Day 48 14th jan
We have booked ourselves on a tour today which leaves our hotel at 8.20....
7 o'clock I'm up and out the door... After a nights sleep we decide to get a price on getting the bike repaired whilst we are out for the day.. We are not overly concerned about getting it fixed as I'm sure it'll make it to Ho Chi Minh fine, just a little slower and smokier than we expected... I've been told by the hotel staff of a local garage which opens early, so after persuading a somewhat reluctant bike to start, i emerge from a cloud of smoke and go off in search of the garage...
500000 dong for them to replace the piston, rings and valves... That's less the £15. With a smile on my face I leave the bike with them and start my second run in as many days back to the hotel.... Thankfully its flat and I'm back in no time ready for breakfast....
We are booked onto a "Natural Countryside Landscape" tour and when our minivan arrives we see that there's another couple from our hotel going on this tour too...
We leave the hotel and head to a flower plantation first.. As we pull off the main road and onto a bumpy dirt track we pass through an old American built, Military Airport Lookout Tower, ( Cam ly airport ) then drive up the derelict looking runway passing many huge green houses till we get to the end and leave the van... The guild informs us that Dalat only has two seasons.... "Wet and dry" there is no winter or summer here.. And combined with vey rich soil that's reddish in colour means that can produce vast numbers of plants which they export all over the world...
We enter a Lilly green house and there are thousands inside, then a rose green house, again, there are thousands of roses that are two weeks before the controlled. flowering date.
From here we travel to a little village... Along the way our guilds point out a flower glowing wild in many of the roadside bushes.... It's called a "Rice Sunflower" and was use to indicate when to sew the rice paddies.... In the distance we can see a large mountain.. It's the second highest in Vietnam and the tallest in the south..... We climbed this mountain yesterday... Its high ! We arrive at the Minority village... One of 52 minority groups in Vietnam.... They all have there own languages and some, including the one we visit has no written language at all.
The women have to buy there husband from his family... Usual costing 1 to 3 buffalo.... 5 for a village chef.
From here we go to a Dalat coffee plantation where they grow the Arabica coffee been... Three years of growth before any usable bean is produced.... The beans start from green and ripen to a dark red / brown colour... And the bush which is no more than 8 foot high only grows above 1500 feet...
It has long branches making it around 6ft wide that are covered in a small delicate white flower that grows along the branch itself and this is where you'll find the beans... The coffee bean as we know it is not recognisable to the bean on the tree... The bean on the tree is about the size of your thumb nail and has a outer skin containing three inner beans.... It's these three inner beans that we recognise as a coffee bean... The skins are removed in the plantation and dried on the road side and put back into the red plantation soil or burnt.... The bean itself is sweet in taste when fresh and green in colour.
Weasel coffee being the best and the standard Arabica coffee being worst..... 400000dong or 20000dong per kilo.
Weasel coffee gets its name from the animal....
How ??
The weasel eats the bean, plus a bucket load of bananas, poos it out, and the beans are then used.... hence the name - Weasel Coffee.
It's regarded as the best tasting coffee, which sells for the highest price.
From the plantation fields we enter a large wooden stilted building... We climb the steps and the building opens out into a local produce and coffee shop that has a huge glass wall and viewing deck over the plantation where a lake is now visible.... We order one Arabica coffee and one Weasel coffee from a huge collection of differing coffee bean flavours, all grown on the plantation.. We chose these two coffees as one is the cheapest and the other the most expensive to see if we could tell the difference....
When they arrived we had to wait for them to filter, and visually they were very similar, with the weasel coffee being very slightly darker, they both tasted pretty much the same to us... We tried them both black before adding milk, but it didn't really mater how much milk you added, both were very very strong coffees....
From hear we now go to a cricket farm... The crickets only jump in the evening so the areas where the crickets were kept are open, and there were many there... In the evening they get covered over to prevent them escaping... The crickets are farmed either for fighting or food where they are expensive and considered a delicacy. On leaving the farm a plate arrives, the guild passes it around so we can taste them if we wish... Shiree politely declines the offer but I give them ago... They are cooked for hours to make them less crunchy and the only real taste is the cooking oil.... I have 5 or 6 in total..... Delicacy they may be, rush to try them again I won't... There ok, but nothing special.
From here we travel to a building making Rice Wine.
