Here I am in a sea-themed room in the Crazy House. Crazy indeed.
D is for Dalat. And for Disappointment. We first read about Dalat back in 2001 in anticipation of our first trip to Vietnam. At an elevation of nearly 5,000 feet it’s a colonial hill-town, first settled by the French in the early 20th century as a place to escape the heat of Saigon. Studded with old French villas and favored with a spring-like climate, with lots of opportunities for adventure tourism in the area, it sounded like someplace we would really like.
As we had to make choices of where to go during our 2001 vacation, it got struck from the list. Then we came back in 2014 … and it got struck again. This time I was determined to make it to Dalat. The result? Meh… More quirk than fabulous.
One of the joys of traveling in Southeast Asia is getting your laundry done. This lovely woman did maybe a week’s worth of laundry for us for a total of about $6.50. And folded it way better than I ever could.
Speaking of quirky, how do you like this little water feature in a park by the train station?
I was expecting some of the beauty of Hanoi and Hoi An, and we just never found it. There was some colonial architecture sprinkled around, but what there was was always surrounded by distinctly inferior stuff. The morning and evening temperatures were quite pleasant, but in mid-day it was just too hot to really enjoy being out and about. And 20+ years after we first anticipated coming here – with age and bad knees inhibiting us – we were way less interested in climbing around in canyons and so on.
Oh, and one other strike against Dalat. We made a rookie mistake and took a nice hotel but that was too far from the center of the city to just hang out in the tourist zone. It was about a 50-minute walk from our hotel to what seems as though it was the city center and while that’s doable, you don’t want to do it very often. On the other hand taking a taxi – or actually Grab, the Uber-equivalent here – was ridiculously cheap and easy, maybe $2.25 or so for the ride. I should add that while the hotel was nice enough, it was quirky. Just weird stuff about how the room was designed and how the grounds were nice but had no place to sit. Just kind of quirky.
Ok then, if it’s hotter than you expect, you’re further away from things than you want to be, and it’s just not that pretty a place, what do you do in Dalat? We found a few things. First up, you have to see the Crazy House. Yup, that’s what it’s called, and it is very aptly named. It’s crazy. I can describe it no better than to just quote Lonely Planet. “Imagine sculptured rooms connected by superslim bridges rising out of a tangle of concrete greenery, an excess of cascading lava-flow-like shapes, wild colors, spiderweb windows, and an almost organic quality to it all, with the swooping handrails resembling jungle vines. Think of Gaudí and Tolkien dropping acid together and designing their own version of Disneyland.” Definitely raising the quirk factor for Dalat.
Atop one of the crazy winding slim bridges with a couple new friends
That pretty much sums it up. The book describes it as a private home, but these days it seems to be a small one-star hotel. The woman who designed it over a number of years has a PhD in architecture and is the daughter of the second president of Vietnam, the guy who succeeded Ho Chi Minh. We were distinctly skeptical about what we would experience there, but we both loved it. Another example that when you think perhaps you’ve seen it all, you haven’t. And a crazy way to spend an hour or so.
Then there was this cog train that takes you about 30 minutes out to a town called Trai Mat. There are only two reasons to go to Trai Mat: to ride the train, because it’s a tourist attraction (described in the English translation at the train station as a “fake antique” car), and to see the Linh Phuoc Pagoda. The train ride itself was fun – on narrow tracks with buildings and farms built right up along the tracks. And then the pagoda was … quirky. Extravagantly colored tiles everywhere, a dragon made from more than 10,000 beer bottles, a seven-story pagoda that you climb to the top of to see … not very much.
The dragon made of 10,000 beer bottles. Quirky, right?
That was about it for sights. Of course our favorite thing to do in a city is to scope out the food scene. This was seriously hit or miss. Lunch at the hotel on arrival, when we discovered how far we were from the city center where we thought we’d find nicer restaurants, was just awful. A Mexican restaurant where we had dinner one night that was the second-highest rated restaurant on Trip Advisor was worse, way worse. Like the worst guacamole I’ve ever had. Just terrible.
I don’t think I’ve ever had pizza this good outside of Naples
The team at Gemination Eatery & Bar
Ah, but then there were some real finds. Like Primavera, a small Italian restaurant run by a real Italian. We stopped for lunch and Mark decided to splurge on a pizza. The second the waiter brought it out and I smelled it and saw it I said out loud “Oh my God, that’s the real thing!” It was a true Neapolitan pizza. We chatted a bit with the owner/chef who talked about getting the crust exactly like they do in Naples. So the next day we went back and both got pizzas. I can spend weeks in Italy without splurging on a pizza, but this was worth it.
And we found what has to be one of the great bar/restaurants in all of Vietnam, a place called Gemination Eatery & Bar. Just a very cool space, well designed, and bartenders who seriously knew what they were doing. As in knew the difference between a Manhattan and a Perfect Manhattan without being prompted. Even knew the proper garnish! The first night we just stopped for drinks, but with every round they brought us some tasty little bite of something-or-other. So the next night we went for drinks and dinner and were thrilled with the food. A place that good, that we loved – you just know it’ll be out of business too soon.
So yeah, Dalat was a disappointment. But D doesn’t stand for Disaster – that would be way too much. Just not as exciting or pretty as I’d long hoped. I will, however, dream about that pizza for a long time. Now get ready for a lot of pictures of the Crazy House.
The Crazy House
A view inside one of the rooms at the Crazy House hotel. It’s only a one-star hotel and I’m pretty sure the rooms didn’t have en suite bathrooms. On top of that, of course, I’m not sure how I’d feel staying in a room with tourists poking their heads in all the time.
Very weird architecture
Crazy winding stairs connecting various spaces
Weird designs on the exterior of one of the buildings
Mark outside one of the first buildings we saw in the complex. It got weirder and weirder.
These narrow, winding stairs are in no way child-friendly
One last picture of me on the stairs of the Crazy House. Gaudí must be in a jealous rage.
Here I am at our Italian lunch spot with a plate of tagliata. That’s before I discovered the pizza.
And that was my little friend for lunch
Our wonderful bartender at Gemination. He could be working at any bar in Manhattan.
Our “fake antique” train to Trai Mat
Korean ladies in a tour group on the train. We were always amused at how insistent so many women here are about keeping their skin completely covered and protected from the sun. You can see the woman near the window wearing gloves. And it was 80 degrees!
Dalat is a major agricultural area for Vietnam. And oddly it seems as though they grow nearly all their produce inside these plastic buildings.
A view inside one of the production areas. The train was just that close to these and many other buildings.
The pagoda. We climbed to the top just because we were afraid we would miss something if we didn’t. We wouldn’t have.
An indication that we were getting close to the pagoda
There was tons of this stuff there
And more pagoda art
I look as though I would fit right in with these colors
As we were walking to the pagoda we walked by this guy working on a backhoe and I thought “Now that’s what Mark’s dad would want to see here!”
