Our first two days in Mui Ne were warm and pleasant, but overcast. The final half day was sunny, and would have been much better for photos, but we had a fantastic breakfast at The Bar and then walked the beach for an hour. Deborah noticed how one's mood improves with the degree of sunshine. Then we packed, checked out by noon and hiked over to the Sinh Tours office to get settled early with a good seat on their bus.
We had stepped into the Sinh Tours office here three times in as many days and not once had our presence been acknowledged by the staff, which is in stark contrast to the way most tour agencies gaily invite your business in Vietnam. The main office in Saigon was barely much better. However, Deb's Tripadvisor research made her feel most comfortable with this company, and we'd had a reasonable tour with them in the Mekong - better during the first day than during the second, mind you. And they were a third of the price of Buffalo Tours, which appears to sell "corporate" and private tours to higher end customers.
Sinh Tours had been unresponsive to emails and phone calls in their Phnom Penh and Siem Reap offices, and they'd lost our business in their Siem Reap hotel as a result. Very inconsistent levels of professionalism, I'd call it...possibly riding on their earlier reputation as the Sinh Cafe, which was always recommended in the Lonely Planet guide and on Tripadvisor. Too bad they don't have some sort of loyalty recognition program for previous customers. I'd love to give their staff a training course in customer service.
When we boarded our bus a sour young agent scratched out our seat assignment codes and told everyone to "sit anywhere!" because she was too lazy to supervise the assignments - which caused a real problem for a young family of four from India with two small children, who were last on and were forced to sit in separate seats all over the bus, from front to back. If I encounter a promising alternative on future legs of our trip over the next two months, I'll happily give my business to someone else.
Anyway, we swallowed our annoyance at being ignored by the desk agents, which bordered on disrespectful to paying clients, and asserted ourselves long enough to demand the tickets they had on offer to Da Lat. We'd been told there were no coaches to Da Lat, that the road is too steep and winding, and that a smaller 24 seater was the only choice; but up pulled a 40 seater coach, which regularly does the run for Sinh Tours. It was comfortable, slower, but had good air shocks, and crawled its way up the bumpy winding road through dunes and coconut palms changing to fields of banana and then acres of coffee bushes, with hillsides of wild yellow hibiscus and white hibiscus that looked like the Rose of Sharon so fondly kept in gardens in our neighbourhood in Toronto. There were hydrangea, bougainvillea, and many other flowers.
We pulled into Dalat six hours later, and stepped off the bus to a bracing chill. We were 1500 metres up from sea level now, and no-one needed air conditioning. This was a French hill station, and a very popular summer retreat from the heat in colonial days. It is an amazing growing area producing a tremendous amount of vegetables and flowers, in addition to coffee.
Anyway, we swallowed our annoyance at being ignored by the desk agents, which bordered on disrespectful to paying clients, and asserted ourselves long enough to demand the tickets they had on offer to Da Lat. We'd been told there were no coaches to Da Lat, that the road is too steep and winding, and that a smaller 24 seater was the only choice; but up pulled a 40 seater coach, which regularly does the run for Sinh Tours. It was comfortable, slower, but had good air shocks, and crawled its way up the bumpy winding road through dunes and coconut palms changing to fields of banana and then acres of coffee bushes, with hillsides of wild yellow hibiscus and white hibiscus that looked like the Rose of Sharon so fondly kept in gardens in our neighbourhood in Toronto. There were hydrangea, bougainvillea, and many other flowers.
We pulled into Dalat six hours later, and stepped off the bus to a bracing chill. We were 1500 metres up from sea level now, and no-one needed air conditioning. This was a French hill station, and a very popular summer retreat from the heat in colonial days. It is an amazing growing area producing a tremendous amount of vegetables and flowers, in addition to coffee.
We met our hosts, Teun and Phik Li, at a vegetarian restaurant. Teun had been a vegetarian for sixteen years. We ordered a "hot pot", which is a soup that boils with a lump of parafin wax beneath it, perfect for chilly air at high altitude. There was a large plate of fresh leafy greens and cabbages that we put into the pot, along with mushrooms and soy items that had arrived already in the broth, and a plate of white rice noodles. I was hesitant about not having any meat, but impressed with the different tastes and textures, and satisfied with my meal.
