Dalat is a mountainous area of Vietnam, north of Saigon and close to the Central Highlands. The air is cool and clear and the scenery a green patchwork of farms, growing vegetables, flowers and coffee. Workers in conical hats squat among the strawberry fields, pruning and tending each fruit by hand. Herds of bison plod, unhurriedly through the winding streets, responding resignedly to the flick of a bamboo switch wielded by a farmer, moving to or from a field ready for ploughing. It looks like a picture of Vietnam in a guide book, or a more South East Asian version of one of Wordsworth's ideals.
We are woken, fittingly, by the crow of a cockerel. We see and hear cockerels everywhere in Vietnam but this one seems to have made a special journey to crow as loud as possible right outside our window. Less fittingly, it is followed by loud banging sounds from the ever growing extension being built on the side of the home stay.
I say less fittingly, and it hauls me, groaning, out of bed, but actually it's enormously fitting. The Vietnamese generally do get up with the cockerel and work very hard. In Dalat especially, that work is largely manual and must be done with the light. As the light disappears as early as five in the evening, and there are crops which need tending, children who need feeding, guests to be given breakfast and houses to build, it makes sense to have an early start.
It fits too, with out host family. The women tirelessly cook and clean up after us and won't hear of help with the washing up. We help cook but are given easy jobs (which in my case we manage to get surprisingly wrong). The brothers who look after the home stay, H and J, are building an extension to house more guests as well as running a tour company and a coffee farm. H's sister also runs a flower farm. His wife sells fruit on a market stall. It's multi tasking to the max, long days and hard work but nobody seems to mind.
"Sometimes it is hard when he is away doing two or three day motorbike tours." says H's wife, her hand on his. Their small daughter, afraid of so many pale western faces, peers at us with a mixture of shyness and mischief and then buries her head in her Father's shoulder.
"When she was younger," says H, "when I came back from the tour, she didn't recognise me."
He means his daughter I think, not his wife.
That is the nearest we hear to a complaint. Everybody we speak to explains, 'we do this so our parents are comfortable. We do it to look after our family.'
Old people are like boxes full of priceless experiences, memories and insights, which, all too often, are somehow locked, either by illness or our own condescending attitude towards them. In H and J's father's case, there is a padlock made of language barrier. But J, talkative and brimming with energy, tells us his story.
Fighting in the 17 year war, H and J's father injured his leg. The war ended shortly after. When their father was discharged from hospital, he came home to find his wife had gone. Gossips in the village talked of a white man, who came to see her shortly before she disappeared, but there has never been any definite evidence and to this day, H, who is actually J's step brother, has no knowledge of his mother after that day.
"She could be anywhere" says J, "in America with a new husband or dead or somewhere in Thailand or Vietnam."
Whichever version is true, it's a familiar story in the aftermath of war.
There in the agricultural community of Dalat, in a country devastated by a war which seemed to last forever, and chemical attacks which maimed people, their children and the landscape, H and J's father found himself too weak to work the land. People in the village grew angry because he couldn't help the community as others did, each helping to recover one another's livelihood. Times were very hard and the family grew poor. Of eight children, four died because there was little to eat. War and circumstances combined to bring the family down.
But, in Vietnam, as H explains to us later, you can work hard, start simple and, little by little, pick yourself up. (Though this may be more possible in an agricultural region than in the city, and I am sure there are still some who don't manage to do so, or who don't have the luck).
H's father remarried to J's mother and, little by little, bit by bit and through extreme hours of backbreaking work in the fields, especially for J's mother, being stronger than his father, they saved enough to move from wooden house to concrete and from working as labourer on another's farm, to investing in their own until they were able, when H married, to give him a coffee farm of his own. J trained in the tourist industry. Between them they ensure that their mother and father, who worked so hard for them, get to enjoy their retirement.
Looking at their father, who beams at us from beyond his black thick rimmed glasses and peak cap and their mother, who talks warmly to me in Vietnamese, smiling widely and alternately hugging me and patting my arm, I think they are enjoying it. And that they must be very proud of their children.
After breakfast, which includes home made strawberry jam as the star item, we are given a lift for free into Dalat city by H on his motorbike. This being the first time I have set my fearful western bottom on a motorbike since our attempt to hire one, (a motorbike, not a fearful western bottom) there is a cold little thrill through me as we set off, and I have a strong urge to make like a child at a theme park, and shout at the last minute, 'stop! I don't like it! I want to get off!'. I set my teeth doggedly and force myself to remember that motorbikes are different here and that H is experienced and very careful.
"You won't let me fall off, will you?" I say to H, trying to smother my fear with humour.
H smiles one of his habitual, gentle shy smiles mixed with the same mischief I detect in his daughter.
"You will not fall off" he says.
I take him at his word. And I don't. It's fine. I am fearless and brave. I am basically Tarzan.
