Dalat

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So we left Saigon for Dalat, in the Central Highlands. Dalat was usually a pleasant 20 degrees celcius, significantly cooler than the rest of Vietnam because it is in the mountains. Despite it's central location, Dalat was uncontested during the war, and was completely unaffected. That may have contributed to the lighter mood.

Dalat was a great time, but we definately slacked off. The final Euro game was on, so we needed some preparation for that. We found ourselves waking up later in the day, taking it easy. No complaints!

We decided we needed a good jam, so we went off and found a music store with a drum set. It was our plan to deceive them, to tell them we were thinking of getting an apartment in the area, and stocking up on musical instruments. The drum set was garbage, but the guitar they put in my hands was beautiful. It's one of the biggest acoustics I've ever seen, so even though the wood isn't the finest, it resonates just beautifully. I was surprised to find that it was for sale for only 300 000 dong - less than 20 dollars. With a beautiful Yamaha case thrown in, they were only asking thirty bucks. I was shaking from excitement, but decided to see if there were other music stores in town worth considering. I played quite a few guitars, and found them all much more expensive and cheap sounding than the first one i'd played. So I went ahead and got it! We'd gone into the store intending to trick them, and found that we were the ones who'd been fooled. Oh, and Dalat is a beautiful french colonial town, so the music store was housed in a big, gorgeous villa type thing.

The most fun we had in Dalat was definately when we rented the motorbikes. All over Dalat, there are these touts who call themselves easyriders. They're english speaking vietnamese tour guides who take you out for the day on their motorbikes and charge you absurd prices. Not being into absurd prices, we got our own bikes and made for elephant falls.

It was a great feeling starting out. The sun was shining, the bikes were loud, we had some really amazing drives through the mountainside. We were well above the cloud level at times, watching clouds lumber about in the valleys below us. Then it started to rain.

We'd checked the bikes out the previous day, and they'd had raincoats stowed underneath the seat. to our surprise, they were nowhere to be found today. So we got wet. Whipping along the road, with every raindrop stinging your face, absolutely freezing - it was brilliant. Eventually the rain got so bad that we had no choice but to pull off, so we tried waiting it out. Well, we waited till it died down, but it showed no signs of stopping.

So we drove on looking for the place. THe region hasn't been popular with tourists for long, so no maps have been published. We only had verbal directions : when you come to the town of Nam Bam, continue for half a kilometer, take the path on your right, and two hundred meters down the road you should see a sign for the waterfall.

Soaking wet and muddy, we tried every bloody goddamn dirt road after Nam Bam, but met nothing but friend (albeit confused) farmers.

So even though we couldn't find the bloody place, it was my first time on a motorbike, and that was cool. We took a breathtaking trip throug the mountains, which is hard to complain about. Overall, it was a really cool day. Besides, I've seen waterfalls before.

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