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November 22, 2005
The Times They Are A-Changin
Another open tour bus journey took us to Dalat - 'The Romantic City' in the mountains according to all the locals. Deb wanted to hire motorbikes again but it started raining again so we decided to try a different approach and hire a car, driver and guide to take us to see the local sites. It was a glorious day when we went out and we had a really pleasant time. One of the first things we went to see was the Lak Village which whilst not steeped in local customs and ancient ways, was quite interesting and we got to see the old style of houses on stilts that the ethnic minorities used to live in and also the sacrificial altar for the buffalo. We also went to visit the 'Crazy House' and it certainly lives up to it's name - very obscure architecture. Other places of note included the Dalat old railway station, Chinese pagoda, Datanla falls and last but not least the 'Valley Of Love'. The last one was quite an experience as it's how Dalat got it's name for being a romantic city. The 'Valley of Love' was originally a picturesque place by a lake on the side of a mountain in forestland and was used by students from the local univeristy there for 'late night research'. However once the tourists found out about it and more and more people wanted to go the Government 'landscaped' the area covering it in concrete and provided delightful swan pedalos for the lake, needless to say the locals found another beautiful spot and never tell the tourists about it ...
After the fun of Dalat we made our way to the final destination in Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City (or HCMC from now on). This was a really nice suprise as we were expecting it to be worse than Hanoi when in fact it was pretty relaxed and we only recieved a minimum of hassle. Our main goal was to go and see the Cu Chi tunnels which the Viet Cong used against the Americans (and the French before them) in the war. The tunnels we saw had been expanded so westerners could fit in them as before this I wouldn't have made it through them. Deb also got to fire a semi-automatic rifle with live ammo - although I don't think she hit any targets her ears were surely well protected by the quality ear defenders they supplied - oh no actually - they were headphones !
We also visited a number of museums in HCMC which were all interesting and exhibited various spoils of war which were fun to go and look round, however, it was all put into perspective by the War Museum where there was a large amount of photojournalistic content including graphic examples of the use of napalm and white phospurous (and they used it in Iraq as well) - not pleasant viewing at all but very powerful nonetheless - highly recommended.
[2 Dalat galleries here and here]
[2 HCMC galleries here and here]
Posted by robl at November 22, 2005 07:46 AM