120kms

We woke up extra early today (6am – my god do I need a sleep in!) today we did a tour organized through our hotel (Pink House Hotel Dalat) where they show you the real Vietnam, you don’t see any travelers all day (except the 9 in our group) and the tour guide, Rote explains all about Vietnamese customs, and takes you to his families house for lunch.
Ewen wanted to ride a motorbike by himself (it’s a tour on motorbikes… don’t think I mentioned that Mum!!) but me and the tour guide talked him out of it after a wobbily trial run in the car park. So we climbed on bikes behind our drivers.

Here’s a picture of Ewen as his bike flew past mine, he is the one far ahead not the one right in front of me.
First up was a trip to a cricket farm where they breed crickets to sell to local restaurants, it wax very noisy! For some reason they also had a tub full of scorpions there…

Towards the end of our visit here we were shown a plate of cooked crickets (some battered with rice)

Here are pictures of me and Ewen having a taste, I went for the safe option and had the battered one, Ewen was a bit braver than I was.


Next up was a visit to a market, usually westerners don't come here so we were shown a lot of interest with the stall keepers whispering and watching us,we were able to take as many photos as we wanted as it was a bit of a novelty for the shop keepers as the dont see too many tourists. at the very start of the market the tour guide showed us two puppies tied up, apparantly these were for sale, not for pets but to eat! although dog meat is considered a delicacy here apparantly dogs aren't farmed like pigs or cows but generally you just eat your pet dog....
the meat section of the market was very interesting, the little black dots in this picture are flies...

and in the following pictures you will see a brain, eye balls and a heart... not sure what animal these come from but i will guess a cow....



our next stop was a ilk factory where we were shown the life cycle of a silk worm to a moth and how they take the coccoon the silk worm builds to make this into silk. the sad part is that the coccoon needs to be harvested before the worm turns into a moth, so for every 100 they harvest they leave only one to turn into a moth and kill the rest of them.... doesn't seem like such a great idea to me, surely they will run out of silk worms soon!!!
here is a picture of one of the machines they use, this one was for making the silk into patterns

after this we went to a waterfall, apart from the rubbish in it it was beautiful, you had to climb down some very steep steps to get there but it was worth it, we were then shown a narrow cave you could go down to get to the bottom of the waterfall.



Next up was a stop at a coffee plantation where our guide told us about a snake that hides in the coffee trees and if bitten you will die after only 2 hours, a little while later when he had finished his talk he pulled a rubber snake out of the tree behind us giving me a heart attack!! he told us that 1kg of coffee last year was 45,000VND and this year it is only 25000VND so the greedy people who didnt sell their coffee beans last year in the hopes the price would get even higher have lost a lot of money now.

Here's Ewen about to get on his bike

We then went to our tour guides parents house and visited their neighbours who are from a different tribe i suppose you could say. they live very rustically, making clothes with intricate patterns

and getting their water from a well. the youngest daughter (she looked about 5 or 6) climbs down here once a month to clean the sides of the well

we were told that in this tribe 80% of marriages are arranged and the way it works is that the girls family must buy the husband. for example, you might buy him with two buffalos or a precious stone necklace, they do not use money.
the woman we were speaking to had fallen in love with a man that her parents couldnt afford to buy so they ran away together 15 years ago, they managed to stay together for 10 years having 5 children but 5 years ago his family came and took him away and made him marry someone else, he has never been back to see his 5 children.

after a vegetraian lunch of noodles with tofu (which was suprisingly nice) we were encouraged to try all the different fruits from the garden, been a bit of a fruit lover myself i was suprised that i had never really heard or seen any of these fruits before.


we then played a few games before getting back on the bikes to head back to Dalat, we stopped at a mushroom farm and also a tree with the only local chillies, which i didnt try, but ewen did.
it was a really good day, and i was suprised that it only took a few minutes for me to feel comfortable on the back of the bike, i had a very good, safe driver so that helped!