Part 15: Dalat, Vietnam (#1)

Sunset from our "home" at Blue Mountain Homestay, Dalat.

Interlude: We are so far behind in posting that this all seems like a lifetime ago. How surprising that it’s impossible to be enjoying where we are, making plans for what’s next, and keeping track of what we’ve done at the same time (weird). I still can't believe it's really happening - even thought we have over 360 miles of walking to show for it! As of this moment we are in Japan, by way of Taiwan and South Korea. We will be here for another couple of weeks before finally getting to our original destination of Portugal, 6 months after we set out. This is such a crazy ride! We are definitely learning a lot about our own limits along the way. Anyway, on to Dalat…

Dalat:

It's daunting to try to sum up our time there (which will take 2 posts to cover). We were finally able to settle in and discover the weird magic of Vietnam. Raw and rustic, serene and surreal, life here has a close personal relationship with chaos. Buffy and Ed taught us their mottos: “Safety Third,” and “It’s a Vietnamese mystery.” These caveats were proven repeatedly on a daily basis. Things just happen here, in their own time, and in the strangest ways. Everyone here has a work hustle, or two or three, and the energy is infectious.

We arrived in Dalat on February 14th - happy Valentine's Day! As previously mentioned, we came here to visit our friends Buffy and Ed, who got stuck there due to a COVID border closure during their travels 5 years ago. The house we rented was where they had originally stayed when they moved to Dalat, next door to their current house. The two places share a small courtyard and gate, so it felt like our own little world. It was so nice to have our friends as neighbors, a whole house to move into, and to finally UNPACK! It can’t be overstated how much it meant to have a sense of normalcy, daily cribbage games for David, and just being silly with friends.  

Da Lat is a beautiful mountain town at about 5,000 feet above sea level. It's full of French Colonial houses and Deco buildings from the 30's and 40's, tucked into the steep mountain hillsides. It's also the primary vegetable and flower growing region for central and southern Vietnam. The bottom of the valley is packed with massive greenhouses squeezed into every available space, and vegetables are sold almost everywhere you look. Every public space is bursting with flowers - roses in particular. The heart of the town is a picturesque reservoir surrounded by gardens, a walking trail, paddle boats and fishing spots. The massive public market nearby could be its own neighborhood. The elevation and mountain breezes keep it cooler than the lowlands, by up to 15+ degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say, we quickly fell in love with it.

The street map of the city looks like a bunch of spaghetti noodles thrown on the ground, and the traffic was so crazy that it took us a couple of days to feel "comfortable" crossing the street. The primary rules are to make eye contact and don't stop, with some waving thrown in for good luck. Everyone is moving pretty slowly, but pedestrians are definitely lowest on the pecking order. Whether it's driving through a 5-way intersection, making a left turn while driving into oncoming traffic, or a full-on U-turn, everything just sort of happens in a surreal choreography at 35 - 40 miles per hour. Sidewalks are mostly for scooter parking, and are full of so many obstacles that walking in the street almost feels safer. It didn’t help that we arrived just after the Tet holiday, so there were still a lot of extra visitors in the city.

Our house was a big, beautiful open space (rare for Vietnam) surrounded by windows that opened to 180+ degree views of the valley. The house sits on a narrow, tightly winding street that ends in a a few houses and a small grove of coffee trees just under our windows. With 8 kids belonging to the family immediately below us, there was always something going on. The sounds of "Mot, hai, ba" ("one, two, three") accompanied by the dull roar of plastic kiddy-cars racing on concrete was a constant soundtrack. Of course in true Vietnamese fashion, everything about our place had its quirks. Most everything here is constructed by hand, and building codes aren't really a thing. It's more important to have the right number of steps than to have them be the same height. Levels don’t seem to exist, and power tools are minimal. It's amazing the degree of craftsmanship they can accomplish this way. We watched a villa getting built across the street (from rubble to 2 floors plus retaining wall and extensive brick fence in 7 weeks), by men and women wearing flip flops and straw hats, mixing concrete in wheelbarrows, never a safety harness or hard hat in sight.

