Catching up from Cambodia, after Siem Reap I took a boat to Phnom Penh, a fast boat across a big lake, not all that interesting. Phnom Penh was just too quick for me to enjoy it. I got there, went to my guesthouse and dropped my backpack, then hurried off to the Tuol Sleng (S-21 Prison) Museum which I wanted to see, after that went for an even more interesting motorcycle ride in the daily downpour 12 km out into the countryside to see the memorial at the Choeng Elk killing fields, after this I was exhausted and feeling rather sick. That was, judging by the symptoms, something that I ate, not from riding motorbike in the rain. Nor from the stomach-churning nature of the only two places I went to see in Phnom Penh, I wanted to see someplace else to bring my experience in the country up to the present, but did not have the energy. So that night I laid in my bed trying to figure out if I had enough energy to ride the bus the next day, which it turns out I did. I took a bus to the border (which was a long and very bumpy ride) and walked across the border to another bus which brought me the rest of the way to Saigon where I got a room and drank great quantities of water and fruit juices and started taking my traveler’s diarrhea pills, which seem to have worked, mostly.
My friends got here fine on Monday. Tuesday we tried to get them adjusted, and took a tour on a procession of three cyclos to some sights in Saigon - a temple, some old French buildings like the Notre Dame Cathedral (NOT the one in Paris...), and the former Presidential Palace. Wed. we took a group tour up to Tay Ninh province and saw the place where the Cao Dai sect started and their big temple, then in the afternoon we toured the old Vietcong tunnels at Cu Chi - where during the war communists just kept popping up out of nowhere and nobody could figure out where they were coming from. Thursday we went to the history museum here in town and the War Remnants Museum. Today we took another tour to the Mekong Delta, rode a bunch of boats, big ones, little ones, and in-between ones, and ate some luscious fruit and saw lots of water and other amusing stuff like a bee farm and our guide walking around with a python around his neck offering to plop it on anybody who wanted a picture (it was a fat python, not very hungry I would judge). They are amused by the downpour that happens most every afternoon, and the geckos you see on every wall, and the way Vietnamese people put pickup truck loads of stuff on bicycles. So I feel old and experienced ‘'cause I had forgotten about all of that stuff. Anyway, it is really fun to hang out together, I have not heard so much about home for a VERY long time. Tomorrow (Saturday) morning we get on a bus to Dalat, in the central highlands.
Friday, June 27, 2003
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Friday, June 20, 2003
Angkor and the Bolaven
I am right now in Cambodia, in Siem Reap right next to Angkor Wat. I spent the last two days wandering through ancient temples. It was, well, it was amazing, and it was also an amusing tourist experience aside from being amazing. On the amazing aspect of it, I took I think more pictures than I have ever taken in such a short time, including when my Lao friend commandeered my camera and filled it up with pictures of her and her family in front of Buddha statues...
Anyway, did I tell you about Pakxe? That was in southern Lao, and the most exciting thing that happened there was that I rented a motorbike for a day and went way up to some place called Bolaven Plateau and saw lots of coffee plantations, and ethnic minority villages, and an amazing waterfall called Tat Fan or something like that.
And tomorrow I will take the boat (I still do get to take a boat, only this is kind of a fast boat I think) to Phnom Penh, and I'll probably go the rest of the way to Saigon on Sunday. My boat starts near here, on the Tonle Sap Lake. This lake is weird - in the dry season it is one quarter of the size it is in the wet season. The funny thing is, that is not just because of runoff from around the lake. The Tonle Sap is connected to the Mekong by a relatively long river, and in the dry season the water runs down the river to the Mekong, and to the SEA at Ho Chi Minh City as one would expect. However, in the wet season the level of the Mekong rises and the water says ‘Hmm lets see now, should I go to Saigon or should I go to Siem Reap?’ and some of it decides to go to Siem Reap, and thus the river turns around and flows INTO the lake, taking away some of the extra water from the Mekong. I don't think it gets all that much deeper, but it is really flat here, so the lake just gets way way bigger. All that (and more) I learned in a museum here set up by an NGO that works with street kids.
