February 25, 2012

We woke up early Wednesday morning to get a taxi to the airport, and it was pouring down rain with thunder! Once we checked in we had to take a bus and from the bus we had to walk to the plane - both times in the rain. The very formal flight attendant in her traditional dress, walked with us with an umbrella, but we still got pretty wet. Our flight was only 50 minutes and when we arrived there was a man with our name on a sign waiting for us. He drove us about 45 minutes to our hotel - The Saigon Da Lat Hotel.

It's a beautiful hotel, very near the center of town. Even though Da Lat only has around 200,000 people, they all ride motorbikes! We walked into town and even though we walked on the sidewalk, we almost got hit several times. Our hotel is right across the street from the Moulon Rouge restaurant and there's even an Eiffel Tower near the lake. The French were here many years ago to escape the heat of Saigon. When they fled they left behind their holiday homes plus the flavor of France.

This was a landmark in town.

We had lunch here the first day and ordered a seafood hot pot.

Our hotel has a beautiful restaurant called the Orchid and we got all dressed up for dinner the first night and even though it was a huge place, we were the only ones there! It was great food, but a little weird getting waited on alone!

Thursday we had a guided tour with Hieu our guide and a driver named Sunny. He drove us to a cable-car station and we rode up to the Truc Lam Zen Monastery. The flower gardens were beautiful and we got to see a gold Buddha where monks and local people came to pray.

Then we walked down to Tuyen Lam lake and took a boat the other side of the lake where we were met by an elephant who took us for a ride.

This poor old guy (or gal) was probably 100 years old! The ride took us about 1/2 an hour because he stopped along the way to eat several tree limbs!

We got back on the boat and rode to the Datania Falls where we hopped on what they call a roller coaster. It's a series of tracks up and down and around where you control your speed with a lever on the front. It's kind of hard to explain, but it was really fun.

The falls were spectacular and we chose the perfect day for our tour because it was cool and clear all day.

Da Lat used to be a big hunting territory in the 1950s with wild boar, dear, panthers, tigers and elephants. But they were pretty good hunters, because only taxidermied animals are left. During the Vietnam War, Da Lat was a safe haven for fighting and the South Vietnamese officials were relaxing here in their villas and their enemy the Viet Cong were doing the same thing not far from here also in villas.

Our hotel had a sign which read "Happy Hour 4:00-6:00 with 2 for 1 prices on drinks." So after showering off the smell of our elephant ride, we decided to check it out. The bar was stunning with bar stools surrounding an elevated area with bottle after bottle of liquor. Again, the bar was completely empty - we were the only ones there! We told the bartender we wanted the happy hour special of 2 for 1 and he just looked at us. We didn't remember the Vietnamese for Happy Hour but we did try to convey that we wanted 2 vodka and tonics for the price of 1. He had to call someone, then poured us 2 glasses of vodka. Ron said "where's the tonic?" He got all confused, called someone again, left the bar for about 10 minutes and produced a can of tonic. After about 1/2 hour we tried to order 2 more vodka and tonics. This time his boss appeared and gave us 1 more glass of vodka. He said it was after 6:00 and could only give us 1 at full price and not tonic. It was a very strange exchange of cultures, but we finally convinced him that we were there before 6:00 and we got out second drink with tonic!

We decided instead of going to the same restaurant in our hotel that we'd walk across the street to the Moulon Rouge where we had lunch the day before. We saw through the window that there were several people inside but when we entered, the hostess said "I'm sorry, the restaurant is too noisy" and wouldn't let us in. We're not sure she meant "noisy" but we left and went back to our hotel where we were the only ones in the restaurant again! And our waiter was the bartender from the upstairs bar!

Friday our flight didn't leave until 4:00 so in the morning we decided to walk to the lake. It's a banana shaped lake called Xuân Húóng, and even though it took us a while to get there, it was beautiful. We passed the Minh Tam flower gardens which is where all of the flowers come from that are shipped to Saigon for Tet.  And there was a spectacular golf course being constructed right across the lake.

Our return flight was on a much bigger plane and it only took 35 minutes to arrive back "home."