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| Linh Phuoc Pagoda |
Dalat is a city in the south central highlands of
Vietnam. Being located quite high up in the mountains has a very
pleasant year round climate - warm days and cool nights; the perfect
conditions for growing coffee, flowers, coconuts, bananas and all manner of
other vegetables. And a welcome break from the hothouse that is Saigon.
The city was built by the French in the late 19th century
who developed the area as a resort; a retreat from the oppressive heat of Saigon. Before
this, various minority tribes had called the area home for centuries so deals were done between the French and the various chiefs, and building soon began in earnest. Wide boulevard like roads,
luxurious French style villas, hotels, spas parks, a lake and a golf course
were all part of the design which earned itself the nickname Little Paris.
It became a popular holiday destination for rich French colonialists and
Vietnamese royalty (one emperor built 3 royal palaces in Dalat which can still be seen
today). A railway from Saigon was planned in the early stages but
building delayed until the 1930s. Sadly the railway no longer runs
although a small section of 7km was rebuilt for tourism purposes and takes
visitors to the small village of Trai Mat and from there you can wander up to
the Linh Phuoc pagoda which really is something worth seeing.
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| The Xuan HuongLake in central Dalat |
We caught an early bus from Saigon and the trip took 8 hours on fairly
good roads. It was a scenic journey which took us up into the
mountains, through the coffee plantations and past cafés where seats are
dispensed with and hammocks provided in their stead.
On arrival at the bus station we caught a cab to the Villa Pinkhouse
Hotel which was one of the best value places we had stayed so far - £11 a night
for a huge room, large balcony and breakfast included. It was a
really well run hotel with views across the city from the balcony where we sat every evening watching the sun set over the mountains in the distance.
We had booked 5 nights and when we arrived we were a bit flummoxed as to
what we were going to do in that time.
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| A dragon in the flower garden |
So, on the first day we did our usual marching around the town including
around the 7km perimeter of the central Xuan Huong Lake, stopping half way
round to visit the flower park which is a lovely way to while away an hour or
two.
The second day we headed over to the old railway station where we were
hoping we would time it right for the tourist train up to Trai
Mat. We were in luck as there were already 9 people waiting to take
the trip and once we arrived, they had sufficient numbers to head off. A
few years ago they had a steam train which pulled the carriages but sadly they
did away with this and we had to settle for an old locomotive pulling a couple
of old carriages they picked up from somewhere (Switzerland rings a
bell).
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| Paul in our little old fashioned railway carriage |
Well, we loved it. We chugged along, further up into the
hills, past all the poly tunnels where the flowers are grown, and through the
farmland where local people have smallholdings neatly growing crops of their
choice.
The destination station is Trai Mat and from there we visited the Linh
Thuoc pagoda which is a massive pagoda, beautifully and intricately decorated
with mosaic china and glass.
Trai Mat is a tiny village and
when we arrived the children were finishing school and cries of “hello”
followed us up and down the road. The pagoda itself is definitely
worth a visit and really quite impressive. Once again, it seemed to
be made out of Granny’s best China and the workmanship was
amazing. It was a shame we didn’t have longer to explore but the
train only waits for 45 minutes before returning to Dalat.
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| Children making offerings to Buddha |
On our third day we decided to hire a taxi to take us the monastery just
south of the city from where we would take the cable car across the
city. Yes, it was another cable car but we had discussed this at
length and frankly it looked like a doddle compared to some of the Chinese
cable cars we had survived, and it was Austrian built which always
helps. However, once we had mooched around the monastery, chatted to
a friendly, smiley monk, and walked around the beautifully tended gardens, it
turned out the cable car was shut. We are still not sure whether it
was just closed for lunch (everything in Vietnam closes for lunch, even cafés
and restaurants who actually serve lunch) but we didn’t spot it working that
afternoon when we returned to the hotel so assume that some major fault had
been discovered and our lives saved at the eleventh hour.
