The Big Year of Travel: Dalat, where locals wear parkas

(We are catching up on posts before we head home so check to see which ones you have read in case we have uploaded them faster than you can read them. We have had a wonderful time exploring and writing about our adventures, although we will be sad to leave, we are looking forward to seeing our families again and eating food our bellies are used to.)

After a 5 hour bus ride up into the mountains we reached Dalat at an altitude of approximately 1500m above sea level. As soon as we exited the bus the temperature hit us and it was splendid. After seven weeks of over 30 degrees Celsius with full humidity Dalat was averaging in the low 20s with no humidity. As we were wearing shorts and tee shorts the locals were immediately concerned that we would be cold but once we explained it was snowing in Canada right now they were thinking we were just plain crazy.

We reached our hotel, Dreams Hotel which was one of our best hotels, for the following reason. When we arrived there were two people behind the desk, a twenty year old man and a three year old boy playing computer games. Chris explained to the man that we had a reservation and he looked at us like we were crazy and then disappeared out the front door. Strange. We were a little confused when the three year old turned to us and said 'Mamma not back yet' in perfect English. Wow.

We were stunned and asked when she would be back to which he replied he didn't know. We waited and Mama came back. She is the young boy's grandmother but he couldn't pronounce that when he first started speaking so she just became Mama. Mama takes care of her two grandchildren every day and speaks with them only in English so that is their first language. We eventually met the little boy's older sister and she was adorable.

We stayed at the hotel and used the free hot tub up on the roof. Nothing is better then a cool evening with a great view and a warm hot tub. Dalat is an old Colonial town which now specializes in growing flowers and veggies in thousand a of greenhouses. There were greenhouses absolutely everywhere.

We booked a country side tour for the next day and enjoyed a lovely dinner at Da Quy Restaurant. Chris had his favourite meal in Vietnam. After and appetizer of shrimp crusted sugar cane fresh spring rolls be has fish fillets simmered in caramel sauce in a clay pot. Usually fish is whole with a few slices but this fish was filleted beautifully. Chris loved it so much we went back all three nights we were in Dalat. It was here while sitting in shorts and t-shirts that we saw people wearing north face coats and toques with mittens. Shall we say extreme? It was above 20 degrees.

Chris' clay pot dish

The next morning we had a lovely breakfast before heading out on our tour with Tong our guide and an Argentinian couple, Nano and Cecelia. Our driver's name was Tong. I am spelling these myself so spelling will be wrong but sound hopefully right. We went with the Groovy Gecko Tour Company. Our fist stop was to visit a greenhouse and see how they grow the flowers. Flowers we grow at home all summer but here are very exotic. After that we visited a local minority village. Vietnam has 54 local ethnic minorities, most with their own languages. We visited a Kaa village where the young children playing were speaking the Kaa language although to Fish and myself it sounded no different from Vietnamese. Tongue showed us a house and our first coffee tree. Chris was in heaven. Tongue told us the Vietnamese in this region grow a lot of coffee as it makes more than vegetables and now Vietnam is the second largest provider of coffee behind Brazil. The local minorities only began growing coffee when the 'King's People' the largest ethnic group at approximately 80% of the total population moved there and showed them how.

Our tour guide Tongue

Local Kaa children playing

A family's pet monkey

Coffee beans beginning to ripen

Chris and his first coffee tree

There are four kinds of coffee bean; Robusta, Mocha, Arabica and something else. The Vietnamese mostly grow Robusta and another kind I am forgetting because they produce more beans per plant than the other two. From the village we moved to a coffee plantation. Here Tong showed us how the beans are harvested here no matter if they are a ripe red or an unripe green. Once the beans are dry the colour is the same and you can not tell which where the ripe ones. However by harvesting this way it causes the Vietnamese coffee to be of lower quality than that harvested when only ripe in other countries. Harvest occurs from September to December every ear and we had timed our visit perfectly to see he ripening and drying beans.

At the plantation we sampled Weasel coffee which is roasted from the beans pooped out by a weasel. The weasels only eat the ripest and best red beans so the coffee roasted from their poop is the highest quality in Vietnam. The most expensive is made by one man who sells it for 20,000,000 Dong or $1,000 per kilogram, wowza! We sampled two varieties and Chris said they were quite good. I don't like coffee whether it has been through a weasel or not.

The view from the plantation

Coffee brewed per cup for ultimate freshness

Enjoying a weasel coffee with Nano and Cecelia

From there we headed to another coffee making house to see the weasels and how they make rice wine. The weasels were so cute and curious but I felt so bad for them being kept in such small cages just so they can eat and poop coffee beans for less than a quarter of the year.

Drying weasel poop!

Rice wine cooking

Do you see the chicken carcass?

Rice for wine

A weasel

Now one sleeping in a box

This family also makes rice wine which was quite tasty. They were burning the dried coffee shells to boil the wine along wit a chicken carcus. As our guide put it, everything burns.

We visited a tea plantation and then went to a Buddhist Temple with some fantastic giant Buddha statues. From there we went on a short hike down some crazy stairs and rocks to the Elephant Waterfall. It was absolutely beautiful and we walked a ways down until it was misting above us.

A tea plant

Below the falls in the mist

Elephant Falls

Lunch was at a local restaurant where Tong got us a great deal on a massive feast. Although we were only six people in total we had more food than the tables of twelve for the same price. The owner is as Tong says, his second mother. I had mentioned Fish loved clay pot fish and even though seafood is rare here due to the lack of ocean, Tong even ordered some just for Chris. It was whole fish and very boney but Chris ate it all because we felt guilty. Tong was so kind.

After lunch we went to. Silk factory where they turn silk worn cacoons into strong silk thread. We have no idea how the workers can see the thin little threads but they can.

We had a wonderful day and would recommend this tour to anyone. They dropped us off at the Crazy House which is an insane hotel built by a nutter. It is made of concrete and every room and hallway is different. We spent time exploring the public areas (everything but the occupied rooms) and finding our way around. For such narrow thin pathways you would think they would had had railings but then it wouldn't have been so fun would it?