Fast forward to our first morning in Dalat. Laurie and I are at the office of Highland Sport Travel so we can pay for the next day’s activities. It was at this point, sitting in the office and looking at the posters and listening to the guides explain the activities, that I realized what she had signed us up for. Sure, there was some trekking, but there was also a lot of talk about wetsuits. And rappelling down cliffs and waterfalls. And swimming in a river. In cold mountain weather.

My mental monologue at the time: “Um. What.”

But what was done was done, so the next morning, bright and early, our tour guides picked us up at our hotel and took us to Datanla Falls, a nature site just outside of town with various activities for tourists. The only other people on the tour that day were a lovely Dutch couple and we all listened quietly as the three tour guides gave us their briefings and instructions. Once we arrived at the park entrance, the guides led us down to the canyoning training area, where we dumped everything into lockers, stripped down to our underwear, and pulled on wetsuits, still cold and damp from the day before.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it: I was fucking freezing. I hopped around like an antsy child and blew into my hands while my teeth chattered and my legs shook.

After some more instructions and safety briefings and demos, we all practiced our abseiling on a 20-foot safety wall. The hardest part was fighting your innate survival instinct while trying to lean back far enough to maintain proper form. Once you conquered that, you still had to be mindful of keeping your hands in the right places and bending your knees and keeping your feet the right distance apart. One or two of the guides were always supporting the ropes with their weight, so the descent always felt safe and controlled, even if you were trying to go as fast (or as reckless) as possible.

After a couple rounds, everyone felt comfortable enough, so we gathered up all our gear and made our way through the park to the first waterfall. We passed dozens, if not hundreds, of Vietnamese tourists on the path who were bundled up in clothing that was appropriate for the weather. They were visiting the park to enjoy the other – much more tame – activities and watched us with fascination as we descended the steps in our wetsuits and life jackets and helmets.

(We weren’t allowed to take any personal items with us, so all the photos below are from the tour guides. One had a GoPro and one had an SLR.)

After trekking a bit into the woods and losing most of the crowds, we finally came to the first waterfall. As with all the waterfalls that day, one of the guides gave us a briefing on any specifics before anything else happened. For this first waterfall, we would lean back and slowly walk down, just as we had practiced, until one of the guides gave a (verbal) signal that we should start jumping our way down. Once we got within a few feet of the river below, he would give another signal and we would let go of the rope entirely and fall into the river.

One by one, we clipped in, attached the rope to our harness, and worked our way down the cliff, following the shouted instructions until it was time to take a dip in the water below. I’ve always been quite comfortable with heights, so dealing with that was easy for me. I lost my footing a couple times during the jumping portion (because I wasn’t leaning back far enough), but was able to recover and make my way down the cliff. And gosh darnit if that water wasn’t somehow warmer than the air! After I swam to the ladder and climbed out, I actually wasn’t freezing anymore.

Invigorated by not dying – and I suppose also by the brief plunge in the cold water – we trekked a short distance to the next cliff. We thought we had heard one of the guides say something about a zipline, but when we reached the cliff, there wasn’t anything resembling one. After watching our guides unpack some of the gear and scramble down the rocks to the river below, we realized what was happening: they were building the zipline on the spot. There were hooks already in the rocks above and below, so once the long, neon green ziplining rope had been securely attached to the hook next to us, the rest of it was thrown over the edge of the cliff. One of the guides who had already climbed down fetched the rope, waded through the river to some large rocks very far away from us, and proceeded to attach the other end of the rope to the hook there.

The instructions for this descent were different than the first one. In addition to being clipped into our usual rappelling line, we also had to attach ourselves to the zipline. We descended normally down the cliff until the guides told us to stop, at which point they counted to three and we released the rope entirely, letting the zipline take us down into the river. It was just as awesome as it sounds.

Next up was a spot in the river with some natural water slides. The correct approach for navigating these was laying down backwards, with arms and feet crossed, keeping our bodies as straight as possible and our necks inline. Look at that form!

Even with the “correct” form, I still hit my head kind of hard on the way down, so I opted out of the second slide once I felt a very minor headache coming on. Laurie assumed the coffin pose and went in for round two.

The next waterfall was the tallest of the day: 25 meters, with a relatively slow descent, capped off by a 7-meter drop into the river below. Evidently the rocks are so slippery on this descent that wearing shoes is actually a hindrance, so we all ditched our shoes and waded through the water in our socks to the edge of the cliff. We each walked down the cliff slowly, especially since the water was hitting us in the face. Once we reached the appropriate stopping point, the guide off to the side would yell for us to stop, then begin the countdown for our plunge.

Laurie’s drop was a pretty fantastic “Jesus take the wheel” moment (see below). I think she was fully horizontal when she hit the water.

After getting our shoes back on and drying off briefly in the sun, which finally decided to come out, we walked a short distance to the next cliff, which was for jumping only. Another (much larger) group from another tour company arrived at the same time, so there was a lot of good spectating as nearly twenty people took to the air. There were three heights for jumping: 7 meters, 9 meters, and 13 meters. Our guides reminded us that we had just done a 7-meter drop at the last waterfall, so even the lowest jump was easily doable for us. The guides stipulated that for anyone to do the 13-meter jump, which required a running start, he or she would have to successfully jump from a lower height first. About half a dozen guys ended up doing the highest jump.

