In my last post I was in Nha Trang. After leaving Nha Trang, it was time to head on down the coast to Phan Rang Thap Cham then inland to see Da Lat.
Fish Trap in a Vietnamese stream
The (pineapple) market lady's "friends" wouldn't let her hide from the camera.
It's all in the wrist action - moving rapidly toward me
So many people (Vietnamese) asked me if i was going to DaLat that I felt duty bound to go. Da Lat is in the highlands of south central Vietnam and is meant to be a bit of a jewel. It was however back into hills and a good ol'climb it was too. I rode inland on reasonably flat ground for half a day then got to the base of the hills for lunch. The afternoon was spent climbing, climbing initially back and forward under a hydro power penstock (The big pipes that go straight down a hill into a hydro-electric power station). My map - which has been known to be inaccurate in many places showed the road going up and forking, right to DaLat and left to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) by-passing Da Lat. When I was many hours up the hill I stopped to eat corn cobs offered by a couple resting by the side of the road. They didn't speak English, but after studying the map for a while pointed to a position on the bypass road - meaning I must have passed the turn-off. My heart sank - but I couldn't believe that at 6km/hr I could have missed seeing an intersection. I was NOT about to head back down the hill looking for an intersection that may not be there. I decided to keep riding up. If the man was right and the map too then i'd missed the near road to DaLat but would eventually find the DaLat-HCMC road. If the man was wrong then I'd find the road I was looking for still ahead. It turned out that the map and the man were wrong. The road was indeed above me, 6km past the top of the hill, and the junction was at the town of Dran (clearly shown on the map half way along the bypass road). I reached Dran, found one and only one Guest House that wanted more than I was prepared to pay, so I bought a meal, filled my water bottles and headed up the road a bit further looking for potential camp sites. After a month in Vietnam I was about to spend my 2nd night in the tent. Poor tent, it must be feeling a bit unloved now. The camp spot I chose just happened to be next to a very large rubbish heap/sorting area. But it was on the top of a saddle, flat, overlooked a valley, Dran and a large reservoir and had market gardens on the other side. All in all, the trade off was worth it. I enjoyed being in the tent again - it does feel like home, and the view was really good as long as you didn't look in one direction. The next morning the climb continued - another half day of climbing from Dran to Da Lat. I did reach the top of the main hill after a couple of hours but I was on top with many large undulations to keep me busy into Da Lat. As I climbed the hill through the forest the day before I had made a mental picture of what I thought DaLat would be like, as I rode across the top on the undulations with no forest I re-evaluated and remade my mental picture. Fortunately my remade image wasn't right, because it wasn't favourable. Da Lat was indeed lovely but not anything like I had imagined. In some ways it reminded me of Esfahan in Iran, the countries jewel, making the most of the water front that it has - in this case a lake, with Esfahan a river. The lake was surrounded by beautiful grassy banks and gardens and the buildings of the city centre perched on the side of the hill over-looking the lake (a bit Wellington NZ like but on a tiny scale)
Down by the lake - Da Lat
I picked one of the not too ove-the-top hotels that looked like I might get a view - but it seemed everybody else had done the same. That place was full - and I think that would be quite rare for most of the hotels, as there are just so many of them in Da Lat. Every road has Hotel after Hotel after Hotel. It must be very busy in peak season to warrant that many being there. I moved two doors down and got a room with a view to the side. It was a great place to spend a couple of days, a nice market and plenty of places you could go and avoid the rest of the tourists that were there in the many "Tourist Cafe's".
From DaLat the road decends through pine forest on a great bicycle road, allowing plenty of chances to pass the many buses, motorbikes and cars also on the road, then after about 10km you plateau and continue at an elevated but not so high altitude (I forgot to mention that the altitude at DaLat made the sunny days wonderful, warm radiant sun with blue skies and a lovely low 20's air temperature.) The plateau was warmer than DaLat but not to the extent of HCMC.
