Vietnam Day 3 - Dalat's Easy Riders

Monday, April 7, 2008

With a flight at 7am, we had to wake up super early and be sure to reach hcmc airport by 5.30am.. boo. That means we had to leave our beautiful hotel room and forgo the breakfast spread. Notice how bright it is at 5+am!

The bellboy just claps his hands and a taxi comes up, and the bellboy will tell the driver where to go. Realized this a bit too late, could have saved us a lot of trouble of fearing that the drivers were out to scam us or that the drivers dunno where we wanted to go.

We dropped off at the HCMC intl airport but couldn't find our flight.. oh, it's at the domestic terminal. surprise surprise. Luckily the domestic terminal was just next door and walkable. Notice their computer screens, they use dos?!

We were taking Vietnam Airlines and I saw some very huge Airbus planes with the Vietnam Airlines logo. Not bad I thought. We took this bus to the end of the airport and I realized that our 'Vietnam Airlines' plane was freaking small and not like the nice big Airbus ones. =(

We reached Da Lat's Lien Khuong airport in an hours time! Safely yes. The airport is so small, it's about the size of a school hall, divided into 2 by a wall. One side is departure, one side arrival. See the arrival hall, consists of just one conveyor belt. =) Oh, and this is the first airport which actually CHECKS your luggage claim receipt with your luggage tag to make sure you are the owner of the luggage! American airports really need to learn from them, since their luggage belts are wide open for anyone to come in and help themselves to.

Da Lat is a quaint city with strong French influence (even has a mini Eiffel Tower). It's THE honeymoon capital of Vietnam, as many young local couples come here for some romance.

Hopped into a cab and off we went towards our Empress Hotel. Along the way, I was part excited and part scared.. Da Lat wasn't what I expected it to be at all.. There were no street signs, no paved roads.. I really freaked out when the taxi driver turned into this construction site:

Was he gonna bury us alive at the site, or sell us off? It didn't help that the meter was jumping damn fast, way faster than the ones in HCMC. The driver was actually quite friendly, and asked us the usual 'where are you from' etc.. But we were a little wary and not ready to let down our guards yet.

Wow, finally some Touristy 'Welcome to Dalat' sign.

Turned out that we really reached our hotel safely, without any visible detours. The cab fare was really expensive though. 270 000 dong?! that's like, $25sgd. Very ex!! I had read in some forum (but outdated, probably 2003 or something) that it costs usd3 to reach the hotel area from the airport. bloody hell.

The Empress Hotel was beautiful.

We asked the hotel staff how much the cab should cost and she said, '300k'. Ah HA! Quite a relief to hear that.. She said that it's cos Dalat is a touristy place so it's way more expensive than HCMC. I thought HCMC is a touristy place too but oh well. We asked her to help us locate the Easy Riders. Ok, the Easy Riders are a bunch of motorbike tour guides who take you around Dalat at expensive prices. Well, expensive by Vietnam standards. They have such good reviews on the net, and it was impossible to find a bad review on them. Really, I actually googled for their bad reviews and I couldn't find any.

So anyway, the sites all say that you don't have to look for them, the Easy Riders will look for you. Well.. yeah maybe, but considering we only had 1.5 days in Dalat, we didn't have the time to wait for them to appear, so the hotel lady called them up. She said that it would cost usd17 for a day tour. Sounds reasonable to me.

Hung turned up in 10 minutes, with a little black bag containing some itineraries and a little black book filled with testimonials from previous travellers from around the world. Looks quite professional to me. He explained the rates, a city tour costs usd 18/person, and a country side tour costs usd 20. We opted for a country tour of course, cos the city tour could always be done the next day. I asked if they would bring us to the minority village and he said that would cost $7usd more. That being the real minority village, not the 'touristic' ones which have become filled with shops. I read that these prices are negotiable but heck. If they're as good as the forums say they are, that's really not expensive.