I was happy just to get it over with, so I went first and jumped from 7 meters, as did Laurie.

Big props to Jochem – the other guy in our group – for turning his cliff jump into a fantastic air slam dunk. Photo of the day right here:

After everyone from both groups finished their jumps, we all had a picnic lunch in the woods with Vietnamese sandwiches, banana bread, fruit, and even some actual sunshine! By the end of the meal, we were all well-fed and I was finally almost warm. The next waterfall – affectionately known as the “washing machine” – was the last of the day. It was almost the same height as the previous one, but required a descent into a crevasse. We walked down the cliff for only about half of the descent; for the other half, we dangled in the air and continued to lower ourselves with our hands, even while going through the waterfall and getting battered and disoriented by the running water (hence the name). Eventually the rope ran out, at which point we let go entirely, crashed down into the river, and let the current carry us away from the cliff.

The rest of the excursion was about 30 minutes of trekking through the woods, sometimes going over the river, sometimes going through it, and eventually beginning a long, gentle climb away from it. The climbing portion was beautiful, in part because it looked exactly like northern California: tall, thin trees everywhere and even pine cones being crushed underfoot. The continuous uphill trekking definitely warmed up all of us and it was the first time all day that I was actually comfortable temperature-wise. I could have done that for hours!

Before too long, we reached the van and it took us back to the welcome area that we had started at. After changing and grabbing our things, we sat and chatted and drank hot tea and munched on jackfruit chips. The guides wrapped up the day with their thank you speeches and pointed us to the company’s Facebook page, where we’d be able to download all the photos in about a day or so.

In retrospect, I was happy that I didn’t know what I was signing up for. Had I known ahead of time exactly what the trip would include, I might have changed my mind on the whole thing, but once I was thrown into it, I had no choice but to plow ahead. This canyoning trip was probably the most physically demanding single-day excursion I’ve ever done; Laurie and I were both sore for days. I knew I had gotten a serious core workout when I had trouble sitting up in bed the next morning.

All told, it was awesome and one of the best days of the entire trip. I don’t really feel the need to do it again at any point, but I’m happy I can cross it off the list.

(Sidebar: an incontrovertible truth of life is that the most delightful and relief-inducing sound you will ever hear is the kuh-chunk kuh-chunk noise when an immigration officer stamps your passport. A very close second is the whirring of a foreign ATM after it finally decides it’s going to give you money.)

Dalat

Back in November, when I was working on the Vietnam itinerary, I had decided to end the trip in Saigon to make subsequent travel plans easier. It then followed that Laurie and I would fly into Saigon, but not actually stop there yet. Given the timing of the flight from Chiang Mai and the time necessary to clear immigration and customs, only an evening flight out of Saigon would work for us and that greatly influenced the decision of where to go first. I had initially thought about going to a beach town on the eastern coast of the country, but none of the flight times worked out. Instead, I fell back to another, arguably more interesting, option: Dalat.

Dalat is a mountain town in the central highlands of Vietnam and used to be a holiday retreat for the French; they went there to escape the heat and humidity elsewhere in the country. Dalat is pine trees and strawberries and sweaters; no palm trees or coconuts or tank tops here. In the context of modern travel, its appeal is that it flies under the radar of most foreign travelers to Vietnam and has a lot of natural beauty and outdoor activities. With a massive metropolis and a beach town already on the itinerary, a hill station with cool weather seemed like a nice way to round out the trip.

Our one-hour, $4 VietJet flight wasn’t leaving until 10:00 that evening, so we had some time to kill in the airport. (Okay, so after taxes and fees, the flight was more like $38. But still, on the website, the flight costs $4 before you check out. Four dollars.) Laurie got her first pho of the trip and I got a photo with my new favorite airline. Everyone was happy.

After landing in Dalat, we hopped on the bus to town, which takes almost as much time as the flight from Saigon. We climbed winding mountain roads in the dark, passing dozens of other buses but not much other traffic. Once the bus started making random, scattered stops around town, we intently watched Google Maps on our phones until the bus stopped very close to our hotel, at which points we hopped out and walked the rest of the way.

The night’s peaceful rest was interrupted early the next morning by the sounds of thousands of motorbikes – pretty standard for Vietnam – but also by loud Christmas music and a choir of children’s voices coming from a nearby school. This was my first, but certainly not last, reminder that Christmas is a bigger deal here than I thought.

After a quick errand, we sat down for breakfast: our first banh mi of the trip. The iced coffee I ordered arrived with coconut ice cream in it. I was not angry.

Our first day in Dalat was intentionally unscheduled, as we had planned on simply wandering the town. The most popular – and goofiest – tourist site in the city is the Crazy House: a compound of buildings, trees, rooms, staircases, and other random shit that looks like something straight out of a Dr. Seuss book. The Wikipedia page describes it very well:

Described as a “fairy tale house” … the building’s overall design resembles a giant tree, incorporating sculptured design elements representing natural forms such as animals, mushrooms, spider webs and caves. Its architecture, comprising complex, organic, non-rectilinear shapes, has been described as expressionist.

