Well, my time at the Ananda Yoga and Meditation Centre was all rather a non-starter.    Honestly, can you see me doing yoga ?   Well I can’t, even if you are hopeful that I can.   And I can meditate quite happily on my own, eyes closed, zero thoughts … it’s not that difficult.  Oscar does it all the time.

The main reason for Huy going there was to help out (he has been going a lot and generally getting them organized, as it is a new set up right here) and they were having a 4 week, teach-the-trainer course, with over 100 prospective teachers coming in to be shown how to go forth and do good.  The organization already exists in several countries, including the USA, so there were folks coming from all over, but 75% of them were VN.

I was warmly welcomed, which was good, as it was distinctly chilly at 4500 feet and slightly airless when walking uphill, so of course the place was on the side of a hill and there was much walking uphill involved.  I had a rather spartan room, with a large bed, a sort of duvet and a nasty polyester ‘blanket’.  Bathroom had no less than two solid rolls of tp (without a cardboard tube down the middle… viz

That was my only creature comfort, but I knew that and went prepared.   Of course, no TV (no big loss for me) and no alcohol and all vegetarian food, which was served just twice a day at 10am and 6 pm.   The dining room was cafeteria style, so you picked up an Indian thali (viz a large metal tray with 6 indentations in it) and voluns served you rice (surprise) and veggies and there was a sort of warm ginger tea to drink.   I was supposed to feel better (I think) by this withdrawal from worldy indulgencies, but I thought longingly instead for my pho shop and banh mi’s that would be awaiting me back in the big smoke. 

So, I think much to Huy’s disappointment, I withdrew and sat in my room and read and reflected on the higher common thought (which you will only get if you know the old novel old Comfort Farm) and felt generally quite like a fish out of water). 

Matters were then complicated by a massive power surge, that ripped through the place the second night.  Any light bulb that was on did not just blow but the whole socket exploded too. My bathroom light was my room casualty but also the power cord for my laptop was completely fried, but most fortunately, not the laptop itself.  So now I had no power, which has saved you from a minute by minute account of my boredom !   The view of all the fir trees (which seem to live at this altitude globally) became very tedious.  Thank goodness I took a book.

Huy had already made a res. for me in downtown Dalat, knowing that 2 nights of such high and pure living would be enough, so we took a taxi for the all of 8 minutes ride in to the city.  A happy sight with real food and bars and life as it is lived.   I moved in to a lovely USD15 a night hotel, right opposite a palace where I could have spent $150 a night, so felt quite smug.  Mamasan took me up the stairs to my  room 2, almost by hand and as there were only 5 well numbered rooms on that floor, I could have probably figured it out by myself.   This is what it looked like:

We went for a walkabout town, as Huy needed some supplies for the center and we met up with a friend of his at the Bicycle Café, which was filled with a wonderful assortment of ‘stuff’, so not only bicycles on the walls but old musical instruments and piles of ancient books and vintage memorabilia.  One of the tables had been a treadle sewing machine.  So we had some good VN coffee while I sat and watched the scene.  Many domestic tourists as well as round-eyes, as Dalat is known for its scenery and is just a good place to visit.  Being high, it was cool, which in itself is a thrill for any lowlander and some looked ready to sign up for an expedition to the North Pole.   It is the flower center of VN and exports thousands of stems a day.  I spotted (of course) this huge pack of Vietnam Airlines toilet paper on sale .. I suppose it just fell of a plane.

Next morning I was booked on the 10am posh bus, operated by the Than Buoi Bus Line, for the 7 hours downhill ride back to SGN.   I went for breakfast in Le Café de la Poste, right opposite.  Being Sunday, I thought it might be good to wait until 8am, which turned out to be a good hunch, as it was open and coffee available, but food ‘is coming’.  The tiny little waitress, all 75 lbs of her, dressed in a tight black skirt, white shirt and a bowtie, was happy to provide me with a hug proper mug of very hot coffee and hot milk too and I watched the world through the window and saw the food being wheeled over from the posh hotel.  I enjoyed watching her, standing in front of a display-case full of macaroons, doing a count of each variety and entering the results on a form… would love to have known how often this counting happens and WHO needs to know ?  