I get a chance to prove this when we get into town and are dropped off at what is known as 'the crazy house'. It's an enormous, sprawling structure, full of hidden corners, pathways, staircases and surprises. With its concrete pillars made to look like the large, winding roots of the trees here, mixed here are there with the graceful legs and bent neck of a giraffe, its walls painted and shaped to look like the eerie red hues of stalacmites and stalactites of an age old cave, and scattered with silvery spider webs, winding green concrete vines and here and there, a deer or a rabbit, it looks like some great living organism. The fact that there are several places still under construction only reinforces that. We have some fun skipping up, over, into and round it and then bump into the German couple who are staying at our homestay.
I really like the German couple, L and A, and I'm pleased to have found them. We approach them carefully, though, trying to give them the option of not spending the day with us if they wanted some space. It's all fine though, and we set off together. From our breakfast conversation I know our plans for today are similar - to explore the town on foot, taking in the various sights, which are rather handily arranged in a rough circle, and then heading home.
Moving in order around our route, we begin with what is known as the 'chicken church', and are mutually baffled by the lack of chickens, chicken motifs or any other indication as to why it's named as such. We walk around it. It's a nice building. But we don't find any chickens apart from a small weather vane on the top of the steeple.
We propose various explanations. Perhaps inside it is full of chickens. Perhaps it is a church for pious chickens. We are not able to enter the building to test these theories. Next to it is a smaller, barn like building with a cross on it.
"Perhaps that's the chicken church" says A.
Later we discover the reason for its name is, indeed, the weathervane. They are rather less common here than in Europe.
We walk on, and begin a walk around the lake, detouring briefly to the French colonial 'Old Railway Station which, complete with both steam and diesel trains, reminds me of the watercress line in Hampshire, England. We walk around for a while before a diesel train arrives and spills out an enormous number of tourists, tour guides and megaphones. We beat a hasty retreat and continue our walk round the lake.
The lake is relatively peaceful and we stroll round revelling in the cooler climes of Dalat. In fact it's quite deceptive and we all get quite sun burned. The sun in Dalat is the kind that burns you, whereas in Saigon it sort of boils you from the inside. As we walk we talk, A and I in particular get so into the conversation we nearly forget to turn off to see the old rail station, though luckily both L and M are better at multi tasking.
L and A are the first travellers we have met so far who I have found it easy to talk to. A lot of back packers talk seems largely to centre on quite a lot of moaning. Whilst I sympathise with complaints which are often difficulties or culture clashes which we too have noticed, it doesn't feel right to sit in a country and complain about its customs and its people. I am very conscious that we are all very lucky to afford to be here, that the complaints only require small adjustments to get used to and are far from life threatening, and that a good number of issues are also prevalent at home. Vietnam, for example, does not have the monopoly on beggars, pushy sales people or overinflated prices. Interestingly, in this home stay none of the other guests have this tendency, but in L and A I feel an affinity. They travel with an open mind and a ready smile. If they are afraid or overwhelmed by something they don't assume its the local's fault but try to learn to understand, assimilate it or, if it is a fear, face it. I like to think M and I travel this way, but even if we are still working towards it, L and A are an example of what I hope we can be as travellers.
We talk about travelling with a conscience, without exploiting people by bartering for unreasonably low prices, especially given the very favourable exchange rates. L talks about trying to travel with a relatively low carbon footprint, choosing long bus journeys over flights for short distances, for example.
L and M talk about the home stay they had in Laos, staying with a family in the jungle and picking fresh fruits from the garden. It sounds amazing.
We spend a while over coffee deciding what M's new career should be. Suggestions include housewife and mother (this seems to be more sensible than it actually is, given that it included M physically carrying the baby as well, to avoid my needing to take maternity leave), and airline pilot
The latter is apparently the most overpaid job you can have (allegedly) as pilots mostly play angry birds and flirt with the air hostesses. As this would involve travel and to keep him away from the air hostesses, there was some talk of my joining him as an air hostess. However this would require me having my hair in one of those perfect buns and being generally flawless and perfectly ironed. That might happen for approximately five minutes in the morning but would be, let's face it, unsustainable. I am naturally rumpled. I like to think of it as a sort of tousled charm... So I will be his mechanic. That's it then. Sorted. I'll give up the day job and get me a boiler suit.
This is, I admit, a massive digression. But the last few days in Dalat have been bursting with activity. It has been a concentration of exhilarating moments, friendship, humour, awe and beauty and I have to represent it all or I will burst with it.
Also I am writing this on Thursday, after the event and during an eight hour bus journey. So I have time to explode with information and various unnecessary details. So there. Dear reader, live with it. If you have read this far you are used to waffle.
But back to the point. We get home, after an amusing taxi journey in which we basically get in knowing we are about to be overcharged and then go with it anyway.