Another place I went to was the landmine museum. The guy who set this up got thrown in jail for a while because either A) he had dangerous (still active) mines and ammunition in the museum like the police said, or B) the police and the people in charge here didn't want the road to Angkor Wat to be 'marred' by signs for a landmine museum, reminding tourists (like they had forgotten) that Cambodia has more history than the Angkorian period. Anyway, that was interesting and I only went there because the guy I hired to drive me around to all the temples on his motorbike told me about it - there are no signs for it anymore. And the guy who started this museum, really just a big collection of leftover bombs etc, is the same age as me - his parents were killed when he was five, he then worked for the Khmer Rouge and learned to lay mines, then was captured by the Vietnamese (who invaded Cambodia in 1979 and took power from the Khmer Rouge) and worked for their army, then after the Vietnamese left he worked for the new Cambodian army (still fighting the Khmer Rouge) and after the UN came in he stopped being a soldier and worked as a de-miner, which he still does, as well as providing a home for numerous mine victims. All of this in a little shack, really, that serves as a “museum”. So, like I said, that was interesting.
My flight here was uneventful, in spite of all the bad things I had heard about Lao Aviation. It was a propeller plane, but there were maybe 15 people on it with room for maybe 60-70, so we were certainly not overloaded. When I got here I had to sign a paper that said “I really really really honest to my Grandma do not have SARS, and if I do I'll stand in a corner with my nose on the wall all day long” ha.
Oh, that ha reminded me, when I was motorbiking in Lao I had a funny conversation. I got a helmet with my motorbike (rather a novelty in this part of the world, but it made me feel a bit better about my novice motorbiking skills). But they didn't have full face helmets, only the kind with nothing over your face/jaw. So, anyway, I am going along gaping at the forest and being amazed at life in general, when suddenly this fat bug comes sailing up to me and dives into the space between my head and my helmet, and I know he was fat because he got stuck right in front of my ear. That was good, because I could hear what he was saying - first he said “Well what the sam hill was that?” Then he said “Aha, it's a person, just a funny color, I know what to do with these people.” And he proceeded to firmly plant his sharp end in the side of my head. OW. Well I stopped my motorbike very quickly (without flipping myself off the front) and tried to take off my helmet as fast as possible without forgetting to unstrap it. Well, the bug left, ran or fell or flew or something, I don't know. But there was some big piece of him planted in my head. He was a good planter too. In a string of amazing coincidences, I had my swiss army knife with me in my bag, AND remembered that I had it in my bag, AND remembered that it had a tweezers in it. So, in probably the first time I ever legitimately used those tweezers, I got them out to pull out this piece of bug from my head. It was conveniently placed for me to see it clearly in my bike mirrors, and I could see exactly how it stuck in my head and when I pulled on it, my head moved right along with it - it must have had some nasty barbs on it or something. Anyway, I got it out soon, probably like two minutes after it was put in. My head is still sore there - I'm glad it wasn't stuck there too long, or I might not have been able to put my helmet back on! Anyway, that's just a note for anyone who was wondering what the dangers of riding a motorbike with a faceguardLESS helmet were!
I didn't really talk about Angkor did I? Well, there are loads of temples and monuments around here, Angkor Wat (Wat meaning temple, Angkor being the name of the place/kingdom I guess) is just the kind of best preserved/restored one. It's also really big. Most of the stuff was built around 11th - 13th Cent I think. Did you know you can go up in a hot air balloon to watch the sun rise/set over the temples? And the incredible $40 that it costs for a three day pass goes mostly to a Cambodian oil company... go figure. And I should go eat dinner now, I have to get up early tomorrow to get on this boat to Phnom Penh.
Anyway, did I tell you about Pakxe? That was in southern Lao, and the most exciting thing that happened there was that I rented a motorbike for a day and went way up to some place called Bolaven Plateau and saw lots of coffee plantations, and ethnic minority villages, and an amazing waterfall called Tat Fan or something like that.
And tomorrow I will take the boat (I still do get to take a boat, only this is kind of a fast boat I think) to Phnom Penh, and I'll probably go the rest of the way to Saigon on Sunday. My boat starts near here, on the Tonle Sap Lake. This lake is weird - in the dry season it is one quarter of the size it is in the wet season. The funny thing is, that is not just because of runoff from around the lake. The Tonle Sap is connected to the Mekong by a relatively long river, and in the dry season the water runs down the river to the Mekong, and to the SEA at Ho Chi Minh City as one would expect. However, in the wet season the level of the Mekong rises and the water says ‘Hmm lets see now, should I go to Saigon or should I go to Siem Reap?’ and some of it decides to go to Siem Reap, and thus the river turns around and flows INTO the lake, taking away some of the extra water from the Mekong. I don't think it gets all that much deeper, but it is really flat here, so the lake just gets way way bigger. All that (and more) I learned in a museum here set up by an NGO that works with street kids.
