Jake Catlett Photography

Destination: Dalat (Part 1)

So, another weekend, another trip.  Saturday was the anniversary of the death of King Hung Vuong in Vietnam, and it’s a public holiday here.  Several years ago I took a short trip to Dalat on the same occasion, but at the time I had no clue it was a special day at all, and basically through dumb luck I stumbled upon a large festival commemorating the event at a set of 3 pagodas located on a hill above Prenn waterfall, about 10 kilometers outside of the town.  I wasn’t shooting seriously at the time, but I have vivid memories of large amounts of people, young and old, participating in the celebrations dressed in multi-colored traditional costumes, and participating in various rituals and public games.  So, when I found out that the holiday was coming up, I immediately decided that I wanted to drive up there and get a great set of colorful portraits to add to the stock I’m building at the moment.  The decision was made all the easier by the fact that April is the hottest month of the year in Saigon. Living in Saigon feels like living in a hot armpit just about now, and Dalat is renowned for being a cool, breezy, hilltop getaway town.  What better place to spend a few days working… and relaxing?

I asked a good friend if he wanted to go up with me for the weekend, and after debating for not very long he decided he could get some material there as well, and would also enjoy the break from the city heat.  So 5am on Friday morning I picked him up and we set off east out of the city.

The first place you hit outside of Saigon is the city of Bien Hoa in Dong Nai province.  I absolutely hate driving through Bien Hoa.  It’s always terrible.  The highway runs straight through the center of the city, and the traffic slows down and becomes a chaotic, dirty, stinky mess.  Big, filthy, rattling trucks jostle for position with smaller delivery vehicles, taxis and three-wheeled carts while thousands of people on motorbikes weave and wind their way through them.  Add to this that there are markets right along the highway with people standing out in the road, and all along the length of the town people run in and out of the traffic and go sprinting across the highway, hopping over the concrete dividers to get to the other side.  God forbid you get into town when the schools are opening or letting out, because then you get to add hundreds of kids in uniforms and “ao dai” on bicycle and on foot running in and out of the street and clustering along the edges of the road.  By the time I get out of Bien Hoa I’m always hot and stressed out, with my eyes stinging from the dust and exhaust and about a centimeter of filth on my face and hands.  This time I figured that leaving so early would eliminate a lot of the craziness on the road, and at first it seemed like we would get through the city with a minimum of agony.  But then, as we reached the end of the town all the students poured out onto to the highway to go to school.  15 minutes earlier and we would have missed it completely.

We stopped for the obligatory breakfast and coffee break after slogging our way through Bien Hoa, and then we finally made our way through Trang Bom, the last town before the turn-off to Dalat.  As we were making the turn north towards Dalat I was joking to my friend… “We have it too easy here, you know?  Two weekends ago when I went to Tay Ninh I got stopped for speeding by two cops with new radar guns.  When they realized I was foreign they figured I couldn’t speak Vietnamese and just let me go.  If I were a local I’d have been paying a fine.  Anyhow, how am I supposed to know what the speed limit is?  There are no signs!”

This is true.  There are no speed limit signs.  Maybe there are specific national laws regarding speed limits through rural and populated areas. How am I supposed to know?  I don’t even have a license in Vietnam…

About 30km or so north of Trang Bom the highway crosses a thin eastern arm of Ho Tri An, a large lake in the hills, formed by a hydroelectric dam on the west side of Dong Nai province.  The bridge there dissects a small community of floating houses in the lake, and we decided to stop and get some shots from over the water.  Standing there, enjoying the cool morning breeze and feeling the stress start to lift after getting off the main highway I got my first good shot of the weekend.  I turned to my friend and said “It’s going to be a great weekend, man…  we’re having a good day already!”