On Christmas Eve day we visited the "Crazy House". Then we went to the Bao Dai summer palace, hiked around downtown getting the flavour of the town of Da Lat, and in the evening stopped at the Cathedral, which was brightly decorated and had worshippers lined up down the steps for the Christmas Eve mass. We went to the Zen Cafe, where "Tim from Albury", a.k.a. Tim Carson, or "Tim Tiger", played jazz standards, then accompanied Teun who played his harmonica, and then a Danish guest joined in on his guitar, and I tried to remember the words to "Georgia". It was a pleasant evening.
It's amazing what you hear from expats when you visit a new country. There are always elements of what Doris Lessing calls "The Monologue", a disparaging script developed over time by the whole group. However, one also pick up useful tidbits and expressions of pleasure and satisfaction in the place, the people or the culture; or ironic amusement.
On Christmas Eve day we visited the "Crazy House". Then we went to the Bao Dai summer palace, hiked around downtown getting the flavour of the town of Da Lat, and in the evening stopped at the Cathedral, which was brightly decorated and had worshippers lined up down the steps for the Christmas Eve mass. We went to the Zen Cafe, where "Tim from Albury", a.k.a. Tim Carson, or "Tim Tiger", played jazz standards, then accompanied Teun who played his harmonica, and then a Danish guest joined in on his guitar, and I tried to remember the words to "Georgia". It was a pleasant evening.
It's amazing what you hear from expats when you visit a new country. There are always elements of what Doris Lessing calls "The Monologue", a disparaging script developed over time by the whole group. However, one also pick up useful tidbits and expressions of pleasure and satisfaction in the place, the people or the culture; or ironic amusement.
One interesting story from this evening was from a teacher who had been contracted to teach university English teachers. She'd prepared lessons and powerpoints, and showed up eagerly for her first class, but there was no-one there. Eventually she learned that the university professors had decided not to attend, some because they were embarrassed at their lack of ability to speak as opposed to parsing grammar (which was the very point of the teaching contract), but too many others because they were afraid of being exposed as someone who really wasn't qualified to teach English at university level - and that included many who'd gotten their jobs through "connections", and some who'd actually purchased their degrees. Crazy, eh?!
It reminded me strongly of the English teacher at the school in Malingua Palma who never showed her face around us. Another teacher explained his employment in Da Lat as "I teach English...when my students show up to class". I have no way to judge whether that says more about the culture or his personality and teaching style, mind you. It's something to consider if we decide to teach here for a month, which Deborah thinks she might enjoy. We've already been invited by one of the teachers to teach at her school - an unpaid voluntourism position like we did last winter. It's a really good way to connect more deeply with a foreign culture.
The town is only about a quarter million, with a large complement of retired expats and others for whom the cooler climate is appealing, so it isn't a large downtown area to walk about. The air is clear and unpolluted, and it is a garden city - gardens and flowers are everywhere. On Boxing Day the bi-annual flower show is supposed to start. We're hoping to see the opening event and a parade scheduled for that evening, although - oddly - tickets to the flower show Opening Ceremony are for "residents only". That's a bit bizarre for a town that is trying to foster tourism. However, there's a permanent flower garden set up with paid admission, and the whole city is becoming one enormous garden for the duration of the festival.
We had a great commercial tour of Da Lat and its surroundings on Christmas Day. Sinh Tours was once again singularly unhelpful. They said they just didn't have enough people sign up for the tours for the 25th or 26th. But with the miracle of cell phones, all the little tour agents connected to every little guest house or hotel managed to fill a van and a smaller vehicle by aggregating tourists.
The town is only about a quarter million, with a large complement of retired expats and others for whom the cooler climate is appealing, so it isn't a large downtown area to walk about. The air is clear and unpolluted, and it is a garden city - gardens and flowers are everywhere. On Boxing Day the bi-annual flower show is supposed to start. We're hoping to see the opening event and a parade scheduled for that evening, although - oddly - tickets to the flower show Opening Ceremony are for "residents only". That's a bit bizarre for a town that is trying to foster tourism. However, there's a permanent flower garden set up with paid admission, and the whole city is becoming one enormous garden for the duration of the festival.
