A rainy day! Luckily, we got out and got some excercise early. Of course, none of us could beat Kylie and Beth up in the morning - they got up early to do the 7km walk around the little man made lake here. After breakfast? We all did the same loop!
Dalat has been described as the Paris of Vietnam, or even "just like Oakville" (lol), but I would describe it more like Niagara Falls, or even Mt Abu in India. Dalat is a honeymoon destination for Vietnamese, and it shows. There are plenty of cheesy things to do (pedal powered lake swans anyone? Hello? Flower garden exhibit? Yeah... How about checking out the Crazy House?) and being 1500 meters above sea level it has quite moderate temperatures (it was maybe 24 degrees today).
It is known for its night market, which unfortunately we missed both nights because of the heavy rains. Dalat is really the breadbasket of Vietnam, as the surrounding area provides a ton of vegetables and fruits that aren't really grown anywhere else. Their fruit and vegetable markets look more like our produce sections back home.
Back to our walk, at one stop we became the ones being photographed as a literal mob came up and took pictures of the 8 Gaijinzilla!
We managed to miss the flower garden and the swans, as well as the horse ride and a dozen other things, but we did decide to walk up the hill to the Crazy House.
The crazy house was built by one of the children of a former president of Vietnam. I'm not sure where she studied architecture (Moscow) or what she had in mind, but this place is very weird. It's actually a 10 room hotel and her principal residence surrounded by weird concrete walkways and odd decorations.
The place was packed, so maybe she did know what she was doing. I do find a recurring trend here in Vietnam - nothing seems to be 100% complete. Part of the facade of one of the buildings was a skeleton of rebar and supporting brick, while they've started another project elsewhere onsite. Dalat is no different - there are buildings that are 80-90% complete everywhere you go.
Other than the very cool market area and perhaps the night market, the whole town seems like a giant government project where a whack of money was poured into the area, but nobody followed up to see how the project was going.
We spent a few hours after lunch walking the streets, ending up in several markets where we bought and sampled a ton of different snacks. I always like the real Vietnamese local markets - they are full of activity all through the day and really show how hard working the everyday people are here.
We chilled out in the late afternoon, getting together for some snacks, music and beer while the girls spent 3 hours filming a horror movie throughout the hotel. After dinner we had s viewing of the movie... It was so scary, I'm not sure I will be able to zzzzz...zzzz....zzzzz. ....zzzzz
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