Wednesday, March 19, 2008

February 02-04, 2008: Da Lat

We arrived really late (early) in Da Lat, and stayed in a clean, but weird place at the bus arrival point. The next morning we set out on a mission to find a different place. We walked all around and eventually met the nicest, most helpful person we'd meet in the whole country--a lady that spoke very good English and was walking her little poodle..... she had lived in the Bay Area for 10 some years. She walked with us and we parted ways as we made a loop, unexpectedly, back to where we began; but before we arrived, we found a sweet room to stay at. Da Lat is known as the Paris of Vietnam, and they even have a mini Eiffel Radio Tower. I enjoyed the city a lot, even though there's still a love of crazy traffic that stops for no one, constant honking and crowds of tourists and locals. We found some serenity at the waterfalls out of town (equipped with a sort of 'do it yourself' roller coaster), and checked out the huge market that's in the middle of town in a huge round-a-bout. There were beautiful sites above the city that we found in search of the gondolas we never saw. And in the nice park in center of town you could see the glaring contrast between the very lowest classes and the upper classes/tourist living areas. It's a really nice city.


Photos and copyright: Jeremy Hohengarten 2008
For editorial use only.

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