Drying Pine cones for seeds to plant - sounds like corn popping
Whilst in DaLat I did something that I'd actually never bothered doing much before - before entering a big city - I located the backpacker/cheap hotel district in HCMC on the web and download a map of the city (to store and view on my camera) so that when I entered HCMC in a few days time, I would have some idea of where I should be going - not going in blind as I've done on most occassions. It was a wonderful thing to do, I really dont know why I hadn't bothered doing it before. Hmmm....
the local industry near Dinh Quan
Dinh Quan, big rocks
One of the places enroute to HCMC was Bao Loc, home of the silk worm breeding industry according to my maps "places of interest for tourists" The afternoon I got to Bao Loc I searched high and low, found numerous silk textile weaving factories, none that accepted tourists and no breeders. I did my searching on a motorbike taxi thinking that the information that I had been given by my guest house would be correct and I could get there in the rain directly instead of riding my bike slowly and searching an unknown city with no map getting soaked. But after three factories I gave up and headed back to the guest house to turn on the TV and watch a few different shows on the "Nat Geo Adventure", "Cable Channel". (National Geographics channel for showing videos that people have made whilst travelling the world, visiting strange places in strange ways and the like.) It felt really strange watching these things in a hotel room whilst cycling to Australia from Europe.
The entry to HCMC came a couple of days later, I had planned to stay 40km out and go into the city the next morning, but when I got to where I had planned to stay I still had a few hours of cycling time, the weather had cooled off with the sun behind clouds (It had got stinking hot when I came down from the plateau to sea level again) and I just didn't have the self control to stop myself from going on. It started raining a few km down the road, but that only lasted about 45 minutes. It made the road (motorway) potentially a bit slippery, but it dried up once the sun came out and made the humidity the enemy. The traffic into and around HCMC has a really bad reputation, so I expected the worst and was pleasantly suprised. It wasn't that bad. No worse than many of the other large cities I've been through. But I do wish I had a companion with a movie camera to take video footage of me traversing some of the roundabouts there. I revil in that type of traffic, and love getting through faster and easier than all the locals. It's all in picking the gaps and adjusting speed, it seems some of the locals haven't worked that out yet.
The HCMC Landmark - The market
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) - I'm walking on the footpath, the roads to the left
Cu Chi Tunnels: Sniper hole
Compared to the rest of Vietnam, HCMC was "expensive". Many of the items I had been purchasing regularly through Vietnam were 1.5 to 2 times the price when bought in HCMC, and it wasn't just tourist prices, marked prices in shops away from tourist areas were like it too. I ate in a cafe the first night surrounded by Vietnamese, eating off the same menu with marked prices and watched a guy fork out a Vietnamese small fortune for a basic meal for he, his wife and young child. (It was my most expensive Vietnamese meal) From then on I went just 1 or 2 blocks east to an area where there were absolutely no tourists, but many footpath vendors of street food and ate there. The prices were still higher than elsewhere, but much much better. (the other options included eating near my guest house in the back packer area - in what I will again call Latté café's at increased prices, or going a few block north to the 5 star hotel area and picking a restaurant where I could spend my retirement money.)
Leaving Ho Chi Minh City was planned to be direct to the Cambodian border, but I changed my route yet again and went south to the Mekong Delta. I'd miss the Cu Chi tunnels going that way, so booked a trip from HCMC to the tunnels on one of my days there. Cu Chi is one of the areas just north east of the city where the "Viet Cong" as we know them had their tunnels for living in and fighting from. You go through a section of tunnel, but they fortunately don't have the "man traps" that were used during the war to stop troops from the US and its allies . They do have some of the traps in a display at ground level so you can see the sorts of things they dreamt up, they are no for the squimish. Also not for the squimish - no I shouldnt say that - it's really a must see - is the War Remnants Museum. It has equipment displays and photo displays showing events from the war without the coloured glasses that the west would otherwise see them through. Some might say it shows the war from the Vietnamese side, but many of the photos are really powerful images that speak for themselves, of western troops doing things that we have signed conventions to stop. They are contained in a memorial display of photos by many photo journalists killed in the conflict.
Heading into the delta means remaining in "Tourist Territory" and so you must play "the pricing game" continually.
