DALAT – A COOL, INLAND, VIETNAMESE HAVEN

MÜI NÉ

Before heading to Dalat, we spent a few days in Phan Thiet / Mui Ne.

I decided against a full on blog post about our time there as, truth be told, we didn’t get up to much.

We arrived on Reunification day, which is a public holiday in Vietnam and as such we could only find one place to stay and had to pay massively over the odds to stay there. Should have planned ahead on that one!

Tri, from the La Gi farmstay, organised a driver to take us to Mui Ne, which was a godsend considering the difficulty organising anything in this small town, let alone on a national holiday.

Holly and I were feeling a bit worse for wear on the journey, but her more so than me. She suffers from travel sickness and did have to throw up out of the car window during the journey. Bad times.

We paid $135USD for two nights at the first place we stayed – Hoang Nga Guesthouse. This would usually be around $10 a night, so we left here as soon as possible and checked into Mui Ne Backpacker village for a further 3 nights.

This place was cool. We had a great private room overlooking the pool. Opposite the pool, the hostel had a massive bar and communal area where we hung out eating and drinking of an evening.

The beach was only a few minutes walk from the hostel. On our penultimate day in the town, we headed down to the beach and rented kayaks and jet skis. The water was quite rough around here, at the time we went, but it was great fun riding the waves on the kayaks and jet skis.

ONTO DALAT

After those 5 days in Mui Ne, we headed to Dalat and took a bus, organised through the hostel.

The bus only cost around 90,000 Dong (£3 each) and took 4 hours down windy, bumpy roads. Fortunately, Holly survived this one unscathed.

ARRIVING IN DALAT

The town of Dalat is 1,500m above sea level and I expected that it would certainly be a more tolerable climate than what I’d experienced so far.

As soon as I stepped off the bus in Dalat, I realised how drastically different the climate was. It was cool. England cool. And far less humid than the rest of Vietnam.

It reminded me of Kalaw, Myanmar.

We took a cab and checked in to our accommodation, which we’d booked for 3 nights – Nam Xuan Premium Hotel.

WANDERING THE STREETS OF DALAT

FRENCH INFLUENCES

Dalat is a beautiful inland town, set up in the Vietnamese hills and the climate made it easy to wander around and take in the sights of the town.

There is a massive French colonial influence here. You can see this from the style of housing and the fact that there were many Christian churches and symbols throughout the area.

French colonial style housing – pretty plush!

There was even an Eiffel tower-inspired construction:

THE CRAZY HOUSE

I’d heard about the ‘Crazy House’ of Dalat before arriving here and was expecting it to be a pretty naff tourist trap. I was wrong. This place was really enchanting. And bonkers.

The crazy house had the most insane architecture, leading up and down through narrow staircases, across twisted bridges and through cavernous rooms, which you can book to stay in, apparently. I felt like I was in a Harry Potter movie or a Salvador Dali painting.

The health and safety of this place left a lot to be desired though and I did get a bit of vertigo at the top!

You could get quite a nice view of the town from up here too:

The crazy house had been open to the public since 1990 and was still under construction. This guy had had a bit too much of it:

CRAZY BAR – MAZE BAR

One of the nightspots that I’d recommend to check out when in Dalat is the Maze Bar, or sometimes referred to as the 100 Roof bar.

This place was definitely inspired by the Crazy House and was an epic labyrinth of many floors, nooks and crannies; with ornate and random furnishings.

Most people congregate at the top floor, where they can look out over the city, but you simply have to wander around in here. It’s so surreal.

The photos can’t really do this or the Crazy House justice, so here’s a quick vid of some snippets I took while looking around:

 ESCAPE BAR – AWKWARD WALKOUTS

Another interesting nightspot that we found, while in Dalat, was the Escape bar.

I’d seen on Trip Advisor that this place was rated quite highly and had a resident band that played jazz. It sounded great, so we checked it out one night. Another truly surreal experience.

The bar is owned by a British guy – the guy in the left in the picture.

Something seemed a little weird when he kept interrupting the music and giving the audience – 6 people – a drunken monologue, about how people shouldn’t judge each other and that if anyone has any problems then he is a trained psychiatrist. The odd insult was thrown to members of the audience too. A class act.

The music would start up again and then he’d solo over the top, with his guitar cranked up to 11. Out of tune, out of time. It was very uncomfortable.

He then proceeded to force the bass player to play drums, which he reluctantly agreed to do.

These drunken, rambling monologues and awful guitar solos continued until, one by one, the entire band quit and left the building. Swiftly followed by the staff. I’ve never seen anything like it. Absolutely hilarious.

