Asian Adventures - Dalat, Vietnam
We had another treacherous bus journey travelling to Dalat from Nha Trang. The majority of it was on small, twisty roads in the hills. The driver was a maniac! He was driving far too fast and overtaking on blind corners! Thankfully, the journey was only four hours which was one of our shorter journeys. There really is no rules over here on the roads. You can do whatever you want. Health and safety doesn't seem to be a thing. Not like in the UK where there are health and safety procedures in place for everything! They are way more relaxed over here about everything. The only thing they have specific rules for is about religion and visiting their religious temples which in comparison is extremely strict.
First impressions of Dalat were that it was more run down than I was expecting. I didn't know anything about Dalat but I imagined it to be a quaint little town but it's actually a small city. There's still masses of motor bike congestion. That was the most surprising thing about Dalat, I thought there would be minimal traffic but actually the traffic could be as bad as Hanoi where you have to fight death to cross the road!!
We got a taxi from the bus stop to our hotel Flower Hill. The taxi prices there seemed to be really reasonable. We had trouble trying to find a hotel in Dalat as the majority were all booked up. We booked our hotel on Booking.com but couldn't find an online presence for it which seemed really weird and our taxi driver had never heard of it before, so we thought we were going to turn up to the address and there be no hotel! When we arrived in reception we found out the hotel was just newly opened which then made the unknown information about it make sense. The hotel was lovely as everything was obviously brand new. There was still some building work going on in the hotel which was noisy and sometimes annoying as it seemed to start very early in the morning. It was a 20 minute walk into the centre of the city from our hotel which was fine. After checking in and getting changed we went for a walk into the city to have a look around and to find somewhere to eat. We found a great Vietnamese restaurant to eat in called Goc Ha Thanh. Rory chose the set menu which included soup, a portion of chips, a main dish, salad, rice, dessert and a beer all for £2.70!!! Which is crazy! Rory was really good when we were away at finding us restaurants with good deals.
I decided to order from the main menu as one of the starters was to make your own spring rolls. After having two cooking lessons to make spring rolls I was keen to perfect my talents! I had ordered a main dish too as I didn't realise how big my starter would be which meant we had a mountain of food. I think the waiter was so confused at us ordering so much food. The best thing about Vietnam is definitely the food and we absolutely made the most of that whilst there. The food at the restaurant was delicious and we tried our best to eat as much as we could. We were definitely stuffed after. We actually ran into a women at the restaurant who we had done a cooking class with in Chiang Mai about a month ago which was so weird! It has actually been so strange the number of people we have met twice on our trip in different locations, or even noticing people in my one place and then seeing them somewhere else too. I suppose everyone will be going to the same main cities in a country but it seems like such a coincidence to for example be on the same bus as someone and then see them again in another place.
On our first day in Dalat we had a motor bike tour booked through our Bamba Experience. I read about Dalat being a good place to do a motorbike tour as Dalat is surrounded by hills and country roads and has lots of attractions on the outskirts of the city to visit by bike. We were both pretty nervous having never been on a motorbike before and having seen the Vietnam traffic! We did a tour with Easy Rider where you are on the back of the motorbike. The tour guides' driving felt very safe and they made sure we were extremely conformable on the bike. The tour was on the small roads in the hills which meant the traffic was a lot quieter which made us feel more relaxed. The tour started at 8.00am and we were taken back to our hotel at around 4.00pm. We drove round the Dalat countryside and visited a lot of cool things.
Our first stop was Truc Lam Meditation Centre which was around a gorgeous lake. I had worn shorts so because this was a temple I had to wear a wrap around skirt I got at the entrance to cover up my legs. We had a nice wander around the temples and met the couple who were on the tour with us and it turned out they were from Glasgow!
The next stop was going to a chicken village and meeting some of the K'ho people who lived there. We spoke to a family who made different clothing to be sold in the city. They let us watch them making cloths and explained to us how they made them. They were really lovely and wanted to practice their English on us. It's really nice to meet local people and learn about their day to day life. We had a look around their shop and I bought a skirt/sarong that they had made. It felt good to support their business and plus all the clothing they made was lovely. It was hard to choose what skirt to pick!
After we made our way to The Elephant Falls which if you are ever in Dalat you should 100% go and see. The falls are huge! We could feel sprays of water on us just from standing on the path looking down on it. It was messy and steep on our way down to the viewing balcony, climbing down steep stairs and over slippery rocks. There wasn't a path marked out so you had to be careful where you stepped and made sure you weren't going to slip. By the time we climbed back up I looked like a drowned rat!! We had lunch after in a café beside the falls and got to speak to our tour guides and find out about their lives and the different motorbike trips they do.
After lunch we stopped of at Linh An Pagoda. There was the main Pagoda to look around as well a huge silver Buddha in the garden beside it to see too. I've found it amazing seeing the massive Buddha statues that have been built. It was great having a guide there when visiting these places as they can tell you about the history of them. It came in handy that I had bought my skirt as I used it to cover my legs whilst there.