So croissanted up, I returned for the shuttle that was coming to take me to the bus station.  This even managed to arrive 10 mins early, but I was there and it was already 80% full, as it had been picking up folks all over, but I was the only foreign devil.  We made another couple of stops, so by the time we reached the bus station, it was about at 110% capacity… quite cozy.

At the station I showed my hand written ‘ticket’ to a man and he pointed me to ”Reception” and a spotty youth bashed away on his computer and gave me, for want of a better term, a boarding card and then walked me over to the right bus.  Probably a good thing as there were 10 identical ones all in a row.

The bus was lovely.  Two seats on one side, one on the other, they reclined with leg-rests and there was even a blanket, neatly folded over the back.  It had tasteful red pelmets running around each window and the look completed with red tassels. We had a young man who looked after us too, with bottles of icy water and cold towels.   Much checking and counting by people with radios before we were allowed to leave.  And I had the front row single seat, so while everyone else went in to mega-doze/mouth -open-drool-mode, I was watching the world and its peoples, go by.

Of course, it did give me the instant life recalling moments when drivers just pulled out to overtake on blind corners, as we were slowly spiraling down from 4500 feet, but I kind of got used to the idea that they all knew what they were doing.  Well, sort of.  There were moments when I was sure all was lost.   We came around one, fortunately at a slow speed, to find someone doing a three point turn right there.

Noticed houses on the hillsides with wonderfully Alpine roofs … steeply angled so that the snow, which will never fall, will slide right off them.   Went by a dam which was spewing water in an enormous arc.  Fields of dragon fruit, one of Asia’s dramatic and pretty looking fruits, but which tastes of nothing.  A few water buffalo, standing around the way they do – perhaps they were meditating.  
After about two and a half hours, we made our first and major stop (all of 20 mins !) at the company owned rest and food arrangements stop.  This line has enough buses going up and down here that they can run their own place and there were always 8 buses nosed in to the building.  In VN you can go massive distances in buses and some are the upstairs/downstairs variety, with single window seats and then another single line down the middle … think of a wide-body aircraft with just three seats abreast and two aisles.  These seats practically flatten out.  As you all take your shoes off on them, the first thing that happens when the door opens is the first office jumps out, opens the front hold and pulls out a huge bin of one size fits all rubber slippers and then folks slide their feet in as they get off:

There is a whole mass catering counter ready for the hungry and ditto junk foods and packages, so everyone noshes like crazy.  I saw a banh mi stall at the entrance and patronized that.  Tons of packaged foods for snacking and the majority of them returned to the bus with enough to last for days. There was nothing you could not buy foodwise, which for the VN is how it should be.

We passed many Buddha’s of various sizes and quite a few temples and paused to let someone off at the Café My Dung, which I thought was charmingly named.   Except Dung is pronounced Zoo-ung, so it loses all in pronunciation.  One small town seemed to be massively overtaken by a Christian cemetery with vast marble tombs.

And eventually we ground through SGN suburbia and a whole mass of people got off, almost in the middle of the road, so bikes whizzing around them.  I went to the very end (having no clue where I was) and took a taxi, first to a computer supplies store, to find me a new cable.   I had Huy write a note for a driver and was convinced he had probably written down “Take this idiot to the street with all the computer stores, which is just along from where my old office used to be” but I recognized where we were and the very first shop had just what I needed and we plugged it all in and all was well.  Don’t know who was more pleased, me or the lady.

So…. enough already, as we say in New York.

There will be more.   I had returned in time to go the airport that night to go to meet me mate Beth from NY, who was arriving for a 4 night stay.  I had her booked at my place, so she will be in the apt. upstairs from me.

Tim