I’m actually cold – cold! – for the first time in about a year. And I love it. I’m in Dalat, the honeymoon and kitsch capital of Vietnam. I decided to skip the well-traveled coastal road and go north via the Central Highlands. Which explains the cool weather: we’re about 1500 meters above sea level.

Most people travel the highlands by hiring an Easy Rider – a loose collection of Vietnamese tour guides who sling you onto the back of their motorbikes and drive you wherever you want to go. Many people do 4-6 day trips with these guys. I opted for just a one-day tour around Dalat, for two reasons. First, I don’t have the time – I want to save enough time to explore Sapa, northwest of Hanoi. Second, the going rate is around $50-100 per day – pretty reasonable, if you consider that you get a personal tour guide, transport, meals, accommodation, etc. But I wanna save that money for Sapa.

The first thing I noticed about Dalat is that people smile a lot more here than they do in Saigon. I suppose that’s a big city/town thing, but I suspect it’s also the weather. I did the Dalat tour with Mr. Hung (I kid you not), a charming 50-something Dalat native who’s been an Easy Rider for about 5 years. It’s hard to see much of interest around Dalat in just one day, but just the ride along winding roads through the pine-forested hills made the $25 for the day worth it. A perfect, sunny day.

So, Vietnam. I have to be honest – I thought I’d hate it here. I heard people are rude and money-grubbing in the same way that I experienced the Chinese in China, but for the most part it’s been surprisingly pleasant. Traces of the Vietnam war are everywhere, from the museums, to the trinkets sold by hawkers, to conversations, to the still-denuded countryside. There are Vietnamese flags everywhere, as well as banners with a gold-on-red hammer and sickle. And of course, the likeness of Ho Chi Minh is omnipresent, on patriotic banners and as statues in town squares.

It’s hard to get past all that, to the new Vietnam. I guess it’s all about making money…this is what I read in the guidebooks and online. And just like in China, I’m having a hard time finding any funk or soul. The hastily built homes are utilitarian and boring, except for the grand mansions of government officials and police, which are faux-opulent and tacky. The shop signs and billboards use more text than pictures, and so far I haven’t seen many ads with sexy young chicks holding up product. Maybe sex doesn’t sell here? Even the motorbikes and helmets – everyone’s got one – aren’t tricked out, like you’d expect. There’s just no personality.

The south Vietnamese – the only ones I’ve met so far – talk openly about how they hate the corrupt government. As a corollary, they mistrust the north Vietnamese, who were resettled here after the war, purportedly as an attempt at reunification but really to lock in control of the whole country. It’s the same tactic the Chinese government is using with Han Chinese and ethnic minority areas, and similar, I suppose, to carpetbaggers heading south after the US Civil War. I’ve also been told again and again how poor most Vietnamese are, but so far I haven’t seen poverty in as stark a form as I’ve seen elsewhere in SE Asia. I suppose it’s early yet, and I haven’t seen much.

To my ears, all this talk of corruption, suppression of civil liberties, poverty and ethnic division sounds like counter-propaganda. I suspect the south Vietnamese are telling western tourists what they think we want to hear. [As an aside, this is an affliction throughout SE Asia: if you don’t know the answer, or even if you do, tell the tourist what you think she wants to hear. It’s some weird attempt to make us happy, but ends up frustrating us.]

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I didn’t post this yesterday, as I didn’t have the chance. Today spent 11 hours on a bus to Kon Tum, a little-touristed town between Dalat and my next destination, Hoi An. I’m hoping to do a two-day trek/motorbike trip around the hill-tribe villages in the area. Stay tuned!

The bottom line is, so far I don’t hate Vietnam. But I don’t love it, either.