Like generations before him, our intrepid editor escapes Saigon for the cool mountain air and the best produce Vietnam has to offer
“Oh wow, I had no idea how handsome he was!” says my wife, admiring a large black and white portrait of a young Alexandre Yersin hanging on the wall inside the front gate of the Madame de Da Lat Museum, once the summer house of the late Madam Nhu, the controversial de facto First Lady of South Vietnam during the war.
I turn to see what she’s talking about and find it hard to disagree. Yersin’s piercing eyes and striking good looks fix me to the spot and immediately conjure up feelings of envy toward the celebrated man despite his being dead for more than 80 years.
“Damn, smart and good looking,” I reply, trying to conceal my feelings of inadequacy, before continuing. “Shall we see how much it is to enter?”
We’re in Đà Lạt in Vietnam’s central highlands around 300 km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City for a short three-night stay to escape the heat of Vietnam’s biggest city, but also to fill our lungs with fresh alpine air and our bellies with some of the best produce Vietnam has to offer.
In fact, we’re doing exactly what generations of people have done before us for the past century and a bit – escape Saigon – which has been made possible partly due to Yersin himself who, according to many accounts, had a hand in choosing the site Đà Lạt was founded on.
And I tell you what, if it’s true, he made a pretty good choice.
Đà Lạt sits at an elevation of 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) which is about 1,481 metres higher than where I live in Ho Chi Minh City. It’s a height that means in the early mornings and late afternoons it has me reaching for my cardigan that typically resides at the bottom of my wardrobe for 51-and-a-half weeks of the year.
The weather is a sensational 26°C (79°F) so scooting around under the brilliant noonday sun I can still wear a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, like I do on our scenic drive to the breathtaking Pongour Falls around 50km southwest of Đà Lạt. While in the evening, I can get away with adding just one layer on top, as I do later back in town for dinner at MotoLaurie, an establishment that holds the quirky distinction of being part motorbike rental and repair shop and part cafe and bistro, but happens to serve up some of the best comfort food I’ve had in Vietnam, including a lamb burger that in my eyes looks every bit as majestic when it arrives at my table as the waterfalls from which we’ve just returned.
Of course, our indefatigable Swiss-Frenchman, Yersin, already knew this about the coordinates for the future town that would one day become known as the City of Eternal Spring, a nickname among a list of others a Google search spits out at me as I write this, including the non-poetic No Traffic Lights City, even though Đà Lạt actually installed its first ever set of traffic lights back in 2021. At any rate, it’s another indicator of the city’s recent dynamic growth.
Despite his brilliance, however, I highly doubt Yersin would’ve also predicted that in 2024, an Australian with an IQ more comparable to Đà Lạt’s overnight temperatures would be sitting in this very spot murdering a burger made with imported lamb topped with a mix of local organic salad greens on a deliciously chewy bread bun and washing it down with an American west coast pale ale brewed in Vietnam.
Yersin’s pioneering efforts all those years ago have meant that everyone from Saigon’s top brass and its elites during his time through to plebs like me in our time, have been blessed with a destination to get away from it all so close to home, hence why we’re standing outside Madame Nhu’s impressive Modernist holiday digs. We’re here in the hope it offers us a window into how the other half lived through Vietnam’s most tumultuous of times. It’s the kind of residence perched on a hill with a view where I imagine boozy soirees took place when she was in town on freshly clipped lawns and the poppy tunes of the likes of the iconic CBC Band and Phương Tâm played on an old 45 record player sliced through the brisk night air before wafting down through the valleys below. My thoughts then shift to wondering if she and Yersin ever crossed paths and what they would’ve said to each other, in French of course, if they had.
Because Đà Lạt fans out over the hillsides, the streets are narrow, winding and undulating with some of the most confusing intersections known to man and Google, which sends its maps app into a tailspin every time I change direction or make a U-turn on my rented motorbike. There’s even a bamboozling three-way intersection I come across where none of the lanes indicate who has the right of way or which line one should take. And to top it off there’s a topiary in the middle of it that creates the most perfect of blind spots, so I err on the side of safety and stay my course which inconveniently sends us in a direction other than our intended one.
But that’s fine because the views are sublime and another loop around the picturesque lake down in the centre of town never hurt anybody. In some ways Đà Lạt reminds me of the quaint villages in the mountainous regions of Japan where small multi-story dwellings butt up against narrow streets out front while any remaining space out back appears to be reserved specially for growing fruits and veggies either for personal or commercial use.
After all, this is Vietnam’s salad bowl where everyone seems to be involved in farming in one form or another somewhere along the supply chain, which is great for the local economy, at least from this tourist’s perspective.
