Day 91 - Crazy

If anyone has managed to stay interested in this blog after the past three posts, which were as exciting as hearing Prince Charles reading a phone book, I have good news for you - today was actually worth writing about! Even though the (very) early hours were a bit of a haze, we made it to Da Lat by 10am and luckily our homestay let us check in and freshen up before heading out to explore South Vietnam’s summer capital. Our host recommended that we spent our first day exploring the city and checked out the surroundings tomorrow, which happened to be exactly what we had in mind.

Our first stop was Crazy House, probably the most accurate name for a building I have ever come across. A personal project by the architect Dang Viet Nga, the daughter of a former Prime Minister who was inspired by artists like Antoni Gaudi or Salvador Dali, it was designed by non-professional local craftsmen based on paintings produced by the author. The result is a set of buildings that sometimes look to resemble giant trees connected by branch-like bridges, but most of the time just look like a product of someone’s feverish dream. To help minimising the financial burden on the author, who incurred in millions of dong (yup, still makes me giggle) in debt in order to complete the project, it functions as a guest house were several empty rooms are on show for the visitors.

My favourite bit was when Mari found a door that no one seemed to have noticed, leading to an incomplete room with an aquatic theme which looks destined to eventually become an oceanic ballroom. Having the place to ourselves was unexpected given the number of times we got stuck in a traffic jam of Russian visitors elsewhere in the house, but being surrounded by paintings and sculptures of heavily stylised marine creatures was as surreal as the rest of the building. This was not the only part of the complex that was not quite finished yet, as several other areas were still very clearly under construction but still accessible, with the terrace atop the tallest tower providing a pretty epic view over the city of Da Lat.

From there we planned to check the King Palace but, as we struggled to find it and eventually realised it was a 45-minute walk away, we instead decided to take the cable car to the Truc Lam Pagoda, an active monastery not far from Da Lat. A quick snack at a cute cafe near the terminal prepared us for an absolutely epic 15-minute journey, with the views over the tree-covered hills and valleys almost making Mari forget her fear of heights. The word “almost” is crucial here, with her nerves growing towards the end as we dived towards the terminal while I dealt with a mixture of concern for her and amazement at the stunning scenery of the lakes and mountains that laid right in front of us.

The monastery itself was an incredibly peaceful place, where not even the young children running around the place managed to affect the tranquility we felt while walking around it. Although none of the structures were particularly impressive, especially given the shremple overload I have been through over the past month, the whole complex and its surroundings were the ideal place to spend a couple of hours away from the rest of the World. Sadly we only lasted about 45 minutes as we still wanted to check a couple of places before sunset, including Ga Da Lat - the only train station where I have ever been where the number of wheels on the trains in service (exactly zero) was smaller than the number of people posing for photos (definitely nonzero).

After a satisfactory sunset at the Xuan Huong lake (no Mount Fuji in the background) we headed home for a power-nap before dinner. Our first attempt was at a pizzeria which had run out of pizza, so we headed to a cafe near the live music bar we wanted to check out afterwards. As it turns out, the two venues are connected and the name Curtis King was all over the cafe, otherwise populated by its employees and a weird couple consisting of an old white man and a bored younger Vietnamese lading. Upon arriving to the bar we noticed a distinct lack of live music, which led me to TripAdvisor to try and find out how frequently it happened. A quick scan of the reviews revealed that Curtis King, the American musician who owned Escape Bar and led the live band, was no longer welcome in Da Lat after a number of drunk incidents on stage, all of which well documented online. Nevertheless, a fairly competent live band did start playing a few minutes later, and after a couple of songs they were joined on stage by a customer with blue hair and a baseball cap, whose contribution to the performance of “Buffalo Soldiers” was something that resembled Mike Shinoda’s lines from “In The End”. After informing everyone he was the lead singer’s “bro for like 10 years” he returned to his seat and we thought that would be it. We were wrong.

As the band continued playing, sometimes accompanied by one of the waitresses who can definitely sing, weird baseball cap dude would step in at his own leisure, sometimes just making grunting sounds but on two more occasions interrupting perfectly sound performances to inform us that in the end, it does not even matter. I am not sure who told this guy he could rap or that the words to “In The End” are like Sean Paul (add a little bit of it to any song and you have a single) but that person needs to stop giving his or her opinions right now. In any case, blue-haired person made this a very entertaining night and I must say I am almost tempted to try a broken Linkin Park rap at the next open mic session I happen to be at. Once again, “almost” is the key word here.

Cheers,
J-Wowww