the artifacts were poorly dated and the historical context was poorly conveyed. To really make the visit worthwhile, I would have had to bring my own description of Vietnamese history.

The most disappointing aspect of the museum was the contemporary art exhibit. Of several dozen works, all but a handful were depictions of the American War. Some of the oil paintings were quite good, but the feel of the exhibit seemed myopic. I understand that the American War defines a huge part of Vietnamese history and culture, but war is a poor cultural focus. The exhibit portrayed the war to defend Vietnamese culture and life well, but then made no mention of what value or beauty that culture and life might have. As I explored the courtyard of the building, however, I discovered four or five art galleries out back overflowing with contemporary works from Vietnamese artists.

The arrangement seemed like a perfect metaphor for the Vietnam that I have seen so far. Walking into the state museum, I discovered the official front of the party--stiff and focused, but walking around behind to the commercial galleries, I found a vibrant expression of life. Which is not to say commercialism is the answer.

After the museum, we walked over to the Rex Hotel, which is a swank, expensive affair in the center of District 1, overlooking the People's Committee Building and right next to several shopping centers. We had a drink on the rooftop bar, which Newsweek called one of the ten best bars in the world back in 1996. It was a pleasant spot. The view was the best I'd seen in the city and gave a nice perspective to our pedestrian tours. A cool breeze blew through the shaded section where we sat and watched evening fall on the city.

The hotel where Jaqi and I stayed is located in Pham Ngu Lao, the backpacker area of Saigon. The area spreads over several blocks surrounded by large, busy boulevards. Jam packed shoulder to shoulder are travel agencies, restaurants, hotels, and cafes. Some establishments stand out with some character but most blend into a generic pool of commerce. It is not the place to have an "authentic" Vietnamese experience, but it is an experience. Watching people there is particularly entertaining. Jaqi and I would pick a spot in the evening after dinner, have a drink and share stories while we watched the odd comings and goings of our fellow travelers and the locals trying to make their living from them (and us).

The streets are full of younger Vietnamese on shiny, new motorbikes and vendors walking from cafe to cafe. Booksellers hold stacks of books four feet high, tied together with ribbons, against their hips trying to tempt backpackers with their titles: Lonely Planet Cambodia or China, popular American fiction--Nick Hornby, classics set in Vietnam--The Quite American, and local subject matter--The Sex Trafficking of Women in Southeast Asia. Middle aged women hold babies while selling packets of gum, gesturing to their infant when a Westerner first refuses to buy. Cyclo drivers pedal their fixed-gear, lumbering bicycles with seats at the front slowly past. Men with a vertical rack of dried squid constructed on the back of their bicycle stop at each bar looking to sell someone their snacks. Cigarette vendors act offended that you don't smoke. Young, smartly dressed men pedal bicycles around the block discretely advertising their "massage" service by shaking a rattle made from bottle caps. I did eventually try the dried squid--it was quite bad. Squid is already chewy enough without the jerky consistency. I ate very little and then gave the rest to a street kid who asked for it.

There were a few things I missed in Ho Chi Minh City. I would have liked to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels constructed during the war and see the History Museum, but I'm glad for the change to Dalat.