This is Dalat.

Dalat: A charming hill station located in the mountains of South Central Vietnam. A French-Swiss scientist, Alexandre Yersin, who is most well known for discovering the bacteria responsible for the Bubonic Plague, "discovered"Dalat and the ethnic minorities living there in 1893. He promoted its development into a resort town for French colonialists to escape from the lowland heat. Yersin lived in Nha Trang, and is remembered here in Vietnam for his contributions to the local medical and agricultural infrastucture, as well as his selfless volunteer work. In addition to introducing European crops and farming techniques, the colonialists brought french architecture. Dalat retains a European feel with it's narrow winding roads, stucco houses, and landscaping. Today, Dalat is a popular vacation and even more popular honeymoon spot for Vietnamese tourists as well as foreigners.

We loved it here. A week before we came to Dalat we had met the reporters and Editor in Chief from the Lam Dong Newspaper (local newspaper in Dalat) on the side of Highway 1. (story in previous blog entry) When we came to Dalat, we were excited to see them again. Our friend and reporter, Nghia met up with us and took us on a wonderful tour of her city.

Many greenhouses can be seen on the hills in Dalat. Some small valleys are entirely covered with them. They are home to flowers, strawberries, tomatoes, and artichokes amongst other crops.

This is Nghia on her motorbike.

She took us to a center for the cultural preservation of the Lat people, who are a large ethnic minority group living in the hills of Dalat. Dalat means "land of the Lat people." Their oral history goes back before the Bronze Age. This is Plim, he is a Lat, and runs this center. He also was wearing a "NYC 212" jersey when we met him. He showed us many pictures of himself and his people performing traditional ceremonies and wearing traditional clothing. He explained that many of the young Lat have now assimiliated into Viet culture and that it is important for the Lat history to be preserved. Plim plays many intruments. Here he was tuning one whose name we have since forgotten that sounded kind of similiar to a ukelele.

Here is a village elder playing another traditional instrument made from bamboo and a gourd.
The glue was made from honeybee wax. It sounded like a harmonized pan pipe.



This is Max attempting to play. He was pretty good, says Kara. Max wouldn't go that far.

Riding through the mountains. Greenhouses ahead.

At one point, Nghia said, "do you want to stop and see flowers?" We said yes, and then were brought through some barbed wire fencing into a private greenhouse. Nghia reports on agriculture, environment, and technology for the newspaper. She didn't have any problems gettnig into this fenced off area once she explained that to the people inside.

All stages of growth are seen in the greenhouse. These flowers and most flowers produced in Dalat are taken 300 km away to be sold in Ho Chi Minh City.

Later Nghia brought us to the Biological Museum. We had seen a sign for it earlier and had shown interest. None of us had ever been here before. It was a creepy, weird, and boring museum. We all agreed on that. The museum was exclusively dedicated to taxidermy.

Chinese pagoda. It was one of Kara's favorite spots in Dalat. We walked through a small forest to find a large white buddha serenly tucked into the woods.

Inside the Chinese pagoda sits a wood table approximately 200 years old. When you place your hands on its surface, after a few minutes, the table is supposed to move on its own. We were instructed to gently place our hands on the table, close our eyes, and think "move right, move right." It moved in fits and starts very slowly. Max thinks he was the non believer responsible for its lack of enthusiasm.

Magestic Horse! Underneath the large buddha there are a series of paintings depicting the Buddha's life. Two large pools collect the rain on both sides. While we were standing under the Buddha, a beautiful horse came galloping up the hill out of the woods. She stopped for water, and was breathing really heavily and Kara loved her and still thinks she is a magical wild creature. Max thinks she belongs to the Temple. Either way, we both agreed she is Magestic Horse!

Group photo.

Lots of churches in Dalat. Also lots of vegetarian restaurants! We found over 10 in this small town.

Group photo #2. Outside Lam Dong newspaper, where Nghia works. The building that houses the paper used to be a French villa.

Crazy House. That's what it is called, really. A Vietnamese woman who studied art in Moscow built this themed hotel/art piece. It has many different rooms that you can stay in, although its business relies heavily on tourists coming to take a look. It is very inventive and strange and would fit right in at Burning Man. Burning Man might be the only place in the world where it would seem normal. We think it is an awesome piece of art.

Max reclining in the "gourd"room. Its only about $30 a night to stay here. (Not on our budget this time, but we would like to come back and spend a night in the kangaroo room, or the giraffe room.)

CHE! (spelled like Guevara.) At the end of the day, Nghia introduced us to this Vietnamese dessert. Che is flavored rice pudding made with many different ingredients that you wouldn't necessarily think to put in dessert. Shown here (from front to back): peanut, artichoke, mixed bean, corn, and lima bean rice puding. The black pot on the left is black bean che, and its delicious. We guess that if you add enough sugar to anything, it makes it a dessert. A small bowl of che is covered with coconut milk and can be served in a plastic bag to go as well. In Dalat they serve it hot, as it gets cold in the winter. A bowl of che costs around 3,000 VND, which is approximately 17 cents.

The next day we ventured out on our own with a rented motorbike. We took in the scenery and wandered without a plan. We stumbled upon a Buddhist Temple with a kind of religious theme park in the front garden. Max thinks it was beautiful and highly appropriate, Kara thinks it was collectively a little tacky, however the pieces on their own were really amazing.

Kara in front of the giant cement dragon.

We followed a road out of town, looking for a vantage point over the city and the surrounding area. At the town of this hill we found Dalat's landfill. The beautiful background was in striking contrast to the malnourished cows who where led up the hill to litterally feed on garbage. It was a very disturbing and tragic sight, and reafirmed why we are vegetarians. Kara tried her best to communicate her anger and disapproval to the cow herder, who pretended they were not his cows at first.

On our way down we saw more cows being led up to graze. Apparently this is a common practice. This is the cow herder Kara yelled at, who eventually brought his cows down the mountain. Vietnam is a country with a developing sewage system, where you can not throw toilet paper directly into the toilet. You throw your feces paper in the waste bin next to the toilet. The toilet paper comes to this landfill. The cows feed here. The people eat the cows.

Another reason we are vegetarians. Local market, Dalat.

This is Kara in front of the lake, holding our flower offering to the newspaper staff. This is the fourth picture in a series. Kara is her most photogenic after getting a little angry at Max. This series happens everytime Max goes to take a picture of Kara.

We arrived at the newspaper to say goodbye to our friends. They insisted on taking us out for dinner at one of the nicest Com Chays (Vegetarian Restaurant) in town. We were driven from the newspaper to the restaurant in the company bus that had picked us up off the side of the road a week before. We had to make a pit stop to pick up the Editor-In-Chief. The food was really good, but the company was even better. They are our first real friends in Vietnam. Kara hopes to make a photo story with Nghia someday on returning to Dalat. Thank you Lam Dong staff, we will never forget you!

We highly recommend Dalat, and will be sure to come again next time we are in Vietnam.

A special thank you to Nghia. We loved talking to you and spending time getting to know you and your wonderful hometown. Your tour was the best we have been on our trip, by far. Thank you, thank you. We hope one day we can take you around New York.

-K and M