Hiking in the mountains

Trip Start May 06, 2007
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149
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Trip End Jul 24, 2008


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Flag of Vietnam  ,
Sunday, May 25, 2008

In Dalat, I decided to skip the seemingly requisite motorbike tour of the countryside and instead signed up for a day-hike through the nearby coffee plantations.  It was definitely the right choice for me.  I've had more than my fill of the hop-on, hop-off tour and was itching to do some hiking since it had been awhile.  There ended up being four of us on the hike, with two guides in tow.  We started heading down the mountain until we reached an incredibly scary bridge that felt like it was going to fall apart as I was crossing it.  Just as my knees had stopped shaking as we made our way through a coffee plantation, we reached a second bridge that was in even worse shape than the first.  Our guide assured us that this was the last one.  After about 5 hours of hiking, with a stop for lunch, we reached Tiger Falls, the endpoint of our trek.  We made great timing because in the car headed back to town the sky opened up and let the rain out.  Thankfully we stayed completely dry (well, except for the fact that we were all still drenched with sweat).

Dalat is where most of the coffee in Vietnam is grown.  Those who drink coffee said that it is quite good, but I didn't try any during my time there.  In addition to coffee, most of the flowers and vegetables in Vietnam come from the Central Highlands, some from the areas around Dalat.  The fruit mostly comes from the Mekong Delta.  In the center of Dalat there's a massive market full of just about everything you could want to buy, edible and non-edible.  I had lunch at a great, cheap vegetarian food stall on the second floor of the market.  Com Chay, or vegetarian food, is actually quite popular in Vietnam because of their strong Buddhist traditions.  Every city has a handful of vegetarian restaurants specializing in mock-meats.  Unfortunately this specialty means that the meals at the vegetarian restaurants are mostly wheat gluten, tvp, tofu, and other soy products, occasionally accented by vegetables, but rarely with vegetables as the focus.  Oh well, at least I know there's no meat in it.  At night the market turns into the place to be in town, with vendors of all sorts set up outside, though there seemed to be a really large percentage of stands specializing in winter coats.  The temperature in Dalat is a bit cooler than the rest of Vietnam, but definitely not winter coat whether at this time of year.  I did pull out my hooded sweatshirt in the evenings, but looked like I was dressed for the beach compared with the way the Vietnamese were dressed.

I really enjoyed my time in Dalat.  It was very relaxed and while a definite part of the backpacker trail in Vietnam, was much less touristy than the other places I've visited.  The locals also seemed less affected by the tourists than in some of the other towns.  Here it was common for people to just say hello as I was walking by without trying to sell me something.  It took me a little bit to get used to that, but was a rather refreshing change.  But after a couple of days in the mountains, it was time to take my motion-sickness medicine and board the bus back to the coast.
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Comments

starlagurl
starlagurl on May 28, 2008 at 03:12PM

What no coffee?
That's a shame... I would like to know what it tasted like. I'm a coffee addict

Louise Brown
TravelPod Community Manager

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