My Vietnam Launch – Dalat Jungle Tour with Chung – 2018 Backpacking

Standby for lots of photos that will surprise you. We are riding through the real Vietnam and very few people get to see what I am privileged to do with Mr Chung Phan & huge thank you to the people of Vietnam & Chung!!! Chung explains the 4 levels of society; scholars, farmers, craftsmen & merchants but everyday life in the regions the people are referred to as ‘minority people’.

On Saturday, 21^st July, Chung arrived promptly at 8am out the front of my hotel standing in the rain with a poncho & plastic wrap bags for my backpacks.  Within 2 minutes he had everything loaded onto his Honda 150cc motorbike & for just a few minutes the rain had stopped for the photo. We are now on a 4day Jungle Tour as Vietnam Easy Riders. It’s amazing when you meet people and instantly find comfort & trust in taking the big steps with them. I was now on a journey where no-one would know where I am or if I’m OK. I must Skype my daughter each night to ensure all is well to alleviate this ‘fear’.

Day 1 is heading towards Lien Son, some 170klms away & this alone will be a test for my novice pillion passenger riding. Chung gives me a few pointers & then .. we’re off!!! We will have many stops & some will be not as per programme for there is always much to see along the roadways. Our first stop just out of Dalat was a very large bamboo structure hothouse to see all types of flowers grown. Roses, carnations, tulips. 1 rose was selling for 5,000Dong ($0.32 AUD) which is a lot cheaper than Australia. Just about everything is grown in the Dalat region. Acres of flowers is an understatement. Just up the road Chung pulls over for his well-known hilltop view looking back onto Dalat, and here he was gracious in taking my much-elated photo to prove I was on a great journey. Notice the rich reddish-brown roadside soil.

Our 2^nd stop, 30mins out from Dalat on road DT725 was Me’ Linh Coffee Garden & what a tourist mecca it is. A dozen large buses no less, plus many cars, scooters & people!! This place catered for everything. Café to restaurant food, coffee to alcohol & incorporated weddings & the like and shops full of merchandise and tourist souvenirs. The range of coffee was amazing, and Chung tried his best for me to ‘enjoy’ the Weasel Coffee with his usual grinning humour. Yeah … sure … NOT!!! At best, I went below the tourist level to see the weasels in their hutches and that was plenty enough for me. I can’t get my head around having coffee that was excreted from animal faeces & also they gladly place it on display. Surely, I’m not the only one that struggles with this? I resorted to my beloved Viet coffee and that was superb with Chung still widely grinning. The weasel coffee was double in price than the normal range of coffee at 70KDong/ one cup ($4.40AUD) or 400K Dong per 100g ($25.40AUD), however this didn’t stop the tourists from buying it. I’ll pass.

The 3^rd stop was a silk weaving factory, full of machinery and mostly women .. & noisy. This stop was amazing to see how they used the simple silkworm and its cocoon to make the silk thread. Silkworms last 30days in life, then into a cocoon, then a moth. I hadn’t seen a silkworm since I was about 13yrs old and it brought back so many memories. Farmers only get one crop of coffee per year, so they supplement their income in mulberries and silkworms throughout the full year. The workers boil the cocoon and then feed the silk onto large reels, then dried. Once dried, the reels are placed onto the weaving mill. I’m trying to get my head around the sheer volume of silkworms needed for the mass silk cloth production just in this factory alone.

The next attraction stop was Thac Voi (Elephant Falls) which was in about 70% of water flow to what it can ultimately reach but it certainly created its roar. Like all waterfalls the view is better from below, so along with about 100steps, tricky bamboo & steel bridge crossings & slippery timber walkways and side-stepping returning visitors on the narrow ‘pathways’ I finally made it. Chung obviously stayed up above as he’s seen it many times. Many decades ago, the elephants used to congregate here and enjoy the water available, hence the falls name. Reaching the bottom and taking what photos I could I soon became the photo icon with many tourists, local travellers, etc wanting to take theirs with me. They were excited to see an Australian, albeit oldish, mostly bald with white rim hair, etc and being very accommodating to their banter. Chung was wondering what had kept me, so I used my new-found ‘celebrity’ excuse.

