One of the things that is most frustrating about roads in Vietnam is they often get used for storage. Motorcycles, for the most part, are limited to riding on the side/shoulder of roads. As much as I tried to ride in the car lanes where it was less congested and therefore safer, I very frequently got forced back onto the shoulder by merging or oncoming traffic. Buses and Dump trucks are the “bigger fish” on the roads and they will not hesitate to run you off the road, especially buses. They will obliterate you so it’s best just to get out of their way in advance. I even saw one bus go into the oncoming lane and run another bus off the road.
It’s not uncommon to find stray cows, water buffalo, goats, chickens, and dogs on the roads but the main reason I don’t like riding in the narrow sides of the road is that they are often used up by parked vehicles like large transport trucks. More bizarre is that I often found big piles of rocks, dirt, or bags of sand taking up these lanes. In central Vietnam it is common to find farmers using the hot road surface to dry seeds and grain or grass. There were a couple infrequently traveled sections I came across where the entire road surface was covered in seeds.
On my way to Da Lat, a semi truck merged into the right lane where I was, forcing me onto the shoulder and I couldn’t stop in time to avoid a section full of grass drying in the sun. The farmer that laid the grass down came to see what the scraping noises came from and he looked all confused. The mirror was bent a bit but, otherwise, the bike was fine so I shrugged it off and kept riding.
After leaving the coastline, the ride to Da Lat was surprisingly scenic and, once I reach the higher areas of the mountains, the breeze finally felt refreshing again and the pine forests had a comforting scent to them. I don’t know what it was with the sunlight in this area but everything looked very vibrant. The landscape was similar to northern Vietnam but, unlike the crops of the Hmong hill tribes, farmers in this area plant their crops either in massive greenhouses or align them on the slopes with great precision.
I came to Da Lat mostly just for one sight in particular. I had some adventures in mind but I was running short on time left in Vietnam so I stopped in an interesting guesthouse the next morning before heading south.
The Hằng Nga guesthouse (better known as the Crazy House) is an architectural wonder. It’s basically like something straight out of Alice in Wonderland. There’s nothing consistent about the design of this place. Every room has a different shape and feel to it. Every surface has shape, texture, color, and a lot of imagination to it. While I couldn’t help but wonder what an engineering nightmare it would have been to build this place, I left truly impressed with what the designer had accomplished. There was a tiny little café in the garden and I tried some yogurt coffee for the first time and it was actually pretty tasty, after stirring. It looks like they’ve bought some adjacent land and are adding a huge expansion to it so I’ll have to return someday to explore even more craziness of the new addition.