Day 12 – Is This the Town I Remember?
I slept in today. It was the first time I really had the
opportunity (other than the ill-fated day I had to cancel my tour, but I was
too sick to really get back to sleep) since I left Cape Town, and it felt
great. It was a little cloudy today in Dalat, with a possible chance of rain
later in the afternoon. If I am outside during that rain, it will be the first
time I have had to experience rain on my trip, as the other two times it rained
I was on a plane or in my hotel asleep. That’s quite a streak I have going so
far, and I really hope it doesn’t get broken during my time in Siem Reap (the
city more known by the attraction it houses – Angkor Wat). The perfect day for
the rain to come is tomorrow, when I take my 10-hour bus from HCMC to Siem
Reap. I have no qualms if it rains throughout that. I have a few books to read
and hours to kill. It’s not as if I’m the one driving, and I have little
planned for my Friday Night in Siem Reap anyway.
I also awoke feeling about as good as I felt yesterday,
which is fine. I’m perfectly content having a few twinges and pulls in my
stomach each day as long as I can function. I could yesterday, I can today, and
let’s keep the good times going. I had to check out at 12 (I pushed it until
about 12:30 – claiming I was packing), and I decided to leave my stuff at the
hotel and walk around Dalat, until I have to leave for the airport for my
flight at 6:55. Because my first stint in HCMC was a disaster, I could have
greatly used this afternoon there and not here, but alas, you can’t foresee
getting sick even before you reach
Southeast Asia, can you.
The city of Dalat itself is small, but still confusing
because it is built on a hill, so there are quite a few climbs up and down. The
hotel was up pretty high, so any walk to the center of the city was downhill
(which, of course, in my mind I immediately translate to the fact that any walk
back to the hotel is uphill). I knew where I wanted to go for lunch, the Thanh
Thuy (Blue Water) restaurant, which lies right on the shore of the lake in the
heart of Dalat. The food there isn’t the best as per the reviews, but the
location most certainly is. To me, the idea of having lunch on the lake was
enough to offset the food; it isn’t like Vietnamese cuisine is that good that I’m really sacrificing
anything by accepting less than the best food.
I got a bit lost walking down to the waterfront and City
Center. I was dumb to not have any map, and as I do often, I planned the route
on GoogleMaps and because it looked simple, I didn’t write it down. Inevitably,
I began to doubt if I knew where I was going, and then I convinced myself that
I didn’t. This sent me on an interesting little chase for information. I
quickly learned that very, very few people in Dalat speak any English. Not only
that, because of the vast differences between the languages, no one knows what
‘lake’ or ‘water’ or ‘waterfront’ (that last one I knew was pretty pointless).
HCMC doesn’t have this problem apparently, but Dalat most certainly does. I
asked the people who I thought would have the highest probability of knowing
English, like well-dressed businessmen or younger people. In the end, I was
lost. Well, considering I knew the way back to the hotel, more like just
confused. I then thought to myself that I really can’t expect anyone to know
English, can I. Dalat (or Vietnam in general) isn’t a big spot for travelers
that speak English (many white-folk in these areas are travelers from other
countries in Europe). This isn’t a financial center that would have many
English-speaking businessmen coming in. Why should any of these people know
English? Especially in a place like Vietnam, which was never ruled by an
English speaking country (like India, or even the Philippines), but by the
French way back when, why would they
know any English?
Dalat Square... yes, this is a secondary city of Vietnam
In the end, I decided to go back and trust my gut, and that trust was well-founded, as I re-found my way back to the City Center of Dalat, a sprawling area with large hotel buildings and a cute little Eiffel Tower replica, which furthered my belief that had I asked ‘how do you get to the lake?’ in French I would have gotten a response right away. There are a few shopping complexes that, like many things in Vietnam, resembled those more modern shopping buildings in Bangalore. I think a great way to describe Vietnam is a slightly cleaner India, slightly less poor India. There aren’t as many upscale places in Vietnam (like tall buildings, modern apartment complexes, finance districts) as there are in the main centers of India, but there are far, far, far less slums, beggars and dirt. India is a rich poor country (a very poor country that can act very rich in isolated places), while Vietnam is just a moderately poor country.
The Bluewater grill was as it was described. Average food
(though my particular dish was fine), and a great view. The waterfront tables
are built on a slab of concrete that is anchored in the water, so the water is
literally under you. There are tons of little boats going around in the lake to
the distance. You get a good view of Dalat all around you. The only quibble is
that the waterfront is so depressed that the mountains that make up the
backdrop of Dalat are blocked away by lower, but close, buildings. I had squid
stir-fried in peanut and chili. It was quite good as it was just peanut enough
and just chili enough. The squids were a little tough, which probably goes to
this place’s reputation that the looks of the food (not to mention the looks of
the place) are primary, while the taste is secondary. That said, during the
middle of the day, there is no better way to observe Dalat around you.
After lunch I headed back to the hotel, well ahead of
schedule. Unless you like shopping, there really isn’t enough to do in Dalat
proper. I can’t imagine spending five days like the group of Brits from last
night are, but then again they were going kayaking and doing more of the
outdoors activities that are possible in Dalat but that I was uninterested in
doing. I sat in the Villa Pink House, a truly great little lodge quite central
in Dalat, with about an hour to kill before the cab back to Dalat airport. In
one sense, I am ready to leave, having expended the list of easily
accomplishable attractions in Dalat, but in another I am sad. Dalat (and HCMC)
is a place I will probably not come back to, the first of the trip (and likely
only). I am glad to have come here. I am more than glad to have experienced my
time in the mountains and hills outside of Dalat on motorcycle, going down that
quaint little roller-coaster, going to the pagoda’s and seeing the Happy
Buddha. I am ready to go, but already feeling nostalgic. I guess that is what
happens when you spend just one day in a place, even if one-plus day was just
the right amount of time.
