Dalat - Hilltribes, Rain and Giant Swan Boats
Trip Start
Jul 25, 2006
1
155
165
Trip End
Ongoing
Dalat, Vietnam
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
One of Dalat's most famous institutions are the Easy Riders. After the war ended, those Vietnamese who fought for the south were often ostracized, or worse, by the local government and often had difficulty finding employment due to their misfortune of siding with the losing team. In Dalat, eventually a group of veterans decided to go into business themselves. Buying the most powerful motorcycles they could (still woefully underpowered by Western standards) and doing a little stitching on jackets, and viola, the Easy Riders were born. They specialized in taking tourists on the back of their motorcycles and giving in-depth tours of the surrounding countryside. Trips ranged from day tours to epic 20 day marathons that covered Vietnam from top to bottom. An eventual mention in Lonely Planet, and a legend was born. And in a classic example of Lonely Planet Syndrome*, so were hundreds of imitators all wanting to cash in on the "Easy Rider - Lonely Planet" connection. These days, any Vietnamese man over the age of 40 (and a number much too young to have even been alive in the Vietnam conflict) on a motorcycle is an Easy Rider. Jackets with all types of embroidery and slogans abound. There are even two or three Easy Rider websites, each of which claims they are the REAL Easy Riders and the others are fake.
The simple fact is there is little way to tell the original from the imitators. You simply pick the least annoying, or most persistent and let negotiations begin. And you will take a tour, even if it's just a day tour. You say you won't, but the chances are you will. These men on motorcycles will hunt you down. They will sit outside your hotel for hours waiting to ambush you ahead of the others, and even chide you for spending so much time inside your hotel when you could be out seeing the countryside with them.
Our Easy Rider was Buddha. His big belly (source of his name after the fat Chinese Buddha) was only matched by his seeming capacity to tell jokes, laugh, and negotiate all at the same time. While I had doubts of his credentials as a real Easy Rider, he had the prerequisite book filled with glowing reviews from tourists, and claimed his was the best tour in Dalat and to be careful of all those fake, bad Easy Riders. It was clear he had staked his claim on us and would follow us or sit outside our hotel for as long as it took to sell us a tour. Seeing it as the lesser of two evils (we could use Buddha as ammunition against all the other Easy Riders stalking us through the streets) we agreed on a price for a day trip the following day.
The next morning we blearily made our way downstairs for an obscenely early 8:30 am start (in general, Danayi and I often do not even leave our hotel rooms until late morning or even early afternoon. Real life after this trip is going to be a bitch.) We were introduced to the other driver, and it quickly became very evident that he knew about as much English as I knew Vietnamese, maybe less. Realizing this would not make for stimulating dialogue while on the bike, I insisted Danayi go with Buddha and I would ride with his partner.
Our conversations were elegant in their simplicity. As we drove along, my driver might point at a clump of trees and say "Trees." I would answer "Trees. Yes, big trees." Five minutes later a dog would across the road in front of us, necessitating an emergency braking procedure. My guide would turn his head and say "Dog." I would answer, "Dog. Big dog." It was like being given a tour by Forrest Gump's mentally challenged Vietnamese cousin.
Eventually our guides pulled off on the road and into a small hill tribe village. These tribal people live sprinkled around the countryside in this area of Vietnam. Almost without exception these people live poor lives in distinct contrast to the relative wealth of the Vietnamese who have built hotels and restaurants and taken advantage of Dalat's relatively cool climate to create a honeymoon paradise.
Buddha claims to know the people of this village and walks us down the lane. Children quickly see and crowd around. Too afraid to approach, they lurk, giggle, or glower a few feet from us. It is apparently the one year anniversary of an important villager's death, and most of the adults in the community are either working in the hills or gathered in a local home for a deathday party. We walk around the village, distinctly alien visitors in a world where we are more exotic to the inhabitants than they are to us. After some makeshift attempts at conversation, we head back to the road and return to Dalat.
A couple days of rain, fog, souvenir shops, and countless attempts by old men to take us for rides were more than enough ready to leave. The next day we headed to Nah Trang.