The process is as follows
Steamed rice is put out to dry for 5 days then put in tubs of water for 5-7 days to ferment. The water is then heated to create steam. The steam is caught and its this stream that is the rice wine and I can personally vouch for its strength... Its strong...
The heat is produced from a fire that the large pot of watery fermented rice is placed over... The fire is burning the outer cases of the harvested Arabica beans that the wine making outfit has harvested itself. There are a number of weasels here to and one climbs up me and sits on my shoulder as I try the rice wine....
Then we are back in the minivan and off to a local silk farm...
This was a hive of activity.... They farm the actual silk worms here and follow the whole silk making process through to the end product in house....
The full cycle takes around 10 days......
We are walked around the factory and observe the workers who are all female of varying ages....
A woman takes the silk worn cocoon and places it in water... The looks for a stray piece of silk... It's like trying to find a human hair, so good eyesight is a must... This one stray piece of silk it that attached to a real that's spinning and it starts to unravel the cocoon... The machinery is very old school, noisily spinning and very dangerous looking, it makes a continuos clinking noise as it works away, unraveling hundreds of cocoons at a time, the single line of silk from the cocoon is barely visible and it's only the bobbing and spinning of the cocoons in the water troff that indicates that something is actually being achieved....
The cocoons still contain a silk worn grub which end up being exposed by the end of the process, these to are edible.... Raw, as the guilds demonstration shows as he chops away on a few... This pleasure I to decline this time....
There is now a reel with lots of silk on which is removed and placed on the floor by a second machine.... The silk thread from this reel is then attached to a second larger reel that spins on the second machine and the process is just to unwind the first reel onto the second... This also stretches the silk too... From hear its placed with many other large reels onto a huge machine that's looks more like a fancy Victorian guillotine which uses a length of paper with holes in to create the most elaborately patterned, one meter wide, silk sheets which are created at a rate of two meters a day... There's silk strands going everywhere and its a very mechanical process, but somehow they create a master piece which is now ready to be died and sold.
On leaving the factory we are offered some cooked grubs, which I try.... There drier so I assume less squishy and thankfully I'm right... They taste very much like cricket to me.....
From here we travel to Elephant Falls water fall.... I'd read about this waterfall so I'm pleased we are here.... After a climb down my initial concerns about there being adequate water flow are put to one side as we get closer to the waterfall base..... There is enough water.... Its about 100ft wide and 100ft drop and there's tones of water passing every second.... It's very impressive and as we get closer we end up getting pretty wet from the spray in the air....
After taking a few photos we make the climb back up to the top to dry off in the sun and have a look around a pagoda, which is a religious building.... There is a huge green laughing Buddha too... From here we head to Dalat train station.. This is the first train station built in Vietnam and was built by the French around 1930.... Within the station is a 1930's German carriage which has been converted into a cafe.. And it's attached to a 1932 Japanese stream train... Neither move, but the line is still open for a short journey and is operated as a heritage railway line.... People go there to get married, and enjoy family days out.
From here we get dropped back to our hotel.... I have really enjoyed this tour..... It's been the cheapest and the best.... Money well spent....
Once back at the hotel a wonder off to get the bike which now should be ready..... It is, and after having to get many bikes moved its out on the road and running fine with no obvious smoke like this morning.... I paid for the work this morning so when I'm called over to the reception desk I'm concerned..... The repair was cheap, and as the bikes now running, if they have done any additional work, then it's already done.... So I'm worried when he writes 400000dong on a piece of paper..... It'll still be a cheap repair, but I'd of liked to of known first if any extra costs... Instead of extra work he hands me 100000dong.... They have reduce the price down to 400000 dong...... Great !!
I ride it happily away and go to collect Shiree... We are now heading off to Dalats "Crazy House" attraction.... Its a functioning guest house, but also a theatrical architects dream.. The female owner is a architect and has designed a very crazy house.... Its certainty like no other.... It has multiple levels and many narrow raised pathways, one of which goes over the roof of the building.... There's no safety net anywhere, and design has ruled all decisions made.... Health and Safety would have an absolute field day here..... Its great, really impressive, and loosely based on Alice in Wonderland and considering most of it is made from concrete it's pretty colourful, but I question how strong some of the structure actually is.....

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_Ly_Airport

http://thienanhoteldalat.com/hang-nga-guesthouse-crazy-house/