When we first arrived in Mang Den yesterday, we had only planned to stay for one night. But at the last minute, we decided to spend an extra day to ride down to Kon Tum to see some of the indigenous villages in the area. We felt we needed to break up all the back-to-back riding days by inserting a sight-seeing day to stretch our legs. We asked the owner if we could stay an extra night, but because this was the weekend, his homestay was entirely booked. He offered to move us to another place he owned, so this morning, we are waiting for him to come over and take us to the new place.  We waited. And waited. And waited... Neda was not happy. We wanted to ride to Kon Tum in the morning while the temperatures were still cooler, but by the time the owner had showed up and moved us to the new homestay, it was already 11AM. :( We dumped all our bags in the room and headed out immediately.  We got to ride that new road again to Kon Tum, about 60 kms southwest of Mang Deng The air gets noticeably warmer as we descend from all the tea and coffee plantations in Mang Den. Conical-hat-shaped hills all around us are a constant reminder that we're in Vietnam!  More cone hats! This time on the trees at the side of the road! It's a rubber tree plantation and the cones are actually rain covers to reduce the latex sap loss in the collector bowls below during rainy season.  Tapping into the Rubber Soul of the tree. With the rain covers on, that sap is going Nowhere, Man! These plantations reminded me of my childhood in Malaysia. Everytime we'd go anywhere out into the country, I'd be hypnotized by the endless rows of rubber trees flashing past from the car window. Very nostalgic! It's already lunchtime by the time we reach Kon Tum. Neda's still upset at our guesthouse's owner for delaying us. We are determined not to be off-schedule for the meals, so we find a busy restaurant for lunch and eat, even though we're not that hungry.  These are the ladies who fed us Most of the staff were too shy to take our order because we didn't speak Vietnamese, even though we were armed with Google Translate on our phones. I could see them talk amongst themselves, "You talk to them!", "No, you talk to them!" LOL! I don't think a lot of farang come into this place. Thankfully the woman on the right knew some English and was confident enough to help us order. She was super nice to us. The first place we visited was the wooden church of Kon Tum. We parked the bikes just outside the church and Neda exclaimed, "There's no one here! We have the whole place to ourselves!" Right when she said that, a tour bus stopped in front of us, and vomited out dozens of tourists onto the grounds. Gross. "Aw, cám ón, Neda!" Now all we need is for her to proclaim out loud to the sky: "I'm so glad it's not raining!"  Underneath the large tree to the right is the most popular attraction on the church grounds... We just stand back while all the tourists mill around the area. Most of them head straight to a shady spot underneath the trees to sit down and scroll on their phones. They look like they just needed a break from sitting on the tour bus and weren't interested in the church at all. Group tours are a funny thing to observe. We managed to find some quiet spots away from all the tourists, so that we could enjoy some of the smaller details on the church grounds. Neda is really into plants, and she's loving all the bonsai trees that are in the gardens everywhere in Vietnam.  A little arboreal appreciation She gives me a botany lesson: "Did you know that bonsai isn't a type of tree? Bonsai is the art of growing and shaping a miniature tree. You can make a bonsai tree out of any species of tree!" I did not know that! There was a coffee shop right next to the church that looked interesting, the woodwork on it was fascinating, so we went over to take a look.  While Neda is interested in nature, this is what I find fascinating: geometric shapes and little details in symmetry and design  Close-up of the wooden siding on the coffee shop. Cool! Across the street, we see that the tourbus, like an anteater, is vacuuming up all the little ants that it spewed out. Elapsed time at the church: 15 minutes and then it's on to the next stop on the tour! These bus tourists came and left like a momentary cloud passing in front of the sun. It would be so difficult for us to travel on a schedule like that since we take our time and dawdle so much. So glad we have our own wheels, it gives us the freedom to move at our own slow pace. And we can always wait for the crowds to thin out as well. We have the wooden church all to ourselves once again!  