Mass, Snake wine and duck eggs

  Dalat, Vietnam
Monday, June 4, 2007

Swings (palm trees) used by the local kids, Mui Ne

We took the bus for the coast, hoping to cool down in the waters of the south china sea. When we got there of course it would have been too easy to book into the place they let us off at, so we walked around in the blistering heat and eventually found a nice place. Dropped off our bags and jumped straight into the ocean. God it felt good. That evening we went to a bar down the road and were treated to the most amazing thunder and lightning storm, they gave us free shots as well. Free shots and live entertainment, can't complain. In Mui Ne there were loads of people out kite boarding  and it looked pretty cool, but we were content with lounging on the beach, we did price lessons though and they were more expensive than in Ireland! We hired out a moped for the day to  cruise around the place, we were on our way to the sand dunes when we were intercepted by a girl on a bicycle telling us the sand dunes were too hot in the middle of the day and told us to follow her, we ended up at her house buying coke from her where all the family were very amused by her entrepreneur skills! After that we visited the local tourist attractions - the red canyon and the white sand dunes. The red canyon was alright but hardly the grand canyon. When we got to the white sand dunes we had been warned about the hoards of children that come running and try to get you to use their sledge to slide down the dunes.

At the sand dunes, Mui Ne

The plan was simple-pick one child and go with them. When we got there though we had to pick two separate children, with about 20 of them swarming around us it was tough going, lucky for us a jeep pulled up in front of us and they all left us for the new business. The sledge ride was hardly what you'd call an adrenaline rush as we slowly slid down a baby sand dune! On the way back from there we were passing a church so seeing as it was Saturday evening we went in to see when mass was on. The curate saw us coming and came out to tell us that mass was on shortly-we weren't really dressed for it but he said we were okay. Then people started arriving all dressed in there Sunday best, made us really stand out in our beach clothes. We sat though mass, (not knowing what was going on) sitting on opposite sides of the church, as is the tradition in Vietnam, afterwards it was back into the sea to cool down again...
Next day we headed inland to the town of Dalat. Damn bus broke down on the way, fan belt went. Eventually after taking two more buses we made it to Dalat late in the afternoon. When we did get there we found it was a lot cooler due to its higher elevation. We were busy here, visited the Lat minority village where an elder met us and gave us a talk.

Lat villager shows us some trad. gong music, Dalat

He gave us some homemade can wine, played some traditional gong music and filled us in on the history of his village during his life time, including the American war, a very interesting man it has to be said. We went up Lang Biang mountain (which was tough enough going!), visited Linh Son pagoda, waterfalls and even did a bit of tobogganing, great fun. 

At the top of Lanbiang mountain, Dalat

When we were at the Lang Biang mountain there were loads of Japanese coming up to us wanting to take a picture, what we didn't realise was they they wanted us in there photos!  The guide was telling us later that they get their photos taken with foreigners and then go home and say 'look at the people I met on holidays! 
Until Dalat we had been playing it safe with the food stalls along the street. We never ate meat...only rice, noodles, veg. and fruit. But now it was time to throw caution to the wind. With 3 other lads we drank some snake wine and went around loads of the stalls eating everything different we could find. It was delicious. We even had embryo eggs (Edel: well thats not entirely true-I couldn't go through with it, it just seemed all wrong..). These were a bit weird as they are duck eggs but until you open them up you don't know what stage of development they are going to be at, you just stick your spoon in and eat everything. In one of them you could see wings and stuff starting to develop but what the hey-it all went down...didn't taste bad either...I guess with a bit of snake wine in you you are ready to eat anything...

Anyone for embryo duck eggs? Night market,Dalat