February 10, 2015 – Da Lat Countryside
We went on a tour of the countryside on the day after the Crazy House Expedition, and the first stop was a Weasel Coffee Factory, complete with coffee weasels. Apparently, the weasel gets up in the morning, wanders over to its Coffee Dish, and eats as many coffee beans as it can force down its gullet. Then it lies down for a nap, gets up, poops out all the coffee beans, and ambles over to see what’s in the coffee dish. Not that different from a lot of Starbucks customers, actually…. They don’t really look like weasels, though; more like Billy Bumblers if you’ve read the Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. Once the poop is (more or less) removed from the coffee beans, they are worth $200 CAD/kilo. Over here. No shit. God knows what they are worth in Canada. Oh yeah, we tried a cup each, and it was almost as good as the stuff I get at McDonald’s.
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Why are these coffee beans all stuck together and lumpy?
Weasel coffee beans with the poop washed off.
Yes, this stuff does make your hair stand up on end.
These guys must work in the Decaf Division.
After we left the Coffee Weasel Place, we stopped off at the Elephant Waterfall. No elephants, luckily; they named it that because there are big chunks of columnar basalts that have fallen off the cliff face, and apparently look like elephants if you’ve had WAY too much weasel coffee. The parking lot was at the top of the cliff, and the guide wisely pointed us to the walkway down and told us to fill our boots and be back in an hour. The walk down was really something; it’s probably 500 feet vertical, so the path down must be 500 feet long because it’s pretty much vertical. They have cut steps into the rocks in places, and grouted in railings made from rebar in some places. Overall, it’s just pretty freaky. It was all worth it once we got to the bottom, though, assuming you don’t think to hard about having to go back up. On the way up, Deb took a header. I thought she was going off the edge, but a couple of us grabbed her and rolled her back up onto her feet. Pretty interesting, to say the least! When we got back to the top, unbelievably, I realized that we were both so focused on not dying that nobody took any pics of the path. After at least two seconds of reflection, we both decided that we’d pushed our luck enough for one day, so you’ll just have to imagine it!
View from the top.
And from the bottom. Deb scrambled out onto a rock for this shot. Note the end-on columnar basalts right behind her.
So I had to go too, right? Right?
A shot of the elephants from above. Can’t see them? Have another coffee….
There are a ton of things to see around town, so we took a city tour to ensure that we didn’t miss anything critical. ‘City tour’ here means anything within about 10 km, so it actually included a lot of outdoorsy stuff as well.
We started with a tour of the King’s Palace, a misnomer at best, as there isn’t a king, and it wasn’t a palace. There WAS a king, but he got the boot after the end of WW2 (The Big One) when the UN installed a ‘democratic government,’ and the king decamped to a life of luxury in Paris, where I’m sure his offspring are doing just fine. And of course, being the king of Vietnam was kind of like being the king of New Westminster. But still. It’s a lovely French-colonial chateau, and it still has a lot of cool stuff in it that’s worth a look.
Then we drove up to Signal Hill, which is about two kilometres from town. There’s a gondola ride of about three kilometres over to a big lake with a working Buddhist monastery. The ride is pretty good, and the monastery grounds are lovely. These guys could teach the Germans something about being clean and orderly and making everything Line Up.
It’s good to be the king. From the reception room looking out on the gardens.
Heading down the gondola to the Buddhist monastery.
Pink things!
The monks have woven the figs into a mesh tube, which has all fused.
A new fuel type: radiata pine/fan palm. How can these two grow together?
Then it was off to another set of falls that were only about five kilometres from town, a series of six falls all strung together with concrete pathways and stairs and things. There is a thriving tour industry taking young (and stupid) people ‘canyoning’ which includes rappelling through the falls and other dubious undertakings. We just wanted to go down to the first falls, after which there was supposedly a cable car through a canyon to the second falls. The tour guide herded us through the process of buying a ticket, and then we were escorted over to what looked like a two-person roller-coaster ride (the sign saying ‘roller coaster’ tipped me off). Not wanting that at all, I promptly made a scene until our tickets were exchanged, and Deb and I then walked about a thousand feet vertically downhill, where we met up with the guys who actually got on the roller coasters! I hate it when that happens. The first falls were good, the gondola through the canyon was definitely worth it, and when we came to the top of the second falls, there was an elevator to the bottom! On the way back up, I was persuaded that there is a God, as we could buy one-way tickets back up the roller coaster, so we didn’t have heart attacks or aneurysms beating our sorry asses back up the hill.
The first falls. Water is crystal clear, very nice!
The cable car through the Canyon of Death. There was a rainbow, but it was very hard to capture.
Every steep hill should have one of these! The elevator goes down to the second falls.
This girl should be flipping letters on Wheel of Fortune. The second falls.
Hauling butt up a 100% slope on the roller coaster-thing.
There was more, including the Crazy House and the Old Train Station, but we had already done that and it was at least 10 minutes after Beer, so we excused ourselves and called it a very good day.