After setting off again we reached the town of Dinh Quan.  The highway leading into the town heads over a low ridge with rice fields and hamlets in it, stretching off towards gently rolling hills in the distance, and at this time of day the sun was hanging just above them.  The highway hugs some low, leafy cliffs on the left hand side and then turns into the village and past busy morning markets.  Up in the distance is a big, white Buddha statue on top of a small peak, with a scenic rock garden spreading out below it.  A smile forms on my face as I debate stopping there, and then…

Stop.  There’s a tan-uniformed cop in the road angrily waving a baton at me, telling me to pull over.  I give him a confused look – this time not feigning foreign idiocy, but seriously not understanding why I was being pulled over.  The cop walks up to me and says “Please sir, turn off moto-bye.  You go too fast – here can only go 40kph, you going 55kph.”  Not exactly perfect English, but far better than I expected.  As switch the bike off he says “I need see your driver card, your insurance card, your bike number card”

Insurance?  What?!  Insurance has never been required in Vietnam!  Well, guess what!  April Fool’s!  From the 1st of April all bikes on the street were required to have insurance.  For me, this is made all the worse by the fact that I DID have insurance, but it had just expired and I hadn’t bothered to renew it yet.  And, as I mentioned earlier, I seriously have no idea how I’m supposed to know what the speed limits are.  Before they acquired these new radar guns it was never an issue.

Speeding, no license, no registration, and no insurance.  Do you think I walked away with my motorbike?  Well, I certainly did walk away, but with three sheets of police paperwork instead of my bike.  They confiscated my bike for 7 days and sent me on my way, 120km from home.  I tried begging and pleading with the officer, telling him how far from home I was, explaining I need my bike for work next week, and finally telling him that next weekend I’ll be leaving for Laos and won’t be able to come and get my bike.  He smiled, nodded his head, and said “you drive with no driver card…  you lose moto-bye one week”.

Yep.  The trip is off to a great start.

My buddy and I stopped to get a coffee while I steamed and spat about getting pulled over by one of the few honest cops I’ve ever met in Vietnam.  But how pissed off can I really be?  It was my fault.  And if I’d been in the USA I probably would have had to call somebody to bail me out of jail.  After calming down a bit, we entered the worst segment of our journey – the mini-bus between Dinh Quan and Dalat.

Are you a thrill-seeker?  Do death, danger, and the feeling of imminent demise keep you coming back for more?  Does your idea of a good time involve staring death in the face, only to be miraculously snatched from it’s hands at the very last moment, and then to find yourself dangling within it’s grasp yet again?  Well, then, my friend, mini-bus travel in Vietnam is for you!  I can only describe our new-found driver as a sociopathic maniac with no regard for safety or respect for other people’s well-being, and a complete lack of understanding of cause and effect relationships – common traits on Vietnamese highways.  He seemed to drive in the oncoming lane simply as a matter of principle, veering back into our lane, barely averting disaster, while his ratty haired assistant leaned out the window and screamed mercilessly at the cyclists and pedestrians they narrowly avoiding wiping off the face of the earth again and again.  This “assistant” position is a legitimate job in Vietnam, apparently.  All psychotic bus and mini-bus drivers seem to employ somebody whose dual purpose is to smash as much human flesh as possible into a vehicle, and cuss and scream at people as they drive past.  Their mothers must be so proud.  As we careened up and down Bao Loc pass the driver insisted on screaming past trucks and buses at top speed around blind curves, while he leaned persistently on his horn.  This is why I prefer to take my own motorbike rather than public transportation.  I did my best to sleep all the way to Dalat… or keep my eyes closed at the very least.

As the satanic death drive was heading into the final stretch before our destination, the clouds started to roll in, darkening the sky and killing the light.  After all the crap I’d gone through up to this point it was looking like I wasn’t even going to get to shoot some photos in the afternoon.  Whatever.  I was so happy to be alive when I finally got off the mini-bus at the station above the town that I didn’t even care, and I was thrilled to death to see the town of Dalat stretching down below as I took a cab down towards Xuan Huong Lake and the center of town.  Anyhow, my goal on this trip wasn’t to get town shots, it was to get portraits at the festival.  I’d have to wait until the next day to see if my bad luck was going to continue…