Vietnam Day 6 – 7: The Escape from City Life

Day 6 – 14th June 2007

7.30am to 4pm was an insane journey from Saigon to Dalat – insane meaning long, though I slept quite a bit and read only the first 40 pages of Haruki Murakami’s Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

The scenery on the right of me (was sitting near the window) changed rapidly: the usual small towns with wooden houses and shops, a young girl preparing her stall, a group of shirtless guys gathered on a table playing cards, kids flying kites that soar high in the sky – everything was at an absolute serene point in time as if I’ve just been transported to a rustic island shielded from negative externalities of the outside world, none of the inhabitants seem to have any problems at all.

Climbing the hill on the bus in a slow ascent instantly reminded me of Cameron’s: the pine trees, the vegetation that differs at height increases – hell, everything I saw seem to be reminding me of Malaysia. I think it was an instant fresh change that we all really needed, to escape the putrid, hot air of the cities that we’ve been, and leave behind their busy lives. Subang Jaya, where I live, is also already a rapidly growing urban area that landing into yet another city like Saigon isn’t that much of a change.

With Dalat, we’re back in touch with nature.

I’ve always thought that communist countries are generally poor (sorry for my ignorance, but that’s what you get for reading about North Korea too much), though Vietnam isn’t anything like it – impression was probably formed from the news I occasionally read.

We’ve had 2 stops during the 9-hour journey, and when we finally reached Dalat, we hit it off with another acquaintance, a blond Canadian guy wearing a bright orange T-shirt whom we saw before during the previous Phnom Penh – Saigon bus ride. (We later learned that his hair was originally black, and he dyed it that colour.)

“Wah so fast make friends with completely random strangers and stay in a room together, don’t scared at night they tie you up and rape you ah wtf,” echoed my concerned friends. Thing is, when you’re backpacking as I did, you get to form immediate first impression and decide within the first 2 seconds whether you’d like to stay and travel together – because it’s always twice the fun to have people who differ in ethnicity and nationality to travel around together. Safety didn’t even cross my mind once, we were that trusting with one another.

Anyway the Canadian’s name is Francis, also a 24 going on 25, and the first few words from his mouth that sealed our journey together were, “If you guys don’t mind, I’d like to stay with you guys” – this brings the total of our travelling circus to 5. He’s apparently just graduated, and will be a teacher at a high school once he finished travelling.

Our guesthouse was pretty cool too – only 50,000 dong per person per night for a large room (about RM11-12), free breakfast included (just baguette and drink, but what do you expect), and most importantly (for me), free Internet access! The room that we obtained was quite large, even bigger than my parents’ room in my own house wtf (the size of two such rooms combined, complete with a balcony).

We merely walked around the town that night, since there isn’t much to do once night sets in, more to sightsee and in search for food than anything else – it’s a quaint little cooling place. At night, the streets were even colder, what with the mist rolling in.

What looked like the main town centre. (Snapped at 7.03pm)

There were plenty of people parading their wares by the street, most unique was a portable stove thingy with various food like corn for sale. (Snapped at 7.43pm, large difference isn’t it?) We bought some glutinous rice lookalike thingy from a shop, and ate at a restaurant for dinner.

Kazz and Gopi wrestling to see who has to sleep on the floor (but with a mattress lah). Obviously Kazz lost.

Most of us slept rather early at 10pm-11pmish after playing cards or read the novels we brought or generally converse with each other. Different people seem to have different reaasons to travel – and me, I just want to see more of the world and got more than what I bargained for. Even hearing other people’s life experiences alone, who are total strangers in the first place, seem to leave a deep impression in me.

Day 7 – 15th June 2007
Everyone seems to have a knack for developing accents based on the people around us. After a while, both Siew Kiat and I have some sort of English-deprecating accent when talking to our Japanese dude, and with the Canadian-Chinese guy (his dad’s Irish, mum’s from Hong Kong), I always sense myself speaking a little differently, perhaps with some faux Americanised “yeah man” etc.

We left our guesthouse by renting 3 motorcycles from where we stayed (Binh Tey or something of that sort), and long story short, after some persuasion by a few tour guides at the city centre, switched our original plan from using a map to explore the countryside to using the tour guide.

Sunny countryside by the hills.

Sitting on the motorbike was the highlight of that day, and perhaps even the entire backpacking trip. 99% of Vietnam’s citizens do not use helmets, so regrettably we follow its inherent culture, including honking about incessantly at what at first seemed like random intervals. I did a little riding about on the motorbike, after having not rode one for several years. Siew Kiat sat behind me, and vice-versa, as we took turns.

It was pure motorbiking around the countryside, tar roads snaking around mountains (imagine Genting and Cameron’s roads up the hills back home), cooling wind chilling your face, but at the same time, direct sunlight baking your skins without the excessive heat we feel on ground level. It’s hard to describe the pure bliss of motorbiking in such conditions – looking at the unbelievably green foliages, string of mountains huddled together, inhaling and exhaling Dalat air, all in a country unlike ours. I felt euphoric.

One of our stops, Vinh the tour guide was explaining something about the Vietnam War.

We visited the usual rose farms and whatnot which we’re not too interested in, so we merely glaze through them very quickly. One of our breaks was at a rice wine miller or something of that sort, and we got to sample a little how it tasted like (tastes like the Japanese sake).

At the basement of the miller where rice wine was produced, there were 2 very large pigs, and a host of little piglets wtf. (Shawn, your friends are here AHAHAHHA jk.)