So instead of risking life and limb in yet another dangly box hanging from a piece of string we
managed to get another taxi to the Datanla Waterfall, another attraction just
outside of the city which we were warned would be mad busy unless we got there
early. Unfortunately, we didn’t get there early and arrived about
lunchtime fearing the worst. We were keen to see the waterfall but,
to be honest, more keen to ride the toboggan/roller coaster up and down to the
waterfall. Granted, this was a bit of a Disney like addition to a
perfectly good natural attraction but we had enjoyed the toboggan so much at
the Great Wall in
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| Inside one of the monastery temples |
China we were eager to compare the two.
We duly arrived (after a bit of a detour back into town due to a
misunderstanding with the taxi driver but it was soon resolved) and paid the
entrance fee and bought tickets for the toboggan. Unfortunately our
experience of the toboggan was marred somewhat by a rather large Russian lady
who was about 4 cars in front and who was inching (literally) her way forward,
obviously terrified. Everyone behind her (including us) were stuck waiting patiently behind her and what should have been an exhilarating 5 minute
ride turned out to be a 15 minute tedious crawl.
So we reached the bottom rather more slowly than we would have liked and
set about exploring the area.
The main waterfall is indeed quite impressive, as was the number of
Russian tourists. There were so many of them (Russians) that all the
gift shop and café workers could speak Russian. And they could all speak
it rather well. We had heard rumours about the Russians moving
into Vietnam and this was the first evidence we had seen first hand that they
have clearly definitely arrived en masse.
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| The first waterfall |
Russians were everywhere but still the place was not that crowded. We
took a few snaps and then sat down for an iced coffee and an ice
cream. As we were cooling off in the shade we spotted a very small,
quite elderly looking cable car in the corner. It was quite hidden
from view, and appeared not to be working (or closed for lunch of course). Unless you looked really
hard you didn’t really notice it was there.
We continue to relax with our coffee when 10 minutes later we noticed
that the cable car had in fact re-opened so our lunch theory was probably right. We decided to investigate and peered along the little narrow
valley down which the cable wires descended and decided we would take our
chances and see what was down there.
So we purchased tickets and as there was only one actual cable car and
it had just left, we waited 10 minutes before it returned and unloaded a family
of Chinese. We then clambered inside and were taken down the slim
gap in the rocks and to the bottom where we disembarked to see what we could
find.
And we were rewarded with another waterfall, just as spectacular as the main
attraction, but completely deserted. We were able walk to a
ledge and along a path which led us to an elevator. I pressed “call”
and the doors opened so in we hopped and we were taken down to the valley floor
from where we had an amazing view of this other waterfall.
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| The second waterfall |
We were completely alone, the cable car wasn’t advertised in any way (in
fact it was all but hidden from view in amongst some trees to the side) and we spent about
an hour or so exploring this part with no-one else around.
After a while we headed back to the main area to discover we practically
had the whole place to ourselves – almost everyone had gone. There
were just a couple of people wandering about but the warnings to go early were
certainly unfounded. It wasn’t exactly swarming with people when we
first arrived but it was positively deserted when we returned from our little
adventure to the second waterfall.
The trip back up to the top involved either climbing the stairs (never
an option) or being hauled up by toboggan. So we hopped in again and
were taken back up to the top with ease, in comfort and without doing our knees
in. In fact we liked it so much, we paid to do it
again! It was much quieter and no-one else was on the toboggan track
so we could go as fast as we wanted this time and it was much more fun second
time around.
As we left we wandered outside to find a taxi to take us back to town
and found that the taxi driver who had brought us here had in fact waited for
us (which was a result as there were no other cabs hanging
around). We climbed in with gratitude and headed back to town to
look for a beer and a bite to eat.
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| Paul on his toy bike |
There are lots of cafés in Dalat but they are just that – cafés serving
tea, coffee, beer, cold drinks and cocktails – and not many
restaurants that we could find. We traipsed up a hill to a place recommended by the Lonely Planet but we nearly fell over when we saw the price of a salad was 165,000 dong -about $8 which is not budget price in Vietnam.
