Mayham on the Uncle Ho Memorial Good Time Number One Super-Happy Driving Road

My father used to say that the two best days of a trip are the day you leave and the day you go back. I assume that he heard this from my grandfather, who had heard it from his father, and thus the origin of the saying could be found by following a proud lineage of Slaters in a genealogical exercise of incomparable boredom for anybody under the age of seventy.

To be fair though, the message is good. There seems to be an obvious and undeniable appeal to the idea of coming home. Nobody understands this better than a traveler; with the possible exception of Avon Barksdale, the world's preeminent incarcerated philosopher.

~

So while I was a little mopey about leaving the chilled out oasis of Dalat, departing wasn't all bad. For one thing, it meant the imminent possibility of acquiring fresh underwear (which should always bring a smile to your face). Also, I have about three days worth of interesting anecdotes, historical tidbits, and thoughtful observations. Usually these can be stretched out over several months of brief conversations at events and parties, so people often have no idea how boring I actually am until it's too late to stop answering my calls without feeling prickish. Unfortunately, when condensed into three actual, sequential days, the process is considerably accelerated. I was happy that Jerome would not be subjected to my usual fourth-day conversational offerings, which consist alternately of mumbled weather updates ('Still cloudy') and declarative grunts about my need to eat, sleep, or find a bathroom. And finally, I was looking forward to seeing the surrounding countryside of Dalat in the daytime. The last two hours of our approach had been conducted in pitch blackness, and we'd seen virtually nothing along the way save the pockmarked surface of the road.

Our last hours in Dalat were spent having a leisurely breakfast at the Peace Cafe and conducting a surprisingly difficult search for Dalat's famous preserved sugar-fruit candy. After we finally located a stall which sold the delicacies, and proceeded to single-handedly finance college educations for the proprietor's six children, Jerome and I moseyed back to the hotel to gather our things. We crammed the candy into our bags, learned to our annoyance that the mini-bar items weren't free, and thanked our hosts. Then we kicked the '67s into gear and zoomed away.

We made a farewell circuit of the lake, gazing at the swan boats as they pedaled lazily across the calm blue water. We passed a lovely small pagoda and some dilapidated old villas as we climbed out of the city, making a few obligatory wrong turns and hurried map consultations in the centers of roundabouts. Eventually we navigated to the crest of a narrow mountain road and stared down at the thin black pavement snaking through the forest.

~

A quick aside concerning mountain roads - my love of going up is matched only by my fear of going down. In October of 2012, I was on my way to the town of Pai in northern Thailand. The road from Chiang Mai was famous for being both steep and curvaceous. Although it is only 135 km long, it manages to squeeze in 762 curves, many of the blind and/or hairpin variety. We were crammed into an ancient minibus when, about 50 km outside of Pai, we barreled into one of those hairpin turns only to see the pickup truck ahead of us slip off the road and tumble down the mountainside. As we passed by, our Thai driver not bothering to stop or even slow down, we could see the unlucky pickup methodically flipping downward, end over end like a large and inflexible Slinky. Soon we were far beyond the scene of the accident, and nobody called an ambulance.

~

Which I suppose is a long and overly detailed explanation of why Jerome beat me down the mountain by an embarrassingly large margin. When I finally caught up to him on the Uncle Ho Memorial Good Time Number One Super-Happy Driving Road, I was delighted to find that the surrounding countryside was as pastorally charming as anything we'd seen on the trip up.

The mountains of central Vietnam loomed regally in the distance as we rode through small outcroppings of buildings on what was basically the country's nicest frontage road. We passed a few bright green fields of rice and bands of schoolchildren in blue uniforms with red kerchiefs. Some of them shouted 'hello' and then exchanged loud guffaws with their friends, as if they'd just committed some outrageously daring feat of bravery. We squinted against the sun and rumbled onward.

Before leaving Dalat we had decided to make the return journey over two days in the hope of avoid both night driving and looking like exhausted homeless people at work on Saturday morning. As such we had the luxury of a more leisurely pace, along with the chance to take a few pictures along the way. Jerome, the bohemian archetype, of course did not pack a camera, so I was in charge of taking interesting photos on the road back to Saigon.

The problem with Highway 20 is that while it is generally a pretty good ride, providing photographic evidence of this is nearly impossible. At no point did I feel that I really captured the beauty of a particular area - there was always a mechanic's shed inconveniently peeking into the background, or a curious mountain fog that seemed mysteriously beguiling in person but merely fuzzy in pictures. However, at one of these spontaneous pit stops I did notice something interesting.

Bendy panorama, meh.

Unfortunately, that 'something' was an enormous black cloud creeping ominously across the sky. Since we'd managed to entirely avoid rain on the trip to Dalat (in the middle of rainy season, no less) ut seemed obvious that the rain gods were about to let us have it.

Like most pessimistic predictions, this one proved uncannily accurate. For the next five hours we were plagued by intermittent blasts of precipitation followed by deceptively tranquil intermissions during which we nervously scurried from village to village, hiding under coffee stand awnings and gas station canopies when the downfall grew too heavy. At one of these unscheduled pitstops I bought two cheap plastic ponchos to cover our rain-soaked clothes, a classic example of shutting the barn doors after the horses escaped, drenched your iPod, and turned the money in your wallet into a soggy multicolored clump.