"You have to be careful with meters" says A, "because the driver can go the long way and then charge you double"
"This will be on the meter" says our driver.
"OK" we say cheerfully, and pile in.
The driver immediately sets off in the opposite direction.
There is a bit of sheepish giggling and then we bite the bullet and point out to the driver that the home stay is just over there, and that we should be there by now.
"What?" says the driver, craning his head round to look at us as he drives, "yes. Home stay. This way."
We give in with good humour. We'll get there in the end. We knew what we were getting into. And anyway I would prefer that to further neck craning resulting in a possible, unexpected dip in the lake.
We arrive. We are charged more than we have been told by H it would cost. But it isn't too much more and in the grand scheme of things none of us is going to be bankrupted over it.
When we get back M and I go, with another couple for a walk with H around his coffee farm. We don wellington boots and set off. I feel most intrepid in the boots. Like a proper farmer, as I comment to a gently indulgent M. As we walk to the farm, through first dirt, then mud tracks, breathing in the scent of fresh air, manure and farmland, scrambling down through wet earth from one level cut out into the hillside to another, and grasping at moist red mud as we scramble, I entertain a brief fantasy about being a farmer.
"You have to go through each plant" says H, showing us a strawberry plantation, "and pull out the leaves as they grow old to allow the plant to last longer and yield more." Up on the mountains and hills of Dalat, it is strawberry season all year round. I imagine myself, humming gently as I work, in my boots, skin grown brown and hardy in the sun, greeting my fellow workers cheerfully each morning and taking in great, contented lungfuls of clean mountain air.
"It takes a long time" says H. "So you have to start very early. When you finish the field it's time to start back again at the beginning."
Do not be misled by my pastoral ideals. Farming here is back breaking, difficult work, in all weathers and for little money, in an environment which, thanks to ongoing climate change, does not always guarantee a harvest. I wouldn't manage one day of it.
Frogs croak in the ditch by the side of a cabbage field. I point them out delightedly.
"Frogs?" says H, bemused. When you are running a farm to feed your family you don't really have time to have raptures over the various amphibious life forms in your irrigation system. So I keep quiet about the kittens I spot a bit later.
Thankfully, though due more to hard work than to luck, H and his family are not quite in the hand to mouth position I described previously. H explains as he shows us his sister's flower farm. When you begin you work on someone else's land. You save little by little to buy your own plot, and then, depending on what you are growing, your own greenhouse. Greenhouses are made of bamboo and plastic sheeting and cost around 5000 US dollars, an enormous amount of Vietnamese dong. Once you have this you gradually work up to employing your own workers, all the while keeping money aside for a new greenhouse, for when this grows old in ten years, new crops for when the time comes for rotation, and provision for your family and your children. When your children get married you will gift them your land for them to farm to provide for their children and for your retirement. Obviously, being a few generations in helps here, H's parents pulled together a farm from nothing. But H and his sister were each given a plot when they got married. That's about as easy as it gets though. And H and his siblings worked hard themselves in the fields from a very young age, and often went hungry.
The farming is largely done by hand, aided by a few ingenious systems, such as a pump to take water from natural streams and the lake, regularly replenished by rain water, and the use of palm leaves in place of plastic to pack around the rows of crops to protect them. Nothing is wasted. Coffee bean skins are used as fertiliser for H's Moka coffee plantation. Animal waste is dug into new land to make it more fertile for the crops and rice husks are used to help retain moisture in the soil for crops which need wetter conditions. Most farms are just over or just under one 'hectare', though some of the richer farmers in other areas have more.
H's manic juggling of farm, homestay and tour guide for his brother's tourism company is explained slightly by his choice of crop. Coffee does not require much watering and is harvested once a year in November. It's a relatively hardy plant which thrives in this soil and climate. It can be sold as it is, the purchasing companies generally having more space and wherewithal to dry and roast the beans before sale. Harvesting must be done by hand though, with plastic being spread on the ground and then the beans stripped by the branches in much the same motion as you might strip fresh rosemary or thyme. H hires workers in to help him.
I still haven't quite lost the fantasy of being one of those workers. And on the way back I can't help it. I still slow down to listen to the sound of the frogs.
Dinner again is so exuberant and the conversation so wide ranging that it blurs into a sort of joyful cacophony. Again after dinner we sit chatting, but this time I excuse myself relatively early, struggling with a headache and finding myself falling asleep.
Clearly, I would make rather a pathetic farmer. I am very happy though. I spend a bit of time with Neville the novel, though he understands about the headache and then I fall into bed, images rushing around in my mind.
I love Dalat. Unreservedly. I love the family, the other guests, the landscape, the frogs. I love the cheeky taxi driver and the warm red mud. I love this journey. I love M.
"Me too" says the latter. "Now stop eulogising. And go to sleep."
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