Dalat – Day 16
I took a motorbike taxi from the station and for want of a destination was dropped off at the roundabout in central Dalat. The Young and the Organised headed off to specific reservations: this annoyed me vaguely. Obviously, I was annoyed they had a place and I didn’t, but I also felt, rather self-righteously, that many of the Young seemed incapable of doing anything on impulse. These planners had no sense of adventure nor instinct for following gut instincts. Were they indeed gutless?
And it wasn’t just that: their itineraries sounded exhausting and left me with absolutely no sense of envy for the months timetabled for restless roaming. It felt shallow and unrooted and… and perhaps exactly what I was now doing over a more limited period. I guess, man, it seemed like a neurotic quest for the next big thing without ever enjoying the moment. I was also struck – not for the first time – how little interest many younger travellers appeared to have in the local culture, people, language et cetera. It seemed to be more about ticking off must-do tourist activities and socialising with other People like Us. I’m sure this is very unfair on lots of fine international youth, but hey, my blog, my generalisations.
Anyway, back to Sleepless in Dalat… I took stock over several coffees while chatting to its friendly and attentive vendor, Vung, about my prospects. Vung was a spirited and diminutive woman of perhaps 30-something years and was also the last person I spoke with when I left town. Finally, I ceased prevaricating and moved on and up the hill to an increasingly built-up area – Dalat market – that resembled a centre. Perhaps because I was getting my bearings alongside the city’s busiest roundabout, my first impressions didn’t fit the guidebook image of a colonial gem whose cool hilltop location offered refuge from the humid jungle lowlands. The usual fuming phalanxes of mopeds poured around it – spinning off centrifugally like flying chairs snipped off a merry-go-round – on their mission to pollute every corner of town.
On reflection, its modern attractions are away from the urban centre of half million amongst whom I chose to make my temporary home. To find the myriad lakes, waterfalls, and pagodas that filled the tourist brochures, a moped would have been most useful.
Smarter hotels lined the roads ahead while within the area they enclosed lay stalls selling flowers and snacks and a space that later teemed with many hundreds of customers to wide spreading street restaurants. From this crowded spot, nonetheless, you could look back to the station and take a picture from a certain angle that captured the old colonial cathedral and the essence of the town from that era. Beyond the roundabout was substantial lake with a flotilla of tourist boats fashioned like giant swans.
Halfway up the hill, I inquired at a hotel that overlooked this urban nucleus, but its price and formal atmosphere wasn’t right. Further on, I found one for less than a tenner with a hairdressing shop in its foyer. Several camp young men generally occupied the chairs strewn about it with a mood of languid huffiness, while all the work was done by a young woman unsupported by the younger siblings crowding around her cramped desk of operations.
I made a dire decision for lunch – fatigue and hunger were aggravating factors. I ordered a boiled fatty chicken – all the gristly bits with a pho of noodles – a lot of which I spilled over the table, but gamely munched through what remained in the giant bowl. To add insult to possible internal injury, it cost 150 dong instead of the 60 I expected. It was possibly a meal for four, and certainly my worst. From now on, I vowed to only order food I recognised.
Journalist Nick later rang to assure me that I was unlikely to be arrested in Dubai on my return journey. Nonetheless, criticising an intolerant regime in a broadcast before returning four weeks later now seemed like poor planning. Insulting the head of state, Nick suggested, was a more reliable way to provoke the authorities. Still, my report detailed petty and extreme reactions to private messages on which the state had eavesdropped so I figured an international broadcast might upset someone from the ranks of its paranoid publicity machine. Nick ‘joked’ about what a story that would make. The image of this idea could easily haunt the rest of my trip. Another flight via elsewhere would cost a painful 600 quid.
Later, I belatedly received an email reply from the programme editor who’d been off during the days of my growing paranoia that my real name was used on the broadcast. I’d changed it to something alliteratively similar in the recording, but not in the introduction I’d written a few days earlier. Thus, I whooped with relief to discover the report hadn’t yet run and gratefully agreed to re-record – with my real name – when I returned home. Panic over. Win-win. On reflection, the exhausted tension of this first day permeated my time in Dalat, but now that my 600-quid flight scare had passed, I promised myself I’d now eat and drink whatever I wanted.
My eating day began in one of the best possible ways with a bacon and avocado sandwich, strawberry smoothie, and a Vietnamese coffee. The quality of the food was excellent at my latest local though it cost slightly too much for not quite enough. I was now craving familiarity from my daytime food, while more than happy to place my taste-buds in the hands of the national cuisine thereafter. The few members of staff in this small but well-formed backstreet spot were very polite, stuck rigidly to their script, and gave the impression of being fearful about some cataclysmic event sure to engulf humanity sometime before lunch.
