We nearly didn’t go to Da Lat (correctly written as Đà Lạt, but often just Dalat). We were in Ho Chi Minh City, previously called Saigon but renamed for the new Vietnam under a new leader… a city obsessed with being new and busy and bright. Everything about HCMC was bustling and intense, loud and inescapable. No space for a person, no space for peace.
The War Remnants Museum and Cu Chi tunnels had been fascinating, they had totally changed our perspectives on the Vietnam war and through it how ‘the West’ is viewed, but after only a few days we were desperate for some peace. Two big cities on the bounce – Phnom Penh then HCMC, we were fishes out of water.
Before I continue this post I will give 3 more concessions to Saigon. First, we discovered Highlands Coffee, a great chain (I write this sat in a Highlands Coffee in Nha Trang), second we had a lovely chat on a long bus ride with a middle aged Vietnamese lady who was very proud to speak English and enthusiastically helped me with my Vietnamese. On the second half of that ride we had another interesting chat with someone we’re fairly sure was a prostitute heading home after work. Interesting lady. Very friendly! Third and finally, whilst at the tunnels we met a pair of teachers from Derby doing a journey much like ours but they are in their last month rather than their first – prime for some travelling advice!
Back to the point – we’d planned to go to Mui Ne, a small-ish beach resort, but the weather wasn’t looking good and we thought being on a beach in a thunderstorm might not be fun. Ness had fancied going to Da Lat, but I’d been nonplussed by it. Everything I read left me feeling underwhelmed and disinterested, but Ness was keen so on Tuesday we hopped on a bus for a 7 hour ride to Đà Lạt.
Da Lat is set at 1500m (higher than the highest point in the UK) amongst the central highlands, so it was instantly cooler. Having felt rather abused by temperatures in the high 30s for the last few weeks, we enjoyed the mid-20s, like a British summer. Ness had been struggling with the heat and so was a lot happier within minutes.
We checked into our hotel (we wouldn’t recommend it) then went in search of a coffee shop. As you can tell we do enjoy our coffee shops, and in a few months time I think I will have to write a post on coffee shops of SE Asia. Just around the corner from our cardboard hotel we found a beautiful coffee shop. Full House Coffee seems to be a family run business, styled in what someone more fashionable than me would describe as ‘shabby chic’. The waitress, a radiant and warm lady called Trinh, probably the same age as us, welcomed us and humoured me as I managed to pour most of my coffee over the table having failed to understand how a ‘vietnamese coffee’ system works. If you ever try a Vietnamese coffee, please note that the system of stacked metal plates are not attached, and need to be kept in a certain order!
We sat in the quietly friendly atmosphere of Full House and instantly felt relaxed, that we were a bit more at home. We would spend a lot of our time in Da Lat just relaxing in this place, enjoying the smiles of the staff and the peace of the environment.
The next day was a lazy start before trying to find the ‘city’ bus station. Đà Lạt calls itself a city but I think it’s safe to call it a mid-sized town. We made the mistake of expecting the bus station to look like a bus station. I think it is better described as a section of road where bus drivers choose to hang out together. I’m sure there are timetables, but I doubt the drivers read them, and it is hit and miss as to whether the buses actually display their numbers. After lots of pointing and waving we found ourselves on a bus which we hoped would end up at Robin Hill. We were evicted from the bus at the base of the cable car we had been hoping for, and so took a scenic ride above the town and across fields and jungles, with an incredible backdrop of mountains.
The cable car landed us at a Buddhist monastery. The Truc Lam Pagoda is a Zen meditation centre, though it was sadly difficult to find out much about it. I did learn though that Zen monks love a bonsai tree!
We walked down from the monastery to a huge lake. After enjoying a coffee on the waterfront, Ness insisted on taking a ride in a swan pedalo.
Đà Lạt is probably best known for its waterfalls, being set in a tropical mountainous area makes for a good waterfall! Of course these can be done on organised tours for a lot of money, but as ever we went for the DIY option. Back to the “bus station” we got on a bus to Thac Voi, or Elephant Falls as it is known in English (I didn’t see any connection to Elephants). Having been fortunate enough to learn its Vietnamese name we were easily able to find the right bus, and the conductor knew to throw us off at the right place.
On the ride we met 2 really cool girls from Manchester out here for their uni summer (Lucy and Liora), a chap from Gloucestershire who has already been travelling for over a year and with no plans to return, and a Portugese couple doing much the same as us (Amelia and Samuel). A really lovely laid back couple, beautifully suited to each other, having set out from Lisbon in May their approach is to travel until they run out of money. More adventurous than us! As I write this in a new city we have just bumped into them by pure chance, they are about to spend 2 weeks dogsitting for someone’s Yorkshire Terrier, giving them free accomodation – quite the trick! If you want to see them, check out @vida._.boa on Instagram.
Elephant Falls was stunning, 30m high and 15m wide, a roaring torrent amongst the buzzing jungle. Getting soaked made it even more fun, especially finding the narrow passageway lined with vine branches to climb down behind the falls. One of our friends from Manchester seemed a little disturbed as whenever you went to grab a vine branch you couldn’t be 100% sure that it wasn’t actually a snake. It turned out that they were all branches at the point we went down.
We had planned to get another bus from Da Lat centre to Datlana falls, but on the bus ride back we found that Lucy, Liora and the chap from Gloucestershire also wanted to go there, so we decided to share a taxi out there. We’d read that the falls themselves were quite unremarkable but that there was a toboggan ride to get to the bottom… Of course this suckered Ness in! I’m always cynical of paid activities, for some reason the idea of tying myself to something and jumping off it seems fun, but paying for someone else to tie me on suddenly becomes tedious or unattractive. I don’t know why, just a weird thing, an aversion to taking part in touristy things. Ness however loves this stuff… She has made clear that we will be going to water parks and theme parks during our year, and so was beaming with excitement at the toboggan. Of course as soon as I was on it and I control of using (or not using) the brakes I loved it too! The weight limit for one toboggan was 150kg, and Ness and I are definitely well over that even without our bags… I’d planned to try to avoid using the brakes at all but decided I wasn’t sure on the safety margins of a rickety Vietnamese toboggan.
The falls themselves completely broke expectations, having been told that they were dull we found them beautiful. We also found the rope attachment points for the canyoning routes and wished we had our rope with us. The canyoning looked great fun but was A LOT of money, and maybe it wasn’t sensible for us to do our own tour down a waterfall without knowing much about the waterflow. Save the rope fun for later in the trip.
On our last day we’d decided to do the hike to the summit of Lang Biang mountain, at 2,167m this is twice the height of Snowdon and in the Alps would be the height of a snow covered glacier, but here it is 600m of ascent through 5km of jungle. Arriving at the base we enjoyed stepping around the tourists waiting to see the attractions and onto the trail. After a short 2 hour hike past flower plantations, through pine forests reminiscent of home and then through thick jungle, we were at the top.
The view was minimal as we were in the usual cloud that enshrouds these tropical mountains, but we sat to enjoy our lunch. As we perched there, in the peace of nature, having earned our moment atop this place of beauty, we reflected that we felt ourselves again. As we travel we will spend time in chaotic cities, on remote peaks, and everywhere in between. Some times we will feel like a fish in a desert, and it will all be a part of this magnificent experience that we are so lucky to have, but for now we feel like we are ourselves.
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