6 january: dalat, day two

second day in dalat started early on account of the fact that we've been going to bed pretty early and the cacaphony of motorbike honking begins at around 5am. picture the horn that might be affixed to a banana seat bike with streamers, multiplied by a few thousand, and that's what the horns sound like here. we've continued to think we're pretty awesome for working out at the gym every day (and lets be honest, that's probably why we keep going back). so we hit the gym and then met tinh the tour guide at 8:30am.

another extremely efficient day of sightseeing. we love the pace here - no dawdling at sights, no extraneous explanations or more detail than you really want. these guides just hit the high points and move on, which is exactly our style.

we first headed to a gondola station and took a beautiful ride high above the treetops across to a monastery on the other side. we got to know tinh a little better in the gondola, as andrew discovered that tinh roots for arsenal (he even wears an arsenal charm around his neck) and knows a ton about english 'football', so it was an instant love affair. the monastery itself was serene and beautiful. it's functioning today, so there were monks walking around and tinh explained how their level of seniority is depicted by the color outfits they wear. beautiful flower gardens, peaceful surroundings.

then we hopped into a little motorboat which took us clear aross a huge lake. on the way, we learned another fact that's still reverberating with us -- the average salary in vietnam, according to tinh, is between $85-$150/month depending on whether you work for the government (less) or the private sector (more). either way, it was a serious dose of perspective.

on the other side of the lake we were met by our driver who took us to a totally kitchy tourist attraction -- a beautiful waterfall, which you access via a contraption that's a cross between a bobsled and a rollercoaster. it was awesome.

skip through the next several stops b/c they're not all that interesting to report back on - but one point of interest was the evolution of tinh's vocabulary throughout the day. tinh has never left vietnam with the exception of one work-sponsored trip to singapore, has a pretty thick accent and only learned english 3 years ago (not in university, which is the norm here). yet his extremely sophisticated vocabulary to describe the most random things astounded us. a few phrases we remember: matriarchal society, feudal system, branch offices, tree stumps, any flower you could think of, and the list goes on. maybe writing it here doesn't convey how amazing it seemed at the time, but we were impressed.

after lunch we headed to something called "crazy house" -- a hotel that the middle aged daughter of the former secretary general has been in the process of building for ten years and it's set to be completed in 2011. her power and influence has afforded her the luxury of building what is honestly one of the weirder structures we've ever seen. its as though you stepped into alice and wonderland. all the rooms are named after animals (pheasant, kangaroo and termite to name a few) and appropriately designed to convey that animals' living quarters. so as a tourist you might crawl into a tree stump where the bed is, and then go wash your hands in the sink that looks like a bird's nest. its trippy and kind of reminiscent of the houses in gaudi's park guell in barcelona.

in the evening we obviously did a repeat performance at larry's bar, but this time spiced it up by playing what may have been kim's first game of pool (according to her). this was brutally apparent by how quickly andrew won. but, to be fair, she's a quick study and we might just keep playing throughout our trip to see whether it ever becomes an equal match. we ended the night at a restaurant called "v cafe" owned by ex-pats, which boasted a menu that included vietnamese staples alongside chicken nuggets, pizza and burritos. we're far from sick of local cuisine, so we didn't even indulge in the good old american offerings. can we keep this up for a month straight? an interesting test.

next up: free day in dalat