September 27, Da Lat, Vietnam
We had only one full day in Da Lat and we certainly made the most of it. We strolled through a large display garden, looked through the King’s palace, climbed around a Crazy House, and rode a train to a pagoda. We even had a bit of downtime sprinkled in there.
We weren’t sure when our next laundry opportunity would be so we had done hand washing the night before. Things were still pretty damp but had lost enough moisture that we switched to hanging things in the open closet to hopefully take advantage of more air circulation.
The buffet breakfast was very impressive, and there were many more people than in our ago Chi Minh City hotel. It wasn’t difficult to find enough to eat.
Lang hoa Van Thanh
We left the hotel not long after breakfast and went to Lang hoa Van Thanh, a show garden that also sells plants. If you’ve been to the tulip festival in the Skagit Valley, you have an idea of what the first room looked like. Most of the display was various colors of impatiens with other flowers thrown in here and there.
We then moved on to various greenhouses of vegetables. Most of what we saw were tomatoes and squash, but there were also strawberries and lettuce. The tomatoes were trained up on twine going up about ten feet high. This seemed interesting, but the winter squash was also strung this way, and then was strung horizontally at the top. It was strange to see the squash hanging in the middle of the air.
As we wandered from section to section, we came upon other show gardens. One was outdoors with a mound in the middle you could go up. Another had a tunnel with origami cranes hung at the top and orchids lining the outside of the tunnel.
While we were in another outdoor garden, we heard a bee. Looking for it, I was surprised to see something about an inch long and with blue hues. I later asked Bao about them, and he said they are more common in North Vietnam but are larger in Da Lat because there is more food available with all the agriculture.
When we were on the way to the gardens, Bao mentioned that we would head to lunch afterward. However, including sitting down and relaxing at the end, we were done within an hour and a half, wondering if previous tour groups would take much more time than we did. Bao quickly pivoted and suggested that we go to the Bao Dai Summer Palace and Crazy House before going to lunch, then take the tourist train to the Linh Phuoc Pagoda. So that was the plan.
Bao Dai Summer Palace
This summer palace was one of several palaces the king Bao Dai would go to, but this one is the most popular for tourists.
Unlike other museums we’ve been to, this one had everyone put on shoe covers. Unsurprisingly, we saw a lot of kids sliding on the wood floors near the entrance.
This palace isn’t huge, and while the bedrooms are large, they’re not larger than you would find in a modern house. You see a lot of Art Deco influences in the architecture, decorations, and furniture.
There were several balconies with great views, and while there was a formal garden, the rest of the grounds were less formal.
Crazy House
No matter what kind of imagination you use to try to picture what Crazy House would look like, it’s even more so. Buildings varied from cartoonish representations of conventional houses to Seuss-like blobs of buildings. Wild staircases and walkways go in all directions, including crossing each other, and the handrails are stylized vines.
The building with the most distinct style looked like you were in an aquarium. The back side of that building had giant red claw-like hands that almost looked like crabs.
Crazy House also acts as a hotel, with rooms scattered throughout the property. During the hours when the public can wander through the property, the rooms are empty and you can look inside. The rooms are decorated in the same wild style as the rest of Crazy House.
After we all wandered around for quite a while and took a lot of photos, we walked down the street for lunch. Bao ordered what looked like a lot of food, so much so that we had to get creative to fit everything on the tables. It was all great, and we went through a lot more than I expected.
Downtime
After lunch, we all decided to walk back to the hotel so we could relax for a couple of hours before the afternoon’s activities.
Melody and I decided to go to the top floor and grab some ice cream from the café. We placed our order and sat down, but were wondering why it was taking so long, but when they were ready, we understood. They were decorated with toasted coconut chips, a flower, and a small sprig of rosemary.
We then went back to the room for a bit longer before heading down to the lobby.
Dalat Railway Station
A couple of our group decided to do other things in the city, so the rest of us boarded our bus to go to the Dalat railway station. It also has Art Deco influences, but you still immediately know it’s a train station when you first see it.
The train we were taking was waiting on the tracks. Several people were taking photos standing on a train car platform which was there for that purpose. It and the car next to it were not attached to the train and were visibly different.
On another set of tracks was another train, but the cars were split up into different cafés. Very clever! The engine on the café train looked much more like what we would think of as a train engine, but the one pulling our train was very boxy.
We found our seats and the train started leaving the station. The ride was quieter and smoother than I would have thought for a tourist train that only goes between two stations. We had great views and saw many greenhouses on both the hills and the flatlands.
At one point the train slowed for no apparent reason and one of the employees standing on the platform between the cars jumped off and ran towards the engine. We were quickly underway at full speed with no explanation of what had happened.
Once we made it to the Trai Mat Station, we all got off and started walking down the street towards the pagoda.
Linc Phuoc Pagoda
After a short walk, we saw a gateway with a Buddha and walked through it. We saw an ornate spire-shaped pagoda, but that was only the beginning.
The main pagoda almost looks like a castle, but is extremely ornate, both in architecture and decoration. We went inside, took off our shoes, and started exploring. We found a spiral staircase with a porcelain handrail and went up to a series of walkways where we could examine the building from the outside. We could also look across the parking lot to the spire-shaped pagoda and a separate building with a tall Buddha.
Having explored the castle-shaped pagoda, we went to the spire-shaped one. There was a large bell that people were ringing. We took off our shoes again to go up the tight spiral staircase to look at the bell from the top.
The third building is rectangular but is not by any means plain. We were able to go up to the second floor to a huge room that had two levels of mezzanines around it, with a tall Buddha at the far end. There were gold-colored statues lining the main floor, and the whole space was roughly shaped like a triangle.
We then went across a walkway to the giant Buddha we saw from the ground. It was protected in a room that accommodated its tall size but was open on the front.
After we were done comparing notes on various ornate details, our bus picked us up and we went back to the hotel. Bao had asked if the group wanted to eat dinner together, but everyone was so tired that we decided to split up. We compared notes on what we wanted to do, and it almost sounded like we were all going to do the same thing.
Once the bus arrived at the hotel, Melody and I went to a mall that had a large grocery store. We found the food court and picked up a banh mi and a couple of onigiri, the whole thing costing us less than $2. After we finished, we picked up a few items from the store, including a package of cream puffs for dessert. It was back to the room where we made quick work of our dessert.
