20 Dec. 2011: FREEWHEELING AND CRAZY #2 of 5

By 9a.m. I finally went native in Vietnam. I rented a Yamaha 110 motorcycle ($5 for the day!), told Pat to jump on with a helmet, and off we blared into the wild wild streets. Pat nervously said it was weird to actually be IN the chaos, actually adding to it! I just cackled in happy delirium. I have wanted to get back on a street bike for years. It was fantastic and if there were bugs in Da Lat I would have one giant smudged smile. 

First stop after some deliberate wrong turns was The Crazy House, an ad lib architectural exploration of surrealism. The owner has a PhD in architecture from Moscow and has been building this since 1990. It's becoming more outlandish every year but no worries about the authorities; her father was Ho Chi Minh's successor and was Vietnam's second President 1981-1988!  

It is a hard-to-describe maze of tunnels, narrow ladders, walkways, mirrors, and vertigo. Concrete seems to melt and drip a la Salvador Dali. You can even stay overnight in this Alice's Wonderland, in freeform "rooms" named after animals (e.g., bear, eagle, kangaroo) or plants (e.g. bamboo). You are meant to get lost in this enormous unfurling tree-shape. Kitschy, weird, even scary. But definitely some kind of Crazy.