Had a final breakfast in Dalat (seriously, the breakfast in Dreams is excellent – as much as you can eat, lots of fruit and great coffee).
Met up with Loc and Hung. They didn’t took at all worried by the amount and size of our bags…. which was a relief. Indeed I think Mhairi and I felt pretty comfortable about travelling for 5 days with these guys.
This will all be slightly out of order… but hey, you weren’t there so you’ll never know! But one of the first things we visited was a coffee plantation. Vietnam has excellent coffee, everywhere, and cheap!
Hong took us down and showed us around, talked about when they pick them and roast them etc… We also had a quick look under the house.. where we saw slightly different production – that of rice wine. So at about 11am had a shot of some fairly potent rice-wine. Definitely stronger than the stuff we were given in the Mekong.
We visited a silk factory – much more industrial than the one we saw outside of Siem Reap. The machine in the pic was kinda cool – it had long strips of paper-punched cards, and depending on how they were punched different threads would be used / not to make the particular pattern they wanted. Quite clever!
So, after the rice wine it was time to try the next drug of the day (quite appropriate for Vietnam seeing as 30% or something, probably more, of the soldiers were addicted to drugs!). Anyway, this time it was a water-pipe. Tobacco in a valve-thing on one side, and away you go. Quite strong.. (very?!). Loc had a good chuckle anyway!
We passed through some indiganous villages. Blatant bribery through offered candy brought the kids out for the standard photo opportunity!
We also saw chopsticks being made – mostly for export. Looked like fairly dangerous work actually… the blades which sliced the bamboo looked sharp, and it’s all done by hand of course!
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Loc and Hung broke the day up really nicely – we travelled about 140km or something the first day, but they seemed pretty psychic (or maybe they’ve done trips for the last 11 years and are attuned!) but either way, just as my bum was verging on the point where I really needed to get off and walk for a bit – they’d have a stop – either to look at something or just to let us stretch legs.
I kinda like their petrol pumps… oh and there’s also a waterfall we went to see… it may or may not have been called elephant falls!
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