First Impressions of Da Lat

Da Lat is wonderful. It is situated at about five thousand feet of elevation in the central highlands. It is cool up here, there are beautiful pine forests, good food, good coffee, and a nice big lake for morning runs.

Da Lat, historically, was an escape for the French from the heat of Saigon. I have heard it referred to as both le petit Paris (there is a cell tower in town shaped like the Eiffel tower) and the Seattle of Vietnam. At the time of my writing it feels much more like Seattle--it is in the low sixties and has been raining all day. But it is nice to be a bit cold after sweating the entire time I was in Saigon. 

Because of the climate here, different vegetables can be grown from elsewhere in the country, and it is, so far as I am aware, the only place in VN that produces wine. The food also seems to be a little bit different from Saigon. There are a lot of baked goods around, and Hubert told me they were known for their pastries and cakes. I stopped into a shop today for lunch and bought a few pastries: one filled with sausage, one with sausage and fruit, an egg tart, and a pineapple cake. All delightful.

It is also a hub for adventure traveling. There are lots of hiking, mountain biking, and canyoning trips. I tried to book a trek, but everyone else cancelled because of the cloudiness, and they talked me into a countryside tour on the back of a motorcycle instead. Canyoning seems to be the most popular variety of trip here. It involves hiking, rappelling, and sliding down canyons and waterfalls, and sounds like a blast, but I think it may be too cold this time of year. One of the folks I was chatting with this morning went yesterday and said it was fairly cold even in dry weather and might be just miserable in the rain.

This town is much more my style. I had a nice run this morning around Xuan Huong lake and spent much of the rest of the day chatting with folks at the hostel and drinking excellent local coffee in cafes. A cafe that I stopped in today had by far the best milk coffee I've had. Milk coffee is extremely strong coffee dripped over condensed milk, and is available at every cafe. The options are typically black coffee, milk coffee, and fresh milk coffee. This particular milk coffee was so rich it was almost too much, like really thick hot chocolate.