We have agreed with L and A the previous evening that travelling offers a good opportunity to face our fears. Accordingly, M and I are going on a motorbike tour of the countryside and L and A are going canyoning. Canyoning, in this instance means abseiling down the face of a huge and powerful waterfall. Or two. Along with some water slides and a couple of jumps. Off cliffs, that is. Into water. L is afraid of heights. In contrast our cushy little trip sitting casually on the back of a motorbike driven through jaw dropping countryside by the ever careful H, seems somewhat of a cop out. I admire her courage, and I am actually quite excited about the end of the day when we can meet up again and swap stories.
Having said that, our trip had its own exhilaration, if admittedly, no actual danger.
I don't know exactly what it is. The countryside itself which is verdant and magnificent, the height, the pure air and wide, winding mountain paths or the physicality of the way you experience it, wind in your face, snatching your breath as you ride, the smell of the air and the crops and the coffee skins, holding onto a gentle man with a shy smile, who you met two days ago and who navigates the route with careful pride. Whatever it is, it makes things swell up in me. I have the sort of sudden stirring of unidentifiable emotions that I associate with the opening to a piece of theatre, the birth of my nieces or the day that I walked down the aisle.
The day is packed with colour and information. We walk to the top of a smaller mountain to gaze at a panoramic view of Dalat.
We stop at a flower farm and H explains how the Gerboras grow, the investment from large Dutch companies and the sale both to local markets and to large business who buy in bulk to sell in the city. The city in question, can be Vietnamese or in any number of overseas locations.
H explains how the communist government supports the poor, providing them with a chance to do well, because the land costs the same for rich or poor. This means that the rich cannot drive up the price until only they can afford it. Its cheap enough for anyone to give it a go. Once again I reflect that the western view of communism seems based on extremists. Certain aspects of it seem really to work. And the form of communism adopted in Vietnam still allows for open borders, international trade and the ability to earn a reasonable wage. In fact, if what H tells us is truly representative, it is more possible, at least in the rural areas, to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps and make the kind of journey H's family have made. Possibly, as in the UK, some of this potential for social mobility is largely theoretical, and there are subtle factors such as peer group, accent and education which form a glass ceiling. But if that's the case H certainly doesn't tell us. Nobody so far has told us anything bad about the government. That rather goes without saying, but H in particular is grateful for it. The system has allowed his family, at least since 1986 when the land was no longer owned by the government, a clear path to prosperity, and affordable land on which to forge it.
We stop at a coffee plantation, where the coffee is grown, processed and, eventually sold. We taste the bitter fruit of the various trees, and H teaches us how to tell a Moka coffee tree from an Arabica or Robusta. He also tells us about weasel coffee. Weasel coffee, as we explain later to our fellow housemates, much to the absolute disgust of D, a traveller from Isreal, is coffee made from beans which have been predigested by weasels. In the digestive system the enzymes give the coffee a special flavour. When the weasels, not to put it too delicately, poo it back out again, the beans are still whole and are washed and roasted. And then, yes, you can drink it. And yes, to D's incredulity that night over dinner, we do drink it.
Actually we hadn't expected to. Not from disgust but because we were concerned that we might find the weasels crowded cruelly into cages, with nothing to eat except coffee beans, in which case we didn't want to dignify this process by tasting the outcome.
Perhaps a testament to the quality of the tour, this weasel farm houses sleepy but happy looking weasels in roomy cages complete with houses to shelter in, bars to balance along and, all importantly, a food tray containing not just the beans, but also some banana.
"He sleeps now" says H, "because he ate coffee all night and he couldn't sleep."
It's a nice explanation. Though actually I think they're nocturnal.
We taste the weasel coffee. It's rich and bitter and not as expensive as we've seen in the city. A word though. I think weasel farms work rather like meat farms. Some are humane. Some less so. And there is the fundamental problem of whether humans have the right to encage wild animals. Almost certainly not. But I have no intention of spreading rumours which put the weasel farmers out of business. This, like all animal products, carries some risk that the animals have not been well treated. But there's no way to know.
Having given ourselves a buzz with the coffee (as if we needed one), we move to a rice wine factory where the highlight for me is seeing a cat. Yes. I know. My priorities are skewed. Alcohol before felines. I don't need to travel all the way to Vietnam to see a cat.
