Bao Loc - Da Lat

Gorgeous Greens
After getting off the beaten track I decided to get right back on it again. Following breakfast, the first thing I did was book my place on a coach to Da Lat for later in the day. I still believe in leaving the tourist trail, but next time I'd do it with some companionship, or at least the basics of the local language.

In the morning I took a walk around the town -- that's if around can be used to describe the long march up and down the main road. Advanced capitalism in action. You see, Bao Loc has no width. Height and length are present and correct, but the third-dimension has gone AWOL. The town exists next to the main road alone. It's like those a frontier town from an old Western: the buildings look like stage sets with one-dimensional facades, and if you go one street back from the road the town ends.

Bao Loc must've ballooned in size when the road was built. There was no financial incentive to build other roads when you had a perfectly servicable one cutting through the heart of the place, so the town grew like an elastic band being stretched. And, to stretch the simile as it were, it simultaneously grew powerful and brittle. Economically strong, but with faultlines riddled through its social fabric.

Maybe I'm reflecting my own prejudices, but this linear town with its forgettable buildings hunched over on either side of a dusty road, had lost its spirit. Community depends upon a myriad of factors, but I think it begins with physical inclusion. A central hub about which people can build an identity and feel they belong. Away from heavy, polluting traffic which as well as being dangerous for children reinforces a notion of fleeting existence. I'd hate to live in such a town.

I don't believe this is just about Vietnam, or other developing countries, either. It's one of capitalism's knock-on effects. Profitability before social welfare. It's especially pernicious where the institutional framework to put people first is absent, or in the pay of economic forces. Newer towns are especially vulnerable -- whether in Middle England, or the third world.
Any economists, town-planners, psychologists, or anyone else want to chip in and reinforce/demolish my house-of-cards?

The town's temple had a listless and defeated air, too. You don't see that very often in Asia. Usually the temples are the vibrant heart of a place. Not here it seems. I took some pics and trudged back to the hotel to pack.

The scenery on the coach-ride lifted my spirits: a chequerboard of paddy fields of the most amazing lime-greens. When we pulled into Da Lat the sun was shining on the shimmering lake. Getting off the bus, it was a cool, fresh air I stepped into, with a very fine light. Back on the trail!

A entrepreneurial hotel owner picked another guy and I up and whisked us to his newly built hotel after we'd been walking for not more than two minutes.

Advanced capitalism, I thought, as I settled back into the tourist groove.

Da Lat, Paris of the East