February 5, 2015 – Da Lat In and Around Town
The road to Da Lat was one of the worst roads for potholes I have ever been on, and it was so twisty and windy that many corners had 3-foot round mirrors on them. The driver honked his horn to warn traffic that the bus was coming. The bees’ nests are huge, and there are sometimes three or four of them per tree. There goes that theory of not building in the same territory, like our bees. Dalat is a very nice city. It’s up in the mountains at about 5,000 feet, and the weather is almost perfect. It’s 24-27 in the afternoon, and the temperature drops to the low teens at night. So, shorts and a T-shirt all day, a light sweater after 5 pm, and you don’t need air conditioning. The weather reminds us very much of Morelia or Guadalajara, cities in the Mexican highlands; it’s spring every day! It’s pretty easy to see why the French colonists picked this as their go-to spot to beat the heat. The city sprawls over a (large) number of hills, so there are scenic vistas everywhere, and it feels more like a small town than a big city. It’s very clean and pretty, and there are lots of things to see and do here. If you are not walking downhill, you are climbing stairs.
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Eating on the street in the evening; best pho in town! Note the parkas. The kitchen is a guy with an enormous soup pot, and they set the tables up in the street, effectively shutting it down to traffic.
Organic weasel coffee? Who knew?
This guy is selling aquarium fish off his motorbike.
We decided to check out some of the local sights, so we laced our runners up really tight and went looking for the Crazy House. It turned out to be only about two kilometres from our hotel, but of course on a completely different hill, say no more. This place was built by a successful Vietnamese (lady) architect who painted the interiors and exteriors she wanted and then had local (non-professional) builders put it together. Sometimes you are on a tree, sometimes you are in a cave, and sometimes you’re walking over a 30-foot drop on a tiny walkway out of The Hobbit. And somehow she shoehorned ten hotel rooms into the whole thing to help pay for it. It seriously has to be seen to be believed, and walking in/over/through it was an experience.
Taking a break on the way up one of the numerous birth canals.
A tiny and precipitous walkway between two roofs over a vertiginous gap
On top of the world! Well, the roof anyway. This is WAY up in the air!
There’s a very nice lake that is three or four kilometres long right smack in the middle of the city, with roads and walkways completely around it. You can rent paddle-boats and goof around out on the lake, or you can clop around behind a horse in a carriage. The entire shoreline is edged with stone retaining walls, so you don’t have to worry about muddy feet or any of that uncivilized stuff.
The north side of the lake is dominated by a nice-looking golf course and a large flower garden complex. We checked out the golf course, and after adding up the green and caddy fees, plus the cart and club rental, we decided that $300 US each to play what for us was a mid-range course was a bit much. Clearly, golf remains an upper-class sport here! The garden complex, on the other hand, was pretty cool. Sadly, as in all of Vietnam, we are here right in the middle of the dry season, so the flowers are at their lowest; the gardeners are all arse up – head down getting ready for spring. One of the interesting things here is that the large flower arrangements all over town are ‘plug and play,’ meaning the arrangements are all made up of big racks, and the flower pots go in the racks, and that’s that. When a flower stops holding up its end of the deal, they yank the pot and put a new one in.
Paddle ducks on the lake, with the city in the background.
The island in the background (right of the bridge) is completely covered in gardens and a coffeehouse.
Of course, they put the welcome on the INSIDE.
When the bombs drop, the washrooms and atm will be fine.
Replacing flower pots in the Welcome Arch.
The south side of the lake has a large complex of in-ground bleachers built into the proverbial Grassy Knoll, and there are some weird metal-sculpture things on the hill above. The whole thing looks like it’s still under construction. We just figured they were the legacy of some Vietnam Games thingy or for public affirmations of The Workers’ Paradise. Then one day, Deb needed a new hair dryer. She bought one at the Night Market, but it didn’t work, and the woman who sold it to Deb would not refund her money. One of the ladies who worked at our hostel said that she would take Deb to the only mall Da Lat has. They walked about two kilometres back to the weird hill by the lake, and there was an inconspicuous doorway between some bleachers that looked like it would lead to a hockey team dressing room, and that was the entrance to the underground shopping mall! There was a complete two-story shopping mall, complete with a supermarket, food floor, and arcade! I guess they didn’t want to ruin the view from the lake, so they just buried the whole thing and grassed it over. I bought a much better hair blower for 50 dong cheaper…grrrr.
Dancing broom from Fantasia (remember the water buckets?)
Deb fell in love with this guy, but there was no room in the suitcase.
The topiary is getting pretty ratty. (Rat-ty. Get it? Sigh.)
One of a zillion unique and beautiful orchids in the greenhouse.
Then we checked out the Old Railway Station, which is really just The Railway Station, as there is no New Railway Station. They must have hired the same PR firm that decided the smallest cup of coffee at McDonald’s should be called ‘The Medium’. But I digress. There isn’t a lot to see there, but the station building is nice, and they have one old ‘train’ which is composed of a non-functional steam engine and a boxcar converted into a coffee shop. It reminded both Deb and me of the CN way-freights we used to ride in the 1970s! 80-90 years ago, the French spent a ton of money extending the railroad from the lowlands up to Da Lat, but then, during the Vietnam War (that would be the Third Liberation War to the locals), the Americans bombed it right back into the landscape. So, no train.
The old girl is looking pretty rough.
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.