Easy Riders, Flowers, Vs and Larry's Bar
Trip Start
Jul 10, 2008
1
17
20
Trip End
Jul 10, 2011
Loading Map
Dalat,
Vietnam
Monday, December 22, 2008
Once on Hwy 20 we started up into the hills, there were less houses and agricultural land included coffee and tea. The people definitely looked less well off. We were both looking forward to the mountains and colder weather after 5 months in the heat of Darwin. Our bus was definitely not going to make our estimated 1:30 arrival time and some demanding young lady of oriental background went to tell our driver 'get us there on time' - I laughed as at this time it was already 2:30 - chill lady! Eventually we switched drivers; the second driver was a lot younger and definitely speedier! After ascending a final big pass we arrived at 4:30 and got dropped outside the Hotel Nice Dreams! Erica had her heart set on a place called Dreams, but we ended up checking out the room and for $13 we got a balcony, view over the city, free Internet and a buffet breakfast.
Bear Room
There was no need to go any further!We had wanted to go to a national park called Cat Tien from Dalat to see the monkeys, birds and crocs. This place was meant to be one of the last places on earth where they had Java rhinos, although none had been seen in years! They also had an Asiatic bear sanctuary. We now realised that due to the speeds of the travel on the roads that 150km would be 4 hours back down the road and we should have got off the bus closer to the park and made our own way in! Oh for hindsight!
We wandered around this old French hill station that afternoon. This is where the French colonialists would come to escape the heat of the lowland and there was a little French architecture left over, but nothing like our guidebook implied! Dalat was now the place Vietnamese tourists and honeymooners came and boasted up to 1m of them a year as oppose to the 100,000 foreign tourists.
We ate at Long Hoa restaurant that evening. Good food but they put us in a fairly un-atmospheric back room. This seemed like a family room and I couldn't swear it but one of the family photos looked like superimposed imaged from other pictures! The joys of Photoshop! The music was also a bit suspect, there was some Dirty Dancing, I've had the time of my Life, followed by some of Elton Johns Lion King music and despite what people say this is not my favourite music!
Multiple Easy Riders accosted us during our first evening in Dalat. They are a band of about 80 motorcyclists, mainly on 125cc bikes who have their own business and take people around the surrounding countryside sightseeing! They have imitators around town but we were told to real ones are distinguishable from their jackets!
http://www.easyrider.vn/
Next morning we got a fantastic buffet breakfast
- Fruit - orange, banana, passion fruit
- Bread/toast jam, butter, peanut butter
- Coffee/Tea
- Egg and bacon combo of your choice
That morning we took some back alleys to escape the hoards of Easy Rider touts and went for a wander around Xuan Huong Lake.
Buddha Lihn Son Pagoda
Our first stop was the lovely Dalat Flower Gardens and their fantastic orchids. Despite the Lonely Planets horrendous map and Erica's doubtfulness on my map reading skills we made it to the old railways station. Cremaillere Railway Station has an active cog railway that goes for a few kms up the valley, the station though it nothing to write home about. We stopped at the Vietnam Airlines office and booked tickets from Hue back down to Saigon for the end of our trip. In my book, $35 for a 1,000km flight is a bargain, especially when a 24-hour bus ride would cost you the same price! We stopped in Tin Tin Restaurant, that overlooked the lake from a hill, for a spot of lunch. This place was organised chaos. A few hours passed before we ordered, ate and paid for our meal. I think Erica had finished her food before mine even arrived! She did get to try an artichoke tea though! What a strange flavour!
In the afternoon we went to Crazy House and all I can say is it's a crazy place! It's a hotel there the rooms have themes and the outside looks like some sort of tree although I'm not sure where the guests are as all the rooms were open for viewing! There was a kangaroo room, a gourd room, and eagle room, a tiger room and more, on top of that they are still building - pay the place a visit!
We met a couple of easy riders outside and booked a tour for the next day. Kenny and Titi were their names and they were not quite as pushy as the other easy riders, or so we thought!
That evening we went to Larry's Bar for happy hour.
Butterfly ay Dalat Flower Gardens
This tavern would fit right into a top US steak house was a nice place to hang out for an hour or so. Afterwards we went to the V Café for din dins. Part owned by an American, Erica got some half decent Mexican food. Just a shame the specials board had lemon meringue for desert, not my favourite! I think in Vietnam you can't own a business unless you are married to a Vietnamese or are a multinational corporation!We were up early to make sure we took full advantage of our buffet breakfast before taking off with the Easy Riders!
