Lions and tigers and bears oh my...
Trip Start
Feb 21, 2008
1
13
20
Trip End
Mar 18, 2008
Buon Ma Thot,
Vietnam
Thursday, March 6, 2008
4 March: My birthday! Driver and guide (Hai and Tinh) collected us at the hotel, we had a lovely big air con car. Which was just as well because we drove for hundreds of km. First stop a brick factory, there are loads of them the people make bricks from mud. Then we went to a coffee plantation where we saw green tea and virgin flowers (Tinh got into hysterical giggles telling us about the virgin flower that closes up when a man touches it. This theme was to continue for the whole trip).
The brick factory
I saw a monkey in a tree which was very exciting until Tinh told me it was probably a pet. Next stop an ethnic minority village, which was kind of like a reservation with all tourist shops, very strange. the people live in "long houses" which are on stilts. They are all one room. Tinh went to great lengths to explain the whole family sleeps in the one room, three generations. And he asked his friend who is a minority person how he "goes to visit his wife" with all the people in the house. I won't go into the details (He did. He told us this story about 5 times.)Anyhoo the ethnic people make special wine from rice called Jar Wine and also a special potion from mushrooms and herbs to giver strength to men (you can guess what kind of strength by this stage, right?). More giggles. We went on the crazy suspension bridge which is like the one that breaks in Indiana Jones. Scary stuff. Then we went for a ride on elephants! I was so excited but of course when the time came I was petrified but I made myself do it - you had to climb onto this high platform and climb into a basket on the top of the elephant. I was muttering away to myself the whole time and I had the white knuckles gripping onto the basket. We got to the end of the village and I was so relieved, great we can turn back now, but oh no off we went down a big bank towards the river. The old basket was feeling a bit unstable at this stage and I was getting a bit panicky - off we went into the river! I never brought my camera because we got tinh to take pics of us on the elephants so he had them but I am so sorry because once I got over the fear and started breathing again it was amazing and so beautiful.
Making bricks
Caroline's elephant decided he was hungry and started eating trees and climbing up the (very steep) river bank. I would have been screaming (I was pretty much whimpering the whole time anyway) but she was very calm indeed. Like the Queen of Sheba myself and Cait thought. Our elephant went off doing his own thing as well and the driver gave him a few whacks with a stick which was fairly horrible I thought. And when we were going past local people the driver was saying things to them and they were laughing - I swear it was something like "this stupid western woman is petrified up on the elephant what a fool" I'd say they are still having a good old laugh about me. My legs were shaking for about an hour afterwards from the fear!Off we went to our long house which is at the Virgin Falls (more giggles). They are not very big waterfalls but very pretty. The old long house was just a cabin on stilts and we slept on the floor under mozzie nets. It was right beside a pool with two crocodiles (enclosed TG). The crocodile situation had Cait a bit freaked and she had a bit of a scream when a huge stick insect thingy landed at our table at dinner and had a good old stare at us! The bathroom was in another building which meant there was a bit of walking around in the dark. went for dinner about 7 thinking we would just go to bed after as there is nothing else to do there....so we thought. Tinh had brought a bottle of Jar Wine from the ethnic village for my birthday so we had a little party with the wine (more like poitin it was rotten), us and all the staff. You had to drink the wine in shots so you couldn't taste it. we poured some vodka into it - it did not improve. Rocket fuel. We all piled into the car and went inot the village to do karaoke. NOthing in the village but they still had a state of the art Karaoke place. Everyone had a great time and then back to the hut because we had to go trekking in the morning. Well apparently Caitriona and Caroline heard a noise in the night and were petrified it was some kind of wild animal but I never heard a thing thanks to the Jar Wine. I paid for it the next day. We went to Draysap waterfalls which are really beautiful. And then we spent the rest of the day driving through the highlands (up and down mountains) which was gorgeous but not ideal to be stuck in the back of a car all day with the old dodgy tummy.
Caroline's mother is sick so she had to organise to go home which was very stressful for her as we were up in the mountains and the phones don't work half the time, but she sorted it out. Tinh regaled us with more hilarious stories about the sleeping habits of vietnamese married couples (seriously). They dropped us in Dalat where were got a night bus to Ho Chi Minh City. It was supposed to arrive at 5am. It arrived at 3am. We had a little bit of problem in that we had nowhere to go....
I'll put up the photos tomorrow my camera just died again.
