Dalat

This morning we awoke to find our bikes where we had left them the previous night. Phew! As we hopped on our bikes to leave, a younger guy working at the motel laughed and said to us "no girl?". I guess no one spends the whole night at a sex motel without a girl.

We stopped at a roadside stand for a breakfast of Pho, and then headed off toward Cat Tien National Park. The national park is on the way to Dalat, and home to one of the rarest rhinos in the world (only 7 left!), so we decided to check it out. Our Lonely Planet suggested overnighting at 'crocodile lake' where animals come to drink at night. On the way to the park, we passed a man on a motorbike with a pig on the back. This isn't surprising for Southeast Asia. In fact, lots of people carry butchered or roasted pigs on the backs of their bikes, two at a time. What was different about this pig is it wasn't your ordinary pig-roast pig, this was a PIG. It must have weighed 1,000 pounds. No kidding. I have no clue how the man was keeping his balance. In the city it is not uncommon to see a man with a full-size, brand new refrigerator propped on the back of his bike, upright. I have no idea how they do it.

The road to Cat Tien took us off of the highway and into a more rural farming area of Vietnam. As we zipped along the small winding roads, I was surprised to see that half of the road was covered in dirt. As I approached, I realized it was corn! All along the road, maize farmers were drying the kernels by laying them out on the road. Very innovative, if not a little odd.

When we arrived at the park, a girl stored our bikes in a barn and then chatted away with Ryan. She was realllly into him. She told him she 'loved him more than she could say'. Haha!

We took a ferry boat across a wide, muddy river, to the visitor's center of the park. It turned out that the cheapest lodging was around $15 a night (for a tent that we didn't have), and up to $30 for a bungalow - much more expensive than Lonely Planet claimed. Also, it was about $10 an hour to rent a Land Cruiser and guide to take us around the park. What were the chances of seeing the rhino? Zilch. Same for the elephants. It sounded like we might see a crocodile or two at the lake, but that's about it.

We opted to walk around instead, and spent the majority of our time watching the monkeys and bears (I have no clue what type of bear lives in Vietnam, but this was no ordinary black bear), that were situated in cages so small they could barely turn around. Very depressing. The monkeys were more interesting, as they were quite fond of begging for food by holding out their hands and feet, and grabbing your fingers (Heather, you would have loved this). We had a bunch of bananas on us as our 'survival food', and spent a solid hour feeding bananas and insects to the monkeys.

We decided to not spend the night at Cat Tien National Park, and rather push for Dalat. Outside of the park, we stopped to get lunch, and a 16-year old girl got out her schoolbook to practice her English on us. I found this interesting because the phrases she was asking us were not the typical phrases you learn when first learning another language. "Do you have girlfriend?" "Do you have wife?". Okay, I guess those are ordinary questions...but those were the first ones in her book she went to hahah. Even more interesting was the fact that the phrases written in her book did not follow proper English grammar. Some of the phrases didn't even make sense. I guess the quality of English teaching in rural Vietnam is poor.

The rest of the ride up to Dalat was quite uneventful. More and more people stared at us as we drove further north, and the scenery became absolutely stunning. The traffic thinned out on the road, and the road began to follow a ridge that overlooked the hills and terraced agricultural fields of coffee, tea, and mulberry. Lining the road were little corrugated metal shacks with million dollar views. Give this place 20 years and real estate will be out of control - I bet.

We stopped at a cafe for a break - we needed to give our sore butts a rest, and drank some Vietnamese coffee. I forgot to mention Vietnamese coffee before! The stuff is amazing. They serve it suuuper dark and thick - like an espresso on steroids. They also serve it with lots of condensed milk (because it's hard to keep milk fresh in the heat), so it's extra extra thick, and very sweet. Most of the time they serve it on ice because who wants to drink hot coffee on a hot day? Like a frappucino...only way better.

Well, we arrived in Dalat right after it got dark, and I was freezing! It was nice to be cold for once, but I got really, really cold on the motorbike driving through the highlands at night.

We had no clue where we wanted to stay, and we just happened to come upon a lady on a motorbike who asked us if we needed a place to stay. Yes! She took us to a verrry nice guesthouse owned by her sister with a double room for $25. We splurged, but the place was really nice - wood floors, pretty lobby, and clean beds. What more could I want?

Well, luckily we had our motorbikes, because we were actually a distance outside of town, and needed to drive to dinner. We found a cute restaurant overlooking the morning market area, and two wasted europeans invited us to join them for dinner. Between the two of them they had killed 5 or 6 bottles of wine and were having a grand old time. The German was only interested in karaoke, and asked Ryan every five minutes if he was ready to go to the karaoke bar. The other guy, a 50 year old british man, seemed to embody british humor. If only I can remember the things he said!

Anyways, they convinced us to order a bottle of the wine they were drinking 'Dalat Wine', which they said was quite good. Hey, they're europeans, they should know their wines, right? This wine was shit. Ryan kept pouring me more, and only later did I find out he hated the wine too. He was trying to get rid of it through me.

Well, the German man got frustrated with us, and left to go to the karaoke bar. We then got creeped out by the englishman who was talking about 2 year old boys playing with their wieners, so it was back to the guesthouse for us.

I asked Ryan about these karaoke bars, and why they're so popular in southeast asia. He said that he went to a karaoke bar with his moto driver one night, and they take you to a room with a karaoke machine, and serve you expensive drinks. Girls walk in and sing karaoke while sitting on a sofa next to you, and I guess try to seduce you through their singing. I guess it's all a front for prositution, but it seems like a really roundabout way of going about it.

Well, I thought this sounded hilarious, and convinced Ryan that we had to go check out a karaoke bar (I was pretty confident a Vietnamese girl couldn't seduce me through her singing - we both find the music pretty annoying). There happened to he a karaoke bar right next to our guesthouse, but when we walked in, our guesthouse owner was right there. That was a little awkward, so we walked around looking for another karaoke bar. We asked a moto driver where to find a karaoke bar, and at first he didn't understand. He then goes "ahhhhh, kara-okay, yes yes". I guess it isn't pronounced the same in southeast asia. Well, he wanted to take us far away, and when we refused that, the lady moto driver next to him offered her services to us. NO THANK YOU!

We gave up and went to sleep.

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