Saigon and Dalat

Dalat is pretty cool! In temperament and temperature. It was a relief to finally get here. The trip from Saigon (Not Ho Chi Minh City, I'll explain in a minute) was much longer than the map would indicate and has put a kibosh on trying to travel the length of this country by bus or rail.

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC from here on in) is a huge sprawl of 10 million people, enveloping Ton Son Nhut  airport (in my day, way on the outskirts of Saigon) on the northwest and all the way to Long Binh on the northeast and enveloping several formerly independent cities on the south. Buried somewhere in the center is district 1, still known as Saigon. Which is where we got off the bus form Phnom Penh after a 6 hour ride. We did not explore at all! Only there for the night and a bus ride to Dalat. Made friends on the bus with an ex-pat named Keith who led us to a pretty nice (and inexpensive) guest house. Keith has been in Asia for about ten years, doing carpentry and building houses and shops as prime contractor and has just opened a restaurant south of Nha Trang at a beach recently discovered by wind-surfers. House specialty: Tex-Mex. Good luck to him.  Saigon has the volume knob cranked up to 11! Everyone drives with one hand on the wheel (or more often, handlebar) and one on the horn. Traffic is up to and surpassing standard Asian, boggling the western mind.The bars are open to the street and apparently in competition to drown out the music of the ones next door.  You find yourself conversing in shouts. This goes on all night. Fortunately, our guest house was deep into an alley and pretty well soundproofed. Nevertheless, one night was enough.

Street scene, Saigon. Note the bundle of wires in the center of picture.

Oh hell, look even closer. Definitely not to code.

A word on bus serices in Asia. Just go to the hotel desk and express your wishes on destination. They make a quick phone call and give you a departure time and incredibly low price. In the morning, a cab or van picks you up at the door and, if a small trip, sets out to your destination. If a long trip or popular destination, they take you to the bus terminal and get you settled on the bus. In Saigon there was a young lady detailed to make sure we got on the right bus. This for a ride that cost ten bucks each. 

The ride to Dalat. It took hours to leave HCMC, most of it on wide boulevards and freeways, with designated motorbike sections. When we reached the outskirts on two lane roads, they were bordered by small businesses of all sorts, especially storage yards for heavy equipment. Power shovels, bulldozers and cranes galore, ready for the next building project. Then onto a fairly narrow two-lane road for a constant stop and go, never exceeding 40mph or so, horn constantly blaring. Good looking country, though. On the map, this looked like a shorter drive than Phnom Penh to Saigon but took two hours longer. Kind of soured us on busses up the length of the country. We'll fly from Dalat to Danang and probably from Hue to Hanoi  on our way Ha Lon bay.

Yes, this a necessary warning.

Crossing the Mekong

Back to Dalat. This city was virtually untouched by the war, known locally as the American War as opposed to the French War or Chinese War or Cambodian War. While the Central Highlands was raging, ARVN commanders had villas here, sometimes a couple hundred yards from VC cadre. In effect, Dalat was an open city. When North Vietnam invaded the South in 1975, they completely bypassed Dalat and dealt comparatively decently with the residents. Except for moving in hundreds of Hanoians on vacated tribal lands to farm and eventually get pretty rich. Admitted, the result of very hard work and waiting out some of the more hard-core communist economic principles.

Details of our hotel in Dalat. Not bad for 25$ a night.

Typical Dalat architecture

The town itself is really quite pretty with a decided French influence. Lots of 1930's era villas built in the tall narrow French style remain. Good streets, a nice lake in the middle of town. The people seem to know they have something special going here and do their best to keep it so. Our hotel is modern and convenient with a wonderful continental breakfast at the outrageous price of $25 a night. Of course, there's no elevator so we have to climb up and down granite stairs with gorgeous handrails. No air conditioning. There's a reason for that. Unlike most of Southeast Asia the temperatures here are like San Francisco. As Mark Twain quipped "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco".The night we got here, it dropped into the mid 50's, jacket weather. Excellent climate for fruit, vegetables, wine grapes (Dalat red and white wines are quite good and served throughout Vietnam)  and especially flowers. I'm astounded. There's a huge market for flowers in the Communist Wonderland!
Yesterday, we partook of a Vietnam innovation called "Easy Riders".This one was and all day tour of the city and environs as passengers on 125cc motorcycles. Note I said motorcycle as opposed to motorbike. These were built to actually handle two-up riding and actually looked like a traditional motorcycle. Into the terror of Vietnam traffic seated behind a little guy on a small motorcycle. These guys are pros! They glided through traffic like eels, always keeping plenty of space from traffic, handling potholes and dirt roads with aplomb. They even spoke good English. Start with a view of Long Biang Mountail, overlook terraced farms, through Luwok coffee(!) through a silk factory to Crazy House and the Ralilway Station. You know what, I'm just going to give you a reference- http://wikitravel.org/en/Da_Lat - We saw most of the stuff in the middle of the page interspersed with riding up and down who-knows-how-many hills. It was a hell of a day! Better than roller coasters. I'd better give special mention to the Crazy House. On the other hand, it's next to impossible to describe. The architect has a special relationship with Escher.

Elephant Falls

The way down to the falls.
Even riskier than the motorcycle ride

Laughing Buddha



Silk Factory



Crazy House

Oldest railway station in Indochina

Railcar built in Hanoi, 1930's.

1930's Japanese steam engine.

In a perfect world, we'd probably spend more time here, but our visas are only good til March 2 and we're going to try to make that deadline in order to spend more time in Chiang Mai. This afternoon, we're off again to Hue, or maybe Hoi An. I suppose eventually we'll have to decide.