In which I meet a little cluster of Americans

In Vietnam, people generally tend to go from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi or vice versa. So when you're staying in one of the more touristy areas, there's this great mix of people who have all sorts of advice and recommendations to swap.
I heard about the Da Lat Family Hostel from a variety of people, so when Aly and I headed up there, we decided to do a two day motorcycle tour followed by a night in the city at Da Lat Family.

Da Lat farms. They are known for strawberries, avocados and flowers

Now, I did not realize how long of a country Vietnam is when I started planning my trip. It's a long stretched out country, which means night busses! I had a pretty decent experience with the Cambodian night bus so when Aly and I went to board our bus to Da Lat, I was incredibly optimistic. Except this bus was a little bit different. Each chair is a tiny recliner that doesn't sit fully upright or lay fully back. Nor can you sit up all the way because you'll bonk your head on the seats above you. Not to mention that when you're in the very back of the bus, you can see the whole bus bouncing around at every bump or turn, and you have the heat from the bus engine heating up the tiny little confined space you're sharing with a few other people. Great right?!?

The one nice thing about night busses is that you don't have to pay for accommodation. And you get to wake up somewhere new! And suddenly it's 530am and you've got about an hour to kill before your hostel will be open to let you put your bags down. And even then, you probably won't be able to check in until someone else checks out because all the awesome dorms are full most nights. Luckily, the hostel we stayed at in Da Lat was exceptional. We were greeted with hugs and green tea. When they found out we hadn't had breakfast and we're heading off on a motorcycle adventure an hour later, about five plates of food appeared in a table in front of us for breakfast. Just what we needed.

Buddha Buddha Buddha rockin' everywhere!

At 830am, our moto-guides came to pick us up. Mine was named Tai and Aly's was named Happy. They have been part of the Da Lat Easyriders for almost 15 years. It's such a successful company that tons of imitations have popped up in lots of Vietnamese cities. They took us on a two day 300km motorcycle ride of the central highlands, stopping to show us random things like an orchid farm and a mushroom farm. We got to walk on part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is now essentially the path that a farmer takes to get up to one of his fields of coffee plants.

It was a really great way to see and hear about bunch of random stuff that goes on in Vietnam. For example, we pulled off the road where there was some construction equipment. The guide then shows is several workers that all have hammers and various sizes of chisels. All of the rectangular stone blocks used for paving stones or construction are chiseled by hand from massive chunks of stone dig out of the earth. There is a ton of manual labor in Vietnam from the farming to the construction, but one of the guides pointed out that if machines came in to do these jobs there would be no work for the people. From his perspective it sounded like dangerous manual labor was definitely preferable to no job at all. 

Elephant Falls

I noticed right away that Happy had an Intel bag strapped to his moto. Turns out his son works for Intel in California. He mentioned one time "Even when my son comes to Vietnam for vacation, they are still calling him! All the time! Every day!" Yep, I bet they were.

One of the places that we stopped was a family that ferments rice wine and makes weasel coffee. Rice wine is strong. And does not taste delicious. Apparently it can be between 30% to 40% alcohol depending on the batch. 

Weasel coffee is a totally different thing. It's coffee made from beans that weasels eat. The idea is that when the weasels are choosing what coffee berries to eat, they are choosing the best ones. Therefore, the seeds that get pooped out are the best seeds to dry for making coffee.Yum yummm.

Yum yum!

Poo coffee!!

After two days of sitting in a motorcycle, our bums were pretty sore and we were looking forward to some time to walk around and explore the town of Da Lat.

Our first family dinner at the Da Lat Family Hostel was a bit intimidating. Take an entire hostel full of backpackers and cram them into a tiny room with a ton of great food and Crazy Momma singing Vietnamese propaganda songs at the top of her lungs. After hanging out for a bit we explored the night market, and the next morning Aly boarded a bus for her long journey back after we explored a massive flower garden. 

Tossing rice to polish it. So heavy!

They were doing karaoke on the water. And stopped when they realized we were enjoying it from the bridge.

I took the rest of the day to attempt productivity but wound up chatting with a variety of people and getting nothing done. This hostel had a strangely high number of Americans there at the same time. We had all four corners of the country represented, including one guy who's travel schedule is only about two weeks different from mine, and we are both returning to the U.S. for bachelor/ette parties and a wedding. Funny little world! 

Why are the houses on stilts? Not water, snakes!

Baby coffee plants!

The next day I booked a bus to head north to Hoi An. This meant a four hour bus ride and then a fourteen hour sleeper bus ride. Luckily, about half of the hostel was all heading the same way so we had a great bus ride full of songs and chatting. I didn't realize that smores are really only a thing people do in America. The same with Oreos and peanut butter. Us Americans know our junk food. That's for sure.