Riding Through the Outskirts of Da Lat

Yesterday Kenny and I went on a tour of the surrounding countryside of Da Lat on the back of a motorbike.

We hired two guides, called Easy Riders, to drive us around on the back of their motorbikes.

The experience was unbelievable. I've never been on a motorcycle so you can imaging that I was a bit nervous at first. However, a couple turns into it, I could not imagine touring Vietnam any other way.

Our first stop was at Loi Cao Bach, the first pagoda in Da Lat city. Then, our tour guides shuttled us off to Lang Bian mountain, the second largest in Vietnam. We hiked up a short trail to see the peaks but they were covered in clouds. We did get a beautiful view of the city though.

Next we stopped at a flower farm. The farmers build structures similar to green houses so that they can grow flowers year round. The flowers, fuchsias, grew in many different colors. Red, pink and orange for love. Yellow for luck and white for funerals. Interesting to hear that there are only two places in Vietnam where flowers will grow. Here and a very small village in Hanoi. Flowers are picked daily (another flower blooms in its place 7 days later) and shipped all over the country.

The drive from the flower farm down the mountain to several surrounding villages was incredible. These winding roads went through pristine hillside forests. I'm unable to post images now however I will make sure to upload a number of images (as well as video of Kenny and I riding) when I get home.

After we visited a few small villages, we stopped on the side of the road where coffee beans were growing. Our guide showed us a few things about the plant then took us to a cafe where they processed coffee and rice wine. We tasted the partially distilled rice wine (potent) and then moved to a room filled with caged weasels.

This was the strangest thing we'd seen and at first we were very confused. Our guide proceeded to tell us that the weasels were known for finding the best coffee beans in the fields. They would eat them and something in their stomach would naturally alter the bean. Humans would then go through the fields and collect the droppings of the weasel to make Weasel Coffee.

Weasel coffee is considered a delicacy and very expensive. A kilo of it would cost $3,000. Hilary Clinton was even presented weasel coffee as a gift from the Vietnamese. Fortunately at this cafe we were able to try it at a fraction of the cost. It was awful. Dense and grainy. Kenny and I could not stop laugh. The guides just laughed at us.

After the Weasel poop coffee, we headed to a silk factory. The silk worms were grown else where but at this factory they sort the cocoons, boiling them and then unravelling the thread with the help of a very loud machine. The thread is then dyed and woven into all sorts of patterns.

While walking through the factory, I felt something on my left leg. I looked down but didn't see anything so I continued on. A couple seconds later I felt it again but still nothing was on my pants. All of a sudden, I realized it was coming from under my pants. As I rolled up the bottom of my workout pants two huge cockroaches fell to the floor. I tried to keep my composure but it was so unexpected that my skin was crawling and I quickly made my way outside while I started shaking and dancing about to make sure no other critters were trying to hitch a ride. The guides started laughing at me for a second time that day.

The Elephant waterfall and the Linh An Pagoda were next, followed by a quick stop at a rice paddy. I never knew how rice was grown. I had always for some reason thought rice actually grew near the root when in fact it grows more like wheat with the little kernels forming at the top. We also ended up seeing an avocado tree and papaya tree, which I had never seen before.

We rode to a few more places before arriving at Tuyen Lam Lake, home to the largest meditation center in Vietnam. The pagoda was beautiful with lovely gardens. The hydrangeas reminded both Kenny and I of my mom and her love of Ina Garden, the Barefoot Contessa, who always uses these flowers in her center pieces.

Our last stop was the Crazy House, described as a free-wheeling architectural exploration of surrealism. Basically, imagine if Antoni Gaudi were to design one of the houses in Disneyland's Toon Town. I would recommend googling images of this place. It was a trip.

Our guides then dropped us off. Safe and sound at our hotel. We enjoyed our trip immensely but were sad to see them go. Both Kenny and I could have done with more time on the back of the bikes. It has us both considering learning how to ride and taking a motorcycle trip across our own countryside.