Crazy House

Pretty crazy, the brainchild of the architect daughter of a high ranking communist party member. She moved to Dalat and created this amazing place. It used to be the family house and hotel and hotel rooms, all wonderfully themed and called things like the Honey Room, Bear Room (or similar). No longer rented out as a hotel I’d imagine it makes a small fortunte from visitors. I’ve never seen anything like it. Imagination gone wild in the form of reinforced concrete, amazing carved wood, plaster and chicken wire. There’s a limit to what reinforced concrete can do though, I think and some bits are particularly wobbly. Don’t think it would pass any building regs in the UK! Kind of makes it all the more amazing. The threat of danger in an unregulated world!

Some wobbly bits!

Dalat

“Honey Mooners and Kitsch Seekers love Dalat” says the Lonely Planet. That has to arouse curiosity surely? It’s true. It’s a brilliant description! Not even sure how else it could be described. Right on your way in you realise there’s something different about this place. It could be the manicured public lawns, the round about monuments made out of hundreds of flowery pot plans or the concrete animals all over the place. It’s also lovely and cool being quite high up for Vietnam which seems to make a massive difference. The locals seem to all be wearing coats most of the time but that, frankly is ridiculous.

These guys have chosen now to pull an ancient encrusted peddleo (no idea how you spell that) up off the lake bed. Behind me, while taking this picture was a spangly horse and carriage and probably a selection of brightly colours concrete animals.

Floating peddle powered swan anyone?

No? Perhaps a dolphin with a wind screen and door instead?

Down at the market, famous for its jellied fruit sweets (what else for the kitsch capital of the east?). Free samples too.

Just find a nice spot on the street and you can pretty much see anything go by, maybe not quite on the bizarre scale of Hanoi but hey!

Easy Riders – Vietnam Style

Wondering why you are greeted with the fairly unexpected “Easy Rider?” shout at every corner or when coming out of any doorway must be quite a common thought in Dalat, Vietnam. Not, as one might think, a question more suited to the seedier night bound alleyways but actually a business proposition by someone owning a two wheeled motorised conveyance or “Motor bike” and perhaps traditionally a large beard, although that kind of facial hair is a strange and rare luxury for most in this part of the world.

Anyway Easy Riders are everywhere in Dalat at least and they will, at the drop of a hat take you on either a city or countryside tour for which they all have printed itineraries you can peruse. You can of course ask them to quote you for a trip to the places of your choice which is what we tried to do. Easier said than done is all I’ll say to that! We were more than happy with what we got though. They will also take you anywhere in Vietnam which could be great fun. Apparently people often become good friends with their easy rider and stay in contact etc.

With ours we went to…

See a big dragon in a Pagoda

some crazy freaky extreme kitsch “Love in” at the Valley of Love (More later)

A minority hill village

with these guys you can stop when you want too which is great for photographing local life…

A nice lake

A really big pagoda!

and the Crazy House. Quite literally crazy, yup, that’s a giraffe in the middle there. More on that later

Oh yeh and we tacked on the Post Office at the end so send our postcards.

Kath’s Easy Rider

Ha Long Bay Junk Trip

We went budget on this. I’m definitely not complaining because this was so cheap it’s not really possible to complain. If I can offer any advice at all then it’s at the bottom of this post. Anywhere (from your hotel to the laundry maid) in Hanoi will offer you this trip around Ha Long bay on a Junk. They’re for 2 or 3 days, with one night on the boat and one in a hotel if you go on the 3 day one, which the one we chose.

I have to say this wasn’t quite what I was expecting but all in all it was still great. The guidebook kind of described a tranquil, lounge around on a traditional Junk being wined and dined while taking in the amazing island scenery (there are something like 990 islands in the bay), floating villages and general interesting stuff. This is actually pure mass tourism done as cheaply as possible but in an amazing location that, for me anyway worked out pretty well. Some other people we met weren’t so lucky and had to basically mutiny to get the guide and crew to take them where their itinerary said they should have gone. Thankfully we didn’t have that. The apparent complete lack of organization could be a bit frustrating. There was an awful lot of waiting around while busses turned up and boats met other boats. A huge endless dance of boats, busses, punters, passports* and guides that must surely regularly end in disaster was strangely fascinating to watch. In between all that, a great time was had by all, in some amazing settings. We had a great mixed bunch on our boat and there was much rejoicing into the early hours even if the captain did at one point come screaming out to drag a couple of particularly happy teenage girls from the glowing phosphorescent night waters.

There’s quite a jam at the various stop off points. If you were looking for quiet leisurely secluded sailing this probably isn’t the place.

================================================

The 3 day 2 night budget trips offered by agents are all exactly the same, ultimately going with the same boat operators in the end by the looks of it. They all offer one night on the boat and one night in a hotel. The prices we heard people paying on our very boat ranged from US$90 down to US$30 for basically exactly the same thing. Some people who chose the luxury version did go off to a “better” hotel for the night they spent on shore but from what people said it was pretty much like our “budget” hotel, they even had to pay extra for butter for their toast in the morning

If it is possible to do this trip in luxury I’m not sure how. These junks we saw below look a bit more like the picture postcard versions. Not sure who runs them though.

