Friday 30th December: leaving Da Lat

Da Lat‘s Crazy House certainly lives up to its name! It is quite a beguiling place, Gaudi-esque; quirky and bizarre, it is a maze of  winding pathways, staircases and bridges lead you and lose you as you explore.  One of the staircases leads you over the roof and you have a fantastic view of Da lat. Look in all the corners as surprises lurk in them – giant cobwebs, little doors, gnarled “wood”, ladybirds, mushrooms, giraffe’s bottoms!  Real trees and concrete trees wind around the building and you feel like you are walking around a fairy tale and half expect a pixie or a gnome to pop out at any time!  It is a delight to explore and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. There are also gift shops round every corner!  Unfortunately there is extra development going on so some areas of the place are under construction, which doesn’t mean they are closed, just that you feel like you are in a building site in some areas.

The Crazy House is also a 3 star hotel – the rooms are quite expensive but they look very inviting.  It says in the Lonely Planet book that it would be like waking up in Wonderland which is a pretty good analogy. The rooms are tucked away along the stairways and have beds built into the alcoves of moulded concrete, en suite bathrooms and little tables and chairs where you can have your meals.  It was great walking round and spotting the members of our group peering out of windows, walking over the bridges, waving from on high as they took the lofty path over the rooftop.  Hand rails seem to be non-existent and in places the walls on the bridges are lower than knee height.  Not sure I’d like to have young children running around exploring – they would love it, of course, as it is like a huge maze and very exciting, but as a parent you would have your heart in your mouth!

The Crazy House, or Hang Nga Guest House was designed by Ho Chi Minh’s daughter, Hang Nga.  Another building she designed was torn down by the government as it was seen to be anti-socialist but after a struggle she did manage to get permission to continue work on the Crazy House and it has become an iconic place in Da Lat.

The rest of the day was spent either waiting for a bus or sitting on a bus, waiting for a train or lying on a train!  The bus from Da Lat to Nga Trang which we were told would leave from the hotel at 12.30 finally arrived at 1.30; what a junk bucket!  It was a tatty looking bus and somehow we managed to squeeze in our luggage and then find seats.  It was another sleeper bus, so we had space to lie down.  Howie and I shoe-horned our way into the back where we actually had quite a lot of space despite not being able to sit up. We also had the benefit of a window that opened which provided fresh air. The bus was filthy and who knows how many heads had lain on the pillows and how many times the blankets had been used without being washed! Fortunately it was too warm to use the blanket and I just tried not to think too much about the pillows!  I spent a lot of the four hour journey watching the scenery go by; I found that I could squeeze up between the framework and perch behind the upper level seats to look out of the back window, but I could also open the side window next to my “seat” and point my camera out to get some photos.  Not sure how blurred they will be, though!

We made our way up through the mountains and then travelled quite high up along the edge of a gorge before descending into the valleys. Incredibly green and lush, the forests gave way to banana plantations and rice paddies lower down the valley. The villages seemed very poor;  delapidated wooden huts with, here and there, more modern, but quite possibly less comfortable concrete boxes with smallholdings where a few chickens scratched an existence even more meagre than their owners, it seemed.  It was much more  humid as we left the mountains and the fog and mist that cloaked them and we could feel the dampness in the air that came in through the window.  We stopped for 20 minutes at what can only be described as an oasis; a huge restaurant area, obviously quite new, proper toilets, clean and hygienic and a landscaped area where you could sit and enjoy the stream and .  It was quite odd given the poverty all around.  There were also some strange animals in cages around the back of the building which intrigued us.

It was not far after that to Nga Trang – too late for the beach as it was dark by the time we were dropped off outside a hotel not far from the beach but 2km from the railway station! Sixteen of us carrying packs on our backs and our fronts walking in crocodile formation through the bustling streets of Nga Trang.  We have become quite good at this now and manage to look around and take in the atmosphere whilst also keeping in touch with the person in front of us. The Christmas and New Year lights were amazing, imaginative, creative, very colourful and dynamic.

At the station we found that there was nowhere to leave luggage so eight of us stayed with the bags whilst the others went looking for food and then we swapped over.  Unfortunately, according to the Lonely Planet most of the restaurants are down by the beach – too far to go back to in the time we had.  Eventually we found a place on the 4th floor of a department store – quite surreal but the food was surprisingly good. It was on the same floor as the children’s play area and the entrance to the cinema so the noise was overwhelming.  Food shopping for breakfast and lunch for the next day in a supermarket in Vietnam was definitely surreal – instant noodles, biscuits and bottles of water ( oh, and the kids bought huge pots of chewing gum in weird flavours!)

Getting on the train in the dark was an experience and the n working our way down the carriage to find our compartments was a bit of a challenge, but we were soon settled into our respective bunks and we were off.  Vietnamese trains have two classes of carriage; hard sleepers and soft sleepers.  Guess which we had!  The hard sleepers have 6 bunks in a compartment, number 1 is on the bottom and has the most head room, number 2 is in the middle – lying down only and number 3 is on the top with your nose just about touching the ceiling!  Hard as nails and, if you were unlucky enough to take the bunk over from a previous traveller, a used blanket and pillow! We squeezed our way in and settled down for an uncomfortable night.  Surprisingly, I managed some sleep but couldn’t quite shake the headache that had descended on me as the humidity has increased.