We had beautiful sunsets almost every night, with a view of 2 temples and a monastery of nuns on the far hillside. Directly across from us was a huge white statue of Guyanyin: the female incarnation of Buddha, and a goddess of compassion and mercy. Buffy and Ed have a rooftop garden, which was an ideal spot to play cribbage, or spend the evening watching the light change. Our mascots at the house were Mama and Ralph, two neighborhood dogs that had decided to take up residence in the courtyard. Apparently Ralph actually belongs to the neighbors below us, but he and Mama are usually hanging around (when not out getting dirty), and Ed and Buffy do a lot to care for them. With Buffy's cat, Tony, we had a little menagerie.

We had intended to rent scooters for our stay, but you can get anywhere - and everything delivered to your door - for next to nothing via Grab (their Uber). You could order a single beer and someone would bring it to you. We did do some shopping and cooking, braving the giant grocery store in the middle of the mall or getting veggies from the ladies that line the streets. But for the most part we just didn't need to shop. There's so much good food everywhere. Some favorite spots were La Viet Coffee, with the most inventive "cocktails," like coffee margaritas and coffee Pho. Or Banh Can (mini savory rice pancakes with fillings and broth) for breakfast down the street, or the pork wonton giant bowl of soup (with 3 other kinds of pork) for $2, or bun that nuong (noodles with barbecue meat for humans). Great expat spots were Moto Laurie's (Australian-Vietnamese brunch spot and scooter repair shop), and Le Alpie (Frank the grumpy Italian making wonderful pasta). We definitely were in no danger of going hungry.

The Goat Farm

When Ed and Buffy first moved to Dalat, they became friends with their landlords, Rob and Chou. Eventually they all started Blue Mountain Farm together, where they raise goats to make cheese and caramels. It’s about 15 minutes out of town, but feels worlds away. As landowners, they are expected to carefully manage the forest with occasional controlled burns, and are not allowed to cut down a single tree. They built everything from the ground up, with granite found on site. They have about 80 goats (probably twice that by now) on 72 acres of land, with an ultimate goal of around 250 animals. They also give tours and host events. We went there twice during our stay, along with other visiting friends. The first time we went, Rob hosted us for a fantastic dinner overlooking the valley, surrounded by peaceful forested hills. We feasted and sat around the fire pit talking into the night while the sun set beyond the far mountains. On our second visit, we joined the official tour from Chou, and got to feed the goats and stuff ourselves with home-made biscuits and all of their lovely food products. The caramel sauce is to die for! Check them out:

https://www.dalatbluemountainfarm.com/en

Bo

Early on when Ed and Buffy moved to Dalat they met Bo Ho, one of the most adorable, endearing and indispensable humans ever. He has become an honorary member of their family, and house-sits for them during the rainy season. When he’s not doting on their animals, he’s usually finding stray critters to save. Having taught himself fluent English through movies and video games growing up, he was our ambassador to the neighborhood, and taught us a lot about life here. He would regularly appear with treats of salted coffee, or kumquat tea, or fried chicken and sweet potatoes - perpetually in his coat and scooter helmet. Everything that needed to be arranged, or delivered, or negotiated with the neighbors, or navigated in Vietnamese, Bo was there. Usually before you knew you needed something, Bo had already made it happen. When our entire house short-circuited while we were away in Hoi An, Bo was the go-to intermediary. He never seemed to mind spending time with people twice his age, but we had to ask him not to call us Ma’am and Sir, haha! After that, we were “Miss Maggie and Mr. David.” We really look forward to seeing him again when we go back!

