Easy riding, sorta

On Sunday I spent one day in Da Lat, a city on the edge of the Vietnamese Central Highlands. As it was just a one day stop over before heading to Saigon, Petra and I decided to take a motorcycle tour of all of the good things to see. (Jenny left our little group Sunday morning, as she was catching a flight to Kuala Lumpur.) We thought we were getting an "easy rider" tour, tours on the back of classic Honda motorcycles. Instead, we got little motorbikes. That's the way it goes in Vietnam, though. You never get exactly what you expect. In fact, should you actually get exactly what you expected, be thankful and tell the rest of us all about it.

Besides the style of bike, the tour itself was great. Our tour guide (my driver) spoke excellent English and taught us a lot about the progression of the Vietnamese economy over the past 35 years, from Communism to Socialism to their recent entrance into the World Trade Organization. Sadly, he also taught us a lot about the problems Vietnam has with racism, as he is of an ethnic minority here and has worked all his life trying to escape the prejudice imposed upon him. It saddens me that there seems to be no where in this world where people manage to just get along. At least, no where that I've found yet. Come on people, all we need is love.

Da Lat has fantastic climate and great soil (thankfully untouched by Agent Orange), making farming the thing there. Somewhat surprisingly, flowers are one of the big cash crops, although vegetables are also grown in abundance. The other huge crop is coffee. I haven't checked his facts, but the guide told me that Vietnam is number 2 in the world for coffee exportation. Around town, you see fields upon fields of coffee trees, every front yard is used for drying coffee beans, and the air is heavy with the fragrance of green coffee beans. The crops bring a lot of money into the area. So much money, in fact, that the huge, beautiful homes in the area all belong to the farmers.

Fields of lettuce

Fields of daisies

Coffee, still green on the tree

Coffee drying in the streets

After the farms we walked through a minority village, then got to see how rice wine is made. Pretty strong stuff, let me tell you. From there we moved on to a huge waterfall and a pagoda with the best happy Buddha that I've ever seen. A curious sight was that of other Buddha's with what we would consider a swastika emblazoned on their chests. It takes a moment to remember that Buddhism originated in what is now India, and that Hitler corrupted a symbol of luck and prosperity originally found in Sanskrit.

Vietnamese Buddha

Best happy Buddha ever

Our final stop of the day was the Crazy House, which is actually multiple fanciful buildings that twist, turn and grow like something out of Alice in Wonderland. It's not something you'd expect to find here, but it was quite fun to explore. All in all, a good day. I repeat myself, but seeing Vietnam from the back of a motorbike is just cool.

Climbing around the crazy house

We passed this guy, or he us, 4 times before I could get this shot.

On a side note, cute Christmas displays are popping up in some of the shops and hotels. That and the fact that Poinsettias grow wild here (and northern Thailand and Laos) and I've got my own little holiday spirit going on, all the way over here!

Poinsettias

Da Lat store front