Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

This is coming a little bit earlier than expected, I'm actually still in Dalat right now, but I am totally exhausted, so I'm just waiting for my bus in my hotel. I'll probably go watch wimbledon finals in an hour though. But the past two days have been busy so I'll get right to it.

I left Ho Chi Minh city at 12:15 saturday morning, I got to watch the third set of the Roddick-Murray match with a bunch of people from Britain...

This put me in Dalat at about 5:45 or so. After it became apparent that the bus company was not going to take me in a little bus to my hotel like they said the would, I started walking. I didn't actually have any idea where I was going, because I was off of my maps. But I eventually saw a sign for Dalat Market, so I headed that way. Now on my map I set of for my hotel, which is a good bit north of the city. I ended up getting there at about 7:20 in the morning. I had intended to just ask them if I could leave some of my stuff behind the desk so I didn't have to carry it all day, but, no not at the Thien An hotel. Instead, the owner asked my to wait for twenty minutes, and then showed me to my room, even though I only had it booked for Saturday night. Then he told me to come downstairs and have breakfast (yes patrick you were right) breakfast was amazing. Passion fruit juice, which I hadn't had before, scrambled eggs, peanut butter and strawberry jam on a huge roll, pineapple, banana's, yogurt, passion fruit, and dragon fruit (I didn't have the last three) . I made myself and extra peanut butter and strawberry jam roll and threw a banana in my backpack for lunch, and set off. Dalat it pretty sweet. It was much nicer to walk around in than Nha Trang or HCMC, just because its so much cooler. The only sort of negative part is that everything is really spread out. I saw most of the sights I had picked out, Crazy House is sweet, that's what most of the pictures are of (they'll be up tomorrow night).
I was pretty tired though, probably because I hadn't slept all that well on the bus, so I stopped periodically to rest and read my book ( I had bought catch 22 and catcher and the rye the night before). During one of my breaks on a bank next to a horse pasture, a nice old vietnamese guy came to visit me and we talked for a little bit, then he asked if you could take my picture, which I was fine with, and he gave me cough drops as a souvenier (I think he thought they were candy). Then they let the horses out to walk around a little, and one of them came to visit too. After a while I decided to continue sightseeing.

But I could not for the life of me find this pagoda that I wanted to go to. I now had three different maps of the city, Lonely Planet, the one that is on my map of HCMC, and the one that the guy at the hotel gave me. They all have this pagoda being in different places, and I couldn't find it in any of them. And the area around where it is supposed to be isn't the same either. None of the maps have the same streets, nor are the ones that they have in common named the same on each map. There are some streets that actually exist that weren't on any of the maps, and some streets on the map that I couldn't find in real life. I know this place exists, because Patrick had checked it off (the one that the book says has all those paintings), and added a street to the map right next to it, but I still couldn't find it.

At this point I was dead tired and getting cranky, so I gave up and headed back to central Dalat. Ben had said that Dalat wasn't really a place where you went to go sightseeing, as much as a place where you went for the atmosphere, and should just sit in a cafe and read a book. So I did. For about 30 seconds before I fell asleep. After maybe half an hour of trying to read and falling asleep and trying to read and falling asleep, I went back to my hotel and took a shower. Then I read some more (catcher and the rye is pretty good) before I went out for dinner. I had also stopped by a tour company on the way back to figure out what I wanted to to on Sunday (today). I thought about doing their rock climbing trip, but they said that there had to be a minimum of 2 people, and no one else had signed up. So I talked to them about a hike I had thought about doing, and about the waterfalls around Dalat, and that helped me figure out my plan. But I needed a bike, so on the way back to my hotel from dinner I stopped at a bike shop, and tried to figure out if I could rent one. They guy didn't normally rent bikes, but he said he would rent me one for about $2. When I got back to my hotel though, I realized that they had bikes, and they were free (this hotel is sweet). So I planned on taking one of theirs the next day, and then fell asleep reading at probably 9:30.