The rain was not without its diversions, however. During one particularly fierce deluge, which surely had local ark-builders rubbing their palms together in delighted anticipation, we holed up at a coffee stand directly in front of a massively flooded stretch of road. As we anxiously sipped hot tea under a perilously overstressed umbrella, we were treated to a uniquely fascinating experience - the breathtaking stupidity of Vietnamese motorists.

~

Vietnamese motorists are inarguably the worst in the known universe. Just in Saigon, there were 133 traffic deaths in January and February alone. It would be safer to drive alongside a drunk, blindfolded toddler than a typical Vietnamese. Whether they are pulling blindly out of an alley at breakneck speed, abruptly cutting across three lanes without signaling, or just texting as they veer carelessly into oncoming traffic, the Vietnamese exhibit a special lack of regard for road safety that would almost be impressive if it wasn't also life-threatening. Driving with the Vietnamese might be less dangerous than an intoxicated game of Russian roulette, but only if your name isn't Christopher Walken.

In fairness, said motorists can't be entirely blamed for the atrocious conditions of this particular road, which suffered from the painfully obvious design flaw of being deeply concave. The rainwater settled in a vast pool nearly one meter deep, almost to the knees of motorbike riders. Yet this did not deter them from speeding gamely into the abyss, barely bothering to tap the brakes as they sloshed into the murky brown 'puddle'. Several motorbikes coughed, sputtered, and quietly died as their carburetors were choked with gallons of muddy rainwater. Others hydroplaned wildly and toppled over, gingerly picking up their soaked vehicles and looking utterly flabbergasted as to how this could have happened. Worse still were the buses and trucks, which blasted their horns and splashed heedlessly into the mess, screeching to an uncertain halt when their manic drivers finally noticed the floundering motorbikes ahead. For half an hour this continued, even after a few clever souls discovered they could avoid the whole ugly scene by detouring ten meters off the road onto a gravel embarkment. Ignoring these helpful examples, most people elected to crash full-speed into the flood, where they met the same damp and dangerous fate as the idiots in front of them. They behaved like big, dumb, motorized lemmings.

After several pots of tea and some increasingly desperate bargaining with God to call off the flood, we ventured back onto the road. It was nearly 3pm and we needed to cover some ground if we wanted to make Saigon at a decent hour the next day. We still had 200 km to go. During brief snatches of shouted conversation atop our speeding '67s, we decided to stop for the night at a landmark we called the 'boulder'. Jerome said he remembered several guest houses nearby, and I agreed that it would make a perfect place to make camp before the final leg of the trip.

We had passed by the 'boulder' on our way to Dalat, as we traveled through an area known for its once-active volcanoes. Although the fire-spitting behemoths had long since sunk back into the earth, evidence of their presence could still be found in the giant igneous rocks scatttered about like a child's playthings. Our particular rock was noteworthy because it was perched on a tall pillar, teed up as if it was a mammoth golf ball. As we rode onward, the 'boulder' became increasingly magnificent in our minds and the pillar grew ever more slender, until it assumed the almost comical proportions of an enormous Tootsie Pop. Erroneously or not, we began to get quite excited about reaching the amazing balancing rock.

Sadly, even as we were overestimating the boulder's grandeur, we were underestimating the distance needed to reach it. A combination of night driving and long-haul fatigue had completely distorted our estimation of the boulder's whereabouts. At each little hamlet we passed, we fully expected the boulder to be just around the corner. Our hopeful quips gradually morphed into grim-faced mutters as the sun sank lower and the clouds grew darker. We stopped for gas and I glanced nervously at my watch, trying to calculate the remaining hours of daylight and the likelihood of imminent thunderstorms.

Squeezing in a few klicks between storms.

Around 6:30pm we passed through Tan Phu, notable for being perhaps the most hideously depressing victory of the Vietnamese crusade against attractive architecture. For an interminable stretch we sputtered along the ruined Main Street of this provincial abomination, looking glumly at the endlessly repetitive rows of garages, coffee stands, and cheap restaurants. The few rundown hotels scattered amongst the charmless milieu looked so decrepit and uninviting that we decided to press onward, unable to bear the thought of tarrying a moment longer than absolutely necessary.

If the Vietnamese military ever gets its hands on a reasonably sized nuclear bomb, I would suggest Tan Phu as an excellent testing site.

~

About two hours later, we reached the boulder. After a day of fitfully slow travel and hours of feverish imagination, it was a welcome if slightly underwhelming sight. It wasn't quite as grand as we remembered, though after the featureless wasteland of Tan Phu we were grateful for anything less ugly.
Unfortunately, the guesthouses and restaurants that Jerome recalled proved to be entirely imaginary. In fact there seemed to be almost sign of human habitation for 10 km leading up to the boulder. With thunder cackling lugubriously in the distance, we were quickly running out of options.

Luckily, we found a small hotel about five minutes up the road, set in the center of a sad little cluster of shabby buildings. We gingerly eased our dusty bikes into the courtyard and greeted a bemused old woman in blue pajamas, who beckoned us to come around back. We parked the '67s in a large room with tile floors and began the difficult process of negotiating with a young woman who was apparently convinced that we wanted the smallest possible room with one bed and no windows. Eventually we found ourselves in a spare but comfortable room with two large beds and a painting of a naked river nymph hanging above the door. There was a nearby balcony which, in the absence of other guests, we quickly appropriated as our own for an important discussion about the prospects of dinner.

