Up early enough the next day – 8am, and back on the bikes. This was a shorter trip – just 100km through to the capital of the highlands.

First stop was looking at a guy working on a pile of rocks by the side of the road.

He chiseled a hole into the stone, then hammered in pieces of metal to put pressure on the rock, and finally with a sledge bashed in the final piece of metal – and the rock splits neatly into brick-sized chunks.

We passed another place where we got to see the actual silk worm worms wriggling around. 800m of silk from one worm. Only 500m in Cambodia ;)

And mushrooms too… not sure how different this is to how they do it in Ireland (someone out there knows ;) they get the loam from the Rubber Trees (more on those later!), and then they heat it!? or so they said, to steralise the soil – then they wrap in plastic, and keep moist – and mushrooms appear. At least I think that’s what they said. The part that confused me was – if they get the soil, and then steralise them – where do the mushroom spores come from?!

Then it was onto the capital of the highlands, where we checked into our hotel and headed out to a national parky kinda place.

Where we had a pleasant walk by lots of waterfalls (quite impressive really)

We were then left to walk a few km through the jungle and Loc and Hung would pick us up at the far end. It did decide to piss rain – but didn’t really matter as there was excellent shelter under the trees.

And slightly out of order is this pic of another factory we went to – where they made (Again by hand) vases, well all sorts really, from concrete.

oh, and the flower is a banana flower, the other pic of Mhairi and Loc

That night we were left to our own devices for dinner (so far we’d been having our meals with Loc and Hung) WE checked out the place they’d suggested, but it seemed a little expensive (like $2 a main or something crazy) ended up getting some quite tasty fried chicken from a street vendor – and a soupy thing, for a dollar fifty I think it was.

The next day when we were saying this to Loc – he explained (And I remembered) that there was the whole bird-flu scare going on. An Irish guy out here said it was pretty hard to get – and if the meat is well cooked you should be ok.

But I don’t think I’ll be having any more chicken for a while!

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!

>

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!

Next morning it was a 7 hour bus ride to Dalat. Our bus made periodic stops, sometimes just bathroom breaks, and sometimes so that our driver could tighten the nuts on the wheel.

Seriously.

Dalat is great. It’s cool up here in the mountains. Even need to wear long sleeves at night. I love it. And it’s just got a great feel to it.. after stocking up with another 2 million dong at the ATM, and a nice dinner in the V Cafe the long bus rides just melted away.

Today we hired bikes from our (Excellent) hostel (Dreams), and headed out to the Lake of Sighs. Dalat is the honeymoon capital of Vietnam, and it certainly has some pretty cheesy sights… at the Lake you can hire paddle boats in the shape of swans. Yes, we would have been so up for that, but seeing as it’s low season there was no one about to open up. *sigh* ;)

After that we cycled back into town to check out the gardens, made it in before being ushered out ‘not open, not open’.. looks like their still working on it.. and then headed to the Crazy House (that’s its name). Run by the daughter of the successor to Ho Chi Minh, the place would *never* be allowed in Vietnam, let alone Dalat, except that she’s the daughter..

I actually really liked it. It’s gross, totally over the top concrete sculptures.

You can hire rooms (kangaroo room, gourd room, tiger room, ant room…) here for about $50 per night. If you want to.. :) Seriously though, it’s worth a look.

Then a quick trip to the Stop and Go Cafe. I actually went here for Artichoke Tea (surprisingly good) yesterday, but went back again with Mhairi (she’d been doing laps of the lake!). This time however the proprietor was about. A guy called Duy Viat. He used to be the mayor of Dalat, now a self proclaimed intellectual and zen kidna guy. He writes nice calligraphy poems though. And makes a mean cup of cherry tea… strums nicely on the guitar, and grows many orchids. I reckon he’s chosen a great place to retire!

So, after the war remnants we caught a night bus to Nha Trang. Beachy place.. We decided not to stay for more than a day, but did hire a motorbike. Death on a stick you might think (I did) but it was fine (did let Mhairi drive though!!) I’m such a wuss sometimes, did have a wee go though.. and will do more I’m sure.

So we drove 40km out to Doc Let Beach. Nice place, until it started pissing rain. Serious thunder storm really. The place was *slightly* spoiled by the vendors trying to sell crab and shrimp. However, thankfully, we gave in eventually, and did buy some. And it was delicious.

