Seeing all that Dalat has to offer.....
Trip Start
Oct 28, 2007
1
12
33
Trip End
Nov 21, 2007
Dalat,
Vietnam
Monday, November 5, 2007
We started with a cable car ride over the hills of Dalat, which overlooked Paradise Lake (wow). The country is lined with green from either forrests or planted vegetables. Dalat is known for its asparagus, gourmet lettuce and coffee. The cable car ride was just awesome and gave us a birds eye view of the billion dong views. A new housing development is underway. You can buy a 200 sqm block for $400,000US (that is something like 7 billion vietnam dong!!).
Following the cable car ride, we went to the Phenn falls - a wonderful waterfall. We enjoyed an elephant ride, we walked behind and in front of the waterfalls and discovered a little more of the jungle type landscape that also dots in and out of Dalat.
Next, we visited the "chicken village". Towns all have their big versions of something, whether it be the apple, the pineapple or the prawn.....the chicken village has a giant chicken. Basically, this is one of the 3 local tribes and known for growing coffee and weaving silks.
Just before lunch we visited the local train station. There are 2 trains to look at but only 1 travels anywhere and that's just 7km. The story goes that during the Vietnam war, an American bomb was dropped on the railway and destroyed the line...apparently Dalat copes without the line for now (but we think it's being rebuilt by 2010).
Lunch was great!
After lunch we visited the Crazy House. John thought it was the local mental asylum.....no. It's a house built by the daughter of the Prime Minister after Ho Chi Minh. The daughter was sent to Russia to learn architecture. When she returned, she spent billions of the local currency building a house which looks "crazy". It kind of looks like a tree with branches winding about it and each room is themed. Cannot explain very well so wait until we upload some photos and you'll get the idea! We just thought it was cool.
Next stop was the hand embroidary emporium. Exquisite pictures that are hand embrodiared and look just like paintings. Quite bizarr because no-one seems to buy anything but it appears to cost a fortune to maintain. Who knows.
Final stop of the day was the Valley of Love. Great views of a spectacular valley but otherwise quite strange. It would appear to be a theme park which hasn't been maintained.....with the them of love (love seats and romantic sculptures) but there there are vespers and jeeps dotted around the place...no idea what the connection is.
Home at 4pm. We changed into warm clothes (probably only about 15 degrees now) and walked around the town. We bought an alarm clock and artichoke tea (!) along with munchies for tomorrow's bus ride. We then ate a street stall, with a beer for $3.75 all up, before finding our first "beer hoi" (a fresh beer stand on the side of the road).....
Very early to bed tonight....as it's now 7.30pm!