An hour later we wandered down the stairs, freshly bathed and feeling somewhat human again, intent on dining recommendations from the owner of the hotel. The owner turned out to be a pleasantly fat, shirtless man with a powerful body odor and surprisingly good command of English. In rapid succession he informed me that he had a sister in North Carolina, that he was very drunk on banana wine, that there was only one placed that served food in the area, and that it was probably closed. I asked him to point us in the right direction anyway and we walked off, thanking our host quickly before he could invite us to stay and drink.

In retrospect, this was a bad choice.

Everyone who has lived abroad eventually experiences a phenomenon in which a group of locals, usually quite drunk and unsavory in appearance, accost the unwary expat and quickly entangle him in a web of garbled conversation, unidentifiable liquor, and uncomfortable innuendo. It is usually easy to see how long the expat has lived abroad by timing how long it takes him to escape. There is a delicate balance to strike between being forceful and polite, and few would argue that it is not a vital survival skill when traveling. Interestingly, it's also a skill that abandoned us at the worst possible time.

We walked into the restaurant, which had a low thatched roof and several clusters of cheap plastic stools around rickety tables. A tired-looking woman halfheartedly fanned the flies away from a pot of chunky grey soup while her young daughter stared vacuously at the anime cartoons chattering away on TV. Jerome caught the woman's attention and placed an order in halting Vietnamese as I gazed skeptically around the room.

My eyes soon found the only other patrons still hanging around - a group of five bedraggled, clearly intoxicated locals gathered around a small table and staring curiously at the two foreigners who just straggled in. One of them leapt to his feet and sprinted over to me, beaming and babbling incoherently in a drunken slur. As I weakly protested he dragged me by the arm over to his table, shouting to his friends and nearly tripping over his own chair. I smiled unhappily at Jerome and considered just running out the door, but he soon joined me at the table and it was too late.

And so began the most creepily unenjoyable meal of my life.

~

Our dinner companions were rural Vietnamese bumpkins of the foulest and drunkest variety. By their bleary eyes, rancid breath and general inability to stop swaying, they had been drinking for some time - there were bottles of homemade moonshine littered across the table. They had the worst table manners I have ever seen; when the woman brought over our noodles they immediately began loading the bowls with chili sauce, soya, and shrimp paste, mixing the condiments together with their dirty fingers. When we looked skeptically at the contaminated soup, the hillbillies took this as an invitation to spoon feed us like infants, snatching the utensils out of our hands and attempting to cram huge sodden clumps of vegetables into our mouths. One of these neanderthals even grabbed a handful of corn kernels and  shoved them in my face, as if he was feeding a goat at the petting zoo. I shook my ahead and dreamt of murdering him.

Perhaps this could have been mistaken for genuine misplaced camaraderie if not for the increasing disturbing behavior of the table's drunkest occupant. He was a weathered old man missing most of his teeth, and his hands were covered in motor oil. I noticed this because he tried to grab Jerome's hands constantly as he ate, each time frantically pumping his arm like a small-town mayor at a church bake sale. After every unsuccessful attempt he would leer drunkenly and cackle an obviously profane joke to his friends, pointing at our hair, clothes, and general looks of discomfort. Some of his pals joined in the mockery, which one particularly sour individual simply glared at us and fiddled with his cell phone.

We wolfed down our unappetizing grub, picking around slices of synthetic pate and chunks of spinal cord, trying to avoid both eye contact and confrontation with the loathsome quintet at the table. One of them shoved a pack of cheap Vietnamese cigarettes in my face, gesturing for me to join him in a smoke.  I shook my head and produced a pack of Marlboros, which I had bought in Dalat for the main purpose of buttering up mechanics, waiters, or policemen on the way back. I distributed cigarettes to several of the bumpkins. who stared curiously at the gold lettering and mumbled inaudible comments to each other. Suddenly the sulky drunk looked up from his phone and snatched the pack out of my hand, greedily fingering the remaining cigarettes as if they were rolled with solid gold. THen he turned to me, the wheels clearly spinning deviously fast in his tiny brain, and pantomimed an unmistakable question: where do you sleep tonight? He grinned and pointed toward our hotel, obviously the only accommodation for miles.

I vigorously barked, 'khong, khong,' and gestured forcefully in the opposite direction. '20 kilo-nit, you stupid piratical bastard.' Jerome and I hurriedly left the table and half-ran back to the hotel. In the morning I was pleasantly surprised to find that we had been neither robbed nor murdered.

Jerome and the boulder.

After we woke up, Jerome fixed a flat tire on his '67 and we headed back to the boulder to snap a few pictures before leaving for Saigon. Along the way we passed a bizarre monument commemorating either A) a local military victory, B) worker-peasant solidarity, or C) Vietnam's unrivaled supremacy in stair-building. Forsaking the ten-story climb, we drove our '67s up a very steep path to the top of a small hill overlooking a lake dotted with ramshackle floating cottages. We posed for a few photos and continued on our way. Part of me was disappointed that the journey would soon be over, but another, hungrier part was quite enthusiastic about getting home and ordering the Big Cheese from Black Cat.

Finally - the sun.

~

Several hours later, we were back in Saigon proper, wedged between giant diesel-belching lorries on the semi-paved deathtrap also known as Highway 1. My heart sank as I looked around at the teeming hordes of blank-faced motorists and clouds of noxious smog. There's always a bit of postpartum depression after an exciting trip, but especially when you are returning to a city as ruthlessly ugly and congested as Saigon.

