We’d been back in Shanghai for a week and still there was no news from Flo’s job and the outlook for the holidays looked bleak. Crappy weather, in a city at a standstill with nothing but the noise of non-stop fireworks for a week was not an enticing prospect. After a few days of umming and erring we managed, by the skin of our teeth, to get a rush visa from the Vietnamese Embassy before it closed for the week on Friday, and a last minute flight that took us through Hong Kong with a 6-hour stopover, but finally, we arrived. Being the first day of the New Year, public transport was minimal so we hopped straight in to a taxi bound for Mui Ne, kite surf-central and home for the next week.
MUI NE
We met up with a few friends over there – Nico and Kennon - and Max and Marie, also from Shanghai, arrived a few days later. After my successes in Puerto Princesa a few weeks earlier, I was all bravado about my kite surfing prowess… though I had still never set foot on the board I could feel this moment drawing ever-closer… indeed, with the wind in my hair and a beer in my hand, by midnight, I was pretty sure I’d have the whole thing nicely under control by the following afternoon. This was not to be.
Its not that I didn’t try, I really did, but once again, the elements outwitted me and most of the week went like this:
Breakfast, 9-10am. No wind.
10.30am pack stuff and head to the beach.
11am – wind arrives with gusto (sorry), we get kitted up, and we have lift off! The kite is in the air and we’re flying (along with the other 100 kiters on the strip)
11.30am-1pm – Flo watches helplessly from the beach as I flounder about trying to control the kite enough to get my feet on the damn board… not such an easy task when you can't touch the ground, are surrounded by other very large flying objects (in varying degrees of control compared to your own), occasional buoys demarcating swimming areas and of course, the more than occasional swimmer that thinks it's a laugh to run the kite gauntlet instead.
Usually by 1pm I had managed to get myself vertical once or twice for no more than few seconds before plunging face first into the water to emerge fuming and cursing like a spoiled child 500m downwind with a hefty walk back to start the process all over again. Fortunately, the wind tended to give me an excuse to stop at lunchtime by stepping it up a few notches and introducing some monster waves. The first afternoon I was ballsy enough to give it a go but learned my lesson after 20 minutes of being buffeted about above and below the water. It chewed me up and spat me out with my soggy smile wiped firmly off of my face.
By the end of the week the wind had completely dropped. It was time to bid the others farewell as they departed for Shanghai and Flo and I stayed on in the hope that it would be back but even a 14 metre kite was tough to fly so we called it a day and kicked back and relaxed. We took the opportunity to finally go to the Fairy Stream. On the excellent advice of my parents, we took an early morning, barefoot stroll down what is a really pretty, shallow stream that curves through the base of some remarkable red and white sand cliffs and ends up at a small waterfall. We were the only people in sight and had the early morning light illuminating the rosy cliffs and the satisfying sensation of the silken sand squishing between our toes.
We left Mui Ne on a bus bound for Dalat that we’d been assured was a full size coach and would have no problem to accommodate our obscene amount of luggage (3 kites and 2 boards do no light travelers make). Of course, when it arrived, it was a 25-seater with fun-size seats and a moped already installed in the front. We managed to squeeze in all the same and 3 bumpy hours later, arrived in Dalat.
DALAT
Up in the central highlands, Dalat is a centre for agriculture and tourism though agriculture is the more visible with much of the surrounding hillsides covered with plastic greenhouses, churning out everything from chrysanthemums to avocados. Though not always the prettiest sight, it does make for an amazing local wet market with stalls piled high with fruit and vegetables so fresh and delectable that I yearned for a kitchen to try then all out.
We spent an afternoon roving the city and drinking coffee, were disappointed to find the lake drained of water and spent some time trying to navigate our way through back streets to find the Hang Nga Gallery & Hotel, known locally as “The Crazy House”, a hotel/gallery designed by a madcap female architect with a passion for breaking with the norm. When we did eventually find it, it was certainly pretty loopy. Filled with impossible angles, stairs that climbed up the neck of a giraffe, giant spider webs in the garden, animal themed rooms with said animals often featuring sinister red eyes, it was a bit like Disney on acid.
The next day we signed up for an “Easy Rider” tour around the countryside. A group of motorcycle guides with an excellent reputation for serving up their extensive local knowledge with wit and charm, the Easy Riders come highly recommended by other travelers and also my folks (John and Lesley having ridden with them from Dalat to Mui Ne a few years previously). With all this in mind,we got over our initial misgivings about the price – at $25 per person, its not the cheapest way to sightsee but our guide, Lou, assured us we’d be doing and seeing things we could not do independently and it would be well worth the price. In fact, if we weren’t happy at the end of the day, there was no need to pay, he was that confident.
Sadly our experience did not live up to the sales pitch, and after a disappointing morning which involved very little actual guiding and a few moments of genuine concern for our safety, we told them we’d prefer to continue the day on our own. The situation got a bit nasty and ended up with Lou brandishing a rock at us and shouting insults before angrily driving off, leaving us open-mouthed and in utter disbelief at the scene we’d just witnessed. Once we our wits returned, we went back to the hotel, hired a motorbike for $5 and went off to continue the tour we’d begun that morning.
It was a very unfortunate incident and one that didn't fit with all the other great things we'd heard, or the other guides we'd met who all seemed very genuine and nice. We just got the rotten egg of the group. Anyway, one of the benefits of the Easy Riders is that they do know where they’re going and once we struck out alone it wasn’t long before we were lost. I like to look at this as all part of the fun and often taking a wrong turn or two would lead us into lovely fields or coffee plantations, along streams and over rickety wooden bridges.
We accidentally visited Ankroet falls whilst looking for Elephant Falls, which we did manage to find eventually though a ridge of multi-coloured rubbish took the edge off what would have been an attractive view. We also went to the old train station to check out the old steam engine and Pullman trains before going out of town again, bound for Tiger Falls and on the way stopping at Linh Phuoc Pagoda which turned out to be an unusual temple and pagoda, every square inch of which was covered in a colourful mosaic of ceramics. After 5 years in Asia our eyes are a little temple-jaded so this was one of the prettiest and most unusual ones we’d seen for a long time. By the end of the day we were satisfied that we’d seen enough and booked ourselves on the bus to Nha Trang the following morning.
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