Dalat

March 31, 2008

And lo, where there be a view, there shall be a fibreglass animal….or ten. It would seem nature didn’t quite get it right with all the misted peaks and waterfalls, and thus, in a purely charitable act, the good people of the Dalat Tourism Board gave the old bird a helping hand. As with many a boardroom discussion though, the concept must have just got lost in a haze of cocaine and ego;

‘ Sure, that mountain’s beautiful, but how are people going to the top of it?’

‘a road….yes, and a carpark at the top…just all over it…yeah yeah, just tarmac everywhere….and a cafe, one of those nice flat roofed concrete ones. My wife loves those.’

‘wouldn’t that kind of ruin it? I mean that’s not going to be too pretty. Y’know…the idea’s great, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here.’

‘Fibreglass animals. Yeah, just loads of them..everywhere’

‘ Guys dressed as cowboys… with ponies’

‘Really?’

‘Loud speakers playing music…and..and a rollercoaster!’

‘Great. Can we get a price on those somebody?How are we going to pay for all this?

‘Well we just fence off the mountain and charge people to get in.’

‘Genius. Is someone writing this down?’…

The rollercoaster down through the rainforest to Datanla falls was fun though. The rest was just bemusing. Dalat was also awash with, ‘Easy Riders’, a much famed group of motorbike guides that everybody seems to reccomend, and nobody can escape, due to their unwavering persistence. The whole biker thing just wasn’t for us, as I stopped pissing in my jeans when I was four, and Kelly kicked the crystal meth years ago. We hired our own scooter to outrun them and experience the mountain roads and pouring rain by ourselves.