We stopped of next at a Silk Farm. We got shown all round the factory and got told about the different stages of making silk. We also got to see the finished products that were made at the factory too. I tried a larva which is the cocoon that forms during the metamorphosis of the silk worm. It's a delicacy associated with Korean cuisine and also popular in South East Asia. I thought it tasted ok. It wasn't the tastiest thing I've ever had but it wasn't awful. I wanted to try any strange food whilst on our trip that isn't served in the UK.
Our final stop on our tour was at a coffee farm. They keep weasels on the farm to make weasel coffee. Weasel coffee is made by feeding the weasels coffee beans, waiting for the beans to come out when they go to the toilet and then brewing them in to coffee. This sounds disgusting but weasel coffee is very famous in Vietnam. I'm not sure who thought of the idea or what makes the coffee taste better after being threw a weasel! They made other types of coffee at the farm too and asked if we wanted to try a cup of one. Obviously you had to try the weasel coffee. I don't drink coffee so just tried some of Rory's. It seemed to taste ok though, it just tasted like very very strong coffee. You just had to try and forget about what you were actually drinking!
This was by far one of the best tours of our trip! We were both slightly nervous about being on the back of a motorbike but our guides were brilliant and you felt really safe. Anyone wanting to do a motorbike tour in Asia should definitely do it with Easy Rider Tours as it's good if you don't want to drive a motor bike yourself and you get to see the Dalat countryside in a unique way.
After freshening up after our tour, we walked down to the city centre to Restaurant Ichi. We wanted to get there just after opening as we tried to go the night before and got turned away as it was full. If you are a sushi fan and are in Dalat you definitely need to try Restaurant Ichi. I am a massive sushi fan so I was really excited when I read about the restaurant in our guide book describing it as a highly rated place to go. All the sushi was freshly made and we were sat right in front of the chefs so could see our meal being prepared. I ordered avocado maki so Rory could try some as he doesn't really like sushi and a spicy prawn one that was all mine! Rory also ordered a chicken katsu dish. The sushi was amazing! It was great it was made from scratch after order and definitely satisfied my sushi craving!
It's amazing how cold it gets at night in Dalat because of it being higher up. I was wearing my hoody at night here which wasn't what we were used to in Vietnam!
We only had two full days in Dalat and on our last day there we went to The Crazy House. It's a house built by a Vietnamese architect with unusual style. You are allowed to have a wander around the house and climb up and around all the different areas. The house was really busy the day we went so you had squeeze past all the other tourists on the small stairs and walk ways. You can actually stay over in the house at certain times throughout the year too.
After, we walked down to the lake in the middle of the city and rented a pedalo. It was fun trying to maneuver the pedalo as you could only go left or right. You couldn't just go straight forward, you had to constantly turn it left and right to try and keep it going somewhat straight. We peddled round the lake for an hour looking at the buildings around the lake. There wasn't a lot to do in Dalat so two days was enough time to spend here. After our pedalo outing we made sure we walked quickly back to our hotel as we could see there was a heavy rain storm about to start. The rain here just seems to come out of nowhere. The sky is clear then suddenly the clouds start to turn black and before you know it the thunders have opened!
Back at our hotel, just before we left to go and get food, two random boys just opened our room door and tried to come in. When they saw we were still in the room they immediately ran out and shut the door. We quickly opened the door to look out and saw they were the reception staff. They didn't speak much English so we've no idea why they tried to get in our room. Whilst we were out getting food we were paranoid the whole night thinking we were going to come back to our hotel and find all our stuff stolen. That incident was absolutely going on our Tripadvisor review.
We made our way to an Italian we had seen the other night but when we got there it was closed. Just past the Italian there was a place 13 Café that was open so we thought we would just go in there instead. The food was awful! Rory got a burger and the meat looked a bit dodgy and I ordered what I thought was a banh mi but wasn't great either. Although our meal wasn't good our night improved when we got back to our hotel and none of our stuff had been taken!! Hallelujah!
We made our way to an Italian we had seen the other night but when we got there it was closed. Just past the Italian there was a place 13 Café that was open so we thought we would just go in there instead. The food was awful! Rory got a burger and the meat looked a bit dodgy and I ordered what I thought was a banh mi but wasn't great either. Although our meal wasn't good our night improved when we got back to our hotel and none of our stuff had been taken!! Hallelujah!
During our short stay in Dalat we had a really great time. We had such an amazing experience on our motorbike tour and were so glad we had done that. Next we were off to our last stop in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City and couldn't wait to get there!
Recommendations -
Goc Ha Thanh - https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g293922-d4014029-Reviews-Goc_Ha_Thanh_Restaurant-Da_Lat_Lam_Dong_Province.html
Easy Rider Tours - http://www.easy-riders.net/
Restaurant Ichi - http://restaurant-ichi.business.site/
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