We went on a country-tour the day after the Crazy House Expedition, and one of the things we saw was a Weasel Coffee Factory, complete with Coffee Weasels. The way this works is, the weasel gets up in the morning, wanders over to it's Coffee Dish, and eats as many coffee beans as it can force down its gullet. Then it lays down for a nap, gets up, poops out all the coffee beans, and ambles over to see what's in the coffee dish. Not that different than a lot of Starbucks customers, actually.... They don't really look like weasels, though; more like Billy Bumblers if you've read the Dark Tower Series by Stephen King. In any event, once the poop is (more or less) removed from the coffee beans they are worth $200 CAD/kilo. Over here. God knows what they are worth in Canada. Oh yeah, we tried a cup each and it was almost as good as the stuff I get at McDonalds.
Why are these coffee beans all stuck together and lumpy?
Weasel coffee beans with the poop washed off.
Yes, this stuff does make your hair stand up on end.
These guys must work in the Decaf Division.
After we left the Coffee Weasel Place we stopped off at the Elephant Waterfall. No elephants, luckily; they named it that because there are big chunks of columnar basalts that have fallen off the cliff face and apparently look like elephants if you've had WAY too much weasel coffee. The parking lot was on the top of the cliff, and the guide wisely pointed us at the walkway down and told us to fill our boots and be back in an hour. The walk down was really something; it's probably 500' vertical so the path down must be 500' long because it's pretty much vertical. They have cut steps into the rocks in places, grouted in railings out of rebar in some places, and overall it's just pretty freaky. Once we got to the bottom it was worth it, though, assuming you don't think about having to go back up. On the way up Deb took a header and I thought she was going off the edge but a couple of us grabbed her and rolled her back up onto her feet. Pretty interesting to say the least! When we got back to the top, unbelievably, I realized that we were both so focused on not dying that nobody took any pics of the path. After at least two seconds of reflection we both decided that we'd pushed our luck enough for one day so you just have to imagine it!
View from the top.
Deb scrambled out onto a rock for this shot.
So I had to go too, right? Right?
A shot of the elephants from above. Can't see them? Have another coffee....
There are a ton of things to see around this town, so we landed on a city tour to make sure we didn't miss anything critical. 'City tour' here means anything within about 10 km, so it actually included a lot of outdoorsy stuff as well.
We started with a tour of the King's Palace, a misnomer at best as there isn't a king and it wasn't a palace. There WAS a king but he got the boot sometime after the end of WW2 (The Big One) when the UN installed a 'democratic government' and the king decamped to a life of luxury in Paris where I'm sure his offspring are doing just fine. And of course being the king of Viet Nam was kind of like being the king of New Westminster. But still. It's a lovely French-colonial chateau and it still has a lot of cool stuff in it and it's worth a look.
Then we drove up to Signal Hill, which is about 2 km from town. It has a gondola ride of about 3 km over to a big lake with a working Buddhist monastery. The ride is pretty good, and the monastery grounds are lovely. These guys could teach the Germans something about being clean and orderly and making everything Line Up.
It's good to be the king. From the reception room looking out on the gardens.
Heading down the gondola to the Buddhist monastery.
Pink things!
The monks have woven the figs into a mesh tube, which have all fused.
A new fuel type; radiata pine / fan palm. How can these two grow together?
Then it was off to another set of falls only about 5 km from town, this is a series of six falls all strung together with concrete pathways and stairs and things, and there is a thriving tour industry taking young (and stupid) people 'canyoning' which includes rappelling through the falls and other dubious undertakings. So we just wanted to go down to the first falls, after which there was supposedly a cable car through a canyon to the second falls. The tour guide herded us through buying a ticket, and then we were escorted over to what looked like some kind of two-person roller-coaster ride thing (I was tipped off by the sign saying 'roller coaster'). Not wanting that at all, I promptly made a scene until our tickets were exchanged and we walked about 1000' vertical downhill where we met up with the guys that actually got on the roller coasters! I hate it when that happens. In any event, the first falls were good, the gondola through the canyon was definitely worth it, and when we got to the top of the second falls there was an elevator to go to the bottom! On the way back up I was persuaded that there is a God, as we were able to buy one-way tickets back up the roller coaster so we didn't have heart attacks or aneurisms beating our sorry asses back up the hill.
The first falls. Water is crystal clear, very nice!
The cable car through the Canyon of Death. There was a rainbow, but very hard to capture.
Every steep hill should have one of these! Elevator down to second falls.
This girl should be flipping numbers on Wheel of Fortune. Second falls.
Hauling butt up a 100% slope on the roller coaster-thing.
There was more, including the Crazy House and the Old Train Station, but we had already done that and it was at least 10 minutes after Beer, so we excused ourselves and called it a very good day.
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