We had a great commercial tour of Da Lat and its surroundings on Christmas Day. Sinh Tours was once again singularly unhelpful. They said they just didn't have enough people sign up for the tours for the 25th or 26th. But with the miracle of cell phones, all the little tour agents connected to every little guest house or hotel managed to fill a van and a smaller vehicle by aggregating tourists.
We had a very entertaining tour guide, "Zoom", who joked with us all the way. She took us to a flower farm and showed us hillsides full of greenhouses, then a coffee plantation where we ate coffee fruit and learned the difference between Arabica and Robusta plants. We stopped at a cricket farm and sampled fried crickets with chili sauce. Deborah really liked these. She downed about twenty of them. Then we stopped at a silk factory where we ate silkworm larvae, nice fat grubs that have a slightly peanut buttery taste to them.
We went to the Elephant Falls and the Linh An Pagoda, and a "weasel farm" where they keep the civet cats who eat the best beans, which makes the tastiest coffee once passed through their intestines. I was skeptical that it could make any difference that we'd be able to notice, but the coffee, surprisingly, was delicious and smooth, strong but mocha in flavour.
We went to the Elephant Falls and the Linh An Pagoda, and a "weasel farm" where they keep the civet cats who eat the best beans, which makes the tastiest coffee once passed through their intestines. I was skeptical that it could make any difference that we'd be able to notice, but the coffee, surprisingly, was delicious and smooth, strong but mocha in flavour.
We sampled whisky made from rice wine, and stopped at a "minority village" where Zoom was a font of information about how Vietnam treats its ethnic minorities,. This was also a great source of jokes about the "fifteen buffaloes" that a young woman's parents from that particular group might be willing to pay in dowry for a big strong man to be her husband, someone who could make her wealthy as a farmer. Good looks might be worth a couple of scrawny chickens...but a big strong ox of a guy would be worth a small fortune.
Our final stop was an artists' village where they do hand-embroidered silk art, and the driver took us to buy our onward bus tickets as well - bonus. It was a fun day. The downside was the 237 photos I had to process to make an album.
On Boxing Day we spent a few hours in the Da Lat Flower Park, where they were setting up for opening day of the flower festival, which was the next day. We saw amazing orchids and many other types of flowers which are now in a third, separate photo album. We saw astonishingly painstaking wood carvings and hundreds of bonsai. We walked several kilometres along paths and through vendors stalls by the hundreds. Someone who retired here would have the perfect climate and all the resources and raw materials you'd need for a very rewarding garden.
We checked out the room at the Dreams Hotel where we might stay if we came back here for a month to teach, and had lunch in their dining room - delicious, and with reasonable prices, although the hotel itself is pricey compared to what you can find within the neighbourhood. There are dozens of small hotels and guesthouses. After walking about downtown for a little while longer, we came home to rest, read and work on photos, and then took Teun and Phik Li out for supper again. On the way home, we strolled in the night market, which is pleasant and interesting, and a good place to walk and munch, making up a dinner as you go from roadside vendors. I bought a Chinese chromatic harmonica for $8, which was astonishingly well made for the price.
On Dec 27th we went to the national archive building which has a small museum of war history (more rhetoric about the "puppet soldiers" and "imperialist lackeys"). We saw ancient woodblocks used to record significant events during the Nguyen Dynasty, in Chinese characters. There was little English translation. It appeared that the woodblocks were a printing press negative and that multiple paper sheets could be printed from them and distributed.
We attended an opening ceremony of a photo display of "120 years of socio-economic development in Da Lat", but first had to sit through dancing and choral singing presented to local officials, men in dark suits, one of whom then made a short speech. It was listed as an event for tourism, but there was no attempt to incorporate tourists or communicate with them. We were befriended by one of the officials, however, and given a place to sit, and the photographs after the ceremony were interesting.
In the evening Phik Li was extremely ill with a very harsh cold. Deb and I went downtown to the night market and had a beef hot pot - an excellent food choice in the chilly winter air. We tried to watch the parade of flower floats and the opening ceremony extravaganza. This is the one that only residents can get tickets for - a major shortcoming of the city's attempt to attract tourist dollars, I'm afraid. The main roundabout downtown was absolutely jammed with many thousands of people and there was no way for us to get through. The next day we managed to see a long string of the floats from the parade, as they made a point of driving through the streets of town in the sunshine so that residents who couldn't attend the ceremony could still enjoy the floats, which were decorated entirely, pictures and text and graphic design, in colourful fresh flowers. They really are very impressive. I think this annual festival only began in 2011.
