Blogs from Da Lat, Lam Dong, Central Highlands, Vietnam, Asia - page 11

We are off to Da Lat today. Our bus is due at 1.00 pm so it’s a reasonable start for once. We go for a swim after breakfast and get packed for 12 as we are intending to go to our favourite restaurant before boarding the bus. However, the bus turns up at 12 and tells us it is leaving in ten minutes. There go Rik’s oysters! It is a tiny minibus and is soon packed out, with every seat taken and luggage crammed in to every available space. It is not the best journey we’ve had. We are pretty hungry (especially as we didn't manage to grab our lunch) but when we stop at a restaurant, the driver tells us we have ten minutes. We all visit the loos as quickly as possible and board ... read more

The bus journey to Da Lat was by far the scariest I have done so far as after we had left the dusty roads running through the valleys we headed up into the mountains where the roads where steep, narrow and all had huge drops over the side. On top of this the driver felt it necessary to drive at the maximum speed possible for each corner - in the end it was better to just not look out the window! We arrived in Da Lat at eight in the evening. The first thing we noticed was that unlike everywhere else in South East Asia Da Lat was cool and in the evenings many would consider it cold. The town grew under the French rule as the French people in Saigon went to Da Lat for ... read more

So here we are in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. This area was developed by the French in the late 1800's -- as a getaway of sorts because of the oppressive heat of Saigon (HCMC). The French government used to move their whole operation up here in the summer months - built a golf course, villas and put a dam in the river to create 'the Grand Lake' in the center of the town. The French left after the Treaty of Geneva in the 1950's, but the area continued to draw government-types. Amazingly the area hosted military officials from opposing sides during World War II and the American/Vietnam War - who would play golf and chill out together before going back out to battle against one another. This area of the Highlands was least affected by ... read more

When one thinks of Vietnam, Dalat's landscapes would not be something that comes to mind. Set 2000 meters up in the Central Highlands, Dalat has unique scenery and much cooler weather than anywhere else in the south. Pine trees replace palms, everyone seems to wear jackets (although still too hot for that I think), and architecturally is a fusion between Vietnamese and French cultures. In fact you could say it resembles more a town in the French mountains than a town in southern Vietnam. During the French colonial days, the colonists went to these hills to escape the heat. The town has always been known as a place of learning as well, with universities and colleges abound, students could study without sweltering. I arrived and checked into a pretty nice hotel room considering the price, and ... read more

So onto Dalat and what we hoped would be a completely different experience to any we had before. Dalat is based in the mountains 1500m above sea level. Because of this we had heard that the temperatures rarely exceed 25 degrees and after a month and a half of baking hot nonstop sweating this sounded like heaven. The road up to Dalat however was not the cool calm start we had hoped for. The coach was winding up huge roads and round tight corners onto even steeper inclines. We were both trying to get some sleep on this trip but a certain morbid curiosity took over and we pressed our noses to window to savour the beautiful views and our imminent death. We survived and the coach dropped us off outside the our tour operators Hotel ... read more