Vietnam's Eccentric Haven
Created | Updated Jun 20, 2003
It's a bird; it's a plane! No, it's a gigantic chicken with nine spurs, more mythical then real. His likeness still crows over 'Chicken Village', an impoverished hill tribe settlement outside
the Vietnamese highland resort of 'Da Lat'.
The 'Koho' people, who hang out their woven shawls and blankets to lure tourists off the highway, aren't terribly eloquent, but the story goes something like this:
A young woman from a poor family was set the impossible task of finding the dowry demanded by the greedy family of her beloved: bring back a chicken with nine spurs! The girl set off into the mountains in search of this elusive creature and died in the wilds, broken hearted.
Settled in the 1930's, Da Lat is one those Asian hill stations with misty vistas, roads meandering around pine-clad slopes, colonial villas, log fires amd locals wrapped up in winter tweeds. Domestic tourists flock to this 'City of Eternal Spring' to svour the novelty ot temperatures in the low 20s, to pose with family and friends against scenic backdrops, and to stock up with tacky little dolls. The fresh, damp air of Da Lat seems to nourish eccentrics, who flourish here like mutant fungi in a fetid hothouse. This is Vietnam's capital of kitsch; a brave show of non-conformity in a
land where 'group-think' rules with an iron fist.
Six-thirty in the morning. As the mists evaporate, a clear morning light warms the ochre facades and terracotta tiles of the 'colonial-era' buildings facing my villa. Activity is everywhere; a woman in lilac pyjamas sweeps her step... Some commuters express their individuality in harmless little ways. Women buzz about the streets on their motor scooters, hands and arms gloved against the sun, heads crowned with utterly incongruous sunhats.
Dang Viet Nga, a Moscow-trained architect, creates her whimsies to endure, using reinforced concrete! An early masterpiece 'The House with 100 roofs', was condemned as anti-socialist and torn
down by the authorities. Fortuitously, her contacts in high places are impeccable, since her father Truong Chinh, succeeded Ho Chi Minh as president of Vietnam. The 'Da Lat People's Committee' would have expressed, even more forcefully, it's distate for the giant spider webs, giraffes and eagles incorporated into her property if this had not been the case. Motorcycle-taxi men and horsecart jockeys know this art gallery, teashop and hotel as 'Crazy House'. Yes, you can stop the night...but how could anyone sleep?!
Da Lat is almost too much. Strange, but unforgettable.