So off we go!!

pb with Tintin, his guide. Before we left, Hung confirmed with me: So, $27 each, so altogether for today $54 right? And I nodded yup. Maybe he was wondering why we didn't negotiate the prices. Hah.

First stop: breakfast. Haha, they are quite lucky to have us huh. They had eaten so it's just us in this cafe around the corner.

Tintin chatting up some girl


yummm

The streets of Dalat city. I've never sat on a motorbike before, and I should say that Hung was a terrific driver. He always asked me 'ready?' before setting off, and always slowed down a LOT at bends, or when there were oncoming vehicles. Felt really safe on the bike. Their bikes are also very new, half a month old! And I can see that they are really proud of the bikes.. kinda cute.

1. Chinese Temple

Notice that we're wearing jackets in the sun.. Dalat is in the mountainous highlands so the weather is really nice, kinda like genting, maybe cooler!

monkey god



2. Rice Paddies

Tintin can actually speak better french than english but we can't understand french so I wouldn't know. But his english is really good, and he also knows a lot about the place. Here he is explaining to us, the different crops that are grown here. Ok, I can only remember Artichoke, which is good for artichoke tea. And he keeps pointing out avocados saying they are damn easy to plant, cos like bananas you don't have to take care of them. Hmm so why are avocados so expensive in s'pore?

Here, they suddenly ask us to get off and walk. And then they zoom off. Huh?!


Turned out that it's a nice shady walk along these pine trees which Dalat is famous for.

Our guides hiding in the shade of the banana trees. These little walks give them some time to relax, and yet they are a good way of letting us slow down and smell the flowers, explore the place a little. I guess they must be quite experienced and know every little corner of Dalat.

3. Flower garden.

Mostly gerberas I saw.. The Vietnamese like the color red cos it's lucky.







keeping a check on how fast he went. I think the fastest he went was 60km/h. Note the man in front with a super overloaded bike..


the kids here are so cute. and independent I should say, walking to school along the roads alone at such a young age.

One of the most interesting thing about the tour was that you never know what you're gonna get. I loved how nothing was touristy at all! It's like we were just visiting Hung and Tintin's friends' houses and they happened to have a farm or factory. No admission fees, no brightly painted signs. Guess where Hung was bringing us to?

4. Rice wine making

This was a family who made rice wine.. I suppose they also diversified their business by rearing pigs and chickens. Had some dogs (dunno pet or food) who growled at me.. to which Hung was like, oh be careful.. The resultant rice wine comes through a hole in the wall and is filtered with some cloth, and placed in that dirty looking plastic bottle in the right most picture.

Hung offering us some rice wine. A very big cup I should say. It tasted like vodka, but much more fragrant. I loved it. But we couldn't finish it lah, so much. Didn't wanna fall off the bikes later.

They use coffee bean husks as fuel to steam the rice.. The setup shown here, is as complex as it gets. After the alcohol is distilled up there it reappears in the hole in the wall as I was mentioning and whee! yummy rice wine.

goofing with the coffee bean husks at the front of the guy's house


Why did the chicken cross the road


The kids of this minority tribe were really shy. We stopped here and Tintin went across the road to a little shop to buy some sweets for the kids we were about to visit.



We obediently followed tintin through vegetation


5. Minority Village

In this minority village, the women wear the pants at home. When a man marries a woman, he has to prepare a dowry of, x buffaloes as dictated by the woman. He then stays with the woman and every day the woman decides what the man should do, like ok today you go pray. today you go farm. Sounds fantastic huh. my vietnamese colleague tuan says that these are just stories though and we should take it with a pinch of salt. Oh well.

This grandmother, when you ask her how old she is, she says, very big.. She can't remember!

Her grandchildren in their hut



They weave these baskets to gather stuff.. very nice! and different tribes have a different form of weaving.


still peeping at us



their shelves


i am like damn red from the rice wine



eel traps


their bungalow


tintin gave me a look of childish surprise as he pointed to this hen in a sideways-turned basket


the government has recently installed electricity for these homes


they even have TV!



five stones, with REAL stones.


