Apologies for the sporadic updates as of late. My crushed fingers haven’t been hampering
typing significantly (although the lumps seems to be hardening), rather the
internet connections at our last two hotels have been very poor, leaving us
somewhat out of the loop. Liz and I have
been trying to make up for lost time on an 8-hour bus trip from Da Lat to Ho
Chi Minh City (AKA Saigon) – fingers crossed (but not in the offensive way)
that uploading our photos will be possible in the big city!
Tired of the onslaught of obese Russians in Speedos which
defined the beach scene in Nha Trang, we boarded a bus to cruise up the new
and improved road to Da Lat. This
updated route supposedly shortened the journey by several hours, taking a very
direct path up the mountain. The reality
of the trip was somewhat less idyllic, as the road was comparable to any
mountain road built in North America in the 1930s. This was something like the Going to the Sun Road in Montana, including
the spectacular scenery. Unfortunately,
the bulk of the passengers preferred to make the journey with the window shades
drawn, making it a game of not falling into the aisle on the unexpected hairpin
curves.
Da Lat has been a retreat from the heat of Saigon since the
time of French colonial rule. A
quintessential mountain town, there is not a single traffic
signal. This conveniently prevents the
local drivers from needing to perform a hill start. We stayed at a small hotel called The Pink House, whose proprietor greeted
us by proclaiming his love for Liz! I
kept a close eye on him after that. The
elevation of Da Lat (1500m) keeps the temperature cooler, but does little for UV
protection; a day of walking around the city had my face matching our hotel’s
very appropriate paintjob.
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| The Eiffel Cellphone Tower |
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| Complete with a Gondola! |
The Pink House offers
a “Very Famous Secret Tour” with Little Cassanova’s “big brother” Mr. Rot. I’m not adding any links to the previous sentence
as I really have no idea of where to start fact checking any of it. The tour started at 6:40 AM with a breakfast
bahn-mi and scooter selection. Liz and I
were given a Yamaha Sirius with a semiautomatic transmission. I’m going to give Mr. Rot the benefit of the
doubt and say that the large number of people on the tour that day (18) meant
the B-string scooters needed to be brought out, but a star it was not.
Broken Components on Sirius
Black the Scooter:
- Fuel gauge
- Speedometer
- Low beam headlight
- High beam indicator
- Rear suspension
- Headset bearings
- Whatever was making that clicking noise on the
left side
The lack of a clutch wasn’t problematic per se, and the morning Da Lat traffic was a great place to learn
QUICKLY, but the diminutive size of Sirius
made downshifting (up with the toe) very uncomfortable. Anyway, one stop in town for gas and we were
on our way out of the city on a great mountain road.
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| Meet Sirius Black. |
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| Just an everyday roadside garbage fire. | | |
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| Does my face look sun-burnt to you? |
The downhill and flat sections were actually amazing on the
little bike, the uphill portions put some serious strain on Sirius’ ~6HP engine. Mr. Rot’s assistant/cousin/sister, Son,
stopped the tour group about 30 minutes later beside a big sign with two
crickets on it. This cricket “farm” was
more like a house in a severe state of disrepair or reconstruction, but as is
typical of Vietnamese real estate it was difficult to say which was the case. Son provided some insight into the farm and
her very strange personality on the roadside, and then invited us inside to try
some lemongrass fried crickets. I think
crickets would be great for dieting as they are apparently high in protein and
really put us off eating anything else!
Getting back on the road took slightly longer post-cricket as one of the
scooters had broken down and needed to be swapped out back in Da Lat.
Our next stop was at a silk factory (ate a silkworm – yuck!)
and a local market where Mr. Rot fed us all sorts of vegetables and meats. We also learned that it not expected for men
to do the shopping or haggle excessively in the market. Score! Two points for Dave! Elephant Falls, a coffee plantation, and some
more amazing mountain riding and scenery took us to the village where we had
lunch at the guide’s family home.
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| Elephant Falls: Mind your step on the rock-climb down. |
The village was really the significant secret in the Very
Famous Secret Tour. Some of the
population is of an indigenous Highland Tribe, the language of which Mr. Rot
speaks very well. All 18 of us
interacted with several old women of the tribe in their hut for a couple of
hours. Once getting past names, ages and
where we were from, Mr. Rot started going into the matriarchal society of the
tribe, how many buffalo a strong man was worth, day-to-day life, recipes for
cooking rat with ginger, and fart jokes.
The women of the tribe were also amazing weavers on a crazy manual loom,
and sold souvenirs.
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| No photos of the Hill Tribe, please. |
We then sat down with Son for a bunch of fruit and a brief
‘explanation’ of Vietnamese culture.
This largely consisted of Son rambling about her personal life and
detailing ways to make fun of westerners.
Her comment, “my mom thinks I’m crazy,” was met with 18 knowing
nods. This time spent in the afternoon
was also chewing into the daylight we had remaining to get back to Da Lat.
The light was completely gone by the time we turned onto the
4-lane highway. It is also significant
to mention that we started this dark portion on the shoulder going the wrong
way. Hey, if the bus
drivers can do it, why not a scooter posse?
After a few delays to regroup the road narrowed back to 2-lanes and we
started up a big hill. No less than
three scooters ran out of gas on this hill, and ours did right after Mr. Rot
decided to pass us. No shoulder, no
daylight, no idea of how to contact our group.
Crap.
A city bus stopped for us within about 60 seconds of pulling
over. I wasn’t sure what the girls
on board were yelling about, but my opinion was that I probably shouldn’t
abandon a rented motorbike so we waved them on.
After 15 minutes of pushing and a false restart (“maybe this piece of
crap just overheated…no, it’s dead again”) two guys pulled over to see what was
going on. Neither of them spoke a word
of English, but their quick repair process included: a) shaking the bike to
check for gas, b) using a cellphone to look inside the tank to confirm said
lack of gas, c) emptying our water bottle onto the road, d) trying to find the
gas line on his own scooter, and failing that, e) leaving his buddy with us and
driving off to the gas station.
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| Sure, you can bring the rental back empty. |
After being left by our Good Samaritan, Liz found a business
card for our hotel in her purse and I gave the desk a call. “Hello?
We were left behind on the Very Famous Secret Tour and are out of gas about
6km outside of the city on the big hill.”
At this point I was assuming that the group would have gotten back to
the hotel and Shawn would have been able to check his phone.
“OK. Just wait where
you are, we’ll come get you.” The voice
said, repeating the instructions given at our morning briefing.
Our helpful roadside friend made it back before the tour
guide. A plastic bag with about 500mL of
gas in it was hanging on his left hand grip, looking very much like Fanta under the streetlight. We tried to pay him 100kD ($5) for his
troubles, but he wasn’t having any of it, indicating that there was only 15kD of
gas in the bag – nobody can break a ‘big’ bill here. We ended up passing him all of our small
change (8kD) and some very good karma.
Just as we were getting started-up again, Son arrived and led us back
into town where we found the rest of the group still waiting by the side of the
road.
We were back at the hotel by about 7:30PM and then regrouped
for a team dinner followed by watching Mr. Rot’s ‘professional’ karaoke. A very long day, but we still had the energy
to sign up for canyoning the next morning.
More stories to come!
Dave