I trekked out to a pagoda 5km or so beyond the centre. Most provided maps are wonky and hand drawn so the reality of other roads and landmarks tends to muddy the picture while the language issue means English names for either are of little use. I thought I’d found it a kilometre or so before, but it was another pagoda that didn’t make the guidebook. Ironically, even now I don’t know the name of my chosen destination and the internet can’t place it despite its spectacular array of colourful carved dragons, golden Buddhas, and life-size figures spread about the peaceful gardens. Happily, I had it all to myself.
In the afternoon, I took a taxi up to the Bao Dai Summer Palace, former home of the eponymous last royal – effectively a puppet of the Japanese during their occupation in WWII. The last emperor was ushered off the international stage by Ho Chi Minh before the serious work of forging independence from the French, who thought re-colonising the country was a reasonable option. Bao Dai and various deceased ex-residents are immortalised upstairs as waxworks. It was quite modest for a palace, barely a spare bedroom for overnight guests, but perhaps this reflects the reality of puppet rulers – just enough luxury to befit the look and nothing more.
On the way down, I stopped at the old Dalat railway station, an art deco building completed by the French in 1938 with claims of being the oldest station in Indochina. Largely unused since the war, it comes with its own now-stationary steam train. Due to its awkward historical timing, the 84km line received more bombs than passengers.
I ate dinner at a restaurant proudly bearing the blessing of the Lonely Planet. I’d scoffed inwardly at the box-ticking tourists packed in like tempura sardines when I’d wandered past the night before, but their judgement proved sound. Like my breakfast locals, it struck the balance between good value for quality fare albeit at prices few locals would pay. When your GDP’s four times theirs everyone wins. I shared the now near empty restaurant with a Spanish woman sobbing down her phone. Solo travelling has its challenges.
A little earlier, I flirted with the menu of a bar operating around the top band of the tourist tax. The 200 dong cocktails (around £7), explained why the only locals present were serving them. I settled for a beer to earwig on those blessed with company for sundowners. A braying American discussed whether he’d even ‘let his girlfriend go to India’ during some period of high political tension before referencing how he’d recently ‘killed bronchitis’. Malaria would presumably slink out the back door when he stormed the bar. The surrounding women looked more thoughtful but their words were drowned out by his opinions. They came with different accents so I presume it was a hostel crowd.
Sometime before dinner, a cash machine gave me two million dong – the most calming pre-prandial gesture a machine can offer a far-flung traveller.
Breakfast was enlivened by something going off at the hard-to-define business across the street. A young woman employee spent a good while shouting at a middle-aged man who finally descended the interior stairs. Several women passed by to comfort her and eventually the usually invisible police turned up in human form. They listened and nodded without looking inclined to lead anyone away. I was also listening out for any Vietnamese I recognised. ‘Toi’ (‘go away’) was the only phrase I recognised… But what was it about?
I’d been wondering about law enforcement in this theoretically intolerant one-party state. When later in Saigon, a hapless policeman attempted to stop the traffic in front of the Reunification Palace, he was almost flattened by the onrushing mopeds and their impassive pilots. Otherwise, the people model a spirit of cheeky warmth. If the NHS was created to reward a put-upon British people for their wartime suffering, the Vietnamese have perhaps earnt a few millennia of expressing themselves how they wish. Seems fair.
For my last day, I finished off my chosen tourist trips after pottering around the lake and having a coffee with Vung. First, I found the Crazy House, an extraordinarily dream-like labyrinth of connected spaces and rooms created by a local architect. Like what Saruman would’ve done with the Shire if he’d had the time and budget. You could rent one of its exquisitely idiosyncratic rooms, which would be fantastic if they came with magic mushrooms and without hundreds of tourists peeping through its porthole windows. On a tendril-like stairway, an Asian woman asked for a picture with me – her companions roared with laughter. Funny white man make funny photo.
After, I took a taxi to the Truc Lam Zen monastery. Clear signs immediately clarified the need for long trousers. Again. The bottom half of my zip trousers lay on my hotel room floor. Where soldiers would have enforced the rule at the Hanoi Mausoleum, the monks might’ve let my disrespectful dress pass with an extra deep calming inhalation, but I didn’t want to be that tourist. My self-punishment involved sheepishly walking around its borders and reading my book in the outlying gardens. I returned via a 2km cable car over pine forests where the views from its base made sense of the modern sprawl beneath. It was a still a handsome place despite the exponential growth though I’d love to have seen it before the coming of the iron 2-wheeled steed.