Neda points out all the small details. She says the Jesus in the little alcove reminds her of the Glockenspiel in Munich LOL! I reply, "Yeah, every hour on the hour, the wooden Jesus pops out on a platform, re-enacts the healing of sick miniature figures..." "Okay, that's just wrong", Neda admonishes me. "He looks a little board up there." "Just... no." "He turns water into coffee... He actually owns the coffee shop that we were at next store. It's called HeBrew..." "Please stop." "Sometimes you gotta ask yourself, 'What Wood Jesus Do?' Hey.. where are you going, Neda?" I think she's a little Cross with me...  Stray dogs running around the grounds remind me of the temple dogs in Thailand Very strange seeing a Catholic church in the middle of rural Vietnam. It's made entirely of wood and was built by French colonialists in 1918.  This large structure is called a "rong" or communal house The rongs are places where community activities, meetings or festivals are held and is a symbol for the ethnic minorities in the area. The large straw roof is shaped like an axe head. This one, Kon Klor, measures 17 meters long and 22 meters high. It's the largest one in Kon Tum. In 2010, a group of students were fooling around inside and accidentally set fire to Kon Klor. It was reconstructed the year after. So two "rongs" do make things right...  Neda in front of the Vietnamese flag at the top of the tiny wooden stairs When I looked at this picture on my camera, I thought to myself, "So familiar! Where have I seen this before?!?"  Found it. I see that Neda has tapped into her old communist Yugoslavian roots. Inside the communal house, there's a platform with a podium where Neda delivers her manifesto for the people. The sign above her translates to:  "The people will eat vegetables every meal! Hiking will be the official national activity! No dog shall be left unpetted!" Communist jokes are the best. Everyone gets them. There's a suspension bridge just outside of the communal house at Kon Klor! Well, we just have to ride over it to check out the view: Riding across the Kon Klor suspension bridge  We visited the Indochine Cafe for a refreshment We don't drink coffee, but we heard there's this cool cafe in town with pillars made of inverted cones made of bamboo stalks, woven like traditional Vietnamese fishing baskets. Very striking, and a (literally) cool place to get out of the sun.  Bac Ai Pagoda  Motorcycle boots off to enter the temple  Neda's found more bonsai trees, she shows me how they're sculpted - bits of stiff wire around the branches shape the tree A poster on the wall of one of the buildings in the pagoda complex illustrates the "Laws of Karma". Neda points to one that may be of relevance to me:  Okay, born as a flea in the next life then. Fair enough.  Monks in the garden, meditating in the presence of Buddha We had planned to visit some of the indigenous villages around Kon Tum, but the heat was starting to affect us and we just wanted to escape back to the cooler temperatures of Mang Den. We had started too late for the day waiting to switch guesthouses. Despite this, we still managed to see quite a lot of interesting things for the day. Towards the end of our ride back, closer to our mountain-top resort, we stopped at an overlook to check out the view from the top. In the distance, we saw some thatched buildings up ahead. Was that an indigenous village? It was off the main road, so we had missed it the first time around riding to Kon Tum. We ride over to check it out.  Not a real village, but still very cute! Someone had built a replica village on a plateau at the top of the mountain. Every thatched structure had a scenic view purposely set up so you take as many selfies as you wanted. I thought this was a pretty good idea, so tourists wouldn't over-run the actual villages, disrupting the day-to-day lives of the people who actually lived there. And it really was a perfect place for picture-taking!  You could sit under this thatched roof and just take in the gorgeous mountain views all around  This swing was set up in the perfect place! After walking around for a bit and taking lots of pictures of the amazing views from the replica village, we finally headed back, exhausted by the day's activities. Our new guesthouse was a marked improvement from the old one. ...Until the evening, when we heard what sounded like the painful yowls of a cat being tortured just outside of our bedroom window. In the patio of the guesthouse, the owner had set up... Vietnamese KARAOKE! Oh mini wooden Jesus, take me now. Even if I have to come back in the next life as a flea...
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