Country Tour

First full day in De Lat and just a tad tired, not a lot of sleep last night due to an uncomfortable bed, traffic noise, and karaoke. But that’s k, got the city experience we were looking for! I wouldn’t highly recommend hotel Tulip Xanh …

At 8.30 sharp (Vietnamese people appear to always be on time) we started our Country tour with our river from yesterday Bay (pronounced “bye”).
First stop, the greenhouses. De Lat is a very fertile area and renowned for its fruit and vegetable production, and flowers. In particular roses, and we learnt about the meaning of different colors. White for death, or the start of a relationship. Red for undying love, and yellow if you’re thinking of breaking up! Also, loads of strawberries in De Lat so we visited the greenhouse and saw the lady literally cleaning each one by hand … no mechanism here! Brought quite a few, 150 000 dong per kilo, $8.

Back in the car and off to a minority village, via pass in the hills, which was fascinating. Huge roadworks, and all the rock breaking being done by hand. Amazing …

Into the village and in insight into the K’ho, essentially a hill tribe that has come down to village life. Different houses, customs, and features; and like many monitories, slowly being intermingled with other Vietnamese. There’s an effort to revive the festivals and traditions, in the context of the modern day.

Back in the car and off to see the cricket farms. They are farmed as a kind of snack, popular with the local men to sit down after work and have several beers and a bowl of fried crickets. After learning about their life cycle, there was the obligatory tasting of course … crunchy, with the added taste of chili. Kids loved them … well, they at least tried a few ;-)

Crickets done, it was then down the road for another “treat”, weasel coffee. I kid you not, a delicacy in these parts is coffee that has passed through a weasel … basically, the weasels love the ripe coffee fruit, inside of which is the bean. After the fruit has been digested, the beans pop put the other end, are separated from the husk, and then the remaining part of the bean (is presumably washed). And then ready for grinding. Seems they favour Arabica, instead of Robusta, the other prevalent coffee here. What did it taste like? Strong, like all Vietnamese coffee. Bought some to do a taste test at a later date. The same place also distilled rice wine Petty simple, ricer, and water, making a powerful spirit. We all, kids included, drank some coming out, 65%! Kids and Hil, not so ken, but I actually like it. Scary ;-)

Then off to the next culinary stop, a mushroom farm, but not like ours. Plastic tubes around 50cm long and 20cm across are filled with rubber tree sawdust, then a stick of Cassava tree is dipped in mushroom spore and poked into the top. 4 or 5 tubes are then strung together and hung in a glasshouse, in the light, no darkness here. The mushrooms, cat ear and white, then spout out thru the plastic, and harvested. Pretty ingenious, and obviously effective.

Time for lunch at a locals joint, Bay assured us it was clean and the food was good. And he even disappeared out the back to help prepare it I think. Cheap and basic, but really good! Then across the road to see elephant falls, as it started raining.

And if you’re getting tired, well it didn’t end there … Buddhist temple next, big Buddha’s, then a silk factory which was super interesting Saw the works (1km of silk thread per worm) and then the extraction of the thread and the processing.

And finally it was back to our new home for several nights. Terrasse Des Roses. $60 US per night, and seriously, just super luxurious (for us). Vietnam, and the trip so far, has been one of real contrasts. And on purpose to some extent. Last 3 nights, very simple and basic accommodation, tonight a treat. We don’t want the kids always to have nice, and in fact, sometimes the simplest is the best.

But tonight, enjoying comfy bed and great shower!