Tết Trung Thu và Dalat

There is so much to update on! This will be a long post guys... Maybe the Vietnamese post will be a little shorter today.

Saturday was Tết Trung Thu, or the Vietnamese mid-autumn festival. This is a special festival in Vietnam. It takes place on a full moon and people give children mooncakes with an egg yolk in the middle to represent the full moon. Lanterns and traditional stories are also part of the festival. On Friday, I brought mooncakes to the girls at the Little Rose Shelter. We had a great time eating the mooncakes. talking, and playing with various lanterns that they had. After that, I got to help the staff members translate some educational videos about preventing sexual abuse in children from English into Vietnamese. They are working on developing some educational videoes in Vietnamese and hopefully I will be able to see more of that process during the rest of the semester.

The girls at Little Rose with lanterns

Later that night, Hanh showed us a slideshow about how mooncakes are made and we all got the chance to eat mooncakes and light lanterns outside our dorm.

Anna and me with our lanterns

The next day, Anna, Vi, and I participated in a moon festival performance. The performance was part of an event for children with HIV/AIDS. Smile Vietnam is an organization that organizes fun activities for children with HIV/AIDS to improve their mental well-being throughout their medical treatments. This event had carnival games, food, a magic show, a fire swallower, and some performances by students at VLS, the place where I take my Vietnamese classes. First, we put on a play called "Sự tích chú cuội cung trăng." This story is about a man who discovers a magical tree with healing powers. He uses it to bring dead people back to life. One day, he uses the tree to bring the daughter (played by me) of a rich man in the village back to life. Of course, after that we get married and take care of the tree together. Unfortunately, as I am sometimes in real life, the wife was very forgetful. One day when her husband was gone, the wife forgot to water the tree with clean water and used the leftover water from her laundry instead. The tree was so unhappy with this foolish action that it flew into the sky. Mr. Cuội tried to grab the roots and stop the tree but the tree simply took him to the moon and even now, when it's a full moon, we can see the silouhette of Mr. Cuội sitting under the tree. The children really seemed to enjoy the performance and we all had fun putting it on. Later in the night, Vi, Anna, two of the teachers at VLS, and I sang a song call "Em thấy mình là hoa hồng nhỏ." This is a very sweet song called "I am a little rose."

Me in my costume for the play

Early the next morning, Anna and I were off for our fall break adventure to Đà Lạt. Đà Lạt is a city in the highlands of central Vietnam. It is a very popular tourist destination for both Vietnamese and foreigners and is famous for its beautiful mountains and cool climate. The weather was a huge draw for Anna and me. Although, as in Ho Chi Minh City, it rained for a couple hours every afternoon, the temperatures were very pleasant. They were in the 60s and 70s as opposed to the 80s and 90s of Saigon. I think the Vietnamese might find the city a bit too cold even as huge parkas and wool sweaters were sold on every street corner... and actually worn by many people!

Anna and I arrived in the afternoon and greatly enjoyed walking around the city. Although the city was extremely touristy, it was nice to go somewhere less crowded and in a bit more of a natural setting. Also, because it was the rainy season, the often crowded city was actually quite peaceful. The disadvantage of this was that we, especially me, were even more of a target than usual for the constant yell of vendors and motorcycle taxi drivers. At times it was quite overwhelming. We were scared to even stop to look at the map sometimes because if we did, about five motorcycle taxis would come up to us and offer to take us somewhere, often quite agressively. We did have fun though walking around the lake and visiting the very touristy, but actually kind of fun "crazy house." The crazy house is basically a huge house with multiple levels, twisted staircases, and random rooms and towers. We also went to the night market that had many stalls selling wool sweaters, Dalat strawberries and artichokes, and other assorted souveniers. I definitely came home with a much fuller bag then when I left.

Me standing in front of "Crazy House"

The city center at night

The next day, we went on a day-long hiking and climbing expedition in the mountains, which was really the highlight of the trip for me. We went with two guides that the owner of our hotel reccomended. I was a little nervous about following two strange men through the mountainous jungles of central Vietnam and trusting them to use safe rockclimbing equipment, but they were extremely nice and very safety oriented. They picked us up on their motorbikes in the morning and drove us to a place near Dalat. We were told that we would hike up and down one peak, then hike up the second peak and hike and abseil (repel) down the other one. Our hike began through some farms and grasslands and we passed by many grazing horses. The scenery quickly changed to pine forests that reminded me of home a little bit. The forest seemed like it could be in Colordao or upstate New York. The only difference was the distinctive reddish-orange color of the soil. The climb was beautiful, but very steep and tiring. It took us about two hours to reach the top and the view was breathtaking. We could see the city of Dalat and beautiful scenery in every direction.

