Our next stop which involved a nice stroll through the forest to relax our legs. The drivers dumped us in the forest and drove off. I was wondering if we’d have to do a Hansel & Gretel on it and leave a trail of coconut candy, but when we arrived at the end, the lads were there.
One of the first few stops was at a flower farm, where there were lots of carnations, roses and poppies growing. James’ easy rider snipped me some flowers and I put them in my hair. I felt like a right hippy. (except not half as cool)
We were brought to various different people’s houses during the day. Each of these houses contained some type of vegetable or animal growing or had some type of money-making activity going on in it.
We stopped at a gaff that had tonnes of silk-worms writhing around in reed baskets in it. Our dude explained the life cycle of the silk-worm and how the locals collect the silk-worms pupa’s and sell them to the silk factory. The pupas are worth a good bit of dosh to the Vietnames and it is a good source of dong.
Onwards and upwards into the highlands where our guides pointed out tea plantations, peanuts growing and stopped at a coffee field. The coffee smells so good.
Then it was onto someone elses house to see the lads making round baskets made from reeds. The lads making the baskets were watching the Vietnamese equivalent of Wheel of Fortune whilst working and the elder lady of the house was very impressed with my Vietnam t shirt. Herself & our guide started saying “Vietnam Number 1” and smiling. I gave her the thumbs up and a smiley nod.
Back to the bikes and off through the highlands. The scenery was beautiful and the weather was great. I risked it all to twirl around on the bike to take pics of Jim behind me and videos of the passing fields.
We were brought to another house to see how rice wine was made. We also got to see some giant pigs. Woohoo. 
Our final stop before lunch was the great ‘Elephant Falls’. We all hopped off the bikes, but our older guide sat this one out. We soon found out why. To get down to the falls, we had to clamber over wet and very slippy rocks. Everywhere was very muddy. I was glad I had worn my Merrels. :p
Jim gave me a hand down and we took some pics in front of the falls. It was an impressive falls. Then we followed our non-English guide further in behind the falls to see the backsplash – which was loud and splashy. I nearly fell on my arse and decided then and there to just stand still. Burrowing our way back out through some slippy, sticky holes, we made it back to the top and then were directed towards a big Buddha & temple over to the right of the falls. The big Buddha was cool. As we walked around behind it, we saw two doors leading into the inside of the Buddha and there was people sitting at a table in there! How cool would it be to live inside a giant 49m Buddha with neon lights behind his head!
Then we were whisked off to a local noodle shop for ye olde noodles soup. We shouted our guides some noodles and followed their instructions to make sure we were doing it correctly. Add the lettuce & herbs, squirt some red stuff in, then some brown stuff, squeeze a lemon in, more lettuce, more red stuff, scrape some chilli in, twirl it all around and have a taste.
I was enjoying mine until Jim told me the soup was made from boiled cow bones. Errggh.
The next stop was the mushroom farm, where we saw big bags of stuff hanging up in the shed. The bags of stuff were cut and at the places that they were cut, mushrooms grew. We also saw some passion fruit trees and avocado trees there too. I was so amazed at all the stuff they could grow here. Rice, rice wine, corn, peanuts, avocados, aubergines, cabbages, passion fruits, tomatoes, mushrooms, coffee, tea and tonnes of other stuff. The climate is amazing.
Anywho, we were biking along on the way to our next stop when a tooting van pulls alongside us. Out of the window dangles some grapes with an arm attached. A lil ole lady was trying to give me some grapes. I didn’t know if she was trying to sell them or not and didn’t know whether to take them, but she had a big smile and was shaking them furiously at me so I took them and said thank you whilst grinning like an ejit.
Our next stop was the blacksmiths house. His large extended family were all obviously having lunch inside the house and we were greeted by a flurry of waving hands and ‘hellos’. Lots of kids came outside to see us and I gave some of my grapes away to the kiddies. Our guide told us that the blacksmiths here comb the countryside collecting old artillery shells, metal from bombs & other war leftovers and chop them up and reshape them to make farm tools. This is a very dangerous job as lots of leftover war paraphanalia may be undetonated and can still be fatal for decades afterwards. When I mentioned this our guide told us that the blacksmith’s son had been killed when an old grenade he had found had exploded. 
As we left the house there was lots more ‘goodbye’s and I got blown some kisses by a young Vietnamese chappie. He he. Well in. ;p
I think our next stop was our last. We were brought to a house called the ‘Crazy House’. It is a guest house that is being built by the daughter of the second Vietnamese president. Work on the house has been going on for 15 years and it is still not finished.
There are stairs leading up and down and everywhere, and around every corner is another nook and cranny with a desk or chair or bedroom in it. The rooms themselves were named things like ‘Tiger room’ or ‘Bear room’ and each room had a giant wooden animal in it. The tiger room had a giant tiger in it, the bear room a bear, the kangaroo room a kangaroo and so on. Everything in the rooms was made out of darkly polished bamboo wood or something and it was all a bit odd.
The garden outside had toadstools, giant fake spider webs and what looked like a kids playground area. I am unsure who would like to stay in a place like that but it was definitely worth a peep.
Our tour was over and we thanked our guides and bid them slan. We headed back to our gaff to wash the mud and sweat off us. I tried to make Jim go to Larry’s Bar again that night but to no avail. 
The next day we were leaving Dalat and we were up at about six am. (uggh). We got up early to make sure we could have breakfast before our 7 hour bus journey, but alas the guy on reception didn’t understand a word we said and by the time our bus arrived (nearly an hour later) we were only just getting our huevos & baguettes. We made small sandwiches out of them, but the bus guy told us to wait twenty mins for the next bus.
Affs says we, but we waited anywho.
The next bus that pulled up was tinchy. Shite anyway. We hopped in and then the bus drove ten feet across the road and we were pulled out and onto another bus. (why didn’t he just point us across the road??)
The other bus was big, but because it wasn’t our tour bus, we didn’t get to stop at the Cham Towers and the bus itself didn’t stop anywhere at all for at least four hours.
33 °C