I left the tribe feeling very fortunate to be able to see these kids and how they live. The look on the grandmother's and the kids' eyes.. priceless.





6. Silk worms farm

So the worms are kept in some house. It's totally open so anyone could have come in to get them. These are imported worms cos Vietnamese worms give poorer quality silk. I accidentally stepped on one on the floor. EEw.

7. Tea Plantation


This is an example of a good tea leaf. Er, something about the young shoots on top.

We stopped here and Hung directed us to go down some stairs to look for the Elephant Falls. He warned us not to ask anyone to help us take our photo cos they would run away with our camera!

8. Elephant Falls

This was so much fun! No admission fees, no souvenir shops. We wandered around ourselves, this kinda reminds me of the West Virginia black water falls where we wandered in too. An angmoh tourist looked at us and exclaimed, 'you're doing this in flipflops?' Well there were some rocks to climb, but we did ok.

The angmoh also told us that we could go behind the falls! Ha, time to do some exploring..

We did some exploring and went into this cave of sorts.. It leads to behind the falls!

Wonder if these were the people Hung warned us about. So fun leh, go to a shady site behind the falls and enjoy some mango.

shi1 fu4, you3 shui3!


9. Some pagoda next to Elephant Falls


This is what happens to you when you attempt rock climbing in slippers.
Pedicure Au Naturel.


Broken bridge


On our way to a coffeeshop across the street. Notice how the gravel has 3 colors.. Red, orange and grey.


There's our lunch!

Freaking a lot of damn yummy food! We asked Tintin what they were drinking and they asked us to taste it.. Oh.. tea with ice. =p Even had some really good mango which they kept offering to us.. Tintin and Hung really took good care of us, serving us the rice and everything. And the meal cost us 130 000 dong.. Which is S$12 for the 4 of us! One of our favourite and cheapest meals in Vietnam.

You know, from my past experiences, every time you ask a local to bring you to eat 'local' food, they will nod their head enthusiastically and still bring you to some hei1 dian4 where the food sucks and is overpriced and they get a free meal from it. This is actually the first time a local has brought me to eat real local food and I really appreciated it.

They brought up the subject of taking us around the next day as well. Well, our flight was at 4pm and it was impossible for us to find a group tour that brings us to where we want to go. Anyway we found them fantastic so it wasn't a hard decision. Our only issue was our huge luggage, do we leave them with the hotel or what? To which they said, no problem! We send you to airport! We tried to make them understand that our luggage was really large but they just went, is it 40kg? er no.. maybe 20kg.. 20kg? No problem! Don't worry!

Tintin whipped out a photo album showing how he straps on his guests' luggage onto the bike. The luggage may be heavy but it didn't look as bulky as ours. Oh well, if they say so.. That would save us our very expensive S$25 cab fare from the hotel. And allow us to visit a lot of places with a fully personalized tour in one morning, right til we check in for our flight. Yay.

See the amount we ate! Tintin is showing pb photos of his previous tourists..


Looks like a popular place for easy riders.


Very pretty lady boss and her 2 daughters.. Who were really friendly and happy to take the photo with us!


10. Silk Factory


Their girls all very pretty hor?


These are the cocoons with 2 worms in it.. Which produces lousier quality silk.

Taking out the dead worms to be brought to the market for consumption! I asked Tintin if he eats the worms.. He says he used to eat them when he was young, when he didn't know a thing. Now he doesn't.. =p

Dyed silks

No pesky salesmen trying to sell you silk blankets. speaking of which my very expensive silk blankets from hangzhou are still hiding in my luggage bag. Just Hung happily swinging in his hammock while waiting for Tintin to finish our Silk factory tour. Somehow I think Tintin gets bullied and has to bring us on more tours than Hung cos he's less senior. Haha but he has better english and is more outspoken than Hung.

Silk being hung out to dry outside the factory


11. Coffee Plantation

er, just lots of coffee plants.



