Vietnam: DaLat Rock City
It felt very cosmopolitan landing in DaLat Rock City on Tuesday at dusk after six days of zooming through one-horse villages and the wide-open foothill frontier of the lower Central Highlands. DaLat felt downright urban with its tile showrooms and HVAC outlets, petrol stations, bars and hillside greenhouses. And honkies. Suddenly there were a lot of people around who weren’t Asian.
Not that there are many Americans. Mostly the whities seem European. You can spot the Russians a mile away, and the Australians are easy to identify too because they’re usually talking super loud about being Australian. There are a lot of Israeli travelers here also, and what I keep forgetting is that just because someone is Asian doesn’t mean they’re Vietnamese. There are tons of Chinese and Korean tourists, but in my tiny self-aware Braimesworld worldview, I still just think we’re the only Americans— which would be fine with me if it were true.
Not that anyone cares. When asked, I do often say we are from Southern Canada. But honestly it seems like Americans are less unpopular than many other tourists. And as far as the grotesquely flawed personality behind US foreign policy goes, it seems many Vietnamese view Trump as anti-China and that is much more positive to them than his domestic developmental disabilities are expensive. They don’t know him like we know him; his character is not their conern. They have much more pressing issues to deal with in China.
And they live in a communist country, after all. The Vietnamese don’t enjoy the sport of being all pissed off that 51% of the fools in their country elected a corrupt imbecile— because the Party tells them who is going to be in charge to begin with. The hammer & sic are everywhere, hanging side-by-side with the gold-star Vietnamese flag— companion pieces for sure. But it doesn’t appear as though there’s all that much muscle or even intent behind the logo. Our bike guides did (kind of) agree that the Party is watching you (some) and they also (sort of) allowed that some businesses (might) raise the flag or donate space in a field or on a building for a propaganda billboard. And maybe the business owner gets some points (a literal gold star!)— it’s not clear. But in general, it doesn’t seem like the Party is breathing down everyone’s neck or taxing them to ribbons. They’re certainly not shooting civilians in the street.
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There’s a lot of French presence throughout Vietnam, but nowhere is the architectural influence on bolder display than in DaLat. The French built what makes DaLat DaLat starting in the very late 19th century and the city retains a strong European flavor, from the buildings themselves to the infrastructure with its stone-lined canals and impossibly narrow, steep, winding backstreets and alleyways. The French got forced out by the Japanese during WWII, but then those guys had to split after surrendering to the Allies in 1945. The French returned for a minute to check on their villas, but eventually were chased for good by Ho and his Viet Minh by 1954. And then of course we all know what happened after that.
The point is that DaLat was largely spared throughout all this historical conflict. Unlike less-fortunate venues like Quang Tri or even Saigon, the City of Flowers was not reduced to rubble because it was just too darned pretty. It’s kind of like Savannah that way, which Sherman spared because he had girlfriends there. Both sides— all sides— agreed informally that they’d work around DaLat, and it functioned as a holiday zone for brass of many different stripes. It still does.
Lots of vacationing going on here. With Tet fast-approaching, there are decorating crews stringing up ornate red lanterns and unpacking great crates of red and yellow flowers. The cherry blossoms are starting to open and there is a lot of dressing up and posing for selfies.
Including by Patti and I. There are some photogenic backdrops here in this colorful tourist playground. Incredibly, three of the most-popular attractions seem to have been built by the same deranged party, if hundreds of years apart and for radically different root purposes. The Hang Nga Crazy House (architectural expressionism) the Linh Phuoc Temple (straight-up Buddhist worship) and the aptly-named Maze Bar (alcohol abuse) share an unnerving architectural flavor, featuring riddlesome melting buildings, secret rooms, and ladder-like staircases climbing high into the forgotten uppermost reaches of the rafters. Borrowing heavily from Parc Guell, Casa Bonita and the Winchester Mystery House, there’s also a bit of Seuss, Dali, Tolkien and Escher tossed in to thicken the respective confounding batters. And to make the experience that much more unsafe. A vertigost’s bad dream, many passages are poorly lit and the patterned textures blend together, further limiting visibility. The ‘handrails’ on bridges several stories above the ground are at thigh-height. And at least at the Maze Bar, you are actually required to consume alcohol. You could never get insurance underwritten to operate attractions like these in the US.
Just another of the many differences between here and home! I will say it was nice to have a hot shower with first-world water pressure in our second hotel here. Our first DaLat flop was a guest suite in the home of some friendly locals on the outskirts of town (think AirB in a 125-year-old French villa with 15’ stacked stone walls and 12’ arched windows). But checking into La Macaron downtown was like being welcomed to the 21st century with its separate stall shower and western threadcounts. After a week’s worth of loose fitting coldwater waterroom baths and lumpy beddings, Le Macaron was a delicious 36 hours of boutique luxury, a splurge at $40USD/night. We slept well, had some underpants washed, and got re-packed to fly into the sky on an airplane to the next town.
See you in Da Nang.
