Dalat was THE location for outdoor shit, thanks to the gorgeous weather and the stunning mountain views. On day 2 we paid a measly 20-ish bucks for a full day of near-death adventure on a canyoning trip through the Vietnamese wilderness. It also included lunch.
I’ve never been canyoning, but I’ve done a lot of other outdoors/white water rafting/hiking/rock climbing stuff before. So I THOUGHT I knew what I was getting myself into.
It turns out that I didn’t. Not at all.
The little adventure started out calmly enough. We met up with the guides and a couple of younger girls who were also going with us and trekked through a calm, overly touristy waterfall that looked pretty lame. They gave us our little crotch safety straps and taught us how to use the ropes to move up and down the rocks.
It was essentially the same as belaying, if you’re familiar with rock climbing lingo. Only backwards.
Our first little abseil was fun and easy, just really was about learning the rope stuff. Then there were a few little jumps, some hiking, etc. I was feeling like a badass.
Then came the real shit. The point where I started screaming NONONONONONOOOOO and honestly questioning whether or not I would make it out alive.
I can’t be sure on which order these happened in. There was the HUGE waterfall abseil, where you climb down the front of the falls with instructions on how to come out alive. Or the washing machine waterslide. Or the waterfall we went into sideways. Or the 32-foot cliff jumps.
I started hearing things like this:
(in strong accent that was hard to understand)
“If you slip, just try to turn around and slide on your back. Hopefully you won’t get hurt that badly or break anything. Just don’t try to stand up again because it won’t work.
“If you can’t see because the water is pounding down on you too hard, just try to breath through your mouth when you turn your head and keep moving sideways. Don’t go too far to the left or you’ll certainly slip.”
“Once you’re a few meters from the bottom we’ll tell you to jump. You have to push off and let go of the rope, or you’ll get caught in the water and slam into the cliff ledge below.”
“You must finish this or you can’t eat lunch. It’s down there, and there’s no other way to reach it.”
“There’s a little ledge there, so you have to run and jump. Otherwise, you might not clear that huge rock. And you will hit it on the way down.”
At one point on the side of the huge waterfall I started crying a little bit. I was totally, utterly, completely terrified. I mean, rollercoasters, waterslides, snorkeling, jumping off of things, etc – I can do all of that. With a smile. But this? I was in the middle of a river off the side of a mountain in Vietnam, with only a rope coming between me and a painful death. I nearly shit myself.
I got to the bottom of said waterfall when they told me I had to let go, push off and jump. There was a serious gap between me and the water that I couldn’t see. It took some convincing from several people to get me to let go.
All I kept thinking was that my mother would never ever know what happened to me if I died. My body would never be found. Seriously.
Once we hit the 32ft free falling cliff jump, I was done. I wanted nothing to do with any of it.
Then the boys all did a running jump and made it look so easy. But all of us girlies were too scared.
So I did it. And according to spectators, nearly impaled myself on a cliff ridge a few meters below.
But it’s ok, because it didn’t hurt. In fact, it was a blast. And so was the rest of the day.
I was EXHAUSTED at the end, and needed a really long nap. I woke up to find that all of my bruises, which hadn’t shown in the freezing water, were now starting to turn. And I had a killer one on my arm from when we tried to go down the waterfall backwards and headfirst, and a certain someone took a ride on my chest.
After my nap, as I ate my dinner at the nice lady’s café, I noticed a group of friendly looking backpackers, including a couple of cute-ish Aussie cops, and decided to introduce myself.
“Hi, I’m Lisa. Mind if I join you? That old man in the corner keeps starting at me and my laptop.”
“Oh, sure. And don’t we know you? We saw you in a bar in Ho Chi Min. You were with that group ordering it up at happy hour. And then that crazy Australian guy with the rice hat was all over you.”
“Excuse me?”
“We thought you went home with him.”
“Umm, I’m sorry? I didn’t go home with anyone – we left to go dancing. And did I meet you? I don’t actually recognize you …”
“Oh no, we didn’t meet you. We just recognized you. That super crazy guy was making such a scene at the bar. With you. At happy hour.”
“Fantastic. Glad to see I make great impressions on people.”
It ended up being a fun night as I re-lived the entire douche bag Aussie experience from the third person perspective. It was actually a little creepy, since I had never actually MET these guys. But they were narrating my night. In a terrible light. Bastards.
Then we went home, except Adam left his man bag in the bar, which included our bus tickets for the next morning. But super Aussie copper found it, and did some detective work, and found us in time for our bus the next morning. In fact, we weren’t even up yet. We probs would have missed it had he not woken us up AND handed us our tickets.
We’re smart. Ummmhmmm.
