A slightly more relaxed day today. Taking in yet more sights. Really, I think that’s one of the best things about going with the Easy Riders, you get to see heaps of the countryside, and have many small interesting stops along the way.

First was another coffee plantation, Vietnamese coffee plantation. Or so Loc told us. After we’d nibbled slightly through a ‘bean’ (though we were pretty sure he was joking by this stage) it was fairly obvious that it was a pepper tree..

The villagers are quite weathly (relative) here as they can fetch a good price for the pepper, with not a huge amount of effort.

We walked over the bridge with the two kids on it, but weren’t allowed on the other one! (fair enough). People drive motorbikes across the one with the kids. There are 2 foot long gaps in the floorboards!!

We also passed through miles and miles of rubber tree plantations. The coloured strips are pieces of plastic used to deflect the water so that it doesn’t mix with the sap and ruin the quality of the rubber. All rubber and tree plantations are owned and run by the state. Most other things are privatised, but not those two.

The final stop of the day was on the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was a road (ish) from Hanoi through parts of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos down to the South – which the NVA used to send supplies and reinforcements around.

Bad start.. Loc was messing about, and Hung got hit in the eye by a rubber strap. Now this wouldn’t usually be the end of the world, but Hung didn’t blink. Because the eye was glass (not that we knew our driver had one eye!). OR at least that’s what I understand.. I couldn’t quite understand Loc fully.. as he seemed to think Hung might be able to see a little out of it.

Either way, Hung was sent off to hospital.. and Loc had to arrange for a new guy to take over (Man). Not such a nice bike, didn’t speak English.. still, it was good work at short notice.

This was a pretty long day – we went 200km or something, and didn’t stop that often.

We passed by Charlie Hill – where the Americans had a pretty large base that they thought was impregnable, but later found out it wasn’t. The place is still riddled with mines which the locals try to retrieve – as well as other ordnance, and strip down for the metals – and gunpowder (which they use for fireworks!!). Though it does go wrong, when we were sitting down having the best and biggest custard apple ever!, the Vietnamese lady was apparently saying that just last week a kid had stepped on one…

But yes, the do collect the bombs and anything else they can. Oh, thought this was nice – the airstrip that the Americans built to service their base etc. is now used for drying tapioca (sweet potato).

We passed other memorials to the war along the way – lost track of how many. This pic of one of the Russian tanks that the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) used to attack the Southern forces.

Arrived pretty sore-arsed! into Kon Tom, where we saw another indigenous village. They all have different styles, the roof on this meeting house is 18m high!

Oh, yes, in one of the villages we went to – Loc was explaining that the women have to raise a heap of cash to give to the father of the man they want to marry – in order to be allowed to marry him. 2 water buffalo, 20 chickens and 20 ducks is a usual price. Mind you, once they have married they can then sit back and chill for the rest of their life.

However, it’s kinda unfair as if their husband dies – they are *not* allowed to remarry. If instead, the wife dies, the man *is* allowed to remarry but only to the sister of his wife. Odd. And yes, the gene pool is quite small in these places with all the attendant issues that brings (excuse words like ‘attendant issues’ – I’m trying to use more colourful language :)

Dinner that evening was scrumptious (too much colour?! ;). Well, it was tasty at any rate. We were staying in a place where there are many hunters – so for next to nothing ($2 each) we had venison and boar.

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!