Another place I went to was the landmine museum. The guy who set this up got thrown in jail for a while because either A) he had dangerous (still active) mines and ammunition in the museum like the police said, or B) the police and the people in charge here didn't want the road to Angkor Wat to be 'marred' by signs for a landmine museum, reminding tourists (like they had forgotten) that Cambodia has more history than the Angkorian period. Anyway, that was interesting and I only went there because the guy I hired to drive me around to all the temples on his motorbike told me about it - there are no signs for it anymore. And the guy who started this museum, really just a big collection of leftover bombs etc, is the same age as me - his parents were killed when he was five, he then worked for the Khmer Rouge and learned to lay mines, then was captured by the Vietnamese (who invaded Cambodia in 1979 and took power from the Khmer Rouge) and worked for their army, then after the Vietnamese left he worked for the new Cambodian army (still fighting the Khmer Rouge) and after the UN came in he stopped being a soldier and worked as a de-miner, which he still does, as well as providing a home for numerous mine victims. All of this in a little shack, really, that serves as a “museum”. So, like I said, that was interesting.
My flight here was uneventful, in spite of all the bad things I had heard about Lao Aviation. It was a propeller plane, but there were maybe 15 people on it with room for maybe 60-70, so we were certainly not overloaded. When I got here I had to sign a paper that said “I really really really honest to my Grandma do not have SARS, and if I do I'll stand in a corner with my nose on the wall all day long” ha.
Oh, that ha reminded me, when I was motorbiking in Lao I had a funny conversation. I got a helmet with my motorbike (rather a novelty in this part of the world, but it made me feel a bit better about my novice motorbiking skills). But they didn't have full face helmets, only the kind with nothing over your face/jaw. So, anyway, I am going along gaping at the forest and being amazed at life in general, when suddenly this fat bug comes sailing up to me and dives into the space between my head and my helmet, and I know he was fat because he got stuck right in front of my ear. That was good, because I could hear what he was saying - first he said “Well what the sam hill was that?” Then he said “Aha, it's a person, just a funny color, I know what to do with these people.” And he proceeded to firmly plant his sharp end in the side of my head. OW. Well I stopped my motorbike very quickly (without flipping myself off the front) and tried to take off my helmet as fast as possible without forgetting to unstrap it. Well, the bug left, ran or fell or flew or something, I don't know. But there was some big piece of him planted in my head. He was a good planter too. In a string of amazing coincidences, I had my swiss army knife with me in my bag, AND remembered that I had it in my bag, AND remembered that it had a tweezers in it. So, in probably the first time I ever legitimately used those tweezers, I got them out to pull out this piece of bug from my head. It was conveniently placed for me to see it clearly in my bike mirrors, and I could see exactly how it stuck in my head and when I pulled on it, my head moved right along with it - it must have had some nasty barbs on it or something. Anyway, I got it out soon, probably like two minutes after it was put in. My head is still sore there - I'm glad it wasn't stuck there too long, or I might not have been able to put my helmet back on! Anyway, that's just a note for anyone who was wondering what the dangers of riding a motorbike with a faceguardLESS helmet were!
I didn't really talk about Angkor did I? Well, there are loads of temples and monuments around here, Angkor Wat (Wat meaning temple, Angkor being the name of the place/kingdom I guess) is just the kind of best preserved/restored one. It's also really big. Most of the stuff was built around 11th - 13th Cent I think. Did you know you can go up in a hot air balloon to watch the sun rise/set over the temples? And the incredible $40 that it costs for a three day pass goes mostly to a Cambodian oil company... go figure. And I should go eat dinner now, I have to get up early tomorrow to get on this boat to Phnom Penh.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
My friend and guide, Jook.
Monday, June 16, 2003
"Really hard to get"
The bus ride from Hanoi to Vientiane was longish, the Vietnamese border police were kind of funny in their seriousness about extorting 10,000 dong from everyone 'for the stamp'. Ha. If I ever start bribing people it is going to be for more than 67 cents! Lao mountains are beautiful; the villages looked like northern Thailand. Vientiane was full of temples. Big temples. I went to see a bunch of them, along with a great big golden stupa shaped like a lotus bloom that is the symbol of Laos in general. At one temple, I met a monk who spoke English and talked with him for awhile. I thought I had a quote of the day, then he gave me another one.
