Americans Never Forget the Vietnamese in their Hearts

Here’s the next installment from the Gold Coast Gazette!

We did not intend to stop in Da Lat. As the bus rounded a final hill on a long and winding road, I looked down upon the town centre in the valley below. A city founded as a resort town by the French, the European architectural influence remains today; the city resembles the Swiss Alps more than the South Central Highlands. 1,500m above sea level, we blissfully found autumn in Vietnam.

While Da Lat centre may seem western, the surrounding hillsides are home to some of the oldest minority cultures in Vietnam. This is the part of the city really worth seeing, and there is no one better guide than the locals. We embarked early in the morning with Quy and Duc, two of the original Easy Riders of Da Lat. The town is famous for these motorbike tours, which take foreigners around the city sites and up into the mountains. These men grew up in Da Lat and spent over twenty years as Easy Riders. They put serious thought into giving us an authentic and personalized experience, showing us the places they grew up and love, as if we were all friends on a journey. Throughout the day, we were the only tourists among locals.

In the exhilaration of the morning’s ride, I had nearly forgotten our real goal for the day: to meet the hillside minority groups of Da Lat. Our first stop at the local farms revealed transcendent views of the city. Da Lat’s temperate climate not only offers visitors a sense of fall in overwhelmingly humid tropics, but also allows for the growth of produce year round. As we walked through strawberry fields, which seemed to stretch on forever, we received gifts of fruit from the family of farmers. The people we met throughout the day were truly welcoming and gracious; their clear hardship had not damaged their beautiful hearts.

Similarly, at the plantation where we drank Weasel Coffee (description in mleaciampi.wordpress.com), we met another minority culture of weavers that the plantation owners had taken in. I watched as one woman wove an intricate tablecloth of symbols for fish and rice. For authentic souvenirs, these are the places worth spending money at. The nearby silk factory was also solely operated by women; Duc explained the entire process, from live silk worms and dead larvae (battered, fried, and resold later) to the spinning and carbon screen printing press. The carbon machines were ancient and fascinating, outdated but very smart technology. The fabrics were truly gorgeous, much more so than any we’ve seen in stores, and the prices are wholesale. Again, it is worth giving to such hardworking, lovely people.

The generosity of the Vietnamese consistently exuded from Quy and Duc. Their intimate knowledge of the land and the beauty they shared with us is beyond simple kindness. The most impressive site of the day was on the grounds of the Linh An Tu Pagoda. If Quy had not directed me to the right corner of the garden, I would have miraculously missed the “Merciful Charity Smiling Bô Dåi” (Vietnamese name for the “Laughing Buddha”). The shock of suddenly seeing such a large and ancient figure left me in complete awe. I dropped my raincoat and stood at the base of the steps, completely alone with this massive Bô Dåi. A very powerful sense of the long tradition of Buddhism came over me and reminded me why I ventured so far from home.

Quy and Duc shared such breathtaking sites and showed us the true camaraderie of the Vietnamese people. Over lunch – whole fish and lemongrass chicken with vegetable rice and cabbage soup – Quy said “here, we sit together as friends and family”. He spoke about the Vietnam War, and though his father died at the battle of Hamburger Hill, Quy did not feel that Vietnamese and Americans harbor any ill will toward each other. The Americans, he said, just wanted the Vietnamese to be free, but that is not the way it can be in his country. He put it very eloquently: “the Americans gave up the war, and forgot the Vietnamese on the mouth, but they never forget in their hearts; the Americans love the Vietnamese”. After a history of such devastation and struggle, the beauty of the Vietnamese people is truly ineffable.

Is That Poop You’re Holding?

We came here searching for it – the strange and unfamiliar; the food that would confuse our senses, feel dangerous, and leave us wanting more. We had heard about the still beating snake heart shooters in Hanoi, but so far, nothing so adventurous had crossed our paths. In the South Central Highland city of Da Lat, or luck began to change (or run out, depending on how you look at it).

The grandmotherly Mrs. Dung from Dreams Hotel (rave review to come) organized our tour with the original Da Lat Easy Rider Group . Our guides, Quy and Duc, spent 20 years as Easy Riders and treated us as friends they were sharing their hometown with. To avoid the many tourist traps of Vietnam, it is important to look for the small, locally run operations that will be sure to deliver an authentic, personalized tour. Quy and Duc took turns introducing us to local farms, plantations, shops and roadside eats/hangouts located throughout the hillside. The men would teach us about the places we were seeing, then give us the freedom to explore on our own, so each new experience was completely individualized.

As we weaved through traffic, out of the city and high up into the mountains, a light rain descended. In the exhilaration of the morning’s ride, I had nearly forgotten our real goal for the day was to meet the hillside minority groups. Our first stop at the local farms revealed transcendent views of the city. We met families of farmers who let us picked passion fruit and strawberries, warm from the sun, which we ate despite the doctor’s warnings. Throughout the day, we met so many lovely people whose struggles did not deter them from sincere kindness.

It was at the coffee plantation, though, where we got our first real taste of the exotic. Duc showed us the growing moka bean plants and educated us on Vietnam’s most expensive caffeinated delicacy – Weasel Coffee. Weasel coffee, made from a variety of beans grown in Vietnam, is all produced using the furry, beady eyed creatures we met caged alongside the fields. This wild specie of weasels, Asian Palm Civet, love to eat the coffee fruits but cannot digest the actual bean. In the 1800s, farmers began to collect the droppings and salvage the beans, eventually caging and feeding the animals to industrialize the process. Only the female civet is used, as they give off a special, delicate aroma that attaches to the beans during digestion. Though a rigorous washing process is a necessity, the casing surrounding the bean is never completely digested by the animal, so the actual bean does not come in contact with much bacteria. Have I made your mouth water yet?! While poop coffee certainly does not sound appealing, there is a reason it is the most expensive in Vietnam ($18 USD for 100 grams-less than a pound!). Julia and I both agreed it was the best cup of coffee we’ve ever tasted; it was served black and strong, but with none of the buttery taste present in most Vietnamese coffee. The moka bean added a unique richness and smoothness. We couldn’t resist buying some fresh beans as a gift for future unsuspecting tasters.

Later, we held silk worms and watched the larvae be boiled out of cocoon’s, later battered and fried as a delicacy. To read more on my motorbike trip around Da Lat, check out this week’s Gold Coast Gazette!