**I often forget that I went to Vietnam at all in 2013. Granted, I fully remember the days of sitting in a dark hostel room affixed to my bed inbetween rapid trips to the bathroom. So was my time there. But then things brightened up, in the sunny hills of Dalat - probably the only place I went to on my trip that I will never return to. It was the rebirth of the trip, so here I give you a day in, around and through Dalat, on motorcycle no less**
Day 11 – A Return to Normalcy Among the Mountains
Getting healthy again is a strange feeling, one that is welcome, obviously, but still met with extreme caution. For hours, you aren’t sure if you are healthy yet. Any slight abnormal feeling in your stomach you put down to some relapse, some punishment for having the gall to think it was all over. That was the story for part of my day today, where I caught myself every now and then to search for reasons why I wasn’t healthy. In a way, it is hard to believe after what I had gone through the past two days that it was all gone, but apparently it was. My stomach is still not perfect. I doubt it will digest food normally until I return to the 1st world in Australia in 8 weeks time. But as long as it doesn’t come out the front, or as long as I don’t have crippling pain, I should be fine.
Today was the tour I was most looking forward to during my time alone in Southeast Asia. Dalat is known as a little hamlet in the mountains, surrounded by lush farms, cascading hills and a great elevated breeze. All of these things are true, but Dalat also houses quite a few sites. The one issue with most of these is that they are not in the city itself, some as far as 30 KM, but most about 10 KM away. Therefore, it has become the popular tourist attraction to hire an “easy-rider” – essentially a motorcycle – to drive you around. They sell it is a tour, because the guide (assuming you book with one of these companies) knows English and tells some interesting facts through the tour, but it really is a driver. An affordable, unique driver, that gives you a real firsthand experience of just how beautiful the scenery and environment of Dalat is.
The tour started with the furthest location (which I think may have been done on purpose because a motorcycle ride through the mountains is a great way to wake someone up), the combination Linh Anh Pagoda and Elephant Falls. (Just one housecleaning item: you can arrange your own itinerary, but there are good standard ones you can work off of, and all the places I saw are pretty standard). The drive there was first through an extensive farm area. Unlike what I know farms to be, these were small, or at least the crops were separated into small areas, but they were all extremely organized. The farms themselves were below me as we went up, and it gave a birds-eye view of how well maintained they were. About half of them are covered by plastic greenhouses, that are mostly for the flower produce. All along the route there are hills in the distance. The further we got away from Dalat, the farms were replaced more and more by trees (ostensibly the same trees that were cut down to make way for the farms). Dalat is damp (but not humid) so everything is extremely green, and the people of the region take great pride in their natural beauty, and many of these smaller roads are lined with beautiful trees, but all of the roads have walls to prevent rockslides and other danger.
The Linh Anh Pagoda is high above a hill, and is quite regal as it is in a relatively clear part of the area. The pagoda has intricate artwork on the outside, but is not enough for it to become overwhelming (as some later ones were). The place has a very peaceful pond and walking area behind, where one of the more infamous attractions is tucked away, the large ‘Happy Buddha’ so called because of its smiling face. One road parallel to the Linh Anh Pagada is the entrance to the Elephant Falls (alternatively, you can take a flight of stairs down between them). There is an entrance fee for the Falls, but outside of the pagoda’s all these sights do, but they are all 40,000 VND (~2 dollars) or less. The top of the falls are visible from the top, but the real joy is the cascading path down. The path itself is both treacherous and easy. There are many rocks and ledges there that makes it dangerous (the lack of handrails makes it even more dangerous), but all along the rocks are steps that are easy to tell, giving me a nice guidepath of where to go. Sadly, the Falls were a little disappointing, because to get a good look at the falls in full, you have to be more adept at hiking and that type of outdoors stuff that somebody of my abilities. I was able to get very close to the Falls themselves, at an eye-to-eye level, and it was a good site, but the better site was so close but yet so far.