Sensing that my mood was dangerously sour, Jerome suggested a celebratory beer at an alley pub on Bui Vien. It was hard to argue with him, so we slowly made our way to the city center, immensely relieved when we reached our destination and eased our aching haunches off of the sturdy little '67s.

After an ice-cold Tiger I was feeling a bit better - generally I am not big on beer, but there's a certain satisfaction in living the romantic cliche of knocking back a frosty brew after a long journey. I bid farewell to Jerome and we exchanged the awkward one-armed bro hug that is the closest acceptable expression of friendship between two hetero Western dudes. Then I hopped on my bike and headed home.

~

Less than a minute later, I was caught in the fiercest rainstorm I have ever experienced. The gusting wind nearly knocked me off the bike, and my face stung from millions of sharp little raindrops pelting me at Mach 8. I fishtailed my way through a few intersections and splashed into an enormous puddle in the alley leading to my house, all the while cursing God's decidedly antagonistic sense of humor.

Standing at the front gate, buffeted by torrential rains, I fumbled through my dry bag, searching for my elusive house keys. My fingers brushed cold metal and I quickly jammed the key into the lock, twisting frantically. Nothing happened. I swore loudly and tried again. Nothing. I checked to make sure I had the right key. Yep. I checked to make sure I had the right house. No problems there. But still the fucking door wouldn't open.

Now I was soaked from head to toe, thoroughly pissed, and probably stranded. I grabbed my cellphone out of the bag, thinking I'd call the landlady to find out what the hell was going on. Then I saw the text message from my roommate:

Cleaning lady got robbed. Keys stolen. Had to change all the locks. You won't be able to get in. Catch you later.

Yes, I was back in Saigon all right.

The Crazy House, the Emperor's Bathtub, and Weasels that Poop Coffee

Here's an astounding true fact about Dalat: the city boasts over 12,400 coffee shops, yet not a single bar.

Just kidding. There are only 12,300 coffee shops.

~

Not a strobe light or Filipino cover band to be seen.

Many things in life are much better in theory than practice, such as Ikea sectional couches, communism*, and Chris Gaines. To that list we can add 'driving 12 hours to a resort city on a national holiday without booking accommodations first'.

*Just kidding - it's totally great!

As seasoned backpackers, my traveling compatriot Jerome and I were scornful of those timid souls who suggested we find something on Hostelbookers or Agoda before leaving Saigon. We were young, intrepid, resourceful men of the road; only old women and the Japanese book ahead.

Apparently living through the Great Depression and Godzilla attacks has taught those people something. Because when we arrived in Dalat, tired and dusty and sore-assed from the road, we found that all the hotels were indeed booked. This is no small accomplishment for the tourism industry of Dalat, since hotels are rivaled in abundance only by coffee shops and brothels (you're not fooling anybody, 'Massage and Spa'). On one particular street we counted 13 hotels within a two minute walk. Unfortunately they had zero available rooms between them.

Up the road we found one hotel that looked promising - a sign reading 'Room for Rent' hung in the entrance way. Sadly, although the hotel had plenty of vacancies it was woefully short of staff. We spent a solid five minutes hollering 'Anh oi!' and staring dumbly at the desk before shuffling out dejectedly.

Eventually we did find a hotel; one of those peculiar to Southeast Asia where the ground floor doubles as a family home, and the family in question seems entirely unfazed by a couple of dirty, wild-eyed foreigners tramping in, waving their passports crazily in the air and hollering 'two beds, two beds!' right in the middle of dinner. The woman who owned the place was more than happy to oblige, for the outrageously extortionate price of 1 million VND. To put that in perspective, last year the Labor Ministry announced that the average monthly salary of a Vietnamese worker was 3.84 million VND.

Perhaps you could justify blowing a quarter of your monthly wages on a single night in a hotel if, say, you were staying at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan with the Swedish gymnastics team and a suitcase full of cocaine. At a B- facsimile of a Holiday Inn, it seemed excessive.  However, as the woman gleefully informed us, it was 'the only room in town'. Too tired to argue with her or continue the search, we trudged upstairs to our room, desperate for a shower and a soft pillow. When we left in the morning, I vengefully flushed half a roll of tissue down the toilet, ignoring our host's previous instructions to 'put dirty paper in basket'. I assume that it caused a horrific plumbing catastrophe and taught her a valuable lesson about price gouging.

~

The next day, as we groggily hit the streets in search of breakfast and adventure, we noticed something curious: neither of us were sweating. Although it was nearly noon, temperatures were only in the high 70s - still warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt, yet conceivably just cool enough for jeans and long sleeves. I sauntered down the sidewalk feeling sassy and carefree, no armpit stains or butt sweat, with my hair mercifully released from its bun-prison to cascade gloriously down my back. Dalat really did have the most amazing weather in Vietnam. Which is why it was curious to see all the Vietnamese dressed like this:

Seriously.

First, let me explain - Vietnamese fashion is utterly baffling.. In Saigon, where the current temperature is 45 C / 112 F, most young women drive around in long pants, jackets, hoods, elbow-high gloves, giant sunglasses and full face masks. They do this to avoid any possible contact with the sun, because they think pale skin is beautiful (like most of Asia).

It seems at no point have they considered that: A) this makes them look like stormtroopers, B) stormtroopers are unattractive, C) trying to appear more attractive by dressing unattractively is a terrible strategy. Every time I look at them I feel a barely controllable urge to push them off their motorbikes, which is a perfectly legitimate reaction because science.