The drive to the Dalat airport, when made during daylight
hours, is one final reminder of just how beautiful and serene this part of
Vietnam is, as you drive above and then through the canyons of green hills to
the airport. The airport, then, gives another reminder of how advanced Vietnam
is. The Dalat airport is a joke in terms of its scope. There are 6 domestic
flights a day (3 to HCMC, 2 to Hanoi, 1 to Da Nang). There are no gates. There
are no taxiways (just a long runway which you taxi one way and take-off the
other). Yet, the Terminal is still modern, with a beautiful glass façade, more
impressive than the HCMC Domestic airport. Quite amazing, this little town of
Dalat.
Six flights a day, but still nicer than anything in India.
Back in HCMC, I was met once again with the unavoidable
truth of Southeast Asia: heat and its more evil cousin, humidity. The clean
mountain air of Dalat was gone, and the bruising, wet, muggy air of HCMC was
back. Still, driving around during night-time gave me my first real exposure to
HCMC at night, and it comes alive. At that point, I finalized my plan to do the
walk from my hotel, down the main road, past the main buildings of HCMC (The
Palace, the Opera House, the Post Office) and the main hotels, to go to my
restaurant, instead of taking the easy way out and finding a restaurant closer
by.
This was both a smart and stupid decision. It was stupid because,
once again, Google Maps underestimated how long the walk would take, but in
Google’s defense, it is hard to calculate how insane HCMC traffic is. It isn’t
as unregulated as Bangalore, but a little more fast and constant. Then again, I
was in the heart of the city. The smart part of my move was it gave me a good
look at HCMC at night, what many people come to HCMC to experience. The city
comes alive at night (it was around 9:00 when this all took place), with neon
signs adorning the buildings. I was walking northeast on the main road, which
first hits a circle around a statue of someone. Then, the street name changes,
and so does what surrounds you, as mid-tier shops and bars are replaced by
upscale hotels and shops. There is little difference at this point of the
street, between HCMC and any European City, truly. One end of the street is a
statue of a soldier on a horse, the other is an Opera House with fountain in
front of it. Between the two lies every expensive shop necessary, and a few top
hotels, and restaurants with names literally reading ‘La Bourgeois’. My
restaurant, sadly, wasn’t ‘La Bourgeois’, but tucked inside a courtyard with a
little enclave of nice but not oppressively-priced restaurants , tucked behind
the Opera House.
The restaurant was named ‘Hua Tuoc’, the only one in the
enclave with a Vietnamese name (not a real surprise, some of the best rated
restaurants in HCMC are not Vietnamese), but they were all about as busy as the
others. The courtyard open-air seating was packed, but seeing as how I was
already dripping in sweat, there was no way I was sitting outside. There is no
real view anyway, so the real advantage of sitting outside is gone. As said, it
is moderately expensive, as in ‘My dinner of beer, bottled water, appetizer and
entrée will probably cost me 18 dollars’ expensive. If you’ve been to Vietnam,
you might think that is on the expensive side. If you haven’t, you might think
that is really cheap. You would both be right.
For my appetizer, I ordered beef cuts wrapped in Kiffir
leaves, with mint and rice noodle and rice cake. I did not get what I expected.
I got something better. Essentially, they were Lettuce Wraps, except instead of
lettuce being the wrap, it was rice paper, which works a lot better. Also,
instead of some strip of meat, they were little kebabs of beef wrapped in the
leaf which already gave it its own taste. The rice noodles and mint added
something as well. It was pretty close to perfect, actually. One of the best
things I’ve eaten all trip, up there with anything from Cape Town. My main
course was BBQ Vietnamese Snapper, with a beet root and ginger sauce on top.
That also looked great, although the beet root and ginger sauce wasn’t really a
sauce as much as it was a topping. That’s fine, though, because I think it
worked better that way. The BBQ sauce that was added to the Snapper wasn’t very
noticeable, which was also a welcome trait. Overall, the dish was good. A bit
of a disappointment over the home run of an appetizer, but still solid. For my
only true meal in HCMC, it was very good and despite being one of the more
expensive restaurants that I pinpointed, expensive is a relative term. With all
I ordered, I still paid less than 20 dollars.
By far the best thing I had in Vietnam, the Beef Kiffir Leaf Wrap.
It was still kind of early (10:15) and HCMC has way too many
people walking around to be anything but safe – with the traffic, you are much
more at risk of being hit by a car then being mugged or anything even more
disastrous. That said, I wasn’t spending anymore time in that humidity than
necessary, and I found a cab to take me home. I have an early start tomorrow,
as the bus to Siem Reap leaves at 7 AM. I am already dreading the 2-block walk
from the hotel to the Bus Stop with my suitcases, more so because on the bigger
one the handle that extends to let you roll it is broken currently. I’m
considering trying to attempt to pay someone to carry it for me, and I am most
certainly serious. It was a good night in HCMC, if short. If I knew the first
HCMC experience would be close to a zero (I did get to see to Cu Chi Tunnels,
but that wasn’t really in HCMC), I would have booked an earlier flight, but the
rules say you must book in advance, and the rules and the rules.
