Da Lat Dreams

I returned from Bali, itching and peeling from my multiple sunburns sustained through my carelessness, and sat back for about 4 days until it was time for the next adventure: Da Lat.

I had planned Da Lat with a group of 5 girls, which slowly dwindled down to 3 as the coronavirus crept through Vietnam and created fear of any sort of travel (never mind the fact that Ho Chi Minh had more cases than Da Lat!). Us brave (or stupid) 3 soldiered on regardless.  We moved our lodging to Quynh Anh's cousin's homestay, which was quaint, lovely, and had somewhere between 3 and 10 dogs on site. 

The adventure started out wonderfully, with Anlee and I booking flights 10 minutes apart on Friday night, and Quynh Anh arriving early Saturday morning. Our 10 minute gap soon stretched to over an hour as the notoriously unreliable VietJet Air failed even to inform us passengers of the delay, and we all stood in line...waiting...waiting...

Now arriving solo at the airport, I rushed to the first available taxi: my first critical mistake. Instead of booking a fixed price taxi from a reliable company (always go for Mai Linh!), I landed in the taxi of a local company which (unbeknownst to me) garnered a reputation for cheating its customers. I was soon able to verify this report when the driver attempted to charge me double what Anlee paid for her ride. Well-versed in the ways of Vietnam business, I gave him a little more than what Anlee paid and told him it was all the cash I had - oh well!

Anlee and I went to bed early to prepare ourselves for the hike we'd booked for the next day. While I am not in the greatest shape, I genuinely enjoy hiking and plan trips a few times a year at home. Anlee, however, although in far better shape than I, had never hiked before...ever (she's more of a coffee-shop-and-spa kind of vacationer). Poor Anlee was thrust into the middle of a half day hike - the first hour up an insanely steep trail, and the last 2 hours scrambling down a jungle path. Throw in Quynh Anh, who is currently training to hike to the Everest Base Camp, and we made quite a trio. 

Needless to say, after this hike, Anlee was dead set to never, ever hike again, and I reluctantly agreed to relinquish all visions of hiking on our future trips (though am secretly planning to take her up to Mount Monadnock when she visits Boston!).

The many faces of Anlee hiking down the mountain.

After hiking, our outdoor adventure turned to the next stage: kayaking. This also proved a new experience for Anlee, and when our wide-open lake turned into winding creek, she and poor Quynh Anh invariably aimed straight when a 90 degree turn would have avoided some painful scrapes. Anlee took it all in excellent spirits, however, and by the end even she had demonstrated at least one successful turning attempt.

Frog prince found during kayaking!

We made it all up to Anlee by plying her with barbecue and street food that night.  Both are traditional in cold Da Lat; even I must admit wishing a warmer sweater that night (yes, I've gone soft). Our Da Lat street food consisted only of sweets, as we are 3 responsible grown-up women: avocado ice cream and hot soya milk. The soya milk was my favorite here: lightly sweetened and steaming in the chilly air, the milk was (dare I say) better than hot chocolate by a winter fire. I shall be replicating this tradition next winter.

homestay, hot soya milk, bbq: ideal Da Lat trip

The next day we promised Anlee to focus on the girly side of the trip: all 3 stops were for Instagram (though we'd never admit it). Our first was a tea plantation far outside the city; perched on a hill, the plantation suffered from biting winds sweeping up the valley, and we barely walked a kilometer before declaring it too cold to go on. We did, however, spot a picturesque swing, and instead stopped there to take Instagram pictures, our chill miraculously forgotten. We wandered further into a free tea tasting (Oolong was declared the favorite), found a not-free flower garden to wander through, and subsequently decided to defect to our next location: the flower garden.

Tea plantation photo shoot

After a quick lunch stop (we had rice cooked in bamboo!), we made our way to my choice: the Da Lat Flower Park, which turned out to be a rather disappointing, overly manicured garden. My Jane Austen fantasy of wildflowers leaning over crushed stone paths and tuberoses blooming above garden gates was not, alas, realized, and we quickly moved to our final stop: the inevitable coffee shop.

Bamboo rice!

