Halfway to Nowhere

I just took a left.  I was riding along one of the many roads that circle around the outside of the city and decided to go down a road I had passed by before.  An hour and a half later I was down out of the mountains and seeing signs for Ho Chi Minh City.  I had to decide between chancing the uncertain rumblings of the clouds ahead or to turn about and race the path home, potentially safe and dry.  I took a few pictures of the open grasslands surrounding me and sat alone on the bike and watched the clouds roll in.

One of the many joys of my time in Dalat was the weekly motorbike rides into the countryside, cruising along remote winding roads at 40mph.  I pass calmly through smalls towns and villages, pass by coffee fields, pass by flooded rice plots lined by banana trees.  I can feel the warm moist air rise up as I pass by the little family farms and then quickly the feeling subsides as I leave them behind.  Riding in the open air brings with it the aromas of the country.  Sometimes it's a pungent fish smell, sometimes it's wild mountain flowers and pine trees.  Up in the mountains here I feel as if the clouds are immediately atop of me.  They seem far closer than I've felt before, and appear far more detailed, and in being alone I feel as if they are only there for me.

There are so many roads that lead to so many places.  One of these days I'm going to just keep going, keep riding, follow the road and see what's around that last bend.  That time is not now.  I am going home and will be back in New York on the 3rd of June.

You Say It's Your Birthday, Well It's My Birthday Too, Yeah

I got flowers and toy motorcycle.  It was awesome.

Cam Ly Waterfall

Cam Ly waterfall is one of the many that are situated in and around Dalat.  Cam Ly happens to be right in the city.  It's not the most spectacular waterfall, it does have one good view.  Otherwise the grounds surrounding Cam Ly are filled with fake animals (such as a horse painted to look like a zebra) and various other kinds of kitsch.  I wouldn't spend too much time here, but I paid it a visit anyway.

Behold a Pale Horse

They show classic movies on the version of Cinemax I get in Vietnam.  The other day I watched a movie starring Gregory Peck called Behold a Pale Horse.  It was a black and white film starring Peck, Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharrif.  I love watching these old films, because they have nothing but the story to them.  Most of the movie takes place in a small room in Pau where Peck, a Spanish rebel and bandit, debates whether to go back to Spain to see his dying mother. The movie relies heavily on the story and acting for entertainment.  That's why I like to watch these old black and white films, because I like the stories, it makes me feel like I'm reading Hemingway.

The types of movies I get on cable here fall into one of three categories.  They are either big-name new releases, old classics and b-movies, or straight to cable movies which no one has ever heard of.  One example of the latter could be a movie named Mall, where a group of people are trapped in a flooding mall with an escaped serial killer trying steal some huge amount of money hidden in a mall vault.  I've seen this movie more than once. Mostly, I wonder how movies like this get funding.  When I do watch tv, I watch the oldies or the Discovery channel.

Fish Hash

This had a really pungent smell.  It literally is a hash made from fish parts.  It tasted just fine.  I actually liked it once I got past the strong smell of ammonia when it was being prepared.  You mix it in with your rice and it adds a salty flavor to it.  Not even close to the strangest thing I've eaten here.

Something Smells

Durian is in season.  As you walk up and down the street the aroma wafts through the air from these little street side stands, and you know it must be late Spring in Southeast Asia.  Durian is the fruit most known for its smell, which many akin to rotting dead bodies.  It smells bad enough to be banned on most public transportation here.  I have tried it.  It's not horrible, but I'm not bringing a bag full of durian home anytime soon.

Baseball

Sunny days are made for baseball.  I watch baseball most mornings at 6am, if I'm not teaching.  This is not the first time I've watched baseball overseas.  I watched a couple games in Spain a few years ago.  I been teaching a few of the locals to play catch.  They look terrified most of the time.  I think wherever I go I'll have to bring the game with me.  I think we have to; this game more than any other defines us.

The picture is of my cousin Brendan playing little league down in Texas.  Good focus, but he needs to keep his back elbow up in his stance.

Lou Dog

Lou is a dog like most.  Except he has a gimpy leg from when he was hit by a motorbike as a puppy.  He's gonna miss me.  I'm gonna miss him.

This is part of what I originally intended to publish on the blog.  Lou unfortunately was hit by a motorbike and died yesterday.  Motorbike accidents are a fact of life in Vietnam.  Death is a fact of life everywhere, and I'm still going to miss him.

Rainy Season Has Returned

The seasonal rains of southeast Asia have returned.  In Dalat it usually rains sometime in the early afternoon and on occasion it begins again in the late afternoon or night.  In the early afternoon, when it rains, it rains hard.  The skies darken and the clouds come together and the torrential downpour begins.  The rain absolutely brings everything to a halt in the city.  The motorbikes clear, the cafes fill, and everything is covered and moved in indoors.  There's not much to do but sip coffee and watch the drops.  We'll get a full day's worth of rain in just over an hour.  It's an amazing tribute to seasonal winds of the Pacific.

