Our morning begins early with a 6:30 am flight to Dalat, Vietnam from DaNang. We arrive in the mountain town on time, in rain.
This mountain town is about the outdoors, nature and hiking. 
The rain will make it interesting. Dalat is in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and has French colonial influence, including the architecture….and the wonderful baguettes!
The drive to Dalat City from the airport itself is beautiful. Different shades of green, manicured landscapes along the drive are lined with hibiscus, banana palm and other tropical shrubs, flowers and trees.
We make an early check in to the Best Western Dalat Plaza Hotel, our home for the next four days. We have the day to explore on our own before we trek in the mountains and jungle surrounding Dalat. This is a terrific mountain town built-in the hills and along a beautiful lake and river.
We head across the river from our hotel to the town center. Apparently, the town is known for its bakeries. We hit the Ho Lein Bakery. It is fabulous. It is like a grocery store with all fresh-baked goods from pastries to bun to “pigs in a blanket”. We select a few samples and head upstairs to sit and to pair the food with some coffee. The town of Dalat also has a coffee shop or two on each block. There seems to be a big coffee culture here with youngsters glued to their phones sipping coffee at these places.
It continues to rain, lighter but steady. We walk through the town and over to a place known as the “Crazy House“. The house is designed by the Vietnamese architect Đặng Việt Nga. It has an architectural style seeming to incorporate Gaudi, Disney and Dali. Like Gaudi and Dali, its designs are influenced by nature: plants and animals.
I was expecting just a bit of craziness, but this house goes on and on. Stairs and walkways wind throughout, and even over the rooftops, with sections connecting various buildings and rooms. It sort of feels like you are walking through blood vessels or intestines.
One can also actually stay here. There are streams of people touring through, so I am not sure how comfortable it would be staying here.
At every turn at the Crazy House it gets crazier, more bizarre. This is a place definitely worth a visit if in Dalat.
As night falls the view from our hotel room of the lights of Dalat City are beautiful. We venture out to dinner at TeAnh Peace Cafe. The food is excellent, maybe the best pumpkin soup I have ever had. The owner TeAnh is energetic and talkative, very welcoming! I tried a glass of red Dalat wine. The grapes are not grown here, but the wine is made in Dalat. Not fantastic, but not bad. Inexpensive, of course.
Day Two
On our first full day here, we awake to yes, more rain. Breakfast at the hotel is excellent. So many Vietnamese choices, it seemed a bit like brunch. Omelettes are also a great choice!
We wonder if our trek through the mountains will be cancelled. No such luck, as our guide shows up at 8:35 am. Vien is energetic, young I suppose! Vien studied English at Dalat University. His seven siblings work in agriculture in the area. We are also joined by Carol from Singapore. Carol is a nurse, 64, who has traveled many places around the world. Antarctica, Machu Picchu, Nepal, the list goes on! We add a few places to our list based on our conversation.
We start our trek in Chicken Village and walk through the many vegetable and flower farms. The colors are beautiful, even in the rain. The Dalat area provides vegetables to many other areas of Vietnam and exports flowers around the world.
We pass by many workers in the fields, some wondering why we are hiking in the rain. At one point we pass by some workers cutting flowers for shipping. We help load them on the motorcycle in exchange for some pictures. Interesting supply chain. I wonder what country these flowers are going to!
Soon we enter the jungle as we start the ascent up Elephant Mountain. We follow the wet, slippery jungle trails for a couple of hours and about seven miles.
Our route takes us across a few streams. I hit a slippery rock in one stream and ended up submerged in it. Amazingly my waterproof pockets in my raincoat save my camera and iPhone. Both still working at the moment!
We made it to the crest of Elephant Mountain around 12:30pm and stop to eat some local bananas for energy…in the pouring rain. It starts to rain a bit harder so we start moving back into the more dense jungle to try to avoid some of the water.
We head down the backside of the mountain. Tracey and Carol slip several times on the wet, muddy trail. At one point we spot a green snake on the trail…a viper! It wasn’t very reassuring that our guide was scrambling away as quickly as he could, when we announced we saw a snake! Vien and Carol must have nearly stepped on it because it was quite active when Tracey walked by it. Anyway, we count ourselves lucky since we are far away from any medical attention, were it to be necessary.
We also apparently missed some elephants from a nearby sanctuary. We do spot their rather large footprints as well as piles of dung!
We made it down the backside of the mountain to a small village area on a lake. We stop for our picnic lunch around 3 pm. Our guide serves up fresh French baguettes with pork pate, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese and a peppery seasoning. He slices up fresh pineapple and plums for refreshing dessert.
The hot tea and coffee are a good warm up as our wet clothes give us a chill in the 60 degree air. We passed by many coffee plants and some of them being harvested during our trek. Vietnam is the second largest coffee producing nation in the world, behind Brazil!
After our late, late lunch we pick up a boat to take us across the lake for our drive back to Dalat City and our dry hotel!
For dinner, we are going to Ganesh. Ganesh is an Indian restaurant in five Vietnam cities. This one just opened and the food is consistent with the one we dined at in Hue. The Vietnamese staff seem to be in training, at least most of them. Ly is excellent and energetic. We enjoy talking a bit with her about her ideas for work going forward.
Day Three
Today is a day off! At least nothing planned, which is nice after the drenching ten-mile walk in the jungle yesterday.
We head out to visit the “chicken church”, a Catholic Church named so because of the rooster on top of he spire. They are busy getting ready for Christmas festivities. The Dalat area has a large Catholic population.
We venture through the Dalat City center and the markets. They are actually quite remarkable lining the streets, but are also housed in a several story structure. The first floor has all kinds of fresh meat, poultry, fish, crabs and other shellfish, worms?, eel?, and other unknown items. The upper floors have packaged foods, clothes, shoes, and jewelry. I do not see too many shoe sizes or clothes that would fit me here.
We stop in a local coffee shop and then split a small pizza at Vuong Pizza. Delicious! The staff are excited to hear we are from the US and we enjoy talking to them! While Dalat is a tourist town with most of the tourists seeming to be from Vietnam. We seem to be only a handful of westerners.
Dinner is excellent at the Artists Alley Cafe. The pumpkin soup is also outstanding here! The Dalat red wine again is so, so, but hey when in Rome! The lemongrass chicken with chili and chicken curry are awesome, as well. The restaurant has decorated walls and ceilings of impressionist art, actually pretty impressive, no pun intended. Dinner included an instrumental acoustic guitarist.
Post dinner we headed over to Escape Bar run by a US blues musician, Curtis King and his Vietnamese wife, Tui. They had a fun band playing some classics. Curtis joined in on most of the songs with some guitar, trombone, harmonica and vocals. Andy Potter a drummer from England now living in Cambodia and visiting Dalat joined in for a couple of songs.
We chatted with Curtis and his wife after the bar closed, for a while. Then Tracey, Curtis and I went to a couple of noodle bars late into the wee hours. Curtis is from Cleveland originally, Seven Hills. So Tracey and Curtis had an instant connection. Curtis speaks fluent Vietnamese. This combined with the wine and Tiger Beer made for some interesting and animated conversations with the locals. We solved many of the world’s problems, at least talked about them!
The next morning we pack up, do some bun cha at a local place and head to the airport for a short flight to Ho Chi Minh City. Dalat is a beautiful mountain town, worthy of spending more than just a couple of days, in our book!
And a few more pics…