One of thousands of Channels in the Delta
Cycle touring the Delta
The Mekong Delta Vietnams food basket - fruit sorting
I stayed one night on an island along with a dutch guy I met in the area. When it was dinner time there was only one place to eat. - the restaurant in the hotel. We'd explored the island and there were other places, but closed in the evenings as they survive on the Tourist Boat trade. At the Hotel restaurant, the waitress gave me the menu, I looked at it and said that I wouldn't be eating, that it was too expensive. The prices were 100,000 and 200,000 Dong for mains (4 and 8 USD) and I normally pay one fifth to one tenth of that. (Willem's Lonely Planet listed mains at this place being around 50,000) I wasn't going to eat and pay those prices just because they had a monolpoly - even if I did have the money. (I always have emergency rations and some foods in my bags plus a fuel stove and an electric water boiler that I can use for instant noodles amongst other things.) It's the principle... As soon as they realised they were going to make NO sale at all they brought me the "Vietmases Menu" from which I selected a full meal for around 30,000. OK, I couldnt read it, but I knew enough of the basics to select one of the beef dishes with rice. Exactly what would come would be a suprise, but it would be Beef with Rice in some format. The next day for lunch - on the same island - I went to one of the - now open - other places. Their menu had dishes 200,000 and 300,000 Dong, I'd balked at the price but had not got to the point of refusing when the waiter/owner said "Would you like a Vietnamese meal, 2 Spring Rolls, Rice, Pork, Soup 15,000 Dong?" "Yes please" was the obvious answer. (and it came with an extra bowl of rice (when they thought I was a bit scrawny), Iced Tea and a Banana to finish off with. (Iced Tea is free just about everywhere else in Vietnam except HCMC). Whilst in the Delta it's normal to do one of the boat tours, so Willem and I hired ourselves a boatman and headed off at midday. They take you into some of the small canals, visit some of the local producers and generally explore the area. As we headed into one of the small canals we transfered into small boats with a Vietnamese lady paddling front and back (OK, bow and stern if you prefer - though it sounds a bit nautical for this type of craft). Of the many many boats emerging from the canal two really stood out. All the boats were full of tourist in tourist clothes, but two boats stood out with their passengers adorned in bright orange life jackets. I'm guessing they booked their tour from home. Judging by one of the accents, back in the litigous USA.
Late afternoon by the river in Vinh Long
Next was Vinh Long where I was pleasantly suprised with one of the tour agents. I went in to ask about what there was to see, and once he knew I had a bike he drew maps and explained how to get around the places by bike without ever trying to sell a tour. And he told me to come in the next morning and he'd do the same with an alternate route to my next days destination of Can Tho. For anybody going there, find the really cheap hotel right on the waterfront. The one that would have been a really nice hotel in it's day (but it's day was a long time ago). In the front of that hotel is a tour agent, and he's really good. Also in Vinh Long is a good little Cobra Restaurant. No that's not its name that's its cuisine. I was sitting there having drinks with Caroline from the UK, who very conveniently happened to be vegetarian, when the guy working there, (and wanting to impress the visiting female guest) brought over some of their specialty for us to try. I'd never thought of snakes being full of bones, but it's not unlike fish, lots of ribs.
Cobra - very like fish in texture and bones
The taste is quite neutral, a similar texture to fish but with no fishy flavour, quite flavourless in fact, getting its flavour from the preparation and spices.
A couple of days after that I'm on a boat from Chau Doc in Vietnam to Neak Luong in Cambodia (and a few hours up stream).
First impressions of Cambodia, expensive. (is that all I ever think about). So many tourists in Vietnam told me that Cambodia was so much better than Vietnam because they didn't play the "tourist price" game. Maybe they don't do it as much, but around Phenom Penh and some rural districts the prices are always high, typically higher than the "tourist price" in Vietnam. My first night in Cambodia was in Neak Luong, in a hotel where I paid $5USD. The room was about as low as I go standard wise - the one around the corner was below that standard and refused to negotiate below there initial price of $6USD. And yes the rumour I'd heard that Cambodian ATMs dispense USD is true, and so many things are priced to USD too. As for the tourist price game, they do play. When they give me a rediculous set of prices I tell them so and the price often changes.
In Phnom Penh, I spent a morning at the S21 site - a former school turned into prison and torture site by the Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge regime. Now a museum to the genocide committed under his rule. A visit here is like a visit to a concentration camp in Europe, chilling and emotional.
S21 former school converted to prison and Torture Centre for Pol Pot. (The frame in the foreground was swings and ropes at the school and used for suspending people by their wrists - behind their backs by Pol Pot.)
From Phenom Penh it was north on Highway 5 along the west side of the lake to Battambang where I'll head across the lake to Siam Reap and Angkor (tomorrow).
Cycle re-Cycle - Phnom Penh
Cambodian School Bus
Door to Door Salesman
Home Delivery
Well that's it for this time - thanks to everyone that's stayed with me for the past YEAR. Yes, it is now a year since I was in Barcelona, trying to find my way from the airport to the city at midnight on the wrong side of the road, with no map, on roads with detours, and in a place where I didn't speak the language. I've learnt alot since then.
Jeff