#1 – “Enlightenment is really hard to get“
#2 – Regarding a DVD of American pro wrestling, “Now you must answer me completely honestly, is this real?”
Buddha Park is a kind of mixture between an amusement park and a temple. Just a big yard full of big and little concrete Buddhas in various poses, as well as a few elephants and crocodiles, and a three storey pumpkin with heaven, earth and hell inside it (and a lot of cobwebs - in all three, I guess spiders are mortal too).
I rode bike outside of town to where the road went off the bank above the Mekong (that wasn't supposed to happen, I tend to get lost a lot - why do you think I'm in Laos) so I stopped and watched the Mekong, and some tiny fishermen on the other bank for awhile, and some kind person just randomly came up out of nowhere and gave me a big glass of cold water (hopefully it was not Mekong Water because I did drink it). After turning around and trying how many times to ask directions to where I wanted to go (why is it that after a whole year of studying two sort of difficult languages, I still go somewhere where I can't even remember how to say Thank You to people?) I end up sitting in a little restaurant across from yet another huge temple with Buddha the size of the house I visited sitting on the roof, and trying to convince a friend there that I really didn't want to drink many glasses of Bia Lao before pedaling back to town in the heat.
Last night took a 9 hr bus ride. This was a full sized bus barreling through the countryside of Lao to transport, count ‘em up, TWO tourists, and three guys to drive and push buffalos out of the way, from Vientiane to Pakse. Well, at least I had room to sleep, even though I still didn't get much.
I should go back there someday, my friend whose house I visited told me of so many other places to go and see... Anyway, now I am on my way to Cambodia, Pakxe is like the last bit of town (and it is only a bit of town) before the border, which I will cross as soon as I get my passport back with my Vietnamese re-entry visa.
#1 – “Enlightenment is really hard to get“
#2 – Regarding a DVD of American pro wrestling, “Now you must answer me completely honestly, is this real?”
Buddha Park is a kind of mixture between an amusement park and a temple. Just a big yard full of big and little concrete Buddhas in various poses, as well as a few elephants and crocodiles, and a three storey pumpkin with heaven, earth and hell inside it (and a lot of cobwebs - in all three, I guess spiders are mortal too).
I rode bike outside of town to where the road went off the bank above the Mekong (that wasn't supposed to happen, I tend to get lost a lot - why do you think I'm in Laos) so I stopped and watched the Mekong, and some tiny fishermen on the other bank for awhile, and some kind person just randomly came up out of nowhere and gave me a big glass of cold water (hopefully it was not Mekong Water because I did drink it). After turning around and trying how many times to ask directions to where I wanted to go (why is it that after a whole year of studying two sort of difficult languages, I still go somewhere where I can't even remember how to say Thank You to people?) I end up sitting in a little restaurant across from yet another huge temple with Buddha the size of the house I visited sitting on the roof, and trying to convince a friend there that I really didn't want to drink many glasses of Bia Lao before pedaling back to town in the heat.
Last night took a 9 hr bus ride. This was a full sized bus barreling through the countryside of Lao to transport, count ‘em up, TWO tourists, and three guys to drive and push buffalos out of the way, from Vientiane to Pakse. Well, at least I had room to sleep, even though I still didn't get much.
I should go back there someday, my friend whose house I visited told me of so many other places to go and see... Anyway, now I am on my way to Cambodia, Pakxe is like the last bit of town (and it is only a bit of town) before the border, which I will cross as soon as I get my passport back with my Vietnamese re-entry visa.
Saturday, June 07, 2003
Vào Nam
Last week I got to the other end of Vietnam. First flew from Hanoi to Nha Trang, which is on the coast in maybe the southern quarter of Vietnam. It was really hot. Surprise. Nha Trang is probably the best known tourist beach town in Vietnam, but it is an actual town as well, not just a beach. The first day there I rode bike around for awhile. Past all the expensive (relatively) restaurants and the chairs and thatch umbrellas on the beach, over a bridge to find myself in some other part of town where everyone lived in leftover shipping containers and there was no grass or sand, only mud, and where no one came running up to me trying to sell books or postcards or a boat ride to an island or anything, presumably because none of them had any of that stuff. They only looked puzzled to see me, someone obviously belonging to the clean sandy part of town across the bridge, wandering around in their neighborhood.
