Dalat, Vietnam

After three days in Ho Chi Minh City, we took the bus to the mountain town of Dalat. You might notice by now, heading to cooler, mountainous areas has been a theme of our travels this hot season. Getting there took 7 hours. A nice thing about taking these trips in Southeast Asia is that someone else does the driving. Ron and I can appreciate that. The kids, however, don't particularly like being with so many other people and not being able to call a potty stop at a moment's notice. The weather was much cooler in Dalat. It felt like a mountain town. The French had taken down all the native forests at one time, and planted pine trees, so in some ways, it looked a little like Colorado.

Dalat is an agricultural area. They grow flowers, vegetables, fruit, and a lot of coffee, mostly in terraced gardens on the sides of the mountains. These were beautiful. It is cool enough there to grow strawberries, so we enjoyed fresh ones from the market and many strawberry shakes. They also grow avocados so we brought some home for guacamole.

On our second day there we took a tour into the countryside, where our guide brought us to see various family businesses (noodle making, basket making, rice wine making, mushroom growing, flower gardening...) We also hiked up to a hilltop for a beautiful view, and down a steep trail to see a waterfall. The next day we took an alpine slide down to another waterfall.

Another highlight was a trip to what the locals call the "crazy house." The house was built and is still being built by a local architect. You can book the rooms for night, but they would be a little spooky. Anyway, the kids enjoyed climbing around and exploring this place.

Of course, eating good food is always part of visiting a new place. We older ones tried several new Vietnamese dishes. For the youngest ones - western food is the desired treat at this point in the year.

We mixed a lot of things together on this trip: history, natural beauty, kid fun (the water park), rest, cool weather, exposure to local culture and good food. I think there was something for everyone.

Roseann