I woke up at 6.45am, and after much squeeling and jumping around the place, I had a lovely hot shower (yes, hot!!) I was a bit early arriving at reception as I was supposed to be meeting Hue at 8am. I bought a few bananas, although they seemed to get a bit confused when I said I only wanted two, rather than a whole bunch of about 16; eventually the lady from the hotel bought a bunch, and then sold me a few at a proportionaly accurate price! They were really tasty! First bananas I've had in a while!
On the dot, Hue arrived; a very good sign! I'd made sure I'd packed all my luggage up in dry bags, but Hue had brought another bag to put around my luggage so that it kept it dry. I'd imagined myself having my rucksack on my back for the whole journey, which on reflection, would have been horrendous, and pretty scary! Thankfully, Hue, having done this many times before, with even larger luggage than mine, managed to secure my bag onto the back of his bike, with my daily bag on the front.
Yet again I was smiling and breathing funny, but after around 30 minutes I was back to normal!
We started our trip with a tour of Da Lat; first stop being the infamous 'Crazy House'; which was completely crazy! It's the only way to describe it! It had three parts to it; the first looked like a tree, the second, a traditional house, and the third, some sort of animal I think! I entered the animal-like section, which contained the rooms that people can rent out; each room had a theme such as 'the bear' or 'the tiger'; some of which looked quite freaky, with lit up red eyes! Others looked really sweet as the bed was in a wee cubby-hole. Each looked very special. The stair-cases to the rooms spiralled around and it was quite easy to get lost, sometimes I even ended up at a dead end at parts where the architect hadn't yet designed/built yet, so I retraced my steps a bit. Eventually, after finding my way, I reached the house part, which looked like a traditional house on the inside, and with an entrance hall that had the characteristics of a cave; red stalactites and limestone features. The architect currently lives up in the upper floors of the house, which are obviously out of bounds. In the garden, lies the tree-like structure, which contains more rooms. Underneath was a really cute dining-room. The garden itself had lots of surprises; mushrooms, another little house, a lovely pond, people hiding in trees, metal spider webs... It was impossible to take it all in! It made me want to become an architect so I could design something as wonderful as this miracle.
We had a zoom around the lake again, this time in daylight which was nice. This time there were a whole group of cyclists, probably having a time trial or some kind of race as they were bunched together and looked rather serious! Also there were horse drawn carts, and in the lake, peddle boats in the shape of swans.
We went to the 'Valley of Love'. Sounds corny, and indeed it is! All the Vietnamese take there honeymoons here! Hue waited in a nearby cafe drinking coffee whilst I looked around. It was like a theme park; there were lots of places where couples could pose for photographs; in 'love swings' and other such cheese! For the kids there were horse rides, theme park type rides and other things to keep them entertained. It was complete and utter cheese!! There were a couple of fountains, with nude lovers in certain poses (no not sex positions!), and it was rather funny as one guy got his photo taken as if he was spying on them!
There was a spectacular view over a beautiful lake to the valley and the hills beyond, it was really magical.
A greenhouse was filled with various flowers and cactii which was pretty. Outside the 'Valley of love' were various market stalls selling some of the most perfect flowers I've ever seen. They were better than you'd find in any UK flower shop, and there was the most wonderful array of colours and sorts.
We zoomed off into the countryside; stopping at a flower farm, where I saw delphiniums and roses growing. They still had their dew on them, which made them especially pretty. Some were being bundled up to be sent to the cities, and others were wrapped in plastic, probably on their way to being boxed up. I got given a rose, which we attached to the back of the motorbike, making it look rather posh!
we passed a small farm that was growing coffee, and also was in the process of breeding some silk worms. They live off mulberry leaves, so there must have been some near by. The farm also had pomegranetes growing in a tree, and they had some rice paper out drying in the sun.
Next stop was to a silk work factory, where there were millions of cocoons with silk worms inside, waiting to be boiled alive, so the silk comes off more easily. The silk is then attached to a machine which winds it up off the cocoon and onto a holder. This was then dunked into some sort of solution to make it soft. They had people watching the electronic machinery which uses a pattern like in machine knitting to weave out a sarong or other item. The dead silk worms were then removed and sold on to be consumed.