I went to see some ancient Cham towers - like the ones we saw in My Son, but these were not bombed in the war, and these were not just sitting there but were a quite active worship site. My uninformed observation is that the inside of them looked just like most Buddhist temples here, rather interesting since the Chams were distinctly Hindu influenced, not Buddhist, but anyway, it made visiting them all the more interesting. We all went to a nice seafood restaurant on the beach for one more farewell dinner, went on a boat ride to some islands, where you could snorkel and look at coral reefs, and sit on the beach eating more very good seafood, and visited a 'fishing village' on one island which was one more place where the whole concept of being a tourist seemed really ridiculous.
Aside from that, they have little boats here used to go from shore to bigger boats, and between boats, little round boats maybe 5-6 feet diameter that are just like a big basket. Really, they are made of basket stuff and coated with pitch or something to make them waterproof. Right before we left that village, it started raining really hard. So I put my camera in the driver's cab in the boat (our boat, not the basket boat) which was the only dry place, and sat up on the roof in the driving rain, trying to wash away the feeling that my presence in this place was only disruptive, the feeling that by being a tourist instead of a student I suddenly created this big space between me and what I was trying to see. Well, that's life. Anyway, I got wet and cold and back in town my shower and hot dinner was really good and we left that night on the train for Ho Chi Minh City.
HCM City is the biggest city in Vietnam, economically more advanced than Hanoi, a lot more big bildings. The first day there I had kind of a tour with a cyclo driver - the idea of which raises even more questions, but in any case, I could actually talk to him and use my Vietnamese and I was not with 73 other tourists, so it was a nice day. We went to several pagodas, a museum which was interesting (and in an amazing old French building, of which there are a lot in Saigon), a market selling everything, saw the old US embassy, the new US embassy, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office (both in the 'amazing old French building' category), and lets see, one more good pho restaurant. In the afternoon we went to visit the 'reunification palace', which was the house of the president of South Vietnam pre 1975, that was big and interesting, and a lesson in bad 1960's color schemes! Then we went to the "War Remnants Museum", which used to be the "American War Crimes Museum". It was rather intense and graphic sometimes, but good to see. They had a bunch of planes/artillery/equipment outside from the US and South Vietnam, and rooms of pictures of the war, and display on the use and effects of Agent Orange, also had a section on Con Lon Prison, which was set up by the French but still in use under the South Vietnamese government, and they also had displays on how Vietnam has changed since the war and some children’s art and more palatable stuff. And, in demonstration of how Vietnam has changed since then (and of our schedule) we went to a mall that night, ate at KFC and went bowling. There are no KFCs in Hanoi. There are a lot in China, so in a funny way eating 'American' fast food reminded me of China.
Anyway, the next day I went to Dalat. Dalat is in the mountains, and is supposed to have the best climate in Vietnam. The best for the French at least, it was a sort of resort town during the colonial period. Still is, really. The nice part, though, was that it was touristy but most of the tourists were Vietnamese. The town was quite hilly, rather astonishing in this country. The place is famous for lots of lakes and waterfalls, green mountains and trees - looking surprisingly like someplace backwoods on the east coast. So we walked around the lake in town, went through a big flower garden there (Dalat - the city of flowers) and just wandered the town the rest of that day. The next day we all rented bikes and went towards a lake, turns out that riding bike in the 'mountains' is not like riding bike in Hanoi, Uyen went back to the hotel by taxi, Lucy and I got to the lake and waterfall, relaxed a little, then decided to go to another waterfall like 12 km away, and it was all down the side of a big mountain. We decided that if we went that far down we could justifiably find some other way up, and still see the falls and not be too exhausted. The falls were nice enough and the surrounding 'park' was truly amusing, and we caught a local bus back up the mountain, with our bikes on top. It overheated, and they fixed a broken radiator hose with inner tube and pieces of wire... but we got back. Then decided that bikes were not appropriate for this place, so we rented a motorbike and wandered around, getting lost in the countryside until it started raining. We came (soaking wet) back to the hotel, got clean and warm, and had a truly fine dinner. Thursday we rode the bus back to HCM, about 6 hours, past a lot of rubber plantations, and coffee plantations as well. Dalat is famous for coffee, and also for wine, although I don't really recall seeing any vineyards.
