Đà Lạt trip: Part 1

Early in the year, Bảo and I discussed taking Bi (and maybe another of the P Centre children) on holiday with us. The Centre supported the idea, and so we asked Bi his preference between Đà Lạt and Nha Trang.  He chose Đà Lạt .... and after discussing with Mỹ Hương we decided that Thuận would be Bi's travelling companion.

Our initial plan was to travel from Vũng Tàu to Đà Lạt by bus. There were two options: travelling by day on a seated bus, or at night by a "lying" coach, but I had to work on Friday night, making day travel the only possibility. Then at the beginning of the week some of Bảo's colleagues announced that they also intended to take a trip to Đà Lạt for the 30 April/1 May holidays, so we joined forces with them to hire a mini-van and travel together. All up we made a party of 14 people, with all the driving done by Đạt (a big thanks to him and the copious amounts of coffee he drank!), setting out at 4.30am with the expectation of being able to arrive in Đà Lạt by the early afternoon.

At around 10am near Madagui we happened on a stall selling durian. Travelling with a group of durian lovers sort of made a stop here inevitable :( Oh well, at least there was coffee to be had as well. Being security-minded travellers we locked up the van, but forgot to take out the cameras. Bảo and I both wanted to get some shots so we got the key, tried opening the back to reach our bags, discovered that the lock didn't work well and so opened the door from inside, got our cameras, locked the car, shut the back door, checked to make sure it was locked and ... snap! went the only key in the lock!

After that ensued some very tense moments as we tried and failed to extract the broken part of the key from the lock. The next step was to send for help from the nearest town. Help arrived, managed to get the key out, and by use of a very large file attempted to make a copy that would ultimately fail to work. We needed a more technological approach.

To get this we needed to send someone to the next larger town - Bảo Lộc - which was achieved by Đạt being given a ride by another group, and returning with the locksmith with a group travelling back down the mountains. They arrived with another copy of our original patched together key which .... didn't work. After a lot of refinement, the locksmith eventually put together a key that opened the car door.

The next challenge was to get the key to work in the ignition; a different proposition altogether, confounded by the subsequent discovery that putting a non-authentic key in the ignition too many times triggers a shut-down mechanism. I don't remember how we overcome this one, but eventually this extremely talented locksmith reshaped the key sufficiently to get it to consistently open the driver's door and turn the engine over.

How long did this sorry exercise take? Approximately 6 hours which meant we only got back on the road at around 4pm, the time by which we had originally expected to be well and truly ensconced in our hotels in Đà Lạt! Actual arrival time? 8.30pm with dinner time finally coming along at around 9.30pm. This is not an ideal time to be looking for a solid meal in Vietnam, and we ended up in a snail restaurant (which is more typically a drinking place than one for eating). At least there were some noodles and rice for two very hungry and tired boys.

Here are some pics of waiting - patiently and not so patiently - for a workable key. During this enforced stop-off, Bi's continual comment was "Đà Lạt xa quá!" (Dalat is so far away!). However, he also showed his typical curiosity in all operations, watching the work of the locksmiths closely :)