From here, I followed a circuitous route home on foot due to the haphazard layout of the roads and the views home being blocked out by the steep hills of the quarter. While in the area, I detoured towards the Catholic cathedral, named variously as St Nicholas, Dalat, Chicken, or even Cock Cathedral. Completed in the early 40s, its style is described as Romanesque revival. Something light and airy in the elegant and airy tan brickwork of the main tower and its tiled blue roof was more reminiscent of the modern Mediterranean than anything out of Asia.
With its history of bloody invasion from the persistent Chinese, marauding Mongols, and infuriating French and US, it’s no surprise most natives are officially without faith. The Catholics and Buddhists duke it out for the minority who nail their colours to the divine mast. The church was packed when I passed and glimpsed inside the nave from the arched entrance of the main tower. Inside, it contrasted with the Catholic churches I knew from Latin America that are built on locally sourced gold and silver. In a later era, in a different place, the business afoot was more spiritual than acquisitive. The guilt’s still free.
For dinner, I ate a spicy squid at one of the outdoor market places before heading to a hotel I’d scoped earlier where an American Blues ‘legend’ allegedly performed… Located east of the lake amongst flasher hotels and casinos, it was unexplored territory and seemed to be frequented by wealthy Chinese. It turned out the guitar man had moved premises. And he was cancelled there too…
In recompense, I shocked five staff at an empty bar by ordering a banana daiquiri. They were embarrassed to charge me the equivalent of £3 – half what I was quoted elsewhere that night. But my efforts to find good music were rewarded unexpectedly. For the couple of men sipping a beer outside were not fellow customers but a 2-piece band who sang and played Western classics on guitar. The lead singer was flattered when I praised his uncanny impersonation of Cat Stevens, but looked compromised by my enthusiasm. An audience of one prolonged a set indefinitely that might otherwise have been cut short.
Mui Ne – Day 20
I had an annoying adventure just getting to the bus station. My taxi’s first stop was the train station. I’d repeated the appropriate full Vietnamese sentence carefully several times, before indicating ‘bus station’ in two languages in my phrasebook to support the thrust of my request. Despite our different preferences, our squabble was good natured and we left on good terms. The folk appear less sensitive here than their regional counterparts. Napoleon referred to the English as a nation of shopkeepers – the Vietnamese with their direct manner and thicker skins perhaps model the traits of street market traders.
I bade farewell to the ladies of Dalat: namely coffee-touting Vung; the hard-working receptionist, and the formerly timid woman at my breakfast café. For my last meal, she now seemed fearlessly happy to see me and overloaded my sandwich sufficiently to satisfy me.
Buying a bus ticket was hard for reasons I’d need Vietnamese to know. The first two desks wouldn’t sell me a ticket – the woman at the second irritably pointing to a phone number pinned to the wall. Then a man led me to another desk where a woman sold me a 2,500-dong ticket to Mui Ne for a 1pm bus before telling me to be ready at midday.
At 12pm, I was duly driven to an obscure ‘bus-stop’ elsewhere in town by a scowling man in a luxury people carrier. Here, I discovered Shriyani sitting behind a parked bus. Also heading for Mui Ne. I’d spent days planning my next destination and – to my thinking – it was a far from obvious choice. Other places – such as a little port or a fishing village – had appealed more, but seemed either hard to reach or leave so while Mui Ne had a kind of low culture party reputation, it also seemed like an easy place to kick back in the off season. During my planning, I’d concluded that I’d spent too much time rushing around and losing track of why I was there. (Why was I there?) It was time to lower the pulse.
Anyway, while I’d found the right bus for the right money, I had the last (and worst) seat in the bus – centre, back, upper level in a sleeper. I chatted with the English couple arranged like sausages horizontally alongside. It was hard not to acknowledge your neighbours in this exposing position. Presumably I lost my 50 Philosophy Classics book here, which I was only half-way through. As it was my only loss on holiday (the reactolite specs returned from being lost daily), I took it in the spirit it was written.
Driving down through the central highlands to the southern coast, I enjoyed the changing scenery on a daytime journey where I could actually see it. For the first time, it was reminiscent of the Vietnam of those films – dense green foliage sprouting all about in tandem with the rising lowland temperature and humidity. At a pit-stop alongside a wide river over which the jungle canopy hunched, this final ingredient of the tableau completed it. I mentioned this to my 20-something horizontal companion, but his blank look suggested he lacked the reference points.