I've found all coffee shops in Vietnam to be the epitome of an Instagram statement: every one has a strong vibe, and the decor is on point - that's even more important than the coffee. This was no exception: every corner was ripe for Portrait Mode, and oh, did we make use of it.

new neighbor

We finally lazed our way to the airport, full of coffee and ego boosts after the photo session...and thus ended our weekend in Da Lat! Beautiful, chilly, and full of cozy times, it's the Vietnamese equivalent of a ski trip to the mountains. I'd love to come back - albeit next time with an extra sweater :-)

Monkeys are a Girl's Best Friend [Bali]

My dear readers, I'm in a bit of a pickle: I was determined to finish documenting my Indonesia adventures before I traipsed somewhere else 'round the world, but unfortunately, life got the better of me. I now find myself sitting in front of a blank page with not one, not two, but three posts to write: one about Bali, a second about my recent weekend trip to the mountainous town of Dalat in Vietnam, and a third concerning my jaunt to Con Dao, a rocky outcroppping from the sea which I visited with  my family.

Let's overcome my extreme procrastination and get going! Bali, Bali, Bali, where shall we start?

I suppose the beginning is obvious: Melkon. My sweet, darling, patient boyfriend had been waiting for me for 3 long months.  While my absence proved immensely helpful for his productive goals (studying, running, and meme-finding, to name a few), I'm happy to report the productivity increase did not compensate for my company, and he still missed me. I have also dearly missed this human: something seems a little off-balance when he's not around, and my fun adventures are constantly accompanied by little intrusive thoughts reminding me how much I'd love to have him with me.

I arrived in Bali a few hours ahead of Melkon, only to find news both excellent and terrible: we were upgraded (for free!) to a suite...which contained ants and exactly 0 working power outlets. After negotiating with hotel staff, I decided to spruce myself up to meet Melkon at the airport - after 3 months apart, I wanted to look nice! I showered, picked a nice outfit, put on some makeup, decided between earrings, and looked down at my phone to see that Melkon's plane arrived half an hour early. Worse yet, Immigration took a mere 10 minutes compared to my budgeted 30. I raced to the taxi stand, sweat all through my nice new clothes, and booked it to the airport...only to be 1 hour late picking up my sweetheart. I told you, he's a patient one.

I arrived back to the hotel ready to explore the beach, the local eateries, everything!  - only to discover poor Melkon had dropped dead asleep on the bed. This was to be a common theme over the next few days: me, dying to get out and explore, and Melkon, desperately craving the relaxing beach and spa vacation I had promised him. Little did he know that vacation and relaxing never occupy the same sentence for me!

I did manage to grant him a few days for jetlag recovery, and then got antsy and ran around every corner of Bali with him.

Jetlag recovery at its finest.

We started out in Ubud, a small-ish city in the mountains packed with tourists and monkeys. Our first stop was a common one: the monkey sanctuary! This consisted of a large plot of land with no less than 1,000 monkeys crawling about.

We wandered around the monkey sanctuary, alternatively curious and horrified at the little demons; the place is infamous for petty monkey theft: the creatures nick small items from tourists - commonly sunglasses, water bottles, and sometimes even pinching tourist toes and then stealing flip flops - and are then bribed into returning said booty with food from the groundskeepers. The babies oozed National Geographic cuteness, while the adults eyed us threateningly and stalked around our ankles. Melkon even spied one juvenile hop on someone's back and then rummage through her backpack quite contentedly as she squirmed and hissed at her boyfriend to "get it off, what if he has lice??" Needless to say, the Melkon spent the rest of the walk trying (and failing) to get monkeys to climb aboard me - thanks, babe! 

Above: No water for you!

We then proceeded to wander around downtown Ubud, hopping from air-conditioned frozen yogurt joint to air-conditioned, overpriced souvenir shop, until the magic hour came: 7pm....time for the Kecak Fire Dance. Out of all of Melkon's Bali research, this was his top pick for things to do in Bali. 

Above: fro-yo hopping and Ubud sights.

The Kecak fire dance reenacts a racy love triangle between one lovely queen and rival kings (Helen of Troy, anyone?). The good king's wife is stolen by his arch-enemy neighboring king; the faithful queen weeps, desolate at the replacement of her handsome, somewhat effeminate husband (clearly male dancers were sorely lacking) with a tubby man obviously suffering from a midlife crisis. Various gods and monkeys came to her rescuer's aid, and ultimately the good king took back his beautiful, helpless wife and slaughtered his rival. It was an unexpected contrast versus the typical Western love story, which (in my experience) revolve around pure maiden princesses, with their wide-eyed innocence bringing down the hearts of the world-weary men around them. 