We left Back for Dalat (the rest of the attractions were either in Dalat or on the other side). Overall, the ride back to Dalat was quicker than the ride there, but I think that was more of a factor of me being more comfortable with the idea that, yes, I was not sick anymore, and being more comfortable with the whole motorcycle experience. In isolation, the Linh Anh Pagoda and the Elephant Falls aren’t worth a 30 KM drive (60, in total), but it is considering what that drive entails. Numerous picture opportunities. Numerous breathtaking views. The scenery on that drive was better than all the others, and when I think about it as a 90-minute motorcycle ride through some stunning views with two nice stops along the way, well, it makes it a lot more appealing. The surroundings are a part of the Dalat experience, and they definitely had a tangible value and enhanced my takeaway from Dalat a lot.
Our next stop was ‘The Crazy House’, a favorite attraction inside the Dalat City Limits. The Crazy House is basically a complex maze of steps and pathways and bridges that combine from two houses and two large, hollow trees. The most amazing part of this (other than how confusing the endless pathways and forks are) was that the whole thing is made from concrete, even though from far and from near, it looks like wood. I had read about the Crazy House online in my research, and by description, is sounds like a kids attraction (Crazy House with Tons of Stairs Leading in Circles!!), but not only is it not a kids attraction, but I didn’t see one kid there and saw a bunch of couples and groups. Nice spot near Dalat.
The other two attractions in Dalat weren’t as good, for various reasons. First was the ‘Dragon’ Pagoda, named for the large stone dragon that winds its way around the side garden. The dragon is quite nice, but the Pagoda itself is small. It is supposedly the nicest in Dalat, and had I not seen the Linh Anh Pagoda, or the Pagoda still to come, I probably would have been more impressed. The other was the Dalat ‘Flower Park’. It is damn impressive from the very first site, a large arch about 25 feet high with ‘Welcome to the Flower Park’ written in flowers. The park is large but not too much so. It two lakes and paddle-boats to rent, a gazebo, a restaurant, multiple side exhibitions. My Mom (an ardent gardener) would have loved it, and I enjoyed it, but by now it was quite hot, and being back down in Dalat and with the Flower Park containing surprisingly little shade, I was ready to leave Dalat and head back to higher (and more interesting) ground.
We then left Dalat and headed for the Datanla Falls, which is probably the most mainstream attraction in the Dalat region. The Falls are situated a half km away from a large, expansive lake where a couple modern resorts are being built. Once again, I entered the Falls area with the Falls themselves on lower ground. When I got past the requisite shops/restaurants for a tourist destination of this ilk, I had a decision to make. Either walk down, or take the ‘roller coaster’, which is as it sounds. Of course, being against the prospect of walking back up once I was done, and I wasn’t passing up this opportunity after I realized that the roller coaster, much like the Crazy House, wasn’t a children’s ride. The coaster itself is a winding steel path down the hill to the base of the first waterfall. There are no serious drops, but it still gets to a decent speed. The interesting part of the coaster was that the cars are totally user-controlled. There is a lever that you push forward for the car to go faster, and you pull it back for it to brake. It took me a while to get the hang of how to operate it and get it to stop when I wanted it to get a few pictures off (there is enough distance between cars for there to be no worry of holding up the people behind). There are signs throughout telling you to brake, but to me, that was like telling a little kid to not do something. I was quite sad when I reached the bottom, but that was mostly because I realized the ride up was basically the same as the ride up any roller coaster in any theme park, a mechanized, slow, plodding ride up.
On the Roller Coaster down to the waterfall.
My brief sadness was just that when I saw the waterfalls (which is the reason I came here, I had to remind myself). The waterfalls are impressive, if common. You can climb the rocks right up to the water basin that the waterfalls falls into. The water then flows down a long ravine that finally reaches another waterfall. That waterfall is reachable by cable-car, but not during off-season (I could’ve walked there, but there was an extremely little chance of that happening). There are paths all around the waterfall area that lends themselves to great picture opportunities. Again, the falls are nice and worth seeing if you come to Dalat, but the real experience is the combination of the falls and that coaster to get there, for just 50,000 VND total (10,000 to enter the park, 40,000 to use the coaster there and back). I have to hand it to the Vietnamese. 15 km outside of a small hill-side town, they have a mini roller-coaster with user-operated cars. The fact that they had this was about as impressive as riding it.
