Dalat To Like

I couldn’t decide what was most annoying about our frustrated NASCAR wannabe driver, the fact that he felt inclined to check his cell phone for messages every 5 minutes, or the sporting way he slalomed around potholes and cow pies, or the irritating habit he had of impatiently sounding his horn (which sounded like a warbling sore-throated yodeler) at everything, or the paranoid and claustrophobic behavior he exhibited whenever another vehicle blocked his right of way and he felt obliged to pass (and lay on his horn of course)….

 

We were packed 12 people plus luggage in a 9 passenger minivan for the 5 hour ride from the beach town of Mui Ne to
the hill town of Dalat in central Vietnam. Fortunately, I nabbed the shotgun seat while Marge got a middle row next to a young and pleasant Australian mate. As I gazed over the carpeted dashboard adorned with a bottle of perfume, a smiling Buddha statue, a small vase of fresh flowers, and an oversized beanie baby knockoff, I alternatively kept telling myself, this better be worth it and I hope to live long enough to see China.

 

Windswept Mui Ne was a soothing respite from the hustle of Saigon, an isolated and quiet 6 mile ribbon of sand, predictably famous for windsurfing and kite flying. We stayed at a very nice little resort (Little Mui Ne Cottages), and did nothing more than lay around the pool, re-tan, and recharge our batteries for the next leg of our journey. It felt good to be back on the beach, something we last did the end of January, although I’m only good for a few days before getting restless to move on.

 

Mui Ne is rapidly becoming a developed beach community, with new growth prevalent along it’s shores, due to it’s proximity to Saigon, yet still retains it’s flavor as a local fishing community, with colorful and sturdy boats littering the beach, and nighttime squid fisherman lit up like a string of pearls (we had the best squid here at a small family run restaurant across the street – the Golden Sunlight). During the day the local fisherman would bravely challenge the choppy seas in round little wicker baskets called coracles (see pictures), setting their nets and bouncing around like cheap bobble head dolls, seemingly always on the brink of teetering over and drowning.

 

People flock to Dalat for the cool weather, fresh air and pastoral rural scenery. Although the town is pleasant enough, there’s an imbalance between the number of hotels and good restaurants and bars/cafes. By far, the best parts of Dalat are in the surrounding hills, visited easily and enjoyably by employing the self proclaimed and ubiquitous ‘Easy Riders’, a popular excursion where you buddy up on a motorbike with one of the locals. For $20/person, you ride on the back with your driver for the day,

welcoming the fresh air and appreciating the many sites and sounds of Vietnam - mud encrusted water buffaloes languishing in verdant rice paddies, the secretive cicadas shrieking in the hot air, chocolate colored rivers snaking through coffee plantations, gardens meticulously scalloped from the hillsides, lovely young ladies dressed in snow flake white traditional Ao Dai dresses riding their bikes home from school, farmers in their recognizable triangle hats toiling in the fields, and locals on the side of the road selling the fruits of their labor

 

One of the more fascinating sites we visited was the non OSHA approved silk factory, where young girls collected and boiled mulberry cocoons, stripping and entangling the individual silk strands on spools that mechanically wound the multiple threads together. The factory was hot, the ruckus of the machinery overbearing, the potential for accidents imposing, as these ancient machines wound the silk,
and the poor young gals slaved away. I was particularly fascinated by this 200 year old Rube Goldberg, very clever, old fashioned contraption that ingested thousands of individual silk threads on one side, fed them through these dirty old cardboard pattern regulating templates on top, and magically transformed the strands into a delightful woven silk fabric

embellished with elaborate patterns.

 

Other stops included a home based noodle factory, where the entire family toils all day in a hot building, boiling, slicing, and packaging rice noodles for distribution to local markets, the wonderful Elephant Falls with a very funny and jolly giant white Buddha, lunch at a very local eating establishment overlooking the valley, a building designer gone mad Crazy House, and a mushroom farm with adjoining rice distillery. We continue to be impressed by the zealousness and capitalist spirit displayed by so many people, willing to work so hard under such poor conditions to make a better life for themselves and their families.

 

From Dalat, we cruised downhill in a minivan (very comfortable 3 hours) to the seaside town of Nha Trang, the trip notable for the very bizarre naked guy walking down the middle of the road as we rounded a corner. There must be some local competition for who can drive from Dalat to Nha Trang the fastest, since there would be no other reason for our driver to act with such reckless abandon, all the while carrying on a non stop conversation with the cute gal sitting next to him.

 

Nha Trang, an upscale beach community, is nestled against the mountains with a bay that’s sprinkled with offshore islands, and a beach that extends for a couple of miles. We stayed at a very nice hotel about a block from the beach, and ventured to the sand every day, renting chairs at one of the private beaches, reading, and taking long walks and dips along the ocean. Across the street from our hotel was a small, very popular local pub, where you sat around outside on these smallish chairs that seemed to have been stolen from some child’s playhouse, and where for 75 cents you got a small pitcher (good for 4 glasses) of  ‘fresh’ beer, something made by the locals and sold to establishments around town (the last time I had beer this cheap, I was 18 and sitting at the Timber Lodge in my home town). What I’ll remember about our hotel was the observance, as we sat on our balcony during happy hour and looked down upon the debris strewn vacant lot across the street, of a dozen or so rats scurrying about. Nha Trang is very nice, but really, this cookie cutter town could be anywhere in the world – you couldn’t stand down town and look around and know you were in Vietnam.

 

Next adventure is an overnight bus to the charming hamlet of Hoi An, about half way up the coast of Vietnam, where I’m apprehensive about inflicting monetary damage to our budget, since Hoi An is known for it’s shopping, especially made to order clothing.

 

There’s a lot to like about Dalat, Mui Ne and Nha Trang, and for days afterwards, I could not get that annoying and persistent yodeler sound out of my head.