The owner then proceeded to demand another bottle of wine from his Vietnamese wife at the bar, while ignoring his child’s need for attention. Another drunken rambling or two and then we were asked to leave. A brilliant and surreal experience.

The band were decent and I felt bad for them that they had been putting up with his shit.

Here’s a little video of the experience:

BIKING AROUND DALAT

One morning, we hired mountain bikes to cycle around Dalat and check out Tuyen Lam lake.

We rented the bikes from a small company run by two guys named Din and Dong. You couldn’t make this up.

My bike was fine, but we realised after a few minutes that Holly’s only had two functioning gears, which made the hills of Dalat a real struggle. Especially when there were streets like this:

Still, we managed to make it there and check out some of the sights.

Worth a visit, but there is an alternative route, via the cable car, for only 80,000 Dong return.

The next day, we took the cable car to check out the Truc Lam Buddhist temple.

TRUC LAM AND RIDING THE CABLE CAR

CABLE CAR RIDE

The cable car system in Dalat is a really quick and easy way to get to the Truc Lam temple and Tuyen Lam lake. The views are also pretty breathtaking and takes you out over many coffee plantations and forest areas.

Apparently though, even in the cable car, you aren’t away from germs!

TRUC LAM TEMPLE

Just a minute’s walk from the cable car station, is the Truc Lam temple. It’s quite a touristy spot, but I can understand why as it’s such a beautiful and relaxing place to wander around.

It’s free to enter, so I’d recommend checking this out and then walking through the back of the temple and down to Tuyen Lam lake.

Here’s a few pics from the visit to the temple:

There’s some really impressive grounds around the temple and unique looking trees, the likes of which I haven’t seen since I watched Karate Kid:

They do have a resourceful Buddhist-botanist on hand though, to keep it all in shape:

Ghostbusters 3 was a totally different kettle of fish

Here’s a vid from the jaunt to the temple:

A DAY’S EXCURSION IN DALAT

On our last full day in Dalat, we went on an excursion to see some more of the sights near the town. This was a bit of a mixed bag, but there were some little gems included.

FLOWER FARMING

We first visited a flower farm and a strawberry picking site. Not at all interesting. I can only assume they would be on commission and hope you would buy some of their produce.

COFFEE PLANTATION

We next visited a coffee plantation, where they harvest ‘weasel coffee’. Basically how this works is:

• weasels run around
• they eat the decent coffee beans
• they poo out the coffee beans
• the workers harvest the poo
• they dry out the poo
• they use the dried pooed beans for coffee

Sounds gross, but it was actually awesome coffee!

During my time in Vietnam, I’d become a huge fan of the local coffee – served with ice and condensed milk. It’s incredible and I’ll miss this massively.

ELEPHANT FALLS

We visited Elephant Falls and its 40m torrent of water, which was definitely the highlight of the day.

We descended down the rocky path and got to the bottom of the falls, where we could get close enough to feel the power and spray from the falls.

Definitely worth checking out, when in Dalat.

CHUA LINH AN TEMPLE

Upon leaving Elephant falls, we made a quick stop-off at the Buddhist temple of Chua Linh An.

The temple itself held these impressive, many-armed buddha statues.

And were guarded by these dragons:

Walking around the side of the temple, there was this huge buddha statue. Worth a visit just for this. This thing was massive. And look how happy he is!

SILK FACTORY

The next stop on the tour was a silk factory. It was quite interesting to see how they harnessed the silk from the silkworms and how they wove this into fabric.

This was the first time I’d seen a silkworm. Pretty cute!

Holly ate one of these things. I wasn’t keen.

Not much else to say really. Why have cotton?

CRICKET FARM

Another stop and another pretty pointless place to check out was this cricket farm.

I wasn’t interested in seeing the crickets and other little creatures they had here, but they did randomly have these crocodiles outside:

ESCAPING THE TOUR – DALAT MARKET

After the cricket farm, we stopped for lunch back in Dalat town.

At this point, we were quite bored of the tour, so we decided to play truant and continue our own tour.

We headed to Dalat market, to have a look around.

The market was pretty large, with all sort of wares on sale, but nothing too special to be honest. It was interesting to see the vendors go about their business, but they were pretty bored with it all too:

Here’s a vid of the day touring around Dalat:

ONTO NHA TRANG

Ok, so that’s the lot for Dalat.

We were leaving the next day for one night in Nha Trang. Read on to find out what was next…

I realise this blog post is really lengthy, so congratulations and thanks for reading down to this point. If you did make it this far, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page to let me know that you’re still with me and leave me any feedback for what you’d like to see from the blog!

Ciao xx