Finding Zen in Đà Lạt

During travel, what you see and do can leave a lasting impression of your trip, but often not as permanent as who you meet.  During my recent trip to Đà Lạt, I was able to spend some time with some folks you often don't see due to their lifestyle - monks and nuns.  

Đà Lạt is rich in abundance of pagodas and the landscape provides a sort of fairytale land backdrop for their archways, buildings, and statues to be nestled into.  The first one I stumbled upon, I was with Dyanne.  It was high up on a hill off of a main road outside of town.  After a few exchanged "hello"s and "we're from America"s, we started looking around at their own small plot of coffee plants, a building for community activity and one for worship, I heard someone say "Canada! Canada!" and we looked over as a beautiful girl with freckles all over her face and a shaved head approached.  With almost no Vietnamese accent, she greeted us in English and continued to explain that she had studied in Canada for a few years and that this pagoda was strictly for nuns.  We were visiting during a time of confinement - they would not leave the pagoda for three months.  Whew! That's a lot of time together.  

Getting Lost in Đà Lạt

My last trip in Vietnam was to the southern part of the central highlands in a popular destination for lovers called Đà Lạt.  My friend Dyanne (TravelnLass) helped me obtain a motorbike within an hour of arriving and I knew that I was destined for fabulous rambles over my four-day-stay.  This bike was more powerful than my DaNang steed -a whole 125CCs!

With Dyanne working at her language school in town, I hunted down a map of Đà Lạt, stuffed it into my bag and proceeded to drive down a street I didn't know.  (There were many of them at this point).  

Culinary Adventures in Vietnam

While living in Vietnam, I made a promise to myself to become more open with areas in my life that were too guarded.  One of those was my culinary variety.  Being from Chicago, my friends (who are not vegetarian), family and I are used to eating and loving delicious, tender BEEF.  There isn't a lot of great sea food in the Midwest that seems edible, or, I decided that if it smelled like seafood it wasn't edible.  So moving to Asia was a strong introduction to many types of food.  I tried "typical" food like shrimp, crab, muscles and other eats for the first time but in this post, I'll detail a few culinary adventures worth noting...

Everybody's Gone Surfin...[Part Two]

Our next surfer wrote me one of the most unique and personal couch requests I've ever read.  With hers being the exception, most requests are pretty short, and the occasional nimrod will copy paste a standard request without any personal connection (take note new surfers - not desired).

She talked about what she was doing in Vietnam and what we had in common and why she wanted to come stay with me.  She even included my secret word indicating she had read my entire couch description (I noted it in the end).  Most surfers are of the 20 to 30-something variety as this is the golden era of traveling to faraway lands before commitments ground you to a home base until you're retired.

Everybody's Gone Surfin... [Part One]

If you're a traveler and you don't know what Couchsurfing.org is by now, you are missing out on one of the most brilliant programs invented since Craigslist.  Why is couchsurfing even better than Craigslist? It's free!  I know, I know, there is an inherent danger in sleeping near people you don't know.  Of the million people I host or surf with, the one rotten apple wouldn't have allowed me to have a "well, I won't be inviting THAT Bundy over for tea again" reflection. But I made a conscious decision during this adventure to trust people that I don't know, and so far, it has given me a wealth of positive experiences, none of which I regret.

Extreme Team Building

(Not my pic) Here's what happens on the ramp

My HR person at my work (who is like my Vietnamese mom here) organized a team-building outing to..er...well... the motivations weren't clear but the flyer said rafting so I said YES!  As you no doubt have noticed in previous posts, things are done a little differently in Vietnam than in most western countries.  Planning is usually amiss, sanitation is not always a top-three consideration, and common sense safety is just about out the window for most activities.  These three conditions in particular should have tipped me off to the inherent risks a new rafting outfit may present, but as a full time employee, my company was willing to pay for the whole day and vouch for my general well being during the trip.  Let's go!