Ralph's Day Out

One of our more memorable experiences was also the most ordinary. Going to the post office was only supposed to be a small-scale adventure, but Ralph the dingbat dog had other ideas. He had pretty much adopted us (I.e. David) as his surrogate people, and he started to accompany us every time we left on foot. Usually it was just up the street when we waited for a Grab, which wasn’t an issue. Then he followed us to get breakfast down the hill, but was gone by the time we finished. And then I decided to mail my infamous postcards…  

We decided to walk about 45 minutes to the downtown P.O., and catch a ride back for a planned lunch. True to form, Ralph stuck to our side, and try as we might there was no keeping him “home”  (we never had to navigate a language barrier with a dog before, haha). If crossing the street or managing crazy sidewalks by ourselves was challenging, having a goofy puppy involved was pure chaos. The first few crossings had us terrified for him, and there were a couple close calls with him scrambling back out of the street. But whenever we called him he came right back, and he was so good (when he wanted to be). Half the time we just followed him as he parted traffic for us; we were all doing our best to keep each other afloat! Of course we didn’t know exactly where we were going, and got a lot of interesting looks along the way. 

Once we found the post office, I showed the attendant my 11 postcards, and she handed me a sheet of 33 stamps and a glue stick! “One time each, 3 times” were my instructions. Of course this took a while, but fortunately the post office was open air, and Ralph curled up under the table to patiently wait until craft time was finished. Since we didn’t think we could get dog into car, we then had to walk the whole way back, hoping not to be too late for our lunch date. We were so worried about expanding his roaming radius by bringing him to parts unknown, but he’s a pretty self-sufficient puppy. Even when we stopped at a juice stand close to home, he climbed a wall and crashed through the bushes to wait under our table. It was incredibly endearing, and I know we were all relieved to finally get home.

New Friends

We discovered that we were a small part of the regular stream of visitors to partake of Ed and Buffy's hospitality. We were so lucky to spend time with them all. We spent time with Ed's daughter Toshie, traveled with Colin and Bridget from Orcas Island (see Con Dao and Ho Chi Minh City), and had fun exploring Dalat with Pete - another coffee roaster visiting from Seattle. Then Cindy and Züm were our neighbors for a week. Cindy is a U.S. expat, political activist and women’s advocate, with a most impressive string of credentials. She’s also an avid and generous photographer (thanks of much for sharing, Cindy!). She currently lives in Bulgaria with her husband Craig, and we met them together in Hoi An for Buffy’s birthday. Züm is a Vietnamese native and a performer with the National Vietnamese Opera. She has also been a film-maker a (clean) diamond importer, and currently runs an excellent Mexican restaurant in her family home in Hanoi. (More on this in the upcoming Hanoi post.)  Züm graciously agreed to make us a Vietnamese dinner during her stay, and she spent an entire day shopping and crafting an elaborate feast. She made stuffed squash, shrimp salad, and enough soup to feed an army - and so much more. We had a fantastic dinner party on the rooftop under the stars, eating until we were ready to burst. It was truly one of the most special moments we had there.

Girls' Day

During their visit, Cindy and Züm arranged a day for us to have a temple tour and lunch with their friend Phúông, who is the 3rd highest ranking nun at the nearby Linh Phong Nun Pagoda (with the statue on the far hill). We decided to make it a girls' day, and were joined by another friend, Tui, She had come to the rooftop dinner party, and is a US expat from Miami turned global citizen. She has a background in finance history, with the heart of an art historian. She pointed out much of the symbolism and history of the temple art to me. It was a fantastic and fascinating group of ladies, and I was so humbled to spend the day with them. Phúông sent her driver from the monastery to pick us up, and we were given an insider’s tour of two of the larger temples in Dalat (Linh Son Pagoda and Chùa Quán Thê Âm), then went to a vegan lunch of mushroom hot pot, fresh rolls and green rice shoots. We ended the day with a tour of Phúông’s temple, and tea in her private quarters with her cat Miep. We have spent so much time in temples, it was really special to see one on the inside. Meeting Phúông was a truly humbling experience. When she grabbed my hand it felt like a lightning bolt of kindness. I’ve never met someone with such a palpable  and powerful loving grace, and am hoping to learn from her example.

There's so much more crazy stuff to tell - lots of exploring. Hopefully I can get it posted sooner than later, stay tuned!