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Published: March 24th 2010
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Crazy House
I don't know if this would have passed the building inspection The road to Dalat was another winding and at times suspect road into the hills, bringing to mind previous bus trips elsewhere in Asia. It was a good bus though and we were all happy when we arrived in the early evening. Just like Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, we were immediately at home in the cooler, less humid highlands climate. It was nice to have some 'topography' as well - hills and slopes to walk around and great views everywhere.
On the first night we were brave enough to try Vang Dalat - the local wine. The bottle design and label would have made it at home on a rack of Barossa wines, so we were interested in finding out what it tasted like. Our hopes were predictably dashed when it tasted like the $3 bottle of wine that it was, with a strange aftertaste exactly like capers. And I suppose the main flavour of capers is the vinegar that they're pickled in. Well, at least it wasn't anti-freeze.
At the same time, we've found Vietnamese coffee to be surprisingly delicious and have been drinking it at every opportunity. We've since heard that the coffee beans are roasted in
Dragon Pagoda
Which was so ornately decorated it verged on off-putting, but you could appreciate it up close butter, which sounds like quite a sneaky way to make it taste better. But taste good it does, and I've even started enjoying it with a small amount of sweetened condensed milk (the locals would drink it with 3 times as much).
While we were in Dalat, Phoebe's first top front tooth fell out! She was incredibly excited and the tooth fairy duly flew all the way over from Australia to give her 50000 Vietnamese dong. Phoebe proudly spent half of this on some dried apricots at the market the next day, only to discover afterwards that she'd bought a whole packet of salted apricots. They were truly sickening - the Asian love of sweet and salty together is something none of us can get our taste buds around. The next night, right on schedule her other top front tooth fell out. So now she is 'gappy' and looks a little like a vampire.
Anyway, Dalat was fantastic. I didn't realise until a couple of days into our time there that it was built from sratch by those nasty French imperialialists, initially as a 'health resort' complete with villas, a couple of man-made lakes and a golf course.
View from the Monastery
Much prettier than the Valley of Love and without the tacky statues to boot The only Vietnamese person allowed to live there (presumably apart from servants) was the last king of Vietnam, who had an opulent holiday home there and made sure he didn't disagree with his French masters about anything. The upshot though is that Dalat is a nice looking city and has good 'atmosphere'.
We spent much of one day exploring on foot ourselves, seeing a few attractions but mainly just seeing as much of the town as we could. One place that Phoebe did love was the 'crazy house'; not an asylum for the criminally insane but instead an interesting house/ monument/ guest-house designed by a Vietnamese architect. It's hard to describe the buildings which were similar to concrete & plaster sculptures, replete with numerous tangled passageways, bridges and nooks and crannies, all inspired by nature in some way. For a better idea, see the photos.
Another day we gave into the persistent (and very annoying) harassment from the receptionist at our guest-house to take a day-tour. The tour included a few interesting places like the aforementioned summer villa of the last king, and a place where they produced fantastic embroidered artworks. However there were a few tourist-trap duds,
Little Gap Face
Looking a bit vampire-ish none more so than the horrendous 'Valley of Love'. Picture all you know about simpering, facile, mass-produced Hello-Kitty style ideas of love and romance that you might see in Asian media and then multiply by ten. It was an otherwise perfectly good hill and lake that had been gardened and then littered with concrete sculptures of heart shapes, couples holding hands, swings and various romantic animals (Yes! Even Veloceraptors). And after the loving couple has finished wandering through the surrounds and bought a love-photo in a heart-shaped frame from the souvenir shops, he can prove his masculinity by hiring one of the romantic US Army jeep replicas sitting around and they can zoom around the paths while she swoons in the passenger seat. It was surreal! Phoebe labeled it 'the valley of lame' - I think she's been listening to us too much. Perhaps we should be less critical. All in all the highlight of the day was probably chatting to a few fellow travellers - a couple of Swiss girls who worked in Nha Trang and some Australian-born Chinese who told us all about being mistaken for Vietnamese all the time. They also proclaimed 'yeah we speak Cantonese' in
Romance...
... is found in the Valley of Love an ocker accent that had Alex giggling for days!
We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Dalat and would definitely go back. Next stop, back to Vietnam's extensive coastline and Nha Trang.
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birgit
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dalat sounds cool..in every possible sense.love gap face,lukas lost 2 more teeth as well.having a great time here in hoi an.see you then, birgit