Clam Bake Indoors on a Rainy Night

A friend brought back a load of clams and other mollusks from Phan Rang, the closest coastal city to Dalat.  We lit the grill and had a clam bake indoors away from the rain.  Clams and rice was fairly tasty.  The clams were cooked in their own juices and the flavored with peanuts and chives.  It's a little unusual eating seafood when you're a mile high into the mountains, but in Vietnam the ocean is never far away.

These Girls Are Good

A major badminton tournament has been taking place at the university. Apparently they are hosting players from most of the southern provinces, and a few of these competitors play for the national team. I've watched them play and these girls are good. The local Lam Dong team lost two heartbreaking gold medal matches on Wednesday night. They were playing the underdog all tournament and in the final match it came down to extra points, and mere inches along the back line. It was hard to watch.  Check out the video here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4vIiDuZuho

Dinner

Since I will be leaving in a month and because all their daughters were home, I invited a local family to a farewell/thank you dinner.  We ate at a restaurant overlooking Xuan Huong lake (which happens to be completely drained for construction purposes).  The way Vietnamese dinners work is everything is shared, you start with several different types of fruits, meats, and vegetables, and you end with some type of soup or stew.  I have eaten several interesting meats, which I won't eat in America, and on this night I ate two new ones.  I ate fried frog legs and grilled wild boar.  The frog legs were actually very similar to chicken wings and tasted really good.  They were fried in butter and garlic and tasted mostly of those two things.  The wild boar was just delicious, as with most things here it was flavorful and spicy.  Other opening dishes included grilled squid, stir fried spinach, and crispy pork.  We ended the night with a stew of spicy coconut and curry base with beef, shrimp, and fish balls freshly added when ready to serve.  We had a few Saigon beers and a few laughs, and I'll miss this about Vietnam.

Golden Valley Revisited

I decided to return to the Golden Valley.  It takes awhile for me to get out there and back, but the ride is just about perfect.  The trick to finding these great back country roads is to go north.  If you go north out of Dalat, you then drive away from traffic and the majority of the population.  Some friends of mine were having a picnic along the reservoir we found a week earlier.  I wanted to join them.  After finishing some errands, I enjoyed what I think is the best part of Dalat, the mountain air.  I also wanted to see if I could find the same herd of water buffalo I saw there last week.  We found about twenty of them along the road wading in the mud and huddling together in the shade trying to be beat the midday heat.  It's hard to beat wading along the banks of mountain lake miles from nowhere.

Building a Building

They have been working on this night and day outside of where I live.  They are, I believe, building a new dormitory for students.  I'm not sure when it will be done, but it seems to be going rather fast.  We have an empty building next to me that no one has ever used.  The way construction projects work here is that some of the workers first construct a shanty like building and live on site while the work is underway.  Then they begin digging and pouring concrete.  Most days I just walk by and like to watch them work.  Occasionally the construction reminds of the scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark where they are digging for the ark of the covenant in Egypt, especially when they are digging at night.  I'm not sure why.  Mostly the construction amounts to a lot of unusual noises during day that I can faintly hear from my room.

Lawnmower

 Occasionally there are horses just wandering around the campus at Dalat.  They kind of just meander around not really paying attention to anything, until a student or two tries to touch them.  I hate to admit it, but I always imagine an annoyed horse punting one of them across campus like a football.  Normally they are tied to a post and moved about the campus.  They're our lawnmowers, they keep everything trim.

Dam, Buffalo, Electric Plant

Most tourists never get to see the little hidden gems nestled into the mountains surrounding Dalat.  They miss out on much of the beauty of Dalat, because they never dare to a rent a motorbike and just take off in any direction.  I've spent the last few months exploring the back roads that line the mountains here.  I've rode through minority villages, explored dirt paths that lead to nowhere, examined old French remnants of colonialism, seen remote waterfalls, and circled amazing lakes and reservoirs.  One such ride was last weekend.  We started off for an area called Golden Valley where they have a flower garden.  We bypassed the flowers and rode further on up the road.  I saw a sign and we followed it even though we didn't know what it meant.  We drove down a narrow paved path covered in downed pine needles.  The path followed a river that ran low because of the dry season.  At the end is where we found and old French hydro-electric plant from the 1940's.  Unlike many things in Dalat, this electric plant had been well maintained.  The only ruins there were the old on-site housing for the workers, which were left to the elements.  The plant provided a serene hideaway buried at a notch in the valley along a river.  It made New York and everything else seem a million miles away.  After leaving we decided to find the lake or reservoir that supplied the plant, and did so some 3 or 4 kilometers down the road.  From there we rode on, and stopped when, while riding along the reservoir, I noticed a herd of water buffalo wading along the bank.  We just stopped the bikes and watched them watching us for a little while.  We continued farther still.  We journeyed far from Dalat up and down mountainsides until we reached the end of the paved road.  If we were to go any farther it would be over dirt and rocks.  We decided that this would be the time to return and did so.  As we ventured back to Dalat the skies turned black and the rains began to fall, terrible heavy rain, until we had to stop.  We took shelter in the gateway to a small garden in the mountains, and stood there shivering.  We waited for the rain to slow and then we rode on and home.

