I ended up staying in Da Lat a bit longer than expected, but it was great. I like the town a lot, and on the day I was originally thinking of leaving, a friend from home showed up. I've been meeting plenty of people, but it is nice to see friends from home as well.
The first place we went was the Truc Lam pagoda. On the edge of town, right near the bus station, you can jump on a cable car which takes you to the pagoda. This ride was the first time since landing in Saigon (aside from one very late-night walk in Da Lat) that I have been away from the noise of streets. It was incredibly peaceful to ride through the forest and hear the birds sing.
Truc Lam is a working pagoda. I didn't meet the dress code (I was in shorts), but that only prohibited me from entering a few of the buildings. And, for the most part, I was entranced by the gardens and nerding out over all of the interesting plants. It is fun to go to a place where I hardly recognize anything. This one was the first to catch my eye, the yellow shrimp plant:
But there were all sorts of neat plants around:
We spent a while walking the gardens and around the lake and pagoda before taking the cable car back. There were also all sorts of burn scars around, some of them covering a large area. I thought that the burning nearby may have been exclusively related to agriculture, but it would seem that this area might be prone to wildfire in a different season. The forest reminds me a bit of loblolly pine forests back home that have been burned regularly.
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