Da Lat: The Mountain City

From Hoi An, we travelled to Nha Trang. I’ll admit, it wasn’t really our flavour, so I’ve not made an entire post about it. 

Compared to the local, quiet beach we’d come from, Nha Trang was overly commercialised and seemed to lack Vietnamese food. There were a lot of chain restaurants and western food being served. We just didn’t really gel with it.

The beach was nice though. Also, I discovered ice cream rolls - they are delicious.

We then caught another sleeper bus (again, during the day) to Da Lat.

This is a city in a mountainous area of Vietnam, further from the coast but only a few hours north of Ho Chi Minh. The hilly landscape made for a pretty wild bus ride! 

Upon arrival we sought out coffee and food. 

We visited The Crazy House, which really did reflect its name - it’s surreal, whimsical, artistic. 

The Crazy House is also a hotel with 10 rooms, each room is designed to be attached to an animal, such as Kangaroo Room, the Bear room, etc.

The designer is an architect who started work on this house in the 1980s. 

It was bizarre but in a fun way!

We got coffees at a great cafe nearby - great cafe culture in Da Lat.

Since it was nearby, we also visited Bao Dai Palace. This is an historic mansion that served as the summer palace for Bao Dai, an emperor, between 1933 and 1939.

On a bit of a whim, we also went to 100 Roof Bar, which is a bar (you actually have to buy a drink to enter) but it essentially is a maze that you have to work your way through to get to the seats and bar area on the higher floors. Like The Crazy House, it was pretty weird but also quite fun.

It also provided nice views of Da Lat.

For dinner, we found some pretty good spring rolls. Michael still isn’t sick of these!

The following morning we decided to walk out to a cafe with lovely views of the surrounding mountains! 

Just for something different, we caught a Grab (the Asian version of Uber) to Datanla Waterfall, about 5km south of Da Lat city centre.

To access the waterfall you can either walk, or go on an alpine coaster, which we decided would be a little bit of fun! 

This led us to a pretty amazing waterfall. The surrounding area was also really well landscaped and a lot of pretty flowers had been planted. 

There was a path that continued along the river, so we decided just to follow it and see where it led. 

It turned out to be a really nice walk (albeit, with a lot of stairs) and some more nice waterfalls). 

We didn’t really have the highest of expectations for a waterfall inside of a facility, but it turned out to be a nice afternoon. 

Just because we were already in a taxi, we asked to be dropped off at the train station on the way home. This kept coming up on the list of things to do in Da Lat, so we figured we’d see what it was all about. 

It was a nice station and the old train carriages were pretty cool.

On our way home, we stopped by a cafe and tried Banh Mi Xiu Mai - which is the regional version of this sandwich. It’s basically soupy meatballs that are eaten with the breadstick. It was tasty, but not as great as the stock standard banh mi (in my opinion). 

We made ‘friends’ with a cat (sort of). 

On our final day in Da Lat, we spent the day at an organic coffee farm - Midori Coffee Farm. 

We had lunch on their balcony, with beautiful views overlooking their and other farm areas. 

The owner, Huy, gave us a tour of his farm and explained how the beans were roasted and the flavours that resulted. They do so much of the work that goes into preparing coffee beans by hand - amazing! 

He was really passionate about sustainable farming and highly knowledgeable about the practice. 

We loved this unique and authentic experience! 

In all honesty, Da Lat wasn’t our favourite location in Vietnam - we found the traffic harder than other places we have visited and there seemed to be a lack of simple, authentic Vietnamese eateries. I think I also missed the regular banh mi. Having said that, looking back now at all the things that we did, I think we really made the most of the time we spent here.