Da Lat, Vietnam 07.03.08

Da Lat - City of Love

From the moment we arrived, we fell in love with Da Lat - the City of Love. Located high in the mountains, Da Lat has a very different climate to the other cities we had visited so far. It's filled with little cobblestone streets and old villas.

We had heard that Da Lat was not a typical tourist destination, and we were among very few white people in the town. However, we quickly realised that the entire mountain region was filled with tourists! They were all Vietnamese! It must be the cool climate of the mountains and the quirky charm of the village that attracts so many of them there for their holidays.


The hotel that we stayed in was charming! The owners treated everyone like family, and in the morning, breakfast was served around a big wooden table. All of the guests were served a smorgasboard of local fruits, yoghurt, bread, eggs, tomatoes, passionfruit juice, tea etc. We left the hotel each morning feeling very full and satisfied.

Unlike the bigger cities, there were not hundreds of people on scooters or cyclos wanting to take you around. So we decided that the best, and most exciting thing to do would be to hire a scooter! Artur used to have one when he was younger, so he took charge of driving us around Da Lat and the surrounding villages. Using only a rough map, we managed to make our way around Da Lat, covering at least 150km in 2 days.

The Peak

The first place we visited was what we thought was a waterfall. It turns out that we passed the waterfall, and were visiting one of the tallest mountains in the area. We paid our entry and set off on foot up the mountain. It was very steep, but we enjoyed the hike.

We got to a sign that directed us to the peak in 0.3km. This sounded promising, so we took off for what we though would be a short walk. I have no idea how they calculate distance, maybe they meant 0.3km vertically, because we walked for ages before we realised that the mountain peak in the distance was where the trail was leading. It started pouring just as we got maybe half an hour away from the peak, so we decided to return. It was a wise decision, as the rain absolutely drenched us and our shoes squelched and slipped all the way down the mountain.

We rode our scooter back in the rain, wearing our fashionable plastic rain covers. Everyone in the town rides scooters, so these jackets are essential in this mountain climate. After a hot bath, we were ready to tackle the town again. We were too late to get into most tourist attractions like the Bao Dai Summer Palace, but we managed to see the Crazy house.

Crazy House

The Crazy House is a child's imagination come to life. It is like being in Alice in Wonderland. The buildings are made to look like trees, with little rooms carved into every crevice.

There were flowers everywhere, and spiderwebs strung between trees. There were so many different little rooms, you would never have guessed how much space there was inside. Some of the lower rooms reminded us of the Hobbit's houses in Lord of the Rings.

Night Market

When night fell, we went to the Market in the centre of the town. It was absolutely packed with people, and vendors mostly sold flowers, fruit and clothes. After a look around the market, we retired to an outdoor restaurant with a great view of the city. Da Lat has two mini Eiffel Towers, and at night they are lit beautifully. From a distance, you could imagine that they were just as big as the real thing.

Tuyen Lam Lake

The next day, we hired the scooter again, and went off in search of the Valley of Love. We arrived instead at a beautiful lake.

All of the locations that you can visit in Da Lat, including lakes and waterfalls have entry fees. However they are very well maintained and the surrounding lawns are filled with garden beds full of spring flowers, and horses attached to flower-filled carriages. Horses that are not in use, graze around the lake.

On the lake itself, little swan shaped paddle boats are commandeered by tourists. We hired one and went for a lovely trip across and around the lake.

Scooter!
We left again in search of another waterfall, and stopped on the way at an empty strip of land by the road. Here, Loren learnt how to drive a scooter! It didn't take long before she was zipping around the bushes and bumping across the holes in the ground. She took one tumble with the bike, when the brakes didn't function as she thought they would, but she was not fased in the slightest. The next obstacle was the road! So we rode off in search of the waterfall again, this time with Loren at the handlebars!

We didn't find the waterfall, but we found a beautiful pagoda, which was many stories high, and had a beautiful view of the surrounding village and mountains.

Flower Garden

After seeing the pagoda, we decided to visit the Da Lat Flower Garden, which was absolutely filled with flowers at this time of year.

There were bonsai trees, orchids, pansies, roses, hydrangeas and cacti. There were also hedges sculpted into Snakes, dogs and reindeer, and mannequins with skirts made of flowers.

Valley of Love

Next we went searching for the Valley of Love again, and finally found it! It was similar to the lake that we visited earlier, with all the flowers and horses around. However, most things in the garden were shaped like hearts. There were also statues of lovers and courting couples. Very romantic!

Cable Car

Our next object was to find the cable car, which we did find without too much of a struggle, for a change. The cable car was fun, and the view from it was spectacular.

When we arrived on the other side, we were accosted by two Vietnamese girls who wanted to have photos with us. It was pretty funny to be arm in arm with total strangers posing for photos! Actually, we had also been stopped earlier at the flower garden so that some Vietnamese tourists could take photos of us there too! We laughed and took photos of them too. For most of the time that we were in Da Lat we were stared at openly, we felt like we were animals in the zoo!

Cuong Huan Silk Factory
Our last stop for the day was the Cuong Huan Silk Factory, which was supposed to be 27km away near the Elephant Falls. So we figured we might have just enough time to see it before it would close. We took one wrong turn and ended up in completly the wrong direction, however with a bit of sign language with locals and pointing to the printed name of the village in our guidebook, we were able to find our way there. The road to the village was thin and wound around one of the mountains. Overtaking was pretty scary on these roads, and a guy carrying an enormous load of bananas on his scooter nearly caused a collision, when a local staring behind himself at the banana boy, drifted across his lane towards us.

We finally arrived at the silk factory after missing it a few times and thankfully it wasn't closed! We wandered around the factory looking at every stage in the silk making process. We saw the silk worms growing in their cocoons, the machines used to unwind the silk threads, the rolls of treated silk threads, and the amazing weaving machines that follow weaving patterns written for it. The patterns that machine reads look like the cards with holes punched in them that used to be used for printing on early computers.

After watching the silk being made, Loren bought a beautiful turquoise silk top. The factory was one of the coolest things we saw while we were in Da Lat.

After the silk factory, we went looking for the Elephant Falls which were close by, but unfortunately, the entry gates were closed, and we didn't get to see any of the waterfalls that we went looking for while we were there!

[Note: There are a lot more pictures in this post, due to some complaints from Poland :)]