Da Lat: Le Petit Paris

Da Lat is located in the South Central Highlands of Vietnam, and was originally the playground of the French who built villas in the clear mountain air to escape the heat and humidity of the coast and of Saigon. Because of the style of architecture Da Lat is often nicknamed ‘little paris’. Many of its hotels and houses built in a French style; the city spreads across a series of pine-covered hills, with a small lake in the center and surrounded by higher peaks, making for some lovely scenery quite different from the rest of Vietnam.


When I got to Da Lat I was a little disappointed. I expected a village or small town from which you could walk directly into the mountains. With a population of 130.000 (2001 estimate so probably much larger now) Da Lat is far bigger though, making it a small city. During the evening the city gets most of its charm: walking around the night market, eating from food stalls and seeing the lights of the cafés and restaurants, the city indeed feels a little like Paris. Same same but different as everybody says here. The illusion of being in Paris is even enhanced by the replica of the Eiffel tower in the town center.


As mentioned before, to go hiking it’s not possible just to set off on food from the city. Da Lat is littered with travel agencies, but as I don’t like hiking with guides I took a xe om (motor bike taxi) to the entrance of the nature reserve surrounding Lang Biang mountain. It was a ride of about 20 minutes and after buying water and bread at the entrance I set off to climb the mountain. After I hiked for about an hour I caught up with two other hikers: Simon from England and Yentl from Belgium. The three of us walked together and followed the route. Strangely enough the vegetation on top of the mountain was much denser than below and soon we where wading through the jungle. We followed a route that was indicated by red arrows on stones, but someone must have had replaced one stone because we didn’t go up for a long time and decided to backtrack and found the correct path. Being dehydrated from the heavy drinking in Nha Trang I ran out of my supply of water before we reached the top of the mountain. Feeling the dehydration impacting me, noticeable by the lesser flexibility of my muscles due to the lactic acid buildup and by hardly sweating despite the temperature and physical activity, I decided to descend while Yentl and Simon climbed the remaining half hour bit of the mountain. At the base I found a local bus that took me back to Da Lat.


Getting back in my hotel, the old lady running it tried to tell me something and shook two room keys in front of my face. Not understanding a word of Vietnamese, she took me upstairs to another room and showed me that my stuff had been moved to a much nicer one. With a great balcony! I had to laugh a bit though because the poor old thing had to carry the entire coat rack from my old room 2 floors up to my new room; as I attached my packsafe (a secure bag, sort of a mobile safe) with my laptop inside to it. In the evening Simon, Yentl, two other hikers from the mountain and me met in a café for a few beers. Most of the other time spent in Da Lat I just walked around town, the night market and the lake. One place that was worth the visit was the ‘Crazy House’; a building that mostly serves as a hotel and is basically a piece of art by itself. Nothing other really mentionable happened in Da Lat and after a rainy day without foreseeable improvement I took the bus to Mui Ne.

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