I went to see some ancient Cham towers - like the ones we saw in My Son, but these were not bombed in the war, and these were not just sitting there but were a quite active worship site. My uninformed observation is that the inside of them looked just like most Buddhist temples here, rather interesting since the Chams were distinctly Hindu influenced, not Buddhist, but anyway, it made visiting them all the more interesting. We all went to a nice seafood restaurant on the beach for one more farewell dinner, went on a boat ride to some islands, where you could snorkel and look at coral reefs, and sit on the beach eating more very good seafood, and visited a 'fishing village' on one island which was one more place where the whole concept of being a tourist seemed really ridiculous.
Aside from that, they have little boats here used to go from shore to bigger boats, and between boats, little round boats maybe 5-6 feet diameter that are just like a big basket. Really, they are made of basket stuff and coated with pitch or something to make them waterproof. Right before we left that village, it started raining really hard. So I put my camera in the driver's cab in the boat (our boat, not the basket boat) which was the only dry place, and sat up on the roof in the driving rain, trying to wash away the feeling that my presence in this place was only disruptive, the feeling that by being a tourist instead of a student I suddenly created this big space between me and what I was trying to see. Well, that's life. Anyway, I got wet and cold and back in town my shower and hot dinner was really good and we left that night on the train for Ho Chi Minh City.
HCM City is the biggest city in Vietnam, economically more advanced than Hanoi, a lot more big bildings. The first day there I had kind of a tour with a cyclo driver - the idea of which raises even more questions, but in any case, I could actually talk to him and use my Vietnamese and I was not with 73 other tourists, so it was a nice day. We went to several pagodas, a museum which was interesting (and in an amazing old French building, of which there are a lot in Saigon), a market selling everything, saw the old US embassy, the new US embassy, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office (both in the 'amazing old French building' category), and lets see, one more good pho restaurant. In the afternoon we went to visit the 'reunification palace', which was the house of the president of South Vietnam pre 1975, that was big and interesting, and a lesson in bad 1960's color schemes! Then we went to the "War Remnants Museum", which used to be the "American War Crimes Museum". It was rather intense and graphic sometimes, but good to see. They had a bunch of planes/artillery/equipment outside from the US and South Vietnam, and rooms of pictures of the war, and display on the use and effects of Agent Orange, also had a section on Con Lon Prison, which was set up by the French but still in use under the South Vietnamese government, and they also had displays on how Vietnam has changed since the war and some children’s art and more palatable stuff. And, in demonstration of how Vietnam has changed since then (and of our schedule) we went to a mall that night, ate at KFC and went bowling. There are no KFCs in Hanoi. There are a lot in China, so in a funny way eating 'American' fast food reminded me of China.
Anyway, the next day I went to Dalat. Dalat is in the mountains, and is supposed to have the best climate in Vietnam. The best for the French at least, it was a sort of resort town during the colonial period. Still is, really. The nice part, though, was that it was touristy but most of the tourists were Vietnamese. The town was quite hilly, rather astonishing in this country. The place is famous for lots of lakes and waterfalls, green mountains and trees - looking surprisingly like someplace backwoods on the east coast. So we walked around the lake in town, went through a big flower garden there (Dalat - the city of flowers) and just wandered the town the rest of that day. The next day we all rented bikes and went towards a lake, turns out that riding bike in the 'mountains' is not like riding bike in Hanoi, Uyen went back to the hotel by taxi, Lucy and I got to the lake and waterfall, relaxed a little, then decided to go to another waterfall like 12 km away, and it was all down the side of a big mountain. We decided that if we went that far down we could justifiably find some other way up, and still see the falls and not be too exhausted. The falls were nice enough and the surrounding 'park' was truly amusing, and we caught a local bus back up the mountain, with our bikes on top. It overheated, and they fixed a broken radiator hose with inner tube and pieces of wire... but we got back. Then decided that bikes were not appropriate for this place, so we rented a motorbike and wandered around, getting lost in the countryside until it started raining. We came (soaking wet) back to the hotel, got clean and warm, and had a truly fine dinner. Thursday we rode the bus back to HCM, about 6 hours, past a lot of rubber plantations, and coffee plantations as well. Dalat is famous for coffee, and also for wine, although I don't really recall seeing any vineyards.
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