'I bet there's a really pretty girl under there,' said nobody ever.

Other sartorial observations: old Vietnamese men are often shirtless, and toddlers seldom wear pants. After reaching the age of 40, ladies are required by law to wear floral pajamas whenever they appear in public. Ao dai, the traditional Vietnamese dress, looks fantastic on 18-30 year olds and creepily unsettling on everybody else.

But I digress. The important thing is that, in the midst of this autumnal paradise, entire Vietnamese families were walking around dressed like members of Shackleton's expedition. In a country where geckos are the most common house 'pests' and wayward coconuts pose an ever-present danger to pedestrians, people were bundled up in parkas, ski hats, and mittens. I even saw a store selling those puffy black North Face jackets.

#2 on the 'List of Things You Don't Need in Vietnam', right after heated car seats.

And so we strode along the surprisingly clean and empty streets of Dalat, making bemused faces at the occasional neurotic mother practically smothering her child with unnecessary scarves and fleece shawls,  as if little Tram risked pneumonia in the dangerously non-stifling elements. After a quick stop at the Post Office, where a helpful employee with limited English skills but a terrific map helped us get oriented, we meandered our way to Huỳnh Thúc Kháng street. Our destination was the Hang Nga Guesthouse, more commonly known as 'Crazy House'.

Pretty crazy. Pretty house-y.

Crazy House is, by far, my favorite building in Vietnam. It is not so much a house as a compound, and not so much a compound as a series of interconnected buildings that are vaguely house-shaped and clearly inspired by massive amounts of hallucinogens. There is no satisfactory way to describe Crazy House without using pictures, so here are some now:

M.C. Escher would be thrilled. 

Climbing a giraffe's neck.

Part of...something.

Crazy House was designed by Dang Viet Nga, a female architect with a Ph D. from the University of Moscow. Her father was Truong Chinh, the second president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and longtime confidant of Ho Chi Minh. There is a room in the Crazy House plastered with pictures of Nga and her father, along with articles and testimonials extolling the virtues of her bizarre creation in half a dozen languages.

Lovely.

Ranked by the Chinese magazine People's Daily as one of the ten weirdest things ever built.

However, this may be the least interesting section of the house. Because the actual guest rooms are filled with red-eyed animatronic kangaroos, curiously menacing bears, and some interior decorating straight out of Middle Earth.

Haunted kangaroo.

Not sure if the bulbous eyes or enormous bees are more unsettling.

Bilbo Baggins would feel right at home.

Best of all, the guesthouse is dotted with obscure little nooks that practically beg to be occupied by nerds with thick glasses, steaming mugs of tea, and the complete works of Emily Dickinson on a rainy afternoon. Jerome and I stumbled upon many of these hideaways and each time felt stirring flashbacks to our younger, more innocent days. And then we'd scramble to avoid morbidly obese Russian tourists intent on snapping as many pictures as possible without ever actually looking at anything. It was fun.

A Jerome-sized cranny.

Eventually it came time to leave the Crazy House, as there are only so many arched skyways and giant nesting dolls one can gawk at before it all starts to look same-same. As we walked out the surprisingly normal entrance way, I gave silent thanks that Ms. Nga was blessed with such a vivid artistic imagination and superhuman tolerance for massive amounts of LSD. Because there was really no other explanation* for what we'd just seen.

Tam biet, Crazy House!

*At least not one nearly as enjoyable to ponder.

Emperor Bao Dai's palace.

Our next stop on this walking tour of Dalat was the palace of Emperor Bao Dai, the last ruler of the Nguyen Dynasty. Although Lonely Planet fails to mention it, Bao Dai's palace may be the kitschiest and least-impressive imperial palace in Asia. I first suspected this when we strolled onto the grounds and were immediately accosted by several grotesque clowns sporting traditional Vietnamese garb. And then we saw the flower-petal Vespas, which confirmed all our previous suspicions:

Sir Elton, your scooter awaits.

The grounds of the palace were fairly nice, though marred by several photo-op areas where crowds of people lined up to take pictures under heart shaped arches and cardboard cutouts of the old royal guard.  Some of the rooms inside were impressive though dilapidated in a fashion unique to 1950s buildings, where the current shabbiness not only obscures its past grandeur but renders it nearly unimaginable.

The Emperor's bedroom, apparently.

The palace was nice but underwhelming, and we soon beat a hasty retreat to the exit to avoid the swarms of camera-wielding Vietnamese who merrily avoided security ropes and ignored plaintive signs begging visitors to not touch/sit on/steal things in their mad dash for one more picture. Which is not to say we were entirely immune to the appeal of taking a few shots with the Emperor's furniture....

Chillin' like the proverbial villains.

At this point it was around 5:00pm, that curious time of day in Southeast Asia when the sky grows darker, the air gets cooler, and yet it still seems entirely too early for dinner. We wandered back into the heart of the city, near Dalat Market, occasionally pointing out attractive girls and asking the same questions ad nauseum.

'What do you want to do?'
'Doesn't matter to me. I'm good with anything. You?'
'Yeah, I'm cool either way.'