At the rice wine miller (not sure if that’s the exact word to use), we sat down overlooking the fields, chit-chatted while sipping delicious Vietnamese coffee (Gopi and Kazz proclaimed it to be the best ever, which I didn’t taste as it contained milk).

We also visited the silk factory, and these are the silkworm’s cocoons (like lawatan sambil belajar only.. -___-).

That’s how the interior of the factory looks like.

We bought a few silk ties from the factory, they’re all rather cheap, about USD$3 each. The lady in the middle refused to lower down her prices even for a bit.

We were about to leave the factory when Siew Kiat discovered our motorbike’s front tyre was punctured wtf. Vinh had to help us send it to a nearby workshop to get the hole patched (for about 5000 dong per hole, and luckily there was only one), but we went to the Elephant Waterfall first anyway.

It was worth hiking all the way down treacherous slippery rocks to snap this majestic picture – I was more afraid that my camera would be damaged than getting wet or sustaining minor injuries.

We had to squeeze in a narrow passage to get behind the waterfall wtf.

Behind the waterfall, you can feel splashes of droplets raining down on you and hear the loud torrent roaring at your ears. A rather grand sight.

We ate lunch at the local restaurant (ordered my favourite pho bo as always) – it’s more like a shack really, but it’s cheap. Lucky we had Vinh along anyway as we suspect the locals don’t speak a word of English.

Francis was riding alone on his bike – photo blur due to shaky hands while sitting behind Gopi.

We were about to set off to see the Crazy House when we saw clouds of rain hovering in front of us in the distance. We donned our raincoats as per Vinh’s advice (thank god we brought them), and rightly so as rain blared down onto us furiously. It’s hell of an experience alright – motorbiking in the furious rain. Slowly the thought of it being fun slowly dissipates as the rain grew stronger and you actually felt pain, what with large droplets being hurled towards you.

What made it all the more worse was the chilly air, and when you have wind screaming at your direction, I was actually shivering throughout the entire ride back to Dalat. The temperature I reckoned was probably only 20-25ish Celcius, but with the wind tugging at you, it was like grinding through a 0 degrees Celcius refridgerator. I had to use my two hands to keep Gopi’s raincoat’s hood from flying off and distract his eyes – that meant exposing my poor hands to the biting icy rain.

Halfway through navigating the winding, ascending roads, we encountered an accident that looked like it just occurred between two motorcycles. We got down from our motorbikes to help, and two men looked like they were hurled to the ground next to the badly damaged bikes – completely smashed lights, the body almost severed into two – and they were clutching their stomachs, groaning. Evidently they spoke no English, but some Vietnamese men on another motorcycle arrived to help, so we left them in the soaking rain since we couldn’t do anything.

We actually lost Francis and Vinh at this point, but we continued through the rapid rain. We eventually found Francis waiting for us ahead, and when we couldn’t stand the rain any longer, we stopped by to rest beneath the covers of some closed shops. Gopi actually went a nearby wooden house to take a dump with the door wide open wtf (as we were told by the man himself).

Resting beneath the shades.

Interestingly, we passed through the rain nary a scratch, and why this makes an interesting fact will be told in a while.

Inside the Crazy House – it’s actually a guesthouse but designed in a way that it gives off an Alice in Wonderland atmosphere. The architect is the daughter of Ho Chi Minh City’s second mayor or sommat.

One of the many rooms, this is predictably named the Bear Room.

This cat is damnnnn manja ok.

After visiting the Crazy House, we were on our way to the next waterfall. All was merry and well, when suddenly Vinh who was in front of us braked suddenly when a car shot out of nowhere, and Gopi braked immediately as well. What followed that was the skidding of the motorbike, the machine fell flat on its left side sending Gopi and I to the ground in a heap, and my right leg trapped beneath the bike.

The initial impact made my left hand and leg hurt like crazy, and amidst the mini chaos and the pain, the first thing that went through my mind was the irony of it all, having saw an actual accident an hour ago. My limbs escaped serious injuries with only cuts and bruises, but still, they were pretty ugly and they hurt.

Some of the conversations during/after the accident:

Siew Kiat: “Is your leg OK? Why are your legs trembling?” (I didn’t even realise it, but as mentioned earlier, cool air + icy wind made me shiver).

Gopi: “Clem pleaseplease don’t tell your mum about this accident.” (He promised my parents he’ll bring me back safely lmao.)

Francis: “Sorry I didn’t help you lift the motorcycle away, I didn’t realise your leg was trapped. I actually even wanted to laugh.” (wtfwtf.)

The second waterfall was just alright, just a regular tourist-infested one where you have to climb down a well-paved road to reach it.

When we reached our guesthouse, we immediately went out to eat. Had dinner with Fern, an English lady who was travelling alone.

We spent the rest of the night on our motorcycles touring the city. I sat behind Francis this time around, and it was a pleasant, casual stroll even though the fact remains that the air was still chilly. We stumbled across a lake we previously didn’t notice, and eventually after ambling along the roads aimlessly, we got lost.

Took us a while to find our way back, and I didn’t know what to answer when Francis asked if we should turn left or right at said junctions, considering that I’m not exactly a person who’s good with roads. We pretended that we knew the way back just for the heck of it, and when we circled the roads for ages, the rest finally asked the golden question, “Are we lost?”

We played the game “31” as taught by Kazz, who learned it from a couple of Dutch guys he travelled with prior to us. We tweaked it to be a drinking game with several stupid rules, and we all drank the incredibly strong but tasty rice wine – apparently we finished the entire 2.5 litres that we bought at a dirt cheap price (less than RM5 IIRC).

Thought I couldn’t be more drunk than before, but I was totally wasted and puked – again.