A Day In Dalat

Written by Rebecca Brown

Dalat—Day two
We awake in a quiet hotel on top of a mountain topped with pine trees, which feels strangely like home for those of us from New England, in the lovely windy town of Dalat. We wake up early, partly because we all still have jet lag, and partly because Mike has the great idea that we should wake up before dawn every day and bike before it gets too hot. We track down our helmets, drag our bodies into our yellow and green shirts and skin tight pants, and find each other and breakfast. A couple of tourists look at us in shock, and then a wise elderly guest explains to them that we are bikers. The surprise food in Dalat is duck eggs for breakfast, which have clearly been prepared way ahead of the meal, and are slowly drying in the early morning warmth, in order to be aged to perfection. Some people in our group – namely Amy, Jonathan, Shari, and Andrew, have taken to ordering double espresso’s, which they will consume several of before we depart on our bicycles. We are trying to tank up on the liquids, though it will take us several more days to completely master this technique.

We check our brakes, spokes, frames, and bolts, and jump on our bicycles and pound off down the road, destined for a village of Indiginous people. Mike goes first. The rest of us are close behind, though we have diverse experiences of the steep downhill plummet. Shari is in her element. As she explains, you upshift into the highest gear, and pedal with energy, because this is where your power is. No matter if you are going thirty miles an hour down a ten percent incline, push it up, and you’ll be in better control. Mike is loving it.

Forty five minutes later, after being honked at by three hundred motorcycles, two hundred lorry trucks, and two dozen passenger busses, and after dodging hundreds of bicycles, we arrive at Chicken Village. It is a calm place, off the main road and down into a quiet neighborhood, and we are greeted by a small congregation of L’Ha people. One young woman and her two year old son seem to be the ambassadors of the L’Ha, and she explains the circumstances by which her community is living in this small earthen place. Previously the L’Ha lived in the mountains, where several of the elders continue to live because they refuse to be moved by the government. In the forest, they cut significant portions of wood for fuel. It is for this reason, according to the ambassador, that they have been requested to be moved. They are weavers. The original village, where some of the elders have stayed, is five hours away by foot. They are not going anywhere.

We are fascinated to learn about the matriarchal tradition of the L’Ha. In the L’Ha, it is the women who invite the men to marry. They offer them some gifts, sometimes asking permission of their mothers, and the men then come to live with the women’s families.

The L’Ha village is also called “chicken village”, which comes from a large carving of a chicken, originally of wood, and now recrafted by the government in cement. The chicken represents a story. There was a young woman in the L’Ha community who loved a young man. She was a poor woman, hardworking and earnest. The young man was wealthy. When the woman went to the man’s parents to ask for his hand in marriage, the parents were displeased with her because of her economic situation. They asked her, as a wedding gift, to bring to them a chicken with a perfect claw. Such chickens do not grow in Vietnam. But the young woman went off into the forest to look for the chicken, and she looked and looked. She never returned to the village. And so the villagers erected a giant chicken to honor the depth of her love.

Jonathan once said, when he was thinking about that story, that the moral might be, “Don’t ask for perfection and don’t look for perfection.”

There is a small monkey (Gibbeous) in the village. He has a metal chain around his neck, and he is tied to a tree. He is not pleased with this, and at one point in our visit, he loops his chain around a high branch and swings from his neck. We are concerned for his safety. Andrew mentions perhaps that he was in a difficult situation psychically. The family tells us his story: he had been captured from the forest when he was a baby, and he lives in the village now on his chain. Clearly too he is unhappy because he had bitten one of the children the day before.

Rebecca sits down with the child to take a look at his bite, and works with his mother to clean it with alcohol, and wrap it in bandaids plastered with Neosporin. The group happily dubbs her “Medicine woman”, and she happily accepts the nick name. Bandaids are not enough to return to Vietnam with in 2007, but it is a small thing that represents a greater care.

After the village, it is time to consider the ascent of the steep crowded street. Mike says he is ready to go. Andrew and Tang are ready to pound up the hill as well. But the rest of us, whether for concern for the traffic, or concern for the grade, or concern for the sun, or preference to visit the monastery, decide to ride to a Buddhist community instead.

The bikers report an easy climb, not as hard as it had looked, and are cool and refreshed before the monastery visitors rejoin them. The monastery visitors are startled and delighted by the serenity of the lakeside retreat, the Buddhists in their saffron robes, the local participants who have come in their street clothes to say their prayers, the Buddhist barber keeping the monks’ hair tidy and short in short efficient haircut sessions out on the veranda, the opportunities to climb up and down the slopes of the lake and enjoy the view. Several small coffee shops beckon us in as we approach the lake, and we learn one new thing about Vietnamese coffee. It comes in very small aluminum filters, perched over small glasses. If you order it with milk, they pour in canned sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of the cup, and the coffee layers above it in an exotic stripe of fragrant black above a rich stripe of white. But there is a thing here about waiting. In Vietnam you take your time. When you are waiting for your coffee to be ready, you are meant not to try to push it along. Jonathan, after about fifteen minutes of watching his coffee make its way through his filter, tantalizing drop by tantalizing drop, finally takes up his little spoon and gives the grounds a stir. He is immediately accosted by the host of the coffee shop, who strides up to him, takes his spoon away, and resets his coffee filter. Reluctantly, with a scandalized face, she brings him a clean spoon. It is clear that we are meant to wait.

The heat is rising and the group is reunited for a quick lunch and preparations for a countryside cycling trip from Dalat, along a bustling river, and through seven or eight towns which are busy growing spinach, morning glories (a popular vegetable, lightly stir fried with garlic), broccoli, and cabbage. Piles of cruciferous greens meet us at several significant street corners, and many children run out of their houses to greet us.

It is a beautiful afternoon of biking though it felt like four in the morning to our bodies, greeting many new friends along the way, and then, finally, rest.

Amy sets up camp in the hotel lobby, with her reading glasses, her computer (to work on the blog) and a tall fresh bottle of water. Rebecca joins her with her journal. Two women writing, six Americans far from home, a pilgrimage of athleticism and endurance and compassion and good will.