The next, and final, stop, was the Linh Phuc Pagoda, which is actually a collection of Pagoda’s, at the end of a hill. I’ll start with the negatives about it. The site is tucked away in a small town that resembles many little villages in India (but still cleaner and less impoverished), and the decorations, artwork and sculptures may be a little too overwhelming. That said, they still are beautiful. They have the normal temple that had a large inside with three different altars (and far more people there for religious reasons than either of the other pagoda’s). The compound also had a tall Pagoda will bell inside, and two winding staircases up and down to the top, that offered a beautiful view of a relatively low area of this region. The final building houses their calling card, a 25-foot tall figure of a Goddess, made exclusively from flowers. It is quite a sight to see from afar, but even more impressive from up close. The ‘statue’ itself is located on the 2nd floor of a building (but exposed to the open air), however the walk up is short and gives another nice view. There is also a nice Catholic Church located away in the distance. In the end, the Linh Phuc Pagoda is an interesting site, a good visit as it is relatively close to the City Center (12 km), and well worth a visit.
We reached the City Center for the final time, where I decided to play it safe for lunch, say goodbye to my guide, my escort and my motorcycle (or, more accurately, his motorcycle). I had a couple takeaways from my day upon the bike and seeing the sites. I would rate the entire experience as an absolute positive. Some of the scenery and views are just brilliant. The feeling of riding along winding highways above fields of crops and trees and hills with the wind whipping at you directly is unmatched (I guess for anyone who has more experience on a motorcycle that feeling would be a little less memorable). Plus, the sites themselves aren’t bad. Some would be a nuisance getting to if they had to be reached solely by drab roads through open desert, but they are reached through the opposite, which makes them better. I am definitely, definitely happy I did an ‘easy-rider’ tour, and it lived up to every expectation I had for the tour.
I got back to my hotel around 2:30 a little tired. Part of this was spending a lot of the day riding without anywhere to rest your back, which gets tiring after a while (I’m told it is less ‘painful’ for the driver, who is in a more natural position), and also due to me spending more time out than I had previously in about 5 days. Because of my relative tiredness, I decided to take it slow for the afternoon, watch some shows and go down and try to interact with the busy crowd at the hostel. I met a group of about five people visiting from England, and they knew a group of three visiting from Germany. The Brits were on Day 3 of 4 in Dalat, and they were impressed and curious as to the specifics of my trip. They then asked what my plans were for the night. I told them because of my stomach and since I was leaving tomorrow I wasn’t planning on going out after dinner, but I had no real plans. They were going to a place close by for dinner, and it happened to be one of the places already on my list (The Chocolate Café), so tagging along with them seemed like an easy offer to accept.
Dinner at the Chocolate Café was uneventful. It was my first meal of any substance in Vietnam, and my expectations of Veitnamese Cuisine wasn’t all to high to begin with, but the Chocolate Café did meet if not exceed them. The Chocolate Café serves both Vietnamese and Western food (including a large selection of mini pizzas). Two of the five Brits decided to be boring and get ‘Western’ food (which did end up looking quite good). The rest of us had Vietnamese food. We all shared a large plate of pepper-fried squid, which came with an excellent tangy sauce. The squid portions were large, they weren’t fried too deeply, and the taste was excellent. My main course was a clay-pot of Shrimp, served in a caramel curry. The curry didn’t really taste like caramel, but still tasted quite good. It was a sweet taste that was welcome as I was still a little unsure if my stomach could handle spicy foods. There were a lot of pieces of shrimp in that little pot; more evidence that the Vietnamese are not shy with their portions. The Chocolate Café had five tables that were being served when we were there, and all five had people that were not Vietnamese. I’m not sure what to take away from this, other than people from Dalat probably don’t eat out too much on random Wednesday’s. The food was excellent, the drink was fine (I had my first beer in four days), and after it ended, I retired back to the hotel while the Brits wished me Good Cheer and went on their merry way. It was a little sad to see them leave, as I would have joined them if I had, literally, the stomach for it, but it was a fun day, one that would be hard to replicated anywhere else that I have been or will go to.