Horses grazing near the start of our hike

One of our guides, Kha, observing the view at the summit

It did make me very sad, however, to see how much litter was at the summit of the mountain. Even though the only way you can reach this summit is by taking a two hours walk on an extremely challenging and narrow mountain path, people still managed to litter styrofoam containers and water bottles everywhere, ruining an otherwise breathtakingly beautiful location. In fact, despite being a beautiful natural setting, I noticed that many places in Dalat have a huge trash problem. The lakes and streets of Dalat had so much trash in them that I felt disgusted, despite the natural beauty everywhere. I think that perhaps Vietnam's tourist economy has grown so quickly in recent years, that certain considerations, such as waste management, have yet to become a major public concern, though I believe it will soon be a huge one. A quote in a tourism magazine in our hotel was very telling of this issue. The magazine, written in both Vietnamese and English, was covering a new race up a mountain near Dalat. Though the translator may not have fully understood the conotations of his words, I think the message is still there. The English version of the article said,

"It must be wasteful if we can not take advantage of the location and favorable environment to exploit as a picnic service combined with climbing. This will contribute to develop the local tourism which has a lot of unwaken potential."

After climbing the first peak, we started our trek up the next peak. The amazing thing about the second peak was that the vegetation changed completely. This mountain was covered in jungle whereas the mountain directly next to it was covered in evergreen forest. I'm sure I learned how this is possible in my freshman ecology course but it is not coming to mind right now... This trail was even more challenging and we had to use our hands to grab tree roots and pull ourselves up the trail almost the entire way up. It was hard to capture just how hard this trail was with a camera but I think this shot of Anna gives you a pretty good idea.


After a delicious lunch at the summit of the second mountain (fortunately, our guides were very environmentally concious and followed leave no trace principles) we practiced repelling. We each practiced a few times on a smaller rock face before hiking a little further down the mountain to the 25m cliff that we would descend. Repelling down the cliff was extremely fun and not as scary as I imagined.

Getting read to descend the 25m cliff

We then hiked the rest of the way down the mountain (this was not as much fun because it began to downpour). At the end of the hike, we went to see a nearby minority village. This one was a little done up for tourists which I found a little disturbing, but was nevertheless interesting. Our guides were at least honest about this part of the tour and didn't have any pretenses. They showed us a traditional minority house and then explained that they don't actually live there anymore. We went home muddy and exhausted, but very satisfied with our trip.

A muddy but happy pair of hikers finished with our trip

The next day, despite being incredibly sore, we set out for some more sightseeing. We ended up getting in a fair amount of exercising as the sights in Dalat are very spread out. We walked around the lake and saw the Dalat flower gardens, then headed over to the cable cars. The cable cars were very pretty and offered great views of mountains, lakes, and agriculture. At the other end of the cable car was a group of Bhuddist temples with beautiful views of the mountains and lakes.

The Dalat flower gardens

The cable cars

The temples

Then we took a trip to Datanla Falls. The falls were very pretty, but Ithaca has spoiled me too much. The falls were very touristy and I couldn't help but think "This waterfall is about the size of the one that was ten feet from my dorm last year." The falls near my dorm were also free of admission and did not have souvenier shops everywhere.

Datanla Falls

We finished the day with another trip to the night market where we had a great time picking out Engrish t-shirts. I am modeling mine below.

Betrer said

The Twigay ENTHUSIAST YOU JUST SUPPOSEDLY

Today, we finally returned home from our exciting trip. The bus ride was also fairly exciting. The road to Dalat is a little terrifying and we got held up a couple times when a herd of water buffalo crossed the road, but everyone made it home safely. Now to bed before my next big adventure in Can Tho tomorrow!

Chào các anh các chị. Hôm qua tôi đi Can Thơ và bây giờ tôi ở nhà của bắc Hiên. Tôi có thời gian trước Anna đi Can Thơ và ăn tối nên tôi sẽ bất đầu viết blog bằng tiếng Việt. (I hope the characters show up on this computer. Some of them are not showing up but maybe it will be okay in the final post. If not, I'll correct them when I get back to Saigon).

Từ Chủ Nhật đến Thứ Tư Anna và tôi ở Đà Lạt ở miền trung Việt Nam. Đà Lạt nói tiếng ở Việt Nam vì có cảnh đẹp và trời dễ chịu. Nhiều người đi du lịch ở Đà Lạt nhưng vì mùa mưa nên Đà Lạt không đông người. Anna và tôi rất thích trời ở Đà Lạt nhưng chắc là những người Việt thấy trời lạnh quá. Nhiều người bán áo len và áo khoác và tôi thấy những người Việt mặc!

Anna và tôi ở khách sạn mini. Chủ khách sạn rất thân mật và tập nói tiếng Việt với chúng tôi. Chủ ông nói nếu chúng tôi thích léo núi thì nên đi tua với bạn ông. Chủ ông gọi điện thoại bạn ông và sang mai chúng tôi đi tua với hai người hướng dân.