Today, I got up just after 7, and got another free awesome breakfast, and packed lunch. Then I grabbed the bike, and headed north to the little village of Lat. It was about 12km, and the village is at the base of this mountain that I planned on hiking. I was a little worried about finding it, because I was again off of my maps, but the directions seems straight forward enough. I was also a little worried about what I was going to do with the bike while I was hiking since I didn't have a lock for it. Both of these worries were pretty unfounded. I had expected this mountain to sort of just be there outside of the village, however, I should have know better than to expect anything in Lonely Planet to be any less commercialized than Disney World. There was another HOLLYWOOD - esque sign on the hillside assuring me that I had in fact reached Lang Biang mountain. There was also a place to park motorbikes (and regular bikes like mine) inside the gate.

After checking my bike and buying my ticket, I asked for a trail map. Which they didn't give out, they just had a big sign with the trails, which I couldn't really read, so I just sort of headed out along the road. After about half a mile on the road, being passed about every 30 seconds by a honking roaring jeep carrying people who did not want to hike to the top of the smallest of the 3 peaks, I decided that I wanted to get off the road. There was a little trail off the side that looked promising, especially because I could hear running water, but when I looked over the edge I saw a jacuzzi and a tennis court, so I kept going. Then I found what looked like a horse trail off to the side and went for it. It was much nice in the woods, and with a combination of this horse trail, animal trails and outright bushwacking, I made my way up the mountain. After about an hour, I decided to head back to the road to make sure I was going to right way. This turned out to be a good time to make this decision. When I got back on the road, I got all angry at the jeeps passing me again, but after about 500 yards I came to the trailhead for the big peak ( a trail that thankfully was not a paved road).

It was 3 km to the peak, but it felt like longer than that. I ran into another Australian guy who seemed to be leading a group of Vietnamese middle school students along the way. The trail was pretty nice for a while, but towards the end, it got really really steep, and a little over grown. I was dripping with sweat and my legs were dead by the time I reached to summit. The views were sweet, but the summit itself was kind of a bummer. It was really hot and buggy, and there was trash everywhere, so I just took a few pictures and head back down. I had lunch in the shade where I had met the Australian guy and the kids, and head the rest of the way down. I took the road, because I didn't feel like getting all scratched up again. Back at the bottom, I rested for a little and then got back on the bike back to Dalat. It's a pretty nice bike ride through the countryside (ish) and I had planned on taking some pictures on the way back, but then it started raining, and I didn't want to get my camera wet so I just rode straight through. I got soaked, but that was okay as I had already been soaked once in sweat.

When I got back to Dalat I had planned on going to see some of the water falls and stuff, but I was pretty exhausted. I rode over to the Lake of Sighs, which is lame, and then thought about going to some falls, but decided to try to find the pagoda from yesterday again. I went all over where the maps said it should be, but still couldn't find it. Finally another nice old guy gave me directions, and I ended up finding it. It was sort of where it was supposed to be, but not really. And it was closed. bogus. A woman saw me standing at the gate looking all depressed, so she had her daughter ask me if I needed help. I said no, that I had been looking for this pagoda, but now it was closed, and she said, yes it closed everyday. Lame.

Again, exhausted, and frustrated in the same part of town as yesterday, I gave up on the waterfalls (my legs were lead at this point, and my tailbone was sore as all get out. I don't know how you got over that, dad, I know my legs would get stronger eventually, but everytime that I do any sort of bike riding, I can sit down comfortably for about a week).

I headed back to the hotel and stopped at the same place as last night for sweet and sour chicken. And that's where I am now. I gave them back the bike, and picked up my bags and wrote this out at one of the computers in the lobby. Now wimbledon is on in 5 minutes, so I'm going to go watch that before I get the bus back to HCMC.

Clearly I did not get to any waterfalls, but I'm not to upset about that. I walked to the one closest to town on Saturday, and it looked really lame. All touristy and stuff. I'm okay with some touristy stuff, but I guess I just can't stand when people make nature touristy. And Ben said that the waterfalls that he went to when he was here were not all that exciting.