Feb 5 Da Lat In and Around Town

The road to DaLat was one of the worst roads for potholes I have ever been on and it was so twisty windy that there were a lot of corners that had 3' round mirrors on them & the horn was honked to warn traffic the bus was coming. The bees nests are huge and sometimes 3 or 4 of them per tree. There goes that theory of not building in the same territory like our bees. Dalat has turned out to be a very nice city. It’s up in the mountains, about 5,000 feet, and the weather is almost perfect. 24-27 in the afternoon, it drops down to the low teens at night. So shorts and tee-shirt all day, light sweater after 5pm, and you don’t need aircon. The weather reminds us very much of Morelia or Guadalajara, cities in the Mexican highlands; 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 is arranged on a (large) number of hills, so there are scenic vistas everywhere. It’s very clean and pretty, and there are lots of things to see and do here. If you are not walking down hill you are climbing stairs.

Eating on the street in the evening; best pho in town!  Note the parkas.

 

 Organic weasel coffee?  Who knew?

 

This guy is selling aquarium fish off his motorbike.

We decided we should check out a couple of the local sights, so one day we laced up our runners real tight and went looking for the Crazy House.  It turned out to be only about 2 km 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 stuffed 10 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 3-4 km 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 of the lake 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 and 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 Viet nam, we are here right in the middle of the dry season so the flowers are at their lowest; the gardeners are all ass up – head down getting ready for spring.  One of the interesting things here is that they have large flower arrangements all over town, and they 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 it’s end of the deal they yank the pot and put a new one in.

 Paddle ducks on the lake, with city in background.

 

 The island in background is all gardens and coffee house.

 

 Of course they put the welcome on the INSIDE.

  

When the bombs drop, the washrooms and atm will be fine.

 Replacing pots in the Welcome Arch.

 

The south side of the lake has a large complex of in-the-ground bleachers built into the proverbial Grassy Knoll and there are some weird metal-sculpture things on the hill above that look like they are 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. One of the ladies from our Hostel said she would come back to the night market where I had bought one the day before but it didn''t work. When we finally found that stall, the woman there would not give me back my money. Its a good thing nobody peed in my cereal that morning & I was in a good mood. Anyways, off to the only mall DaLat has. We walked about 2 kms before we went in between some bleachers and found this enterance to an underground shopping mall.  We went through a little tunnel between the bleachers that looked like it would lead to a hockey-team dressing room, and there was a complete two-story shopping mall complete with 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 no room in the suitcase.

The topiary is getting pretty ratty.  (Rat-ty.  Get it?  Sigh.)

Far Right:  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 McDonalds should be called ‘The Medium’.  But I digress.  There isn’t a whole lot 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.  Reminded both Deb and I of the CN way-freights we used to ride in the 70’s!  80-90 years ago the French spent a ton of money extending the railroad from the lowlands up to Da Lat, then during the Vietnam War (that would be the Third Liberation War to the locals) the Americans bombed it right back into landscape.  So, no train.

 The old girl is looking pretty rough.

 

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.