on to Dalat

Photo note: A new picasa album is up, at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/econodan/SoutheastAsiaWinter2011Part3
It includes pics from the 4000 Islands area in Laos and onward from there.

The bus ride from Saigon up to Dalat provided more indications of the significant differences between Laos and Vietnam.  Roads in Vietnam are much better, and the houses in rural areas much nicer (concrete or brick v. wood, hard roofs v. thatched, indications of indoor plumbing).  When the bus stopped for a break, rather than the crowd of people selling grilled meats on skewers and other home-made items, there was an orderly US-style convenience store or restaurant.

After a pleasant trip, the bus dropped us in the center of Dalat, a small city and popular destination for Vietnamese tourists located in the south-central mountains. Dalat is like a Vietnamese Guanajuato.  Both are popular tourist destinations, both are hilly and filled with small twisting streets and alleyways, even the pastel colors of buildings on the hillside are similar.  There are also differences: French v. Spanish colonial architecture (there's even a replica of the Eiffel tower), swarms of motorbikes in Dalat, and, of course, it's Vietnam not Mexico.

After some wandering around we found a great place to stay convenient to the center of town, and with strong wifi in the room (which was to prove important--read on).  We did a little exploring in the evening and had a great dinner at a market-side restaurant.

The next morning we set out to explore some of the nearby sights on foot.  First stop was the Crazy House, an amazing Gaudi-esque construction in an otherwise conventional residential neighborhood.  The rambling, multi-level structure incorporates many organic shapes, including large trees and animals.  There are narrow and twisting staircases, narrow elevated ramps modeled on vines (and just as challenging to cross for the vertigo-challenged as if they were the real thing), rooms with built-in sculptures of bears, eagles, and other animals.  After spending some time exploring the House, we continued on foot to the nearby Summer Palace of Vietnam's last king, Bao Dai.  The palace was constructed in the 1930s and designed in art deco style.  One of its attractions is a room where one can be dressed up in royal gowns and pose for pictures.  How could we resist?  After the palace, we walked back into town, had a late lunch, and set out to explore the narrow streets and alleyways.  While Ellen was photographing an interesting gate along one street, the elderly resident came out and gestured us into her home for tea.  It didn't take long to exhaust our few words of Vietnamese, so she brought in a young neighbor to translate and we spent some time chatting.

The next morning we'd arranged to hire a taxi and driver to take us around to see some of the more distant sights for the day. We started with a gondola ride to Tuyen Lam Lake, a beautiful reservoir with the even-more beautiful Truc Lam Pagoda on a hillside overlooking it.  The gardens around the Pagoda are wonderfully designed and very peaceful.  From there, we went on to Datanla Falls.  While the waterfall itself is quite pretty, this is a very commercialized site.  There's a bobsled ride (we passed); there are people with ponies and western attire: for a fee you can pose on the pony for a picture, wearing a cowboy hat and raising a six-shooter to the sky (we passed).  We did ride a short gondola down the gorge below the waterfall, which took us to another waterfall where people were rappelling down into the water.  We continue onward through the many flower farms outside of Dalat, over a ridge to another nearby valley, to visit Elephant Falls.  This is a wide, Niagara-style waterfall, and there's a fun sort of trail (steps carved into rock, lots of scrambling) to the bottom.  Next stop was a silk factory, which was fascinating.  We saw the cocoons and how they are cultivated, the machines used to spin the silk thread from them, and a variety of processes and machines for weaving and dying the fabric.  We continued on to a small distillery producing rice wine.  We were able to taste the fermented rice mash, the un-aged wine (the proprietor touched a match to some poured in a saucer to demonstrate just how potent it is), and finally the finished product.  It is quite smooth, with a tasted between sake and tequila.  Back over the hill to Dalat, we stopped for lunch and then visited an art center with very fine work in production and for sale.  A number of artists were producing silk embroidery which is truly amazing.  The level of detail, and the three-dimensional aspects, are like nothing we'd ever seen before.  Our final stop was at Dalat University, which is at the edge of the city.  Ellen and I walked around the campus a bit, and chatted with a student and faculty member we met.  The campus felt small and quiet, but there are over 12,000 students.