Yeah, that just about sums it up. No straight lines, no right angles. And it really is a working guesthouse; you can book a room there.

After we wandered the weird, quasi-creepy compound long enough to build up a sufficient amount of nightmare fuel, we over-ordered lunch at a small restaurant, ate as much as we could, then wandered down to the lake, which is a significant fixture in town. We ambled the afternoon away, walking past workers in conical bamboo hats, half-completed structures for the upcoming flower festival, and the usual unending stream of traffic. After circumnavigating about two-thirds of the lake, I suggested we stop for coffee (a recurring theme on this trip) before getting a taxi back to the hotel.

That evening, we had dinner at Artist Alley, a cute restaurant up the street from our hotel, followed by cold beers and people watching at a bar around the corner. This was less comfortable than it sounds since we sat outside in the cold the whole time. The temperature in Dalat consistently remained about equal to a very cold day in San Francisco, so we layered up as best we could and even bought cheap, colorful gloves from a shop in town for 40,000 dong (less than $2). I love those gloves. Almost as much as I love being able to say the word dong.

The next day was our canyoning adventure, which was content-heavy enough to warrant its own post. Read that first, then come back here. I’ll wait.

Thankfully, the best bathroom of the trip – by far – was in our hotel in Dalat, because we each took long, hot showers upon returning. After a small bit of lazy time to snack on coconut-covered peanuts and watch Vietnamese music videos starring incredibly effeminate “men”, we set out for the evening. First, a Vietnamese coffee (of course) at a wine bar up the road, then across the street to An Cafe for pho and spring rolls and a view of the sunset.

We walked to the night market and gawked at tables of strawberries and seedless avocados and other produce, racks of sweaters and coats, and disorganized mounds of shoes, all the while trying to avoid being hit by the motorbikes navigating the crowds of shoppers. Laurie haggled with a shop owner for some clothes, then we went off in search of food.

We ended up at V Cafe, a Western-style restaurant, for dinner and a wholly unexpected helping of festiveness. The food was good, nothing special really, but I found myself having flashbacks to the holidays of my childhood; the feeling in the restaurant was like a patchwork of dozens of individual Christmas memories. Images of my parents’ house, my aunt’s house, and the restaurants my family went to on Christmas Eve all combined into a Franken-memory that materialized in front of me as a warm restaurant with coffee and cake, red linen tablecloths, Christmas songs being played on a keyboard, dark wood furniture, candles on the tables, a Christmas tree lit up in the corner, and people bundled up in hats and scarves coming in from the cold. And just when I started to think that maybe I had been magically transported back home, I noticed the red Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling, which were just enough to remind me where I actually was.

After dinner, we walked up the street to visit the last place on our must-see-in-Dalat list: 100 Roofs Cafe, a drinking establishment cut from the same architectural cloth as the Crazy House. The many floors of the building are each connected by multiple staircases, the rooms are all full of weird shit, and they give you drinks in exchange for small amounts of money. It’s great.

That seemed like a fitting end to our time in Dalat, so after a couple beers, we packed it in for the night and got up early the next morning for our bus ride to Mui Ne.

Mui Ne

After an uneventful, but picturesque, morning bus ride, we arrived in the early afternoon in Mui Ne, a quiet beach town on Vietnam’s south-eastern coast. (Well, truthfully, we were staying in Ham Tien, which is to the west; the towns have gotten mixed up in travel literature for decades because an early group of foreign travelers to the area misunderstood where they were.) We had a short stay – only a couple nights – because we wanted to have more time in Saigon. Two nights ended up being perfect since there wasn’t much to do but relax. Beach erosion is really bad in the area and there was actually no beach at all during our stay, so that limited our activities to eating, sleeping, reading, and getting massages, which is exactly what we did for two days.

Ham Tien is really just a single road running parallel to the water lined with hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops catering to tourists. Like some other places in Asia I’ve been to, there’s even a small Russian part of town, where most of the signage and most of the tourists are Russian. A lot of worthwhile places were relatively close to our hotel, so most of the time we walked. Hundreds of taxis run along the road all day every day, so getting one when we needed one (or didn’t need one) was very easy.

Seafood BBQ is definitely the food of choice whenever you’re in a place like this and we happily sat down to a first night feast of spring rolls, morning glory, scallops, and grilled fish. After dinner, we settled into comfy couches at a bar down the street and I introduced Laurie to shisha while we both took in the scene of drunk party boys and over-dressed Russian party girls.

The next evening we gorged ourselves on amazing Indian food at Ganesh; for me, it was the best meal of Vietnam. I had so much Goa fish curry and chana masala and rice and naan and lassi that I didn’t eat again for 24 hours.

After dinner: a long walk to burn some calories, a nightcap at a new rooftop bar, a good night’s sleep, a quick swim in the pool the next morning, and a 45-minute taxi ride to the train station. Our time in Mui Ne was brief but very pleasant. Onward to Saigon!