Luckily M is paying attention. H shows us how the rice wine is made and explains that when it is first distilled it has an alcohol content of 75%. It is then mixed with water to bring the alcohol down to a mere 40%. H dips a shot glass into a plastic bottle and brings it up, with a small taster of liquid inside it. He hands it to me. I drink it. By this point a group of lads, also tourists have arrived with their guide who seems considerably less informative than H. I am enormously pleased to note that they cough and splutter after their taster. I find it strong, but fairly pleasant. Clearly I have alcoholic tendencies and an iron stomach. H dips another glass and hands it to M. This time it's pretty much full to the brim. M is man enough to drink it all down without a fuss.
"So, what percentage did you say this was?" I ask H. "Forty, is it? Or was it thirty five?"
"No," says H casually, "this is seventy five. Later it is forty."
Excellent. We wobble back onto the bikes. My feeling of euphoria is mysteriously intensified.
The euphoria produced by the rice wine, however, is nothing compared to what comes next. We visit a noodle factory and a silk factory, both of which are hugely interesting, and the methods used ingenious and only very lightly mechanised. The silk factory however, does create further animal based misgivings. The silk worms are friendly looking white creatures which peer inquisitively at H when he picks one up to explain the process. They create a silk cocoon in which they will hibernate until the triumphal moment when they burst out as a moth - and fly to freedom, laying their eggs and thus renewing the circle of life. Cue rousing Lion King based sound track.
Except they don't quite get there. The cocoons are placed in warm water where the gossamer thin, almost invisible thread of the silk is gradually unraveled until only the small, silicone transparent bubble remains, and the silk worm inside. Whether at this point the worm has died or is only sleeping, I am not sure. Either way, in true Vietnamese tradition, nothing is wasted. You can eat crispy fried silkworm with spring onion on your way out.
An aside - I am in no way accusing the Vietnamese of cruelty. Or at least of any special kind of cruelty. Humans the world over utilise animals for their own ends, and different places eat different creatures and domesticate others. The silk process in the UK is probably similar. When H offers us the bowl of fried silk worms, noting as he does so that as vegetarians we will probably not eat them, but a photo would be OK, M moves to say no, disapprovingly. He doesn't want to be part of a process which leaves us sad for the silk worm. But I stop him. We are travelling and will see things we would never countenance at home. Not partaking is one thing, but the worm is dead. It's a picture of a culture which doesn't waste. It's really no different to eating cows. Or chickens. And to some extent I wonder whether, really, it isn't more respectful, if you have killed an animal, not to simply throw its carcass away. I am not sure how convinced I am of that argument, given that the animal will contribute after death to the ongoing cycles of life, by decomposing, nourishing the soil and creating plant life. But its really not a simple issue. I would venture that a way to harvest silk without the destruction of the silk worm inside is possible. I would venture that the death of a silk worm in this way, to earn a living and provide for your family is more reasonable than, for example, the eating of live bugs by people who have more than enough alternative options, and who don't even find the creature appetising, purely for dubious entertainment value on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. And other such edifying programmes. I know. I am a TV snob. But really. Give me The Killing any day. At least nothing actually dies in that.
The really amazing part of the day comes next, though. We drive to Elephant Falls. I know it's a waterfall. I expect to peep over a fence at a natural phenomenon, drink in the beauty, maybe hear the roar of it and be awed. I expect it to be, well, pretty. And nice. A good photo opportunity. Then I expect to hop back on the bike and continue our leisurely wind through the countryside. And I'd have been happy with that.
H's other driver, who I realise later is another brother, gestures to us to follow him down a path. There are three stone elephant statues.
"Photo?" says our guide. We obediently pose.
Then he gestures behind us and, sure enough, there's a fence we can lean on and drink in the view. The waterfall is truly huge. Its very high and the water roars as it pours, at an incredible speed, off the side of the rocks. At the bottom is a large rock which could, if you squinted a little, be interpreted as a large elephant crouching in the water.
"Beautiful" I say to our guide. He just nods. Sure it is. But he sees it every day.
We are hustled away from the fence and down a winding path. To the foot of the waterfall I guess. It makes sense. Half way down our guide stops and points back, above the trees at the side of the falls. Rising up high into the air is a cloud of thick steam from the impact of the water with the rocks at the foot of the waterfall. I stop very still, watching it. Its really quite incredible. The scene is eerie, the roar of the water, the slow plume of water droplets like smoke far above the trees. There's no road noise, no birds that we can hear above the roaring. No other people.
