Da Lat: 8-10 June

We suffered a long and very bumpy and windy ride from the coastal town of Mui Ne to Da Lat, in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Later we read that this particular journey is a bit renowned – so we didn’t pick it very well. In Dalat, high up in the central highlands, the cooler temperatures were a welcome relief from the heat of most of Vietnam. We stayed at a great little hotel there (Thien An), with the most amazing breakfast spread, complete with fresh avocadoes, mango, delicious bread, eggs, and more.
Over breakfast we chatted to some fellow travellers, including two Canadians, Jerry and Ylan, who we got to know quite well and ended up travelling with on and off for the rest of our time in Vietnam.

Dalat has a lot of local Vietnamese tourists, but not so many international tourists. We were there in the school holidays and many families were taking the opportunity to enjoy the cooler climes of Dalat, and the products that go along with that, like avocadoes, coffee, and roses. As a consequence, we found the town to have quite a different feel. At night, the markets in the centre of the town came alive with street vendors serving all kinds of delectable nibbles.

While in Dalat we enjoyed being able to walk around without feeling sweaty the second you step out the door. We visited Bao Dai’s palace, went up the cable car/gondola, for a view over the city, and spent some time just chilling out in a café.

The following day we went on an organised tour which took in; a factory producing silk garments (quite interesting to see the whole process), some impressive waterfalls, a coffee plantation, flower garden, a pagoda with a huge blue-ish Buddha, the Dalat railway station, and the ‘crazy house’.

As part of the tour, we were offered the chance to try the ‘weasel-poo coffee’ – which naturally, we jumped at. For the uninitiated, the story behind this follows that a particular animal (weasel, or civet cat in Indonesia I believe), naturally eats coffee beans as part of their diet. This animal has a finely tuned sense of smell and can detect the good beans over the average or bad. It then eats the beans, and what comes out the other end is the bean, still intact in its husk. These beans are then collected and processed as per normal, resulting in a particularly delicious brew.

In Dalat however, the weasels are simply kept in cages and fed coffee beans (rather than going and foraging for the best beans), so presumably the result is a little different. At any rate, we tried it, and can’t say that it really tasted any different to other coffee we had had in Vietnam, so that was a bit anti-climactic.

The ‘crazy house’ was really something different. I can’t remember the story behind it, but it’s basically a ‘house’ that has been created with the most eccentric, weird and wonderful architecture. It includes trees growing inside the house, odd shaped beds and rooms. Imagine a cross between Alice in Wonderland and an Antoni Gaudí building. You can also actually stay the night there, however while I’d recommend it for a visit, I wouldn’t suggest you stay.

After our marathon bus effort to Dalat, and given the distance to our next stop, Hoi An, we decided to fly out – our first flight in a number of months.