Usually in Southeast Asia there is a relatively simple solution to this problem: find the nearest bar (there should be one within ten meters or so), order two of their largest and cheapest beers, and start drinking heavily until you either pass out or feel hungry (which happen simultaneously more often than you'd think). However, as mentioned before, there are no bars in Dalat. Which isn't to say that there are actually no bars, only that they are so scarce and inconveniently located as to be practically inaccessible to anyone without expensive GPS equipment or an bloodhound-like nose for alcohol.

Which brings up an interesting point - chiefly, that although Dalat is certainly a 'vacation' city, it is not a drinking city. Coming from Korea, where all holidaymakers are legally obligated to be shit-faced off soju by sundown (or America, where 'camping' should really be referred to as 'getting drunk while building a fire and then getting even more drunk while trying not to fall into that fire'), it was astonishing to see such a largely booze-free vacation environment. At all hours of the day, Dalat's ubiquitous coffee shops were crammed with people sipping iced coffees and chatting incessantly, even without the benefit of liquid courage/humor/wisdom. It was endearing and depressing at the same time.

Apparently Dalat is quite famous for its coffee. Or so we were told by a group of friends we met the night before at the night market, though personally I suspect they had Dalat confused with Dak Lak, where the legendary ''weasel coffee' is grown. For those unfamiliar with the unique process of creating 'weasel coffee':

1) Coffee beans are fed to civets (small cat-like animals quite dissimilar to actual weasels).
2) Civets excrete the beans, which became magically delicious somewhere in their small intestines.
3) You happily pay twice the price for a cup of coffee brewed from the shit-beans, and annoy your friends with your hip insistence that, 'seriously, it's SO good'.

We never actually found weasel coffee in Dalat, though we did drink several cups of the local brew (known as cafe Da Lat). It was in fact pretty drinkable, if not quite remarkable enough to make sitting at a coffee shop for eight straight hours seem fun. But the Vietnamese tourists seemed happy enough to while away their days stirring those milky, sugary, booze-less concoctions.

Dalat's idiosyncrasies made perfect sense when we belatedly came to the realization that it is one of the few tourist destinations in Vietnam that is aimed at domestic rather than foreign tourists. Saigon is a sprawling metropolis with more than ten million people, many of whom have the disposable income and leisure time to spend a few days chilling up in the mountains away from the noise and grime of the big city. They want to ride tandem bicycles and pedal swan boats and wear couples' stocking caps when it's 25 C outside. These things seem tacky and bizarre to foreign visitors, perhaps rightfully so, but there are plenty of Vietnamese people happy enough to open their wallets, and in any case foreigners are rarely consulted on matters of Vietnamese tourism policy.

I think it's a worthwhile trade, though - booze for bliss. They know what they like, and they see no reason to complicate matters with a lot of loud nightclubs and drunken shenanigans in the street. The Vietnamese people I saw in Dalat seemed happier than their fellow citizens everywhere else; even the xe om drivers were less lecherously aggressive. People smiled and laughed as they walked down the street, groups of young women could stroll around the lake unmolested at night, and hardly anybody whispered offers of 'massa-boom-boom' or 'mari-wanna' at the street corners. The general chaos and filth of Saigon seemed lightyears away, and I understood why the Vietnamese talk about Dalat with such adoring tones.

It might be a dull spot for Spring Break, but it was a lovely place to spend Liberation Day.

Author's note: In case you were wondering, we did succeed in finding a bar that night. I believe it was called 'The Hangout', and we were lured there under the false pretense of being able to select our own music. To find the bar, simply walk in circles around the market for about half an hour, poke helplessly at the blank Google Maps page on your iPod, then call a directionally-talented friend to rescue you. The bar serves a half-decent gin and tonic.

Mountains and Motorcycles

Dalat from above.

Dalat holds a special place in the hearts of the Vietnamese, much like Jeju for the Koreans or Paris for Americans who've never actually been there. If you ask a Vietnamese about the city their eyes immediately glaze over. With a sigh and slump of the shoulders, they adopt the posture of a person who just finished a round of exhausting and emotionally satisfying coitus. They will usually gush something about the mountains, clean air, and pinewood forests. Before this, however, is a nearly orgasmic description of the weather.

To understand why Dalat's weather inspires such universal adoration amongst the Vietnamese,  you must consider the climate of Saigon. On an average day, the temperature ranges from 'Jesus, it's fucking hot,' to 'please just kill me now'. Today, for example, the temperature is 39 degrees Celsius, which is equivalent to 102 degrees Fahrenheit (God's preferred unit of heat measurement). Old people literally wilt as they shuffle down the alleyways and ice cream salesmen struggle vainly to fend off packs of ravenous and heat-crazed schoolchildren. I have not yet tried to fry an egg on the hood of my car, mostly because I don't own a car and hate the smell of fried eggs but also because it is dangerous to venture further than five feet from the nearest fan.

It's really, really, REALLY hot here.

~

My native state of Minnesota, USA is colloquially described as having two seasons: winter and road construction (which is also cold, but with more mosquitoes). To me, then, the idea of holidaying in a city BECAUSE it's colder than home seems odd, to be polite, or batshit crazy, to be truthful. However after six months of sweating through fabrics of all colors and thicknesses, experiencing hair frizz that would make Sideshow Bob jealous, and generally feeling that every trip outside was like walking through a bowl of hot soup, I was ready to give Dalat a try.