For our 5^th stop we come across the local market of a village (no name sign seen). As a Westerner there was very little to my taste. Live frogs, eels, snails, catfish, etc. I’ve definitely lost my appetite for flesh; however, the fruit & vegetables were prime eating. Such quality & better than our supermarkets back home. Just up the road Chung pulls over to show me a ‘curry bush’ that when you crush the small seeds, they produce an amazing fluoro red colour. I dare not taste it as I have a low curry threshold. Lol! Our next stop was just up the road a little further where we stopped centrally on a concrete bridge over a fast-flowing river called Song Krong No’ which divides the Dak Lak, Lam Dong & Dak Nong provinces. Next to the bridge to the East was the pylon remains of an older bridge built in 1945 completely blown apart in the Vietnam war (70s). Most bridges were destroyed to slow down the progress of the Viet Cong in the latter stages of the war.

Doing more mountain climbing we were able to pause & sight the beautiful landscape of below valleys and aligning mountain ridges noticing the escalation of the coffee farmers etching their way further into the ‘jungle.’ The coffee farmers seek approval for their crops and once granted carry out the plantings accordingly. They are not required to pay taxes, etc until they achieve their first & ongoing crops that usually takes 3-4yrs for the red berry to appear to achieve the one harvest crop per year.  Satellite dams or ponds are more widely used now to get them through the dry season which I believe is not even harsh compared to Australia’s drought seasons.

Travelling through the wilderness on a surprisingly still bitumen road we come across a very small village. Chung sees some action from a typical village home and stops quickly. He asks me to stay next to the bike and wanders in to greet the family. Within a minute I was ushered in, for now I will witness the daily living of a minority family as they are commonly called. This 3-generation family is typical and very poor … but flows happiness and a very warm greeting. I’m invited into their miniature house to see one ceiling electric light giving a small ‘glow’ to the large single room where the eldest daughter, (about 20) is grinding the rice for their next meal. Her husband is out working in the jungle and one of her much young sisters (7yrs old) is cradling her baby daughter in the custom baby sling for the time being. Everyone helps in all daily chores. The old parents are busy too. Grandad is making his rice wine (Happy Beer) and Grandma (now stopping her bamboo basket weaving) is already off to the jungle some kilometres away to gather more firewood after Chung passes a cigarette to her and a lolly pack to the young girls. I felt so empty in not having anything I could give to them in my appreciation. I emphatically showed my appreciation by warmly … and lovingly saying goodbye through Chung’s translations. Their next-door neighbour was about to travel to the next big village on his oversized packed aluminium recycled waste scooter. Typical Vietnam where, if you can fit it on your scooter, it’s all OK.

Our next stop was another bridge over vast open water. The bridge was built during the dam’s construction around 2003 and looking over to the Dam’s North end you can see the revised floating village. During construction and the rising water levels the villagers could not, or would not relocate so they transformed their village into a floating one and continued living in their preferred location.

With the sun dipping quickly we finally made it into Lien Son at 6pm. With little time available we dropped our stuff into a Chung-organised hotel and arranged for a light meal of birds’ eggs, banana, soup & chicken at the nearest café. Before hitting the pillow, I spent a lot of time trying to have my clothes, shoes, socks, etc dry before the morning.

I’ll end this Day 1 blog here, so stay safe, happy & hopefully enjoy the photos and kick this ongoing COVID-19 & the more-vile vaccines back into history. Stay tuned for my Day 2 blog on my amazing 4day ‘Chung Jungle Tour’.

“Communication … Communication … Talk to each other”. From a song “Kite” on the concert DVD “Go Home” by U2 @ Slane Castle. YouTube have it also.

Thank you again for reading my blogs and I trust you will stay safe, happy & healthy for 2023 and for it to be a far better year for all. I do not receive any commissions &/or ‘perks’ from the above nominated businesses & locations as I am purely happy to provide the acknowledgement and connection.

I always look forward to seeing the feedback so don’t be afraid to comment. My next blog/s will be more of the amazing Vietnam experiences and quite a few were life changing, & not just for me.

Live life to the most and a quote that I truly love is from Eckhart Tolle ..

“If I am not the hero of my life … who in the hell could be?”