Zum Wilden Mann

The area round Da Lat once was the territory of hill tribes, one of them the Lat, who gave the town it's name. Nowadays it is hard to find traces of these people. The Vietnamese came in only late, after the town was founded only in 1907. The French colonialists estimated the comparatively cool climate and the agricultural chances. Today Da Lat produces much of the vegetables and flowers as well as the excellent coffee for Vietnam. It attracts many tourists, especially Vietnamese, who seek relief from the temperatures during the hot season. Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam, had his summer residence here.

The drive from Nha Trang to Da Lat lead through mountains without towns or even villages, through foggy rain-forests with waterfalls. It would have been fascinating to stay there, but there is not even a humble guesthouse. Some 50km before Da Lat the rainforest gave way to dry pine tree forests (a very north-european sight) and then to agricultural landscape.

Entering Da Lat was a disappointment after all the euphemistic descriptions in our travel guide-books. The center is not nice, to be polite, the artificial lake lacks any beauty. Only later on we found that some of the outskirts of town have preserved some of it's original charm. Plus : the Crazy house is a real highlight.

The nightmarket offers very tasty and reasonably priced food. Chicken roasted on a clay stove and sea-food hot-pot were our favourites.

The Hang Nga house, among foreigners better known as 'Crazy house' is a complex of buildings that serve as art gallery, guesthouse, shop, cafe and tourist attraction at the same time.
Creator Dang Viet Nga called "Hang Nga" is the daughter of Truong Chinh, Vietnam's second-ranked leader (after Ho Chi Minh). She has a degree in architecture and quotes Gaudi as one source of inspiration.
Local authorities have opposed her work for a long time. We see a clear parallel to the work of the Austrian artist F. Hundertwasser.
Construction of the buildings is still going on.

The Da Lat railway station in Art Deco style opened in 1938. It conveys some colonial charme and features a steam locomotive that you can climb into - a feast for every railway enthusiast.

The summer residence of Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam.

The Flower park is one of the major attractions of the town.

Artichokes are one of the major products. Less used as a vegetable, they are sold as medicine in various forms all over town.

This pagoda below was among the few sites in Da Lat that suffered in the Vietnam/American war. But the dragon like all of the dragons in Vietnam seems to enjoy life.
We saw several motorbikes parked beneath a saint, though there was enough space elswhere. We assume, that the owner hopes for the blessings of a saint to survive the daily struggle on the roads.

The landscape around Da Lat with greenhouses and coffee-plantations.

Vietnam grows excellent coffee AND knows how to prepare it - for us the best coffee in the world besides the Italian one. And the countless cosy cafes prove, that the Vietnamese value their coffee, too.
The same goes, though less known, for cocoa. Drinking a chocolate in Da Lat, you'll understand why the plant was holy to the Aztecs.

A snotty version of coffee is the Kopi Luwak - in Da Lat marketed as 'weasel coffee'. The coffee fruits are eaten by asian palm civets and the half-fermented beans are excreted, then collected, cleaned and processed like other coffee. Originally in Indonesia the excrements of free roaming civets were used, which made the coffee extremely expensive. Round Da Lat they keep the animals in small cages, which makes the coffee a bit less costly. but it's a torment to the animals.

The elephant falls run over interesting basalt-formations with the typical hexagonal form. Alas the place was full of litter, probably because the entrance is free.
Rice spirits are common in the area, some of the better, aged quality are really excellent. Often they are 'enriched' by snakes.

The silk factory shows every step of the production of silk, from eggs over caterpillars to spinning of the silk and weaving it into delicate fabrics, that are enriched by embroidery. The womans work you see here, is to thread the silk of the cocoons onto machines. The cooked silkworms serve as a tasty snack. A real hard work in a malodorous hall.

The Truc Lam monastery in contrast has fragrances of many flowers, most of them familiar to European gardens. A peaceful place with a beautiful lake nearby.

Datanla Falls are quite an experience, something between raw nature and amusement park. There are several falls on several levels, that can be reached on foot or different types of ropeways and elevators.
On the way up we preferred the ropeway. One of the guys of the group fom HCMC asked us, if he could take a foto of his girlfriend and us. In return we made a foto of them.

It is the park that makes the Minh Tam Hotel special : Hundreds of species of flowers grow here; Besides well known roses, hortensias and the like one can find rare plants of outstanding beauty.
Opposite the hotel is one of the finest restaurants in town, the Da Lat Xua (Ancient Da Lat). It has a kind of hill-tribe museum and you can dine in a traditional long-house (but there are modern roomms, too.

The Da Lat Xua restaurant has a small, but interesting hill-tribe museum and a modern look-out with great views over the outskirts of town. The menu has some unusual venison dishes. After dinner one can relax in the karaoke-bar with a red wine from the area (quite good !), that is served with a dried salty fruit.

The device on the left below is a simple destiller. The rice-wine is cooked in the pot and the destillate gathers and cools in the 'flag'. On the right a kind of xylophone, only with stones instead of wood, thus a lithophone.

When we studied the menu, we thought it very wise of a wandering chicken to leave a hot pot as fast as it could, but that would have left our stomachs empty.
But it turned out that this dish is chicken with 'wanderer leaves', a kind of vegetable.