We managed to find another restaurant which seemed a bit too
posh for us but the prices were very unposh so we stopped by. The food
happened to be excellent and the service amazing - because they were late
serving garlic bread we were given complimentary profiteroles (very yummy) but
the restaurant itself just wasn’t our cup of tea so we never went back. The bill came to about $8 which was a bit more like it!
It seems once somewhere is mentioned in the Lonely Planet the prices triple and the service nosedives. We noticed this in Vietnam quite a lot.
Dalat is also home to Easy Rider where you are taken on a tour of your choice
on the back of a lovely looking but not actually very powerful
motorbike. Many people up and down Vietnam offer this service (and
indeed the hotel offered their own similar tour but this involved a 7 o’clock
start and a 12 hour day starting and ending with team bonding exercises which
we are just really not cut out for). We would probably have gone
with the hotel’s tour were it not for that but we ended up contacting the original Easy Rider company and on our last day headed out on a
tour with one of their guides, David.
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| A massive gold Buddha in Dalat |
Paul wanted to ride his own bike but was disappointed that it
was a 110cc scooter type thing which he considered to be half a pair of roller
skates. On the other hand, I got to ride pillion on a 250cc proper
motorbike with a backrest and everything. Many times I turned around
to see Paul following in the distance behind us, head down, full throttle,
struggling to get up a hill. Complete strangers found his mode of
transport a source of great hilarity, not thinking twice to comment “I think
you need a bigger bike, mate” or, in the case of Vietnamese, just laughing and
pointing. A lot.
David took us around Dalat city, telling us a lot about the city’s
history, the fact that it escaped relatively unscathed in various conflicts,
and how Dalat (and indeed how the whole of Vietnam) relies heavily on
agriculture and the export of its products for a sizable proportion of its
economy.
We were taken to a coffee plantation where we sampled the famous weasel
coffee. I should explain here that the coffee beans are eaten by weasels and collected, err, afterwards before
being ground for consumption. Can’t say we noticed the difference.
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| Overlooking farmland |
What we enjoyed most about the day was the spectacular
scenery. Much of the area around Dalat is farmed, but there is much that remains wild with native forest. There was a lot of mist around and while it doesn’t make
for great photos, it sure as hell adds to the atmosphere when you are actually
there. It was amazing riding around the mountains, up and down the
winding roads, made more enjoyable and sightly less terrifying by the fact that the roads are relatively quiet compared to the rest of
Vietnam.
David also took us to see another waterfall, Elephant Falls (waterfalls
abound around Dalat). This visit involved a lot of clambering around
up and down rocks following a path which, if we had been left to our devices, it is unlikely we
would have tackled. David was like a mountain goat, jumping from
rock to rock and clearly knew the place like the back of his
hand. It was another beautifully scenic spot and again quite deserted
but for a handful of tourists.
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| Paul with David, our Easy Rider guide |
As the sun goes down the air cools quite rapidly in the mountains and
riding back to the hotel at around 6pm it was becoming decidedly
chilly. Many people opt for longer trips over 2 or 3 days up to
weeks at a time, touring around Vietnam by bike and, had money been no object,
it would certainly be something we would have liked to have done. As
it was we enjoyed our day exploring Dalat and its surroundings by motorcycle.
By the end of our last day in Dalat we were wondering why we weren’t staying longer as there was so much to see! We had grown fond of the city during our time there. It seems a
world away from the rest of Vietnam partly because the architecture is so
European but also as the climate is so different from the rest of
Vietnam. It is still gloriously sunny but quite a few degrees cooler
and not nearly as humid as Saigon.
Dalat seems to have been protected somewhat from Vietnam's tragic history over the last
100 years or so, built and protected by the French and then shielded by the
Americans when it was their turn to wreak havoc on the rest of
Vietnam. You are reminded that you are in Asia when you venture to the
outskirts to the Buddhist monastery and visit the pagoda but otherwise when you visit the so
called Spring City it feels decidedly like an Alpine town in the summertime,
and very different from other places we visited in Vietnam.
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