We continue down. Eventually the path becomes a series of rocks making footholds down a reasonably steep bank. The red mud is very slippery. I try not to look down. We are reasonably wet now, from the spray. We keep going. Half climb, half slither. I am a little shaky. I'm not terrified but also not comfortable with heights. And I don't trust my climbing ability. Not at this stage anyway. Later in this trip I will be properly intrepid. Or that's the idea. And scrambling down slippery rock paths is the way to get there.
We keep going. After a while I think we start to curve to our left. I can't tell where we are anymore. I can only see rocks and mud and the roar of the water fills our ears. No one speaks. There isn't any point.
Suddenly, and without warning our guide jumps down and moves right. We do the same. And suddenly. Instantly. We are drenched. I am standing just beneath the wall of water and a little to the right. There is no safety rail, no perspex screen separating us from the water. We are literally standing on the rock surface at the corner of the waterfall.
Our guide is laughing and nodding. I am laughing too but I don't know why. I nod back at him but we are saying things I don't believe I can put into words.
Then he gestures to me again. Come. Stand here. I move to the flat peice of rock where he is standing. I have forgotten everything. M, who is busy in the dry, trying to capture the moment on camera, where I am, where we will go next, what my name is. I have never cared less about the small stuff. If you told me in that moment I had lost my job, gone bankrupt, mislaid my passport or was seriously ill - I don't think I could have comprehended what it was you were talking about. It was just me and the water. Standing on that flat piece of rock I can see above me a wall of roaring water, almost too thick even to admit the sunlight. I am directly underneath the waterfall. The steam is so dense that when I inhale I take in less air than water. And the force of the body of water above me, literally takes my breath away. I stand there, gasping, arms open, face up towards the water and I feel the kind of rush of euphoria which I assume is what people take drugs to experience. I cannot express it. But I just stand there, summon what little breath I can. And scream. I want to scream louder than the roar of the water. I want to scream obscenities. And if that sounds a bit disrespectful to the waterfall itself and the God who made it, I can only explain that it was something so powerful that I couldn't find an adequate human language to express it. I reached for the most extreme words that I knew. I didn't actually shout any swear words. I just stood there and roared back at the roaring water. I think it, and God, understood.
When we finally make our way, drenched, back up to the top, my heart is thumping and my legs are wobbly. I don't remember the scramble upwards, though I am covered in red mud when I get there. It is the single and most amazing natural high I have ever experienced. For me, this far, it's the defining moment of our travels. And it's enough. If nothing else tops it I'm still happy.
It's hard for anything else to match this. We discuss Buddhism with H over noodle soup. He is much more devout than anyone I have met in the city. From the way he speaks this is common in his community. It may be a terrible generalisation but perhaps in the country, where there is more time for reflection, where you are, agriculturally, far more obviously at the whim of nature, and the God you believe understands or controls it, and where natural forces like the Elephant Falls outnumber the manmade roads, towers and devices, it is simply easier to feel closer to God.
We go to another, stepped waterfall where H, carefully guides us out on the ledge and we stand with the shallow water rushing past us to fall to the level below.
We go to a pagoda. We go to a minority village in the centre of which is a large concrete chicken. The myth is that a boy and girl fell in love but the girl was too poor and so the boy's father forbade the marriage unless the girl could find a chicken with spurs on its legs. Such a chicken does not exist. The girl goes into the jungle to find it. Worried for her, the boy runs away after her. Both of them die in the jungle. To this day the stone chicken reminds the people never to value money above love.
We see a mushroom farm, a lake and then we take a cable car high up the mountain.
We see the French quarter and we visit an ATM. Everything is amazing but a little blurry. I still have a waterfall in my mind.
Back home we catch up with the others. There is a lot of excited chatter. The canyoning has been a real rush and everybody, fearful or not, has done everything and is suitably proud. We are all exhilerated. Dinner is deafening.
I finish a section of Neville the novel before lying down and trying to sleep. I am still pumping.
Over lunch H has told us that to traffic or produce heroine is punishable by death. We agree generally that heroine is a dangerous thing.
What I can't work out is why anyone bothers. Just go and stand directly beneath a waterfall. It's free.
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