Our first stop was the spectacular Lihn Son Pagoda. This was probably my favourite pagoda on the who trip due to the gold dragons places at either side of the main entrance, a huge big dragon to the side, whose body of fully measured must have been 30 metres and Erica may laugh but a statue of monkey that resembled the Monkey from a dubbed Chinese TV program we used to watch in the UK when I was young.
Next were collections of small allotments, interesting for the fact they shows some of the things that were grown in the area. I picked up they were growing carrots, onions, strawberries and cauliflowers at present. Kenny told us how his wife made strawberry wine, I asked him about the yeast, but he was insistent it was not used! I guess the outer skin of the strawberries must have some on there, similar to apples when making apple cider.
Next stop was a large hill where we were to get stunning views of the surrounding countryside - it was a hard slog even in the cool of the mountains and to be honest I think the views were better from the bike looking down into some of the valleys we past.
Cats Ears Fungi
Still a bit of early morning exercise never hurt anyone.There were greenhouses, made with plastic sheeting all over the countryside. They were used for amongst other things flowers. We stopped at one where they were growing roses and daises - we got onto the subject of tulips, but it was too warm here apparently.
Coffee was left everywhere, mainly at the front of house, to dry. We stopped at one little farm where there were coffee trees. They seemed to imply they would use one kilo of fertiliser a few times a year for each plant. Not sure how environmentally friendly that was! The good thing was though all parts of the coffee got used and the husks would be again sold on as fertiliser once the coffee beans had been extracted. It seemed like things would get reused in Vietnam more than the West where stuff tends to get dumped. Coffee trees take about 3 years to produce fruit and will live for up to 25. Titi was a bit of a babbler, more than me I believe! He mentioned that Whiskey, fish sauce or butter would get added to the coffee to enhance flavour, although I'm not sure if something wasn't lost in translation there! Fish sauce flavoured coffee? I don't think so!
There were also some silkworms where we had stopped; they were fed from the mulberry trees in the area. We were going to the silk factory next to see how they took the cocoons and turned them into silk. I didn't quite pick up the whole explanation here, but they are put in boiling water and they have some process to extract the start of the silk twine that is then rolled up ready for producing the silk, twins where there are 2 cocoons produce a more course silk.
Chinese Writing Lihn Son Pagoda
Again what is left over from the boiled silkworms is sold as food. It all gets used! The thread is then used on looms within the same room to produce the finished article. This reminded my of a factory floor from 1800s England in the industrial revolution but without the slave driver owners beating down on the workers. Very interesting place.The next stop was elephant falls. Phew it was a slippery path, but a very nice set of waterfalls indeed. We did see one couple pull up, she was pretty prego and he had a 5 year old girl sat on his lap on the bikes. I guess if it's OK for the locals it's ok for a Westerner in Vietnam to travel that way!
There was another nice pagoda with giant Buddha's and statues. The minority ladies at the top of the falls then persuaded me to buy a nice silk/cotton shirt I liked. Probably way overpaid, but it was for a good cause!
We had a great spread for lunch that day in a little run down hut that all the Easy Rider bikes seemed to stop at. There were 80 official easy riders all together and I think our rider said there were about 50 out that day! We never saw more than about 6 at a time. Pork sausage, shrimp, rice, a couple of different veggies and some noodle stir-fry, it was really quite the spread. After lunch stuck in the café we had to undergo the hard sell for a 4-day trip at $75 a day to Hoi-An - probably the only downer part of the day. Erica is too polite and doesn't like to say no and I get extremely tired with that stuff pretty quickly. I was just about to put my head on the table and start napping, but I think the yawns had given it away and our drivers took the hint.
After the BS it was off to a mushroom growers. Here they fill plastic bags with wood chips, add some spores, seal the bags in a dark place and after a few weeks slit the bags and out grow the mushrooms. I think they called it Cat's Ear Fungus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auricularia_auricula-judae
Our final step was a distiller for rice wine. I was hoping we were going to get to try some, but only if we paid. We were dropped off for a short walk on the way back past a bunch of Lantana flowers. I was in 2 minds whether to tip after our hard sell at lunch. But we did and to be honest for $20 it had been a top day out!
Back to Vs that night - we got lucky, as the prices had jumped 20%; I guess it was time for them to hike their menu prices. As we'd had a cheaper menu the previous night they let us have the old price that night! Well I had to try the 'Grandma's House Special' that night, can you believe it all the way out in Vietnam - Pork loin, gravy, mash potato and 2 veg! It was like heaven!