New Hat

I'm going to look good in this.  All of the old men in Dalat wear these style hats with suit jackets and waistcoats.  I'm thinking of stealing the look from them.

Cafe Moc

There isn't much to do in Dalat.  There isn't much nightlife.  One thing they do have is coffee, and with it, cafes.  Cafe Moc is situated in the cellar of an old French style villa.  On Fridays they have live music, and of particular note is the guitarist.  It's mostly traditional Vietnamese love songs, or more accurately songs of unrequited love.  They will also do instrumentals of old Spanish music or Mediterranean music.  In Dalat, on occasion, it is hard to remember that I'm in Asia and not somewhere in the northern Basque region.

Rodney Dangerfield of English Teachers

I was looking through my class pics and then I noticed this one.

Tiger Falls

While we may not have beaches in Dalat, we do have many secluded and sometimes hidden waterfalls.  One such waterfall is Tiger Falls.  It is located about 20K east of the city with only a minor street sign marking the turn off along a narrow mountain road.  It is worth the trip and the ride, if one wants to find themselves alone in the woods surrounded by the sound of falling water.  Just be careful crossing the rickety rope bridge.

Back to School

These are the four classes I teach.  This semester I'm teaching four sections of Speaking 4, public speaking.  Just about no one likes speaking in public, so this should be interesting.  

I'm in some of these pictures.  You can probably spot me.

AVK 32A

AVK 32B

AVK 32C

AVK 32D

The Philippines

I'm not going to say much about my trip.  I was nervous about returning home to the Philippines after twenty something years.  It ended up being just about the perfect trip.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Ta Keo

Ta Keo is what is called a "temple mountain," it represents Mount Meru in the Hindu religion.  It's only about 140ft to the top, but it's really steep and this is the only temple they tell you is dangerous.  I really wish I didn't climb to the top, because you have to climb back down.

Angkor Tom

Angkor Thom means "great city" in the Khmer language.  It not only refers to the Bayon temple pictured below and most recently brought to popular culture by the movie Tomb Raider.  It actually refers to the entire city complex of palaces, terraces, temples, libraries, etc.  The Bayon at Angkor Thom was massive, yet not nearly as large as Angkor Wat.  What it lacked in sixe when compared to Angkor Wat, I felt it made up for in its unique design.  The large countenances built in to the temple towers gives you the awkward feeling of being watched the entire time you climb through the temple.  Not to mention I was able to get good pictures of the wall reliefs since many of them were outside.

Before the Sun Rises

I awoke at five. I showered and eagerly ate the stale pastry I bought the day before. My tuk-tuk driver was waiting outside to take me on my morning tour of the Angkor temples. I was dressed with the heat of the late morning in mind, and felt chills in the air from the cold wind. We arrived and in the dark distance some shadows of the temples loomed. I crossed the long stone bridge out to Angkor Wat careful as not to twist an ankle. I was early even for most tourists. I climbed through the temples gates and walked towards the main part of the temple complex. There were some vendors selling drinks and breakfast and some other tourists. I found a seat on the some stones by the edge of a shallow reflecting pool. I sat and waited. As the sun began to rise the temples came more and more into view and the colors of the sky changed from purples to reds. The only annoyance was three male college age tourists behind me complaining about how early it was. I found some irony in their annoyance. I didn't wait until the sun was late in the sky to enter the temples. I took advantage of the patience and sleepiness and toured the temples while most were still sitting in their comfortable chairs waiting for the sun to be full in the sky. I was nearly alone in the massive temple complex of Angkor Wat. I ventured through it and was to photograph relief after relief in peace. A temple guard asked me if I wanted to go up to top of the complex before it opened and while I normally might not do so, I paid him five dollars to take me to the top illicitly. So while most were watching the end of the sun rise from outside the temple, I was able to view it from the very top of the temple with full views of the surrounding plains. The temple was eerily quiet and peaceful considering this is the very reason many had come to Cambodia.  Check out the FLICKR photostream for more pictures of Angkor.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Before the Sun Sets

Phnom Bakheng is an eleven hundred year old temple which sits atop a hill.  It has become a favorite place for visitors to watch the sunset from.  Despite being one of the older temples at Angkor it is in surprisingly good condition.  So I joined the throngs of visitors and climbed the mountain temple to enjoy the views of the surrounding valley and all that once was Angkor in its glory.  When climbing the steps here I thought they were steep and rather dangerous for the older tourists and at this time I had no idea what lay in store at other temples.  Even though I was surrounded by tourists I felt this place had not lost its mysticism.  I could feel all the history and the sense of accomplishment the Khmer must have felt standing atop their mountain temple.  I suppose it's the weight of history and humanity that we feel at these sort of places.