~

The weather wasn't my only motivation for checking out this mountain getaway, though. Shortly after arriving in Vietnam I bought my first motorcycle, which triggered a long-dormant love affair I have with loud, fast, shiny things I don't know how to fix. I am very fond of my little Honda '67, and have spared no expense to make it the loudest, fastest, and shiniest machine in the phuong. However, all the blood, sweat, tears and dong I've poured into this burgundy moneypit are largely wasted in the city, where traffic speeds rarely crack 30 kph and the most useful parts of a bike are its horn and its brakes. I was dying to take my girl for a proper trip to the country where I could open her up and maybe, just maybe, drive for a few klicks without nearly getting T-boned by a fucking taxi.

~

Luckily, several months ago I met a kindred spirit with similar delusions of a grand Easy Rider-type jaunt to the highlands. His name was Jerome, and he was an interesting cat. His life journey had been more convoluted than a Faulkner novel but from what I could piece together he was a semi-avid musician/DJ/English teacher with Swiss-French roots and a hopelessly idealistic view of the road. I couldn't have asked for a better travel buddy. He also rode a Honda '67, which gave our prospective trip a nice 'theme'. Two long-haired rebels tearing down the country roads, leaving a trail of dust, broken hearts, and motor oil behind us. '67s are notoriously leaky.

The '67s.

~

We set off early Monday morning with the merciless Vietnamese sun already burning through the pitifully inadequate layer of SPF30 on my arms and face. Looking appropriately outlaw-ish with our dark sunglasses, bandanas and small travel packs, we inched our way through the stifling traffic of downtown Saigon and blasted through the mammoth tunnel leading to the outskirts of the city. We rode side-by-side, laughing at the befuddled looks we were getting from our fellow motorists and making grand proclamations about the plentiful delights awaiting us in Dalat. We were out of the city, and on our way.

Except for one small detail - we weren't really out of the city. Saigon, it turns out, is much like the Hotel California in that it is nearly impossible to actually leave. After nearly two hours of driving, we were still passing the same Soviet-style concrete buildings, rundown mechanics' garages, and ubiquitous coffee stands that define Saigon's outer, less affluent areas. Passing by a garish, kitschy waterpark that literally swarmed with Vietnamese families seeking respite from the heat, I began to despair of ever reaching the open road, or at least shifting out of 2nd gear. We had set out with the goal of escaping the crowds and there we were, stuck in the familiar smoggy traffic jams of this vast and sprawling urban hell. We gritted our teeth and made increasingly pessimistic predictions about our eventual time of arrival.

~

When we finally reached the junction of Highway 20, which leads more or less directly to Dalat, we felt immensely relieved and slightly less homicidal. Unfortunately our mental state stood in marked contrast to our physical state - after two and a half hours of driving, our asses were completely numb. Actually, numb might be the wrong word, since it implies loss of feeling. My ass, at least, was still perfectly capable of feeling, and mostly it was feeling extremely uncomfortable. After squirming fruitlessly for an eternity, searching for that elusive 'right spot' on the '67's narrow seat, I yelled to Jerome that we had better stop before I drove head-first into a bus just to end the agony.

We pulled off the road into a makeshift rest area covered by a tin and bamboo roof. Underneath stood rows of little chairs and tables, and hammocks drooped lazily from the poles. We ordered iced coffees and began the tiresome process of demonstrating our lack of Vietnamese language skills to the rest stop's proprietor, who was completely undeterred by our inability to answer his questions and spend the next fifteen minutes jabbering in Vietnamese and pointing in the vague direction of 'Daaa-LAT'. His wife looked on, bored out of her mind as she stirred the sugary, syrupy sludge into something resembling coffee. Their small son eyed us distrustfully as we rubbed our legs and traced sweeping curves on Jerome's map of Vietnam, which had clearly been made by a profligate drunkard with a seething hatred of setting distances to scale. Dalat looked close - a few more hours of hard driving and we'd be nestled safely in the highlands, sipping icy bia Saigon and hollering (in a charmingly sophisticated way, of course) at the local ladies.

Rest stop.

~

A funny thing happened in the course of those 'few hours of hard driving'. We didn't reach Dalat, but we did reach the forest. And the hills. It's difficult to imagine what a strange feeling this was without, again, considering Saigon. Thousands of years ago my hometown of Minneapolis was steamrolled by an Ice Age glacier, but even so it has no match for the utter flatness of Saigon. I'm told the result is a bicyclist's paradise, though I haven't willingly ridden a bicycle since Pogs were cool. Also, there are (obviously) no forests in Saigon, where the few trees still standing look as out of place as black people at a Klan rally.

Maybe now you can understand my delighted surprise as we began our climb through the foothills and encountered, of all things, cool air. I clearly remember the moment it happened - we had just passed a rubber tree plantation, narrowly avoiding a clearly-tweaking bus driver as he barreled down the wrong lane blasting his horn as a warning to get the fuck out of his way, pronto. I was still slack-jawed at the sight of so many trees when the familiar blast-furnace air of southern Vietnam was replaced by a crisp, cool breeze that reminded me of autumn in Wisconsin. I whooped with joy and zoomed up to Jerome, happy to share this transformative experience with a fellow traveller. Then a giant lorry screamed by and we quickly returned to reality.

As we continued the ascent, we passed through an area once marked by volcanoes; supposedly there were several calderas still intact not far from the main road. As we had little faith in our ability to communicate our interest in these to the locals (O dau giant-fucking-ancient-geologic-formations?), we contented ourselves with occasional pitstops at small-town coffee shops to give our weary glutes a rest. At one point, near the area known as Magadui, we paused for lunch at a bizarre restaurant/resort that might have been transplanted from Minnesota's northern forests, if not for the incomprehensible Vietnamese menus and mopey ballads echoing softly from someone's overworked iPhone.