Nearby, was the elephant waterfall, which was really pretty. we walked over few bridges and down some steps, to get to halfway down it, for a different view. I was really sweating after that walk. I popped into the small shop nearby, where a minority community were selling some really beautiful handmade silk (as opposed to the machine knitting-like machine way). I would have been tempted, mainly because the lady looked so lost and her little boy was so cheeky and adorable, except having seen for myself the fate of the poor silk worm, I had to think of them rather than the humans.
I walked up to a pagoda, which was a mix of the northern Buddhism originating from China, where the Buddha is laughing and fat, and the southern Buddha which originates from India, and the Buddha is thinner, and more serine looking. This pagoda was built in 1994 by a monk from Da lat.
we had lunch; pumpkin soup, followed by an equisitly marinated tofu with cabbage, carrot and rice. It's amazing all the things that Vietnam grows or produces itself;- coffee, rice, mulbery tea, green tea, cabbage, pumpkins, flowers, fish, passionfruit, bamboo, rubber, starfruit, silk, lychees, durians, avocados, grapefruit... to name all that I have seen so far anyway!!
we passed through a minority village; all the kids from the house we had stopped outside had their hands out as if they were begging, although apparently foreigners often pass through with sweets for the kids, although it was advised agains in the guidebook. Not much further on, there were more hut like houses which randomly stood next to enormous mansions! It looked a bit crazy!
Shortly after, it began to rain like I've never seen it before. we got our raincoats and various other rain gear on, except unfortunatly I still got soaked! I got used to it after a while, and had gone in to a numb trans where I was actually enjoying it when large vehicles passed; splashing me with muddy but warm water!
Once it calmed down and stopped raining, I had a go at driving!! On later reflection, I know it's legal to hire a motorbike, but I'm not completely sure that driving one is without a license!! whoops!
It was a scary start, and it was hard to coordinate lifting my feet up, and the clutch and revving all at the same time; it's a manual motorbike which makes things a bit harder. I managed to get going the first time not too badly; in fact a little too well as I went flying off the road! Hue was able to get it back on track okay, and the following try, he did most of the work to get me going, and then I was off!!
I got slightly distracted when young children waved and shouted hello, as I felt a bit rude just ignoring them; but I'm sure they'd rather be ignored than me ramming right into them, which would have been quite possible! I made good use of the horn, which carries various messages; I'm near you, get out my way, I apologise in advance for killing you... people go a bit bonkers with the horn! Although when you are faced with the possibility of being pushed off the road by one large truck overtaking another large truck, in the opposite direction, instead of going horn crazy, they seem to just flash their lights!!
we arrived at the neighbouring minority village to the one we'd be staying at. It was full of lots of free running animals which was really nice. The houses were on stilts; like they were in the past. It all looked so lovely and peaceful there, very simplistic too. It reminded me of Nicaragua. we crossed a very scary bridge, made of bamboo poles place perpendicular to the path of the river (a bit strange) - it used about 10 tubes in total maybe, one of which had been eaten out by termites and had snapped; leaving me with lots of confidence about my fate along the rest of the bridge.
A short while later we arrived at our small village; and it started to rain torrentially again! Luckily I had dried off by this time, apart from my socks. I sat on my matress on the floor and read for a while whilst Hue socialised with his Easyrider friends.
I drank quite a bit of water and the light headache that I'd had, left me. For dinner there was quite a spread, although I think I was a bit too tired to eat much of it. On returning to our hut I noticed an enormous tarantula run from the pots full of rice wine (which apparently is as strong as vodka!) to the matress next to mine!! I was terrified for absolutely ages; wondering how on earth I was going to sleep. Hue noticed my worry, and shooed the spider away!
The locals were quite noisy and there was a strange dance music playing for quite a while. Eventually, with my 'mosquito'/tarantula net tucked very tightly all around my matress, I managed to get a few hours sleep!
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