Day 101: Christmas in Da Lat

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We left Mui Ne on christmas eve for the mountain town of Da Lat. The bus ride was really bumpy - hard to do anything besides listen to music, look out the window and brace for impact. But the views going up into the mountains were awesome. Somehow steph slept through most of it, until a big bump jarred her awake. Four hours later we arrived in Da Lat.

Da Lat was actually kind of cold when we got there in the evening - something we had not felt for quite a while. Two months, even. I had to put on pants! It is at 1500 meters above sea level so it gets chilly at night. It's a pretty city. Supposedly the honeymoon capital of vietnam. In the center of town there is a lake where you can rent swan shaped paddle boats, and there is a floating island shaped like a giant heart. Da Lat also had the most christmas decorations up out of anywhere we'd been yet, so it almost felt like christmas in the USA as long as you ignore all the vietnamese signs, smells, and thousands of people on motorbikes. That first evening we explored the town on foot and bought ourselves some santa hats. Steph also bought a face mask, like the ones doctors wear in hospitals. They are all the rage all across asia. Hers is black with two skull and crossbones. It looked pretty strange along with the santa hat.

On Christmas day we donned our santa hats, went out and found a pair of moto drivers to take us to some of the local attractions. We started by going to a hotel called the "Crazy house", which looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss story. Or Alice in Wonderland. There are bridges, spiraling stairs, scary animal statues... see the pictures to get an idea. Most of the signs were in vietnamese so we're not really sure exactly why it was built. Something to do with the daughter of somebody famous. There were about 12 rooms that you can stay in, all with their own theme. Maybe next time we're in Da Lat we'll stay there. After the crazy house we rode a cable car that goes for 1.5 km over some forest and farms. Pretty. Our drivers met us at the other side, where there was a pagoda and some gardens. That occupied us for about 10 minutes before we took off to the final destination, Datanla falls.

Datanla falls is one of many waterfalls surrounding Da Lat. I think they are the closest to town, so they are probably the most crowded and touristy. But still fun. You have the option of either walking down to the falls, or riding a toboggan down a metal track. Of course we chose the toboggan. It was pretty fun except we had to wait for some slow people in front of us to get far enough ahead so that we could go fast until we caught up again. When we got to the bottom of the toboggan ride, we were presented with another way to waste some money. Archery! Buy 3 arrows for 10,000 dong (about 60 cents) and shoot at targets painted on tigers and eagles. On my third arrow I hit a bullseye, which won me a free bottle of wine. Merry christmas to me! Steph didn't get so lucky. We finally made it down to the waterfalls, which were pretty. Not that impressive compared to the other falls we saw the next day, but still nice. There was a guy in a bear suit posing for pictures, but he wanted money so we decided we didn't really need any bear suit man pictures. We did take turns posing for pictures in front of eagle and tiger statues though. It doesn't get any more christmasy than that, right?

After our adventures our two drivers convinced us to go on a longer countryside tour the next day. They were both very friendly, safe drivers, so we agreed. Of course our hotel was not happy that we didn't book through them when they found out, but we figured we'd rather spread our money around anyway.

The countryside tour ended up being pretty awesome. The scenery around Da Lat is very picturesque. Rolling hills, with sort of terraced plots of farmland. Lots of flower farms. we stopped at a bunch of different types of farms and walked around. Potatos, cauliflower, tomatos, strawberries (which my driver was calling "sparrows" or something before I corrected him), flowers, fruits, etc. it seems like everything grows there. Then we started off towards lower elevation down a crazy windy road, and the farms down there were mainly coffee and bananas, planted on the same plots.

Have I mentioned how strong vietnamese coffee is? It looks almost like chocolate syrup when it is poured. Usually they make it with about 1/4 part condensed milk. Most people drink it on ice, which I started to do so that i'd have something to dilute the intense flavor. It is tasty though, and it wakes me up. Ok back to the story.

The two highlights of the trip were the silk factory and Elephant falls. The silk factory takes silkworm cucoons and turns them in to silk cloth. It is pretty amazing. First they throw the cucoons in steaming hot water, and a row of ladies somehow pick out the starting thread on each cucoon and stick it onto a spool, where it is drawn out into thread. When the cucoons are used up they take out the moth body and throw them in a basket, which eventually gets sold at the Da Lat market for food. I guess the moth bodies are tasty. Anyway the spools of thread go over to another machine, where they are tied together to make bigger rolls. Those rolls then go to another machine, where they are spun onto little torpedo shaped things that then go into the loom. I should say that the "machines" I'm talking about are made mostly of wood and are probably 50 years old. The looms were my favorite thing to watch. The whole thing is driven by one motor, but it does everything. I could probably write a whole paragraph about it but I'll refrain myself. If you're in Da Lat, check it out.

Elephant falls was by far the biggest waterfall we've seen since china (jiuzhaigou takes the cake). It is also kind of out of the way, so there are none of the touristy distractions. no ticket booth, archery, guy in a bear costume... just the falls. The path down was pretty nuts - not recommended for anyone over 50 I'd say. slippery steps carved in to boulders with no hand rails. There is even a path that takes you almost under the falls. I think the falls get their name because some of the boulders look like elephant skin. but it could also be because the falls are so big and impressive. Definitely worth the trip.

We got back to Da Lat with plenty of daylight, so after lunch we decided to go back out to one last waterfall since we were planning on leaving the next day. we found our same drivers again and they were pretty stoked to take us out again. The last one is called Prenn waterfall. The falls themselves were nice - they have a path so that you can walk behind them. Kind of like two of the waterfalls we saw near Ban Lung, Cambodia, except much more touristified. Prenn waterfall might actually beat Datanla falls as far as touristyness goes, now that I think of it. They had a cable car to take you down to the bottom of the falls, even though it was probably only a 40 ft vertical drop. They had the archery booth, similar to datanla. They even had horse and elephant riding. But when we saw the OSTRICH RIDING.... we couldn't resist. For 50,000 dong (about 3 bucks) we each rode an ostrich around a small pen for 3 laps. Totally pointless, but actually pretty fun. When I was on mine another ostrich almost attacked me. Here's a video:



We were only in Da Lat for 2 days but we packed a lot in. The next day we woke up early for a 70 km bike ride between Da Lat and Nha Trang. I think I'll save that for the next blog as the pictures are not up on flickr yet. Here's some pictures from xmas and the next day:

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[Matt Potterton]

Ho-ho-ho or har-har-har?
You can't be both a pirate and santa, choose one.