The well respected Kangaroo Cafe (make sure you find the real one by the lake not one of the many many others all with “Lonely Planet Recommended” in the windows) charges about US$125 I think. That might be it but I cant say as it was too expensive for us.

[More Vietnam Pictures]

*Oh yes, if your passport is precious to you, you will probably want to close your eyes and forget about that when on this trip. Some crazy “law” says you have to surrender your passport when going to sea and the location of it for most people on our boat was entirely unknown most of the time. Some people got pretty upset about this, one Israeli flatly refused to surrender it so couldn’t go. Everyone did get theirs back bang on time when we arrived back, how that happened I have no idea.

Propaganda Anyone?

If you’re craving a dose of propaganda (say, after a visit to Cuba for example) try this place! The museum behind the Mausoleum. I think it’s called the Ho Chi Minh museum but could be wrong there.

If he wanted it or not, Ho Chi Minh is now a god, where even his old shoes are displayed with saintly reverence.

If you ever wonder what good all your toiling in the fields does and what it’s all for take a wonder through these halls. As with some of the museums we’ve been to in Cuba I found I really had to concentrate on being a mere observer. If I thought too much about the sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle propaganda it could cause all sorts of worry. Best not to get too involved unless you’re going to do something about, which is fairly unlikely I’d say this time!

Propaganda is all over the world and on our doorstep of course. It’s good people can spot it mostly these days.

Ho Chi Minh’s Fish Tank

Yup, that’s his fish tank. And those, I guess, are his fish. Both of them.

And this is his mausoleum. Closed when we went (Friday I think??) so we couldn’t go in.

In his will he wanted to be cremated and pretty much forgotten about I think but instead they (the people) built a whacking great building where he will be paraded before the public for all eternity.

The presidential place grounds containing the old (grand) palace, fish tank (in his rather more modest garden house) and car collection are behind this. Whatever you do don’t deviate from the path! We skipped the palace and car collection to get away from the crowds and got shouted at by people with guns when we tried to go back the wrong way on the path. Some things just aren’t worth it!

Vietnam here we come!

Can’t believe this happened to us\we kick arse! It was only on the plane a few hours ago we were leafing through the LP and reading the bit of advice about South East Asia. “Pockets are not for money or valuables” here, the same could be said for any place at the wrong time of course and then another bit of advice we liked “If you worry about being ripped off all the time it will just get you down” and stuff about getting it in perspective, a few dollars here and there isn’t going to kill you. You are a walking ATM, and, however tight your budget you can spare it compared to the people you’re going to meet etc. “Don’t let it get you down”. We’ve certainly experienced that walking ATM feeling rather a lot so far and of course we thought we could spot a scam a mile away having thwarted a good few already!

Our introduction to Vietnam was a text book scam, we could even see it happening. Very clever though, this could only work on travelers laden with bags and unfamiliar with the place (that’ll be us then!). The one and only bit of advice that could have saved us from this was “Get the bleedin’ hotel airport transfer!” It might be a tad more expensive than a taxi but its so worth it!

So there we were being driven along in a lovely taxi after showing him the name of the hotel we’d booked and a map to it, marveling at the mad traffic and how no one was seemingly getting squashed. The taxi driver asks us if we’ve been to Vietnam before, we say “No”. Doh ,what we should probably say is something like “yes we lived in [insert city name here] for a year – we’re meeting our friends at the hotel we always go to. We’re working in a school\orphanage” etc etc.

He calls his mate, arranges for him to be waiting outside a building with the hotel name. He drives us there, meets his mate who comes up to the taxi saying his hotel [insert hotel name here] has had a flood but its ok, he’s arranged another one. He gets in the taxi and directs the driver to the other hotel. We’re suspicious but really cant do anything laden with bags and with the taxi driver in on the scam.

We get out at the different hotel and it looks OK, looks quite nice actually. Still suspicious. They should know what our names are as we’ve booked. We ask them the question and he makes a fake call to the “flooded” hotel. They can’t answer as their reception is out of order (quite plausible I guess). The taxi has gone, he don’t have much choice. We ask to see a room and it looks fine, we check in and leave passports. Thinking about it, we’re still not happy so decide to walk to the proper hotel to check it was the one we were taken to. We walk out, I collect our passports saying we need to change some money. Few streets later we find the real hotel perfectly dry and lovely. Wander back to the dodgy hotel, pack up, empty the mini bar and leave. On the way out I felt it only proper to let the owner know (quite calmly and reasonably I might add) what a “bad” person was, how he’d let himself, his country and the future of his hotel down. I got great satisfaction from that, especially when he started quaking. Never made anyone do that before