The last time I saw this beautiful flower was in Disneyland! They have this everywhere, peppered along the mountains..


freaking huge mimosa plant. I guess the ones in singapore get weeded before any child gets a chance to play with it.

These flowers were spotted in another 'You get down and walk. Nice walk.' sessions where they zoomed away to wait for you further down the road. Literally giving you the time to slow down and smell the flowers. Loved it.

We had come to the end of the tour, but it was still quite early. The only place I wanted to visit in the city was the Crazy House, and we asked if we could go.. They said sure, either today or tomorrow no problem. Since it was early we thought heck let's just go.

12. Crazy House

This is a Gaudi like treehouse created by a lady architect called Hang Nga, whose father was the Vietnam President in the 1980s. She learnt architecture in Moscow and built this when she came back. Really wacky house, which you could reserve to stay for 30-70usd a night! I suppose you would feel like you lived in a fairytale, waking up to spiderwebs and giraffes and bears around you.

The city of Dalat

We were safely dropped back at our hotel after the Crazy House visit. And they didn't charge us extra for that even though we had not prearranged it. Still had lots of time to explore the city on foot! The Empress hotel overlooks Xuan Huong Lake, so naturally we went to the lake for a stroll.

We had just crossed the street when we spotted this little lady selling some food. Walked over without hesitation and bought a bowl of beancurd. It felt heavenly, warm beancurd in the chilly weather, next to the beautiful lake.

While we sat there having the beancurd, a motorcyclist in a familiar blue jacket came up to us and started chatting us up, asking how long we were staying there. An easy rider! So it's true that you don't have to worry about finding them, they will find you! We told him that we already had our easy riders.. And he was like, ok.. I suppose he must have been disappointed and it must be not very easy to find clients everyday. But when they find a tourist, it's pretty good money, considering they are their own bosses and don't have to report to anyone.

Lots of people eating! Our favorite activity too!

pb's favourite road side stalls. we were waiting for our grilled chicken/bird and chicken wrapped in leaf skewer (see the 2 in the middle she's grilling for us?) when the neighboring auntie decided that we had to try her 'rice crackers' too..

I don't quite know what this horse was doing here


=)



Sitting there on the grass and enjoying our warm food, I could see why Da Lat is the honeymoon capital of Vietnam. Loved the pace, weather, people, food, the streets, the buildings..



pb still didn't have enough and went to buy more stuff from this lady who didn't even charge him on the spot, asked him to try first..

I saw this egg and knew something was wrong.. it had the bird foetus in it! Silly pb thought it was just egg. Luckily I warned him and we dug out the foetus feeling damn grossed out and promptly hid all of it in our unwanted styrofoam box. eew. how to eat lah! The corn was gross too.. very dry and chewy.

eiffel tower

we had seen these little touristy trams going round the lake and found the 'tram station'. 10 000 for each ticket which is less than S$1. Well heck, we had all the time in the world. Turned out that the lake was really huge and 'round the lake' took a really long time. Pretty worth it for $1.

A lot of people jogging about, some barefooted!


duan qiao bu duan!


It was getting dark but we weren't hungry yet from all that junky roadside food. So we walked towards the 'city'


The place was a huge market!


Where we had our breakfast


avocados


and this is how they sold their produce.. along the street in the dark, in pails or baskets.


fish..


and chickens!


saw some youths playing something like chatek here.. Couldn't make out what they were kicking.


walked down this flight of stairs but turned out half of it was broken and we had to slowly slide down the steep slope while holding on to the half broken railings.


We decided to dine at this Thanh Thuy Bluewater Restaurant which overlooks the lake.

We were told that the 3 famous Vietnamese foods are Pho Bo, Spring Rolls and hotpot! So we decided to try out the hotpot. Lots of veg.. it was good especially if I was hungrier but somehow I wasn't.

Really tired after our good meal and it was fantastic that the Empress hotel was just across the street. So proud of my choice to stay at this lovely hotel.