Amusing Waterfalls

When I woke at five-thirty in the morning in a darkened hotel room in Bao Loc, I hadn't a clue I would be paddling in a swan-shaped pedal boat a mere few hours later. It would be my first time in a pedal boat in a long time. I think the last time was in a lake in Budapest in 2005, and even then I'm not sure if I was actually in the boat or I just saw other people in the pedal boats and retrospectively rewrote that memory to manifest my perennial desire to pedal a pedal boat. Needless to say it had been, at minimum, nineteen years since I put the proverbial pedal to the pond. My need for minimal speed had been brewing internally for almost two decades unbeknownst even to me and that desire was to be fulfilled before day's end. Nay, before lunch.

I fell asleep early the evening prior. I hadn't slept well in my dorm in Ho Chi Minh City and so a stopover at a hotel on the way to Dalat seemed like a good way to not only rest, but also to break up the eight hour journey north.

It turned out that the reason it took so long to get to Dalat was not because of the distance but because of the difficulty in leaving Ho Chi Minh City by bus. Despite leaving during the day, the buses that headed north were sleeper buses — buses where you can legitimately lie flat and sleep. I had heard about Vietnam's claim to transportational fame in amongst the transport-related online chat rooms where I am an active spectator, and so I was excited to finally get on one of these buses, if only for a few hours. The issue, I later discovered, was that, due to their hefty size, Ho Chi Minh City does not allow sleeper buses to enter the city between six in the morning and ten at night. So if, like me, you were to catch one of these buses during daylight hours, you'd first have to take an hour-long shuttle to a bus station outside of the central city area, turning a five hour journey into a six hour one.

I slept on and off during my time on the bus before arriving in Bao Loc in the late afternoon. Bao Loc was not a tourist city. When I checked in at the hotel the woman behind the desk thought I was staying for one night and not two. This could have been an administrative error, but it seemed moreso that it was the type of place people just stayed for the night on the way to somewhere else.

Bao Loc was still a nice enough city, but it wasn't the type of place you'd expect English-written menus or name-brand convenience stores. Given its proximity to Dalat, the city does get a few foreign tourists but still I had locals staring at me while I walked down the street, waving at me and testing out their English skills. The city doesn't have any major attractions in the centre itself and, aside from a slightly cooler climate and some friendly people, there aren't many reasons to visit.

Though, the one thing all travel guides recommend to do when visiting Bao Loc is to see the Damb'ri waterfall. This seemed like an appropriate thing to do whilst I was in town. The thing was that the falls were twenty kilometres out of town and local buses didn't go there. This surprised me given that it was the thing to do in Bao Loc. Needless to say the best way to get there was by motorbike taxi. I picked one up easily using Grab (the rideshare app in most of Southeast Asia) and arrived at the falls at nine in the morning. I knew that I wouldn't have trouble getting to the falls but I thought that coming back might be harder given that I was without internet access and twenty kilometres out of town. I tried to push that concern to the back of my mind and enjoy my morning.

Entrance to the falls cost two-hundred-and-fifty thousand dong, quite a hefty sum considering that the half-hour ride to get me there had cost a quarter of that. Given that my research is generally wide and not very deep, I was aware of the cost of admission but had no idea as to why it cost so much.

It turned out I was actually paying entrance to an outdoor amusement park with the falls as the central attraction. Above the falls was the aforementioned pond with pedal boats, a ferris wheel, a toboggan track (and another toboggan track that had a rope pull which pulled you up the hill from the bottom), a 7D cinema, an arcade room, two hotels, a glamping campground and some restaurants. All the attractions were included in the cost of entry so I made sure to make good use of all of them.

Most saliently though, at nine o'clock on a midweek morning, was the lack of people. There were plenty of people working in the park, but hardly anyone was visiting. But then again, it was nine o'clock on a midweek morning. As the morning continued, a few more groups arrived — mainly groups of middle class Vietnamese tourists, keen to test out their jeans and winter puffer jackets in the brisk temperatures that the mountainous region endured. Gift shops in the park also sold scarves and earmuffs in case anyone left their cold-weather clothing at home. It was twenty-six degrees.

Given my limited research about where I was going and whether there were food options available, I was happy to get lunch in the large, three-hundred seat restaurant at the entrance to the falls. (My supply of banna-flavoured Oreos and cheese and salted egg crisps had run out by ten o'clock.) At first, I had thought the place was closed but, no, there were just no one around. Only two tables had people on them. I ordered the chicken rice and a 7Up whilst a table full of Russian tourists had their tour guide order a range of dishes served with glasses of red wine, beer and forks. Aside from me, they were the only foreigners at the falls that day. After all, you'd only really go there if you had a car or a tour guide.

The restaurant also gave me something else, Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi, much like the vegetables that came with my chicken, was something I needed even if I didn't want it. I was happy being in a natural environment, but if I had any chance of getting back to my hotel I needed to be able to book a ride out.

I waited till after lunch to book a taxi. I sat on a bench outside the restaurant, still in Wi-Fi range, and booked a taxi. No drivers available. I clicked the button again. Waited a bit. Still no drivers available. I repeated this process another ten times, wondering how long I would wait. It made sense that no one was available to pick me up, I was far from town and it was midweek. It was amazing that someone was willing to drop me off twenty kilometres out of town in the first place. I thought about spending some more time in the park and trying again later. But I had already been on the uphill toboggan twice and received quite a weird look from the pedal boat man when he saw how delighted I was to ride a fibreglass swan in a tiny lake. I wasn't going to endure that humiliation again.

I had done everything I needed to justify the cost of entrance, it was time to get going. I changed tactics and got one of the people at the park to order me a taxi over the phone. This would be more expensive but the cheaper option didn't seem possible. When I explained to the man that I had been trying to order a Grab to no avail, despite his limited English skills I clearly got a "well no shit" face from him in response. I could have waited two hours and I still probably wouldn't have been able to order a rideshare. Instead a taxi came to get me and took me back to my hotel for four times what it had cost me to get to the park in the morning.