We had breakfast with Steve, who does IT for the military in Moose Jaw, and his wife Do-an, a Vietnamese woman originally from Da Lat who has been in Canada for 22 years, exactly half of her life. They were here visiting her sister who is a Buddhist nun. They brought their daughter Ti-en An, and Do-an introduced herself in order to help us order breakfast, because we're not staying in a tourist neighbourhood.
This morning a young man named Binh introduced himself, and in excellent English, performed the same function for us. He sat with us through breakfast, chatting. It was chance to practice speaking English face to face, he said, rather than only interacting with his language programs on computer screen.
After both these experiences, I reflected on how many times here in Da Lat, a safe, friendly city, Vietnamese people had emerged from the crowd spontaneously to offer advice and assistance in English. It is really quite astonishing how many people speak English here better than you might imagine, and how eager they are to be helpful. Although Da Lat is a little cooler than I might like, especially now in the dead of winter, it is certainly a place I'd be comfortable to stay for a month or longer, teaching English...clean, safe, friendly, attractive, sunny every morning although it tends to become overcast in the afternoon. With good food, affordable taxis and accommodation, and cheerful people, it is easy to see why so many foreigners are willing to spend their retirement dollars in this city, which in turn is a great source of income and foreign exchange for the community. There's a pretty good chance we'll be back.
Getting to Nha Trang on Dec 28th was a bit hairy. We decided to try another coach company, Futa. They pick you up, take you to the coach, and deliver you after you arrive to your address in the new city - door to door service. There was a problem with our pickup, however: the small orange satellite Futa van didn't arrive, although Deb's phone kept ringing, and the person at the other end couldn't or wouldn't speak with her. Finally, after several calls and some help from our tour guide from two days ago, Zoom, the guy - who said he'd been to our address twice already, but he hadn't because we were standing on the street fifteen minutes ahead of time with our bags, and there was no orange Futa van - arrived in a surly mood.
On Boxing Day we spent a few hours in the Da Lat Flower Park, where they were setting up for opening day of the flower festival, which was the next day. We saw amazing orchids and many other types of flowers which are now in a third, separate photo album. We saw astonishingly painstaking wood carvings and hundreds of bonsai. We walked several kilometres along paths and through vendors stalls by the hundreds. Someone who retired here would have the perfect climate and all the resources and raw materials you'd need for a very rewarding garden.
We checked out the room at the Dreams Hotel where we might stay if we came back here for a month to teach, and had lunch in their dining room - delicious, and with reasonable prices, although the hotel itself is pricey compared to what you can find within the neighbourhood. There are dozens of small hotels and guesthouses. After walking about downtown for a little while longer, we came home to rest, read and work on photos, and then took Teun and Phik Li out for supper again. On the way home, we strolled in the night market, which is pleasant and interesting, and a good place to walk and munch, making up a dinner as you go from roadside vendors. I bought a Chinese chromatic harmonica for $8, which was astonishingly well made for the price.
On Dec 27th we went to the national archive building which has a small museum of war history (more rhetoric about the "puppet soldiers" and "imperialist lackeys"). We saw ancient woodblocks used to record significant events during the Nguyen Dynasty, in Chinese characters. There was little English translation. It appeared that the woodblocks were a printing press negative and that multiple paper sheets could be printed from them and distributed.
We attended an opening ceremony of a photo display of "120 years of socio-economic development in Da Lat", but first had to sit through dancing and choral singing presented to local officials, men in dark suits, one of whom then made a short speech. It was listed as an event for tourism, but there was no attempt to incorporate tourists or communicate with them. We were befriended by one of the officials, however, and given a place to sit, and the photographs after the ceremony were interesting.
In the evening Phik Li was extremely ill with a very harsh cold. Deb and I went downtown to the night market and had a beef hot pot - an excellent food choice in the chilly winter air. We tried to watch the parade of flower floats and the opening ceremony extravaganza. This is the one that only residents can get tickets for - a major shortcoming of the city's attempt to attract tourist dollars, I'm afraid. The main roundabout downtown was absolutely jammed with many thousands of people and there was no way for us to get through. The next day we managed to see a long string of the floats from the parade, as they made a point of driving through the streets of town in the sunshine so that residents who couldn't attend the ceremony could still enjoy the floats, which were decorated entirely, pictures and text and graphic design, in colourful fresh flowers. They really are very impressive. I think this annual festival only began in 2011.
