Advertisement
Published: December 9th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Dalat
Scenery from Cable Car Station Suzanne here...
The bus ride in to Dalat was promising. Lovely scenery, and we saw coffee growing which was very interesting. We were really looking forward to our stay. The guidebooks describe Dalat as a 'petite Paris', an 'utterly charming' little town with lots of French architecture and great scenery.
The town didn't look particularly pretty on the drive in, not helped by the fact that the lake had been drained. We were dropped off at the other side of town from the hotel we wanted too. A guy stood in the doorway of the bus telling us all how great his hotel was and by the time we were allowed off all the bags were inside the hotel lobby. Stubborn as ever, we retrieved our bags and marched off. A bit of a pain, but at least we could see the town on the walk back through. It soon became apparent that the guidebooks were telling a big fat lie. Very little French architecture, no scenery. In fact, your average chaotic, jumbled, busy little Vietnamese town. Nothing wrong with that, but not at all what we were expecting.
The recommended hotel was just horrid, so we quickly
Dalat
Scenery from Cable Car Station declined the room. It took us ten minutes to shake off a woman (on foot, then on a scooter) who chased us round trying to get us to stay at her hotel. I chose a hotel at random, not great and a bit pricy. We went to another recommended one, I wasn't overly happy. Bear in mind that we have stayed at some basic places, and I've not been overly fussy before. By this time we'd seen almost all of Dalat, and I was starting to loathe the place. I think this was part of the problem. I was anticipating spending a deal of time in the room as nothing in the town was appealing to me, so I wanted a nice room. We looked at another hotel, friendly staff but still not a great room. I think by this time David had lost the will to live and I was starting to approach a nervous breakdown. All I wanted was to get a bus out of this godforsaken place. Determined not to be beaten, in the end, we settled on a ok hotel, nothing fancy but fine, friendly and pretty cheap.
Once settled in, we went to the
Dalat
They have purple ones? Crazy House (not that crazy), a kind of fantasy building with different levels and hidden corners. That was the sum total of sights within the city centre. The guidebooks tell you that there is loads to see and do, but actually it's all out of town so you need a guide or tour. The only time I cheered up was when we booked our bus ticket out. In the evening we had some decent Vietnamese food (despite them running out of a few things we wanted) then a couple of cocktails. I started to feel a bit better.
The next day we headed to the only thing out of town within walking distance, the cable cars to Truc Lam Pagoda. I'm so glad we did, it really turned the stay around. On the walk we passed a few old French houses. The cable car ride was great fun. The pagoda was lovely, in a really nice park and gardens and near a lake. We spent most of the day there before heading back. Feeling much more positive, we actaually came to like Dalat.
In the evening we had a traditional Vietnamese Hot Pot. A huge metal pot came
Dalat
Cable Car ride to the table, the broth bubbling over a burner. Around the side was raw meat and veg that we had to drop in to cook. Great fun, and the broth just got tastier and tastier. We then went to a little local cafe bar, popular with the locals for a couple of beers.
In the end, we did enjoy Dalat. Really, there is nothing wrong with it. It is just did not deliver what was promised so was bound to be a disappointment. It's a nice, typical little town. Just don't believe the guidebook hype, and expect to hire a guide if you want to see any of the surrounding scenery.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.346s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 20; qc: 81; dbt: 0.2352s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb