Dalat

The faces in the street are the same, but otherwise you would think you are in another country. Everything seems to be different. The extreme heat has made way for a pleasant low to mid twenties temperature and the vegetation has lost its tropical look. The architecture looks more European and the people are not so "in your face" anymore. The “buy from me” extreme of Sapa, to the “please look in my shop” of Hue and Hoi An has made way for just a glance or nothing at all. The walk around the covered market is now a lot easier. Dalat has an elevation of 1500 metres and a very pleasant climate. It does not get overly hot here, which is evidenced by the lack of air conditioners.

The French, when they tried to rule this country, built many large mansions and houses in their home country style. This form of architecture gives Dalat its European feeling. I took some pictures from our room so you can see what I mean.

However, it is difficult to get a quick feel of orientation in Dalat, as it is built on hills. There are hardly any straight roads as most streets and roads follow the curved hills. A good paper or phone map is a must. After checking into our hotel we took a walk to find the local market and something to eat. I still can't figure out why they have so many shops which are all identical selling exactly the same thing as their neighbours. We entered an area where they sell dried and semi dried fruit including blackberries and strawberries. In one of the many shops we stopped to have a look at a few items. The lady who served us spoke some English, enabling us to ask some questions about her business. I guess her shop was 1.2 meters wide and 1.2 meters deep and her working space was… ah well, the was no working space other than a square area where her upper body stuck out of being as wide as she was. She could turn around and that was about all. We guessed her to be in her mid-fifties as her kids had left home and she had grandchildren . She told us that she gets to work at around 6 am and is in her “shop” (read “prison”) until about 10 pm, 7 days a week. What sort of life is that? But amazingly she looked happy. Perhaps because someone took the time to talk to her – we don’t know. Even more amazing was that there are perhaps 50 cubicles of the same dimensions all right next to each other - and everyone sells exactly the same thing. We bought some items and left with a “wow” feeling. Next time I hear someone complaining about their job I will tell them about this lady. Gert and I had a discussion about this and at the end of our second day when we passed the market again we called in to ask her the same questions. She confirmed that this was a 7 day 16 hour job. We took some pictures just to illustrate this part of the story show how small these shops are. Her husband did not work she said but did make ingredients for the shop including the manufacturing of different jams. 99% of the shops are run by women who must be absolutely bored out of their brains. Most of them just sit there and play games on their phones.

We started looking for a street recommended by Lonely Planet - a street where there are several coffee shops where you can get a good cup of coffee. Although it was called something like “The Chocolate Shop”, the coffee was indeed one of the best we had found since Taiwan.

About 50km south of Dalat is one of the largest waterfalls in the area. We had arranged motorcycles to be delivered to our hotel and left for a pleasant ride down an almost new road leading down the mountains into the direction of Saigon. A large section of the road was newly laid so I already knew what we would be facing further down the road. Roadworks! Now let’s talk about that for a minute. Roadwork in Europe or Australia is done in about the same way, but here it is not so. There is no slowing down, not many signs and no signals. The work is done on the right hand side for a few kms and then on the left hand side and changes every few km. Although the roads are narrow at that point, trucks and buses are still trying to overtake each other with blaring horns. Motorcycles and scooter riders are fighting their own battles on the remaining 40 cm on the extreme righthand side of the road with the occasional scooter rider coming from the other side (riding on the wrong side of the road). When the road is dry you are showered in dust and grit, meanwhile dodging potholes, rocks, sticks, loose gravel, road machinery and what not. Two trucks may come towards you side by side with one flashing his lights. “Yes mate”, I think, “of course I have seen you coming”, Never mind just keep going I’ll just move over and use my last 20 cm before I run off the road. Never a dull moment when going through roadworks! Now what happens when it starts to rain? No more dust – that’s a plus! But now we ride into mud holes full of unseen slippery things while the raindrops sting your eyes and face. At times the road is completely covered with several cm of water. Here it becomes very interesting with trucks spraying a wall of muddy water sideways! The driver can see the scooter riders but does not slow down because… ? All the locals now wear large ponchos which only have a small opening for the eyes. So here we were. We wanted to see a waterfall in the morning and saw bucketloads of water fall over us in the afternoon. Fortunately we had both taken our rain jackets which helped somewhat. We sought refuge under the cover of a simple restaurant where we decided to do the right thing and order some food. I think something went wrong with the translations as we ordered Pho Ga which is a large bowl of noodle soup with vegetables and chicken. Surrounded by extremely loud thunderclaps and the sound of heavy rain thundering down on the canopy covering our bikes, I stirred the soup and found a piece of a pigs snout. Ok, we got pork instead of chicken. The snout felt like chewing on rubber but tasted ok.

Meanwhile the rain had slowed down and we decided we might as well go and face the remaining 33 km back to Dalat. Once you are soaked right through it can’t get worse, so off we went, stung by a thousand needles of rain a minute as we didn’t have a shield to protect us. Exhausted, we arrived back in Dalat and got changed. Time for a walk and dinner in town.

The second day, (today) I faced a problem. Yesterday, when the rain started I knew that everything would get wet so I transferred my camera, phone and the contents of my pockets to the dry compartment under the seat. While doing this I must have dropped my string, with the keys to the locks of my bag.

Our money was in one of the compartments so we had a problem. As we had plenty of time we visited the nearby “crazy house” first and returned to the hotel just in case they had found the keys when our room was being cleaned for the next occupants. No such luck. The hotel owner called a locksmith who arrived half an hour later with enough tools to pick the locks of Fort Knox. The small padlocks are Abus locks and picking them took him about 15 minutes. He admitted that they were very good. Off he went with one of the opened locks and returned 45 minutes later with two keys. All this for the sum of $8.00, of course we gave him a tip. We now only had the afternoon left and quickly went 8 km down the road to the Datania waterfalls. There are plenty of different falls around Dalat but going to them all turns them into “AFW”, so this one had to be the second and the last. A toboggan ride took us down the mountainside to the first falls and later a cable car to another followed by a lift on the side of the mountain. Plenty to enjoy and a magnificent sight.

Tonight we say goodbye to Dalat and take the overnight sleeper bus back to the heat of Saigon.