We had breakfast with Steve, who does IT for the military in Moose Jaw, and his wife Do-an, a Vietnamese woman originally from Da Lat who has been in Canada for 22 years, exactly half of her life. They were here visiting her sister who is a Buddhist nun. They brought their daughter Ti-en An, and Do-an introduced herself in order to help us order breakfast, because we're not staying in a tourist neighbourhood.
This morning a young man named Binh introduced himself, and in excellent English, performed the same function for us. He sat with us through breakfast, chatting. It was chance to practice speaking English face to face, he said, rather than only interacting with his language programs on computer screen.
After both these experiences, I reflected on how many times here in Da Lat, a safe, friendly city, Vietnamese people had emerged from the crowd spontaneously to offer advice and assistance in English. It is really quite astonishing how many people speak English here better than you might imagine, and how eager they are to be helpful. Although Da Lat is a little cooler than I might like, especially now in the dead of winter, it is certainly a place I'd be comfortable to stay for a month or longer, teaching English...clean, safe, friendly, attractive, sunny every morning although it tends to become overcast in the afternoon. With good food, affordable taxis and accommodation, and cheerful people, it is easy to see why so many foreigners are willing to spend their retirement dollars in this city, which in turn is a great source of income and foreign exchange for the community. There's a pretty good chance we'll be back.
Getting to Nha Trang on Dec 28th was a bit hairy. We decided to try another coach company, Futa. They pick you up, take you to the coach, and deliver you after you arrive to your address in the new city - door to door service. There was a problem with our pickup, however: the small orange satellite Futa van didn't arrive, although Deb's phone kept ringing, and the person at the other end couldn't or wouldn't speak with her. Finally, after several calls and some help from our tour guide from two days ago, Zoom, the guy - who said he'd been to our address twice already, but he hadn't because we were standing on the street fifteen minutes ahead of time with our bags, and there was no orange Futa van - arrived in a surly mood.
There had been a suggestion that we should make our own way to the bus station in a taxi, but that would have added a sizable taxi fare to the cost of our trip, and that didn't seem fair - they'd written our address right on our tickets at the ticket agents, after all, and we were very clear about our address. Anyway, the guy finally arrived, didn't greet us, didn't help us with our bags, had a cigarette hanging from his mouth and drove dangerously to the bus station, braking constantly to narrowly miss motorcycles and other vehicles. He pulled up at the front door of the station without a word and again, offered no help with our bags. We went to the coach and sat for another fifteen minutes in our seats before we pulled away from the station, so I don't know what the crazy driving was all about.
The coach careened down the steep winding roads, and swayed on the switchbacks, but the driver was focused and careful. At one point he braked hard for a young boy of perhaps twelve or fourteen who was sitting right in the middle of the road on the dotted line - we have no idea why, and neither did the worried driver, who called someone immediately on his cell phone. The boy didn't look injured.
The coach careened down the steep winding roads, and swayed on the switchbacks, but the driver was focused and careful. At one point he braked hard for a young boy of perhaps twelve or fourteen who was sitting right in the middle of the road on the dotted line - we have no idea why, and neither did the worried driver, who called someone immediately on his cell phone. The boy didn't look injured.
The vegetation changed and the landscape levelled out until we had rice paddies on either side, and then we crawled through miles of grimy suburban sprawl. At the bus terminal a taxi driver tried to hustle us into his cab, but Deb told him Futa would take us to our destination, and he pointed to the minibus that they use for that final service. We arrived at the guest house that Teun and Phik Li had told us about, steps from the beach, with a large clean room, hot showers and air conditioning. The owner hadn't answered my booking request, but she was delighted when Deb marched up to her with the business card that Teun had given us, and she gave us her best rate. We rested a little, then went out for a walk and an evening meal.
Next entry: bringing in the New Year in Nha Trang
That Crazy House is awesome! What's the story on it? Gaudi would be impressed.
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