A garden paradise, of sorts.

At this point in the story, it is necessary to make an observation about distances in Vietnam. I grew up in the Upper Midwest, where road trips generally involve interminable stretches of interstate highway most notable for the utter lack of anything notable. These highways are long, straight, and generally in excellent condition. It's entirely possible to calculate one's journey using the kind of arithmetic that bores schoolchildren to death - Nick leaves Minneapolis traveling at 70 miles per hour, it's 280 miles to Place X, he arrives in 4 hours. Easy.

This is not the case in Vietnam, especially when riding motorcycles. Speeds are slower, much slower. An interesting design quirk of the Honda '67 is that its speedometer is designed to quit functioning roughly twelve minutes after it is purchased, but we estimated that our usual cruising speed topped out at 50 kph. This doesn't take into consideration all the inevitable slowdowns for oncoming murderers/truck drivers, errant motorbike riders, or idiot kids on bicycles. And more importantly, it does not take into consideration the roads.

While some stretches of highway were absolutely delightful, we encountered one stretch that made me seriously question our sanity for attempting the journey. It would not be entirely honest to even describe it as a 'road' - it was more like a series of potholes (varying in width and depth) with thin lines of intact pavement weaving randomly about the chasms. In rapid succession, we suffered two flat tires, the frame of Jerome's '67 lost several bolts and nearly its entire undercarriage, and this happened:

Yes - the bike shook so hard that the taillight fell off.

So you can understand our eagerness to reach Dalat as quickly as possible. There was only one catch, also relating to the difference between driving in the US as opposed to Vietnam. Which is this: while nighttime driving on Interstate 94 is a time to crank Kenny Rogers and grab a few Red Bulls at the Pump n' Munch, night driving on Vietnamese highways is a knuckle-whitening, pants-soiling endeavor attempted only by the foolish and/or criminally insane. And it was quickly getting dark.

With less than 100 km between us and our final destination, we decided to press on and complete the journey in a single day. At this point it was roughly 5:30pm, and we'd been driving for nine hours. Our spirits were high, however, and the prospect of settling in for the night in some podunk town along the side of the road conjured very unpleasant, Deliverance-y type thoughts. So we kept driving, nervously checking the position of the sun and quipping hopefully about a hot shower and a cold beer.

When the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains, it got dark. I mean, REALLY dark. As in, can't-see-ten-feet-in-front-of-you dark. There are no streetlights on small Vietnamese highways. It was around this time that I learned how fantastically useless the headlight of my motorbike is; it seemed to oscillate between two settings of equal puniness, although the highbeam setting created a slightly wider dullish yellow glow. We were literally driving blind, except when a larger motor vehicle came screaming up behind us to temporarily illuminate the potholes and tree branches in our path.

Also, I was cold. This might have been the strangest feeling I had all trip. But a combination of the cool mountain air and constant wind had achieved the impossible; namely, stopping my profuse sweating and replacing it with the kind of numb-fingered, teeth-chattering discomfort I hadn't experienced since Korea. Out of the frying pan and into the freezer.

Finally, our feeble headlights passed over the most beautiful sight we had seen all day - a small blue sign reading 'Dalat - 7km'. Cackling with the kind of pleasure felt only by those who might not have full control of their mental capacities, we pinned the throttles and jetted down the surprisingly smooth and empty highway. Things were looking up - only a few more minutes and we'd be safely ensconced in a hotel room with soft beds and stealable shampoo.

Almost on cue, I ran out of gas.

After 11 hours of driving I suppose it was inevitable, but it felt like an awfully anticlimactic way to end the journey. Jerome put one foot on the back peg of my '67, and we began the slow and sputtering process of trying to find someone willing to sell us a liter or two of shitty petrol. Eventually, after several false positives and some unwieldy left-hand turns, we found an old lady who happily exchanged one bottle of vile green semi-fuel for 30,000 dong (roughly twice what you'd pay at a proper gas station).

Turning off the beautiful smooth highway (which we nicknamed the 'Uncle Ho Memorial Good Time Number One Super-Happy Driving Road), we began the ascent to Dalat. I'm not sure of Dalat's exact elevation, but it seemed to be impossibly high; I felt as if I was driving to Shangri-La. The switchback roads were steep and narrow; occasionally a car would wiz past and our poor little motorcycles would grumble ill-humoredly, as if they couldn't believe that we would do THIS to them after all the shit they'd been through earlier. Jerome's bike, which had the smaller 70cc engine, was moving at the brisk pace of a elderly powerwalker.

Finally we reached the top of the mountain and gazed down at Dalat. It is a small city, but its buildings cast a kindly, charming light over the plateau. The hotels and restaurants were clustered around the lake, where couples pedaled swan-shaped boats through the calm and gentle waters. We tried exchanging high-fives, thought better of it, and began to meander down to the city proper, eager to find a room and something to eat. The city looked beautifully serene. We'd finally made it.

Immediately upon entering the city we encountered a large roundabout and spent the next fifteen minutes stuck in a hopeless traffic jam, elbow-to-elbow with dozens of assholes who didn't understand the meaning of 'yield' in any language.

It was still Vietnam, after all.

To be continued...