Above: Kecak dance

Our outing the next day filled me with glee: diving! My previous dive in Gili Air whet my appetite for underwater mysteries, and I convinced Melkon into diving with me in Bali. We picked the most beautiful site for diving - Tulamben, a US shipwreck from World War II which slowly grew into a coral garden and now a protected diving area. Before we could get to the good stuff, though, we spent our first day immersed in chlorine and drifting hair: the pool session. I needed to finish certain skills for my diving certificate, while Melkon needed to get comfortable in the gear to prep for the next day's excursion.

Scuba diving gear is heavy, cumbersome, and honestly sometimes confusing. Even remembering how to breathe (mouth only, no nose!) can be challenging, especially when you're 30 feet underwater and trying to practice lifesaving skills with an instructor. My days as a "water rat" in Grandmommy's pool had halfway prepped me for this adventure, and I left our pool session excited to swim around a shipwreck and pet sharks.

We woke at the refreshing hour 6am and spent the next 3 hours jostling on a van winding down potholed mountain roads until we hit our destination. It's really hard to describe the next few hours of diving save - magical. We floated through patches of garden eels, thin eels which live half-extended out of the sand like grass, only to retract when danger (or divers) are close; we found a stingray hunting for prey, a flounder settling into the sand, electric blue sea stars, and thousands upon thousands of fish clouding about the massive shipwreck. Truly magical.

The shipwreck itself has an interesting history: a US ship torpedoed off the coast of Bali in 1942 by the Japanese, the US army tugged it on Bali's shores, promising to return and repair it. As in many cases with the US, we conveniently forgot this promise, and let it rust on the beach for 20 years until an earthquake shook it 25 meters into the sea, where it slowly accrued coral and became a fish haven. It is now internationally recognized as one of the top dive sites in the world, and the local tourism boost has made even fishermen agree to protect the area. 

Our only proof we went diving

After all this excitement, I granted Melkon a day off from adventuring, and we spent the day alternating between spas and food (heaven). This relaxing day needed to end soon, though, for I somehow suckered Melkon into a sunrise volcano hike that started at 1:30am the next morning.

Doubtless Melkon was not pleased with this wakeup time, but in true sweet Melkon fashion, only groaned a little when I shook him awake the next morning. We spent the next 3 hours jostling around in a van that barreled around treacherous mountain roads at unseemly speeds in the dark, no less, until we arrived in a tiny homestay that served as our jumping-off point. 

We had previously researched and discussed the two route options - the easy way (with many loud and dusty motorbikes sharing the road) and the hard way (much more secluded, but a far more difficult climb)- and decided to go with the easy way. Fortunately, we were paired with a very fit, middle-aged Australian couple who were far more ambitious than we were, and when they voiced their strong preference for the hard and secluded way, we looked at each other and wordlessly determined that we could not be shown up by these people. We would consent to the hard way.

In retrospect, this was the best possible decision. Instead of motorbikes kicking up dust in our faces and ~800 obnoxious backpackers blaring tinny pop music from handheld speakers, we had peace, quiet, and insects chiming us along the way. While this was far more peaceful, it did not make the hike any easier: we arrived red and sweating after 1 hour scrabbling up the side of a volcano, tired but happy to have beaten the sunrise. We sat on the top of the volcano, marveling at the amount of exercise completed before 6am, while our guide hiked back down to boil us eggs and make us banana sandwiches. Oh, it was worth it.

Hard to see, but steam was coming out of the ground here!

After the sun had well and truly risen, we explored the crater rim, and encountered a bit more than we bargained for. I had foolishly stored rambutans in the side pocket of my backpack, not anticipating a sneaky monkey population...and Melkon's wish finally came true. While innocently walking along the trail, a clever monkey saw his chance for an easy snack and ambushed me. He sat on my back, a king on his throne, and leisurely picked through my rambutans, so comfortable with my nervous shuffling that he even wrapped his tail around my arm. Finally our guide managed to steal a rambutan and lure him away, but not before I had started to panic imagining the monkey ripping out clumps of my hair.

With Melkon's one wish fulfilled, we happily descended to the base and returned home, ready for a nap and more spa time before Melkon sadly needed to depart for home. I am not a particularly emotional person, nor do I typically get homesick, but having him here was a bittersweet and welcome reminder of what I have left behind, and how much I have to return to.  In spite of all my declarations otherwise, there is a part of me that misses home.