By early evening, I might easily have got off at the wrong town that preceded Mui Ne for once again the lack of a SIM card meant it was all guesswork in an environment where no information is communicated in English. Confusingly, our journey was completed by minibus, which I left while the rest of the passengers were debating the extra money wanted by our new drivers. I had no idea whether they figured I owed them too, but I went unnoticed while the young Europeans debated charges and their specific dropping off points. I had none so wandered off what felt like midway down a 10km strip. (I never found a centre – just created my own and walked 2km in either direction for variety.)
I checked into a hotel with a large optician showroom in its reception. The three or four men working there appeared equally employed by both. I was well overdue an eye test and no doubt it would’ve been good value, but I feared something might be lost in translation. I rented another safe, comfortable en-suite room for less than a tenner. In a country where lodgings are cheap, my choice of what looks okay standing outside was working fine.
For dinner, I crossed the street and ordered the half-done beef pho from a menu of myriad beef options that tonight was only available in two of the advertised 20. The second available was ‘well done’. Bagel twists or poached eff were optional extras. Ironically, my beef seemed quite well done – at least three-quarters, I warrant. The restaurant was manned by a couple of youngsters holding the fort for the odd straggler like myself and the single other customer who also hadn’t the energy or knowledge to walk a few hundred metres for something better.
Today was one of those rare days when I felt fully aware of how wonderful it could be to be alive… The stars were briefly aligned so I let the warmth flow rather than trying to control or decipher the alchemy producing it.
Beyond my opening banana smoothie and bacon and eggs, my ambitions extended little further than to be shaved – I was tiring of my fluffy white holiday beard – before being massaged; eating poolside club sandwiches and seafood platters (I’d already eye-balled my victims); and finishing one of my remaining books.
The most exquisite of shaves came at the gentle hands of the underemployed hairdresser from across the street, who took as long as it needed to slowly pare down the excess of hair on my chin, ears, nose and neck. Leaving scented and looking seven or eight years younger, I pretty much vowed never again to let my stubble grow beyond three days. The only motivation to do so would be to earn another shave.
Afterwards, I booked a space at a perfect cooling swimming pool and a lounger overlooking the sea. I was the only guest. A little way up the long straight road, my spring roll lunch and hot chocolate were followed by an unrequested treat of passion fruit with condensed milk that appeared every time I returned. Here, I lost my prescription sunglasses, which turned up safe the next day behind the counter when I retraced the trail of leisure and self-indulgence. I would continue to lose (and find) them for the remainder of my trip.
The massage took place in the liminal space between pain and pleasure. Massages were one of the main trades on the strip – all I think of the innocent variety unlike Saigon where I believe the sessions were more focused on the ending. (I’m guessing from the on-street marketing.) The list of options was suspiciously wide like a food menu that covers cuisines with nothing in common, so I ordered an hour’s indulgence for the whole body before staggering away stretched, cossetted and bruised before my next appointment. It probably did some good.
That evening, I took a pre-prandial white wine in a rather worldly bar denuded of local charm and boasting a menu of biblical proportions. Unsmilingly, they charged in advance. As I was leaving, Shriyani pulled up on her latest moped. ‘It’s about time!’ I admonished. A young German woman was riding pillion. I was indifferent to the flashy club we visited next door where I mistakenly ordered a short sharp shot when really wanting something longer and subtler. The club employed several DJs and had room for 500 ravers whose places were taken by seven of us. It was like being 20 again, the era when we drifted half-heartedly towards places we felt should visit. All that better music and cheaper drinks at home… but perhaps we didn’t have homes to entertain in then.
The German woman seemed nervous – possibly for the unexpected company of a much older man (me) whose English she struggled to decipher. They returned to their hostel for dinner, while I randomly selected one of the seafood places. Now deserted of custom, the two remaining members of staff seemed thrown by my singular presence. The waitress brought me the two dishes I had expressed an interest in despite only ordering one of them. I dealt with the problem efficiently and without complaint.
I considered skipping onto Vung Tau the next day, which looked intriguing from the mixed reviews. Lively at weekends with a dodgy-sounding ex-forces crowd hungrily lapping up all the Vietnamese extras. They sounded like a colourful cast for a World Report piece.
I spent a lazy afternoon by the pool while waiting for my laundry and bought a bus ticket for Vung Tau. All seemed right with the world still, but my loins were already girded for new pastures. A single day of indulgence proved enough – preparations for my departure were already underway. I’d be bored as hell with a whole holiday of leisure, but one day of recharging was heavenly.