I did kinda loose it slightly at one point. And pointed out to the lovely (but overly persistent..) lady selling shrimp, that we’d just taken a 10 hour night bus from Saigon, that I’d had about 3 hours sleep, that we’d just biked 40km, my bum was sore, and that I just wanted to be left in peace for a few minutes on the beach… but that we *would* come and find her and buy some shrimp later (thank you very much) She was pretty cool about it really and did leave us be… I think the desperation was showing!! :)

Actually, one of the reasons I only got 3 hours sleep was that I was busily finishing (simply could not put it down) Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Cannot wait for the last one now..

Shortly after lunch it started raining. Now when I say raining I mean the ‘I’ve been outside for .5 secs and now am soaked to the bone’ kinda rain. Comical.

We got *slightly* lost on the way back into town.. well, actually quite lost.. Mhairi was *amazing* driving.. really, we were going through flooded roads ‘n everyfink. Fairing quite well for our first foray on a motorbike I think.

Once we made it back into town.. we hired a cyclo driver – to cycle slowly along in front of us and guide us back to our hotel (our maps were (totally soaked) and lacked the detail needed to get back to where we needed to be)

Dinner and beer never tasted so good!

There are some pretty disturbing images here, apologies – skip if you want to.

Today started off nicely – up early and took a moto to the UK Consolate, where I showed them my neatly wripped passport. I was told there was nothing they could do (expected) and they could give me a form to write for a new one to Kuala Lumpa but that was it. She questioned whether I had had any problems with it so far – I said no… But anyway, I guess I’ll just go on and hope that I can get into Laos and Thailand (and home) without too many issues – hopefully I can get a new one when I am back in Dublin.. hopefully (and yes, I will remember to transfer my NZ residency visa!)

So after that I headed on to the History Museum. Mainly becuase I got disorientated and thought I was heading towards the Reunification Palace.

The museum was interesting, though I kinda lost track of the invasions and uprisings. For pretty much the last 2000 years someone or other has been trying to take control of this country.. mostly without success! Even the Mongols got repelled 3 times.

This pic is of a mummified vietnamese woman that was discovered in Ho Chi Minh a few years ago (she’s 80 odd and was born in the 1800s I think it was)

There was a lovely water-puppet show though, that was worth seeing. Apparently it takes 3 years to learn the art of doing it.

After that I took a moto back to the reunification palace (but it was closed until 1pm) wandered about (again taking the wrong turning – walked a good km around the block!) before settling down over lunch to read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Mhairi very kindly swapped two of our old books for a $3 photocopy of the book.. and she’s not seen very much of me since to be honest!

Then we met up and went to the war remnants museum. It was, even more so I feel than the killing fields, a horrible exhibition of the utter futility and devasation of war. You *really* won’t understand until you come to this place and see for yourself. At one point (and you’ll see the pics if you want to) I was just standing in the room, and everywhere I looked it was just another picture of something horrible, something that shouldn’t ever be done to anyone. Some pics I didn’t take, mostly the ones of the burns (to they face, the eyes the body) – from phosphor and napalm.

We saw the deformities that a generation of children (Esp of VC fighters) were born with.

There was an exhibition (and tribute really) to the corageous photographers who tried to capture and bring back images of the war – so many of them died.

The two pics above are of a South Vietnamese soldier fleeing from his tank that the VC blew up with a mine. The second picture is a second explosion from another mine. There’s no third picture..

There were so many pictures which dealt with the torture that was performed on the enemy. I’m quite sure the VC did awful things too, but I guess you’d hope that our beackon of civilisation wouldn’t do things like dragging people behind their tank until they died – or looking quite the way this guy does picking up a bombed body.

Mind you, what with Guantanamo, and this practice of rendition? I think that’s what it’s called when you take someone away and hold them secretly in a country – and one that allows torture.. well, I wonder if we’ve learned from our mistakes. And it makes me kinda angry that it seems there’s so little we can do about it.

Sorry to ramble, it’s been a fairly shocking kinda day.

There was also a section on the propoganda, and the protests that went on around the world, and helped to bring about the end of the war. One of them showing that it was big military oriented corporations that were making billions from the war, and wanting it to continue (not that that happens any more of course… Iraq was never about the oil).

Sheesh, sorry, this is supposed to be a travelogue not a political diary!

Well, finally there’s a pic of me beside a tank. Big old things.

I would reccommed this museum very very highly if you ever make it to Ho Chi Minh. It made me feel like I ought to try and do something a little more useful – or devote some of my time to doing something good.. we’ll see.

Actually, on that note, mum and dad have been making wonderful progress in Uganda on the university. Even have students being taught at the moment. I know it’s pretty uncool to be super proud of your parents – but to build a university from scratch and have the first batch of students – all within 2 years.. well, maybe good things can be done.. (dad also takes a pretty good picture!) Can’t wait to see family again in a little under 2 months time.