Motorcycle Diaries 2

We rented a motorbike to explore the area today.

First stop was Crazy House, a house-cum-hostel designed by a Vietnamese lady-architect who graduated from Moscow. The style is similar to Gaudi and Hunderrwasser. Each hostel room is in a different style and there are walkways linking the different buildings. Some big strong Russian men were quite terrified of those high walkways with minimal railings; which just goes to prove that phobias aren’t related to apparent masculinity.

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Next and nearby was the summer palace of the last emperor of Vietnam. It was an art deco villa really, nothing like the Summer Palace in Beijing. Our tummies decided it was lunchtime and we headed back to town. We toyed with the idea of detouring to the Dalat Nuclear Reactor but the weather looked a bit dodgy so we didn’t. Just as well, as it did pour once we tucked into our pho and bun.

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The weather was dry enough for us to get to a massage place near our hotel, but not dry enough for exploration outside of town. I opted for a Thai massage which was very good. After that one hour interlude, it was dry again so we tried our luck going to the nearest waterfall.

We passed many lovely French villas which Dalat is famous for, as it was the playground for the French colonialists. When we were nearly at the falls, it started raining again.  We managed to get back to town and return the bike without getting too drenched. It was around 1600 by then; we felt that we had done enough with the bike as it only cost us USD5 for the day.