But it hasn’t come without a cost.
Just about every sweeping turn we make on the outskirts of the city reveals another valley or hillside taken over by greenhouses of an industrial scale like I’ve never seen before. This is perhaps best exemplified at the popular Xóm Lèo lookout less than 10km out of town where small coffee shops and barbecue joints cling to the surrounding hillside offering uninterrupted views of plastic sheeting reflecting intense rays of sunlight that I need to shield from my eyes. I guess that’s why no one else is here at this time. Perhaps it’s nicer at night when the valley glows after the lights under the plastic are switched on for the plants, but by then, this old codger is tucking into a chicken hotpot and knocking the tops off a couple of Saigon Specials a few doors down from our hotel, followed soon after by bed.
Even further out of town, we abort our attempt to visit the popular Lang Biang Mountain – the area’s highest point – and turn instead in the completely opposite direction, anything to avoid the tour buses and dump trucks, in search of better and safer roads. Before long we’re quite literally headed for the hills far beyond Ankroet Dam, through the small village of Đa Nghịt and its coffee plantations until the tarmac runs out and the tapping on my shoulder from my concerned wife riding pillion becomes impossible to ignore.
By my calculations we’re just shy of what I assume to be the farming community of Kil Kout where escarpment-like sections have been carved out of the hillsides to form level ground for the erection of greenhouses and at this point, the cynic in me has me questioning the impact it’s having on the environment and wondering just how sustainable the practice is.
Recent landslides also pose a concern for our safety so I keep on the alert for any tumbling boulders that may take us out. It’s perhaps fanciful thinking given I won’t be able to do anything to avoid tons of rock and earth should it happen to come down. It’s just one of those things in me I guess, where I’d prefer to know what’s coming so I can at least make an attempt at a remote chance of survival.
And in places there seems to have been attempts to shore up hillsides with even more plastic sheeting, especially on farms where some greenhouses literally find themselves on the precipice and look in danger of ending up a tangled mess at the bottom of the hill come the next deluge of rain.
While the Đà Lạt “brand” has been carefully crafted around organics and sustainable farming, I’m now not entirely sure how sustainable it is to farm this way when it appears mountains are being moved – quite literally – so that I can order a side of healthy organic greens at my favourite restaurant in Saigon and feel good about it.
Nevertheless, it’s still stunning country and I can smell positivity in the air that pairs well with the beaming smiles of sunkissed local farmers as they whiz by on their motorbikes, sometimes with three of them aboard one bike. I never imagined we’d be out here this far just a couple of days earlier when we touched down at Lien Khuong Airport around 30km south of Đà Lạt in time for breakfast.
Đà Lạt is famous for a number of dishes including bánh mì xíu mại which typically consists of a few pork meatballs bobbing around in a rich oily, spicy and “tomatoey” soup into which you dip pieces of crusty baguette that just seem to taste better here than anywhere else I’ve been in Vietnam. We try three places on this trip but Ms Hồng’s comes out on top, after all, she’s had about four decades to perfect it, ably supported by her now septuagenarian husband by her side for the entire time.
Then one afternoon my wife twists my arm and gets me to go with her in search of some bánh tráng nướng – often referred to as Đà Lạt pizza – so she can tick it off her laundry list of quintessential Đà Lạt snacks to have while we’re here.
We find a vendor near the central market who happens to be cooking up her first batch for the day and we buy two because we’re feeling ‘snacky’ at that funny time of the day between 3 and 4 o’clock, but are conscious of not spoiling our appetite for dinner at Moon Dining later on which happens to be quite good and where I eat my second lamb dish for the trip. Here, if the waitstaff bent over backwards any further for us, they’d be walking on their heads, such is the quality of their service.
Another go-to breakfast dish famous in Đà Lạt is bánh căn, although similar varieties can be found right along the south-central coast in towns like Nha Trang and Phan Rang, not that far down the hill from here as the crow flies. There’s even a Khmer variety served up in the Mekong Delta in which you dunk these little disc-like flavour bombs made from rice into a sweet syrupy concoction of coconut milk, chilis and fish sauce.
But in Đà Lạt at Ms Hiền’s, the chấm of choice is fish sauce and chili which soaks into her perfectly spongy little rice cakes and coats the shrimp or squid or otherwise inside with a flavour that simply says Vietnam.
The thing is though, for all the amazing local food I eat here, it’s the local takes on Western food that impress me the most, from the hot chocolate and croissants at The Choco Cafe adjacent to the tired looking, but architecturally impressive, Đà Lạt Railway Station, to the coffee and choux pastries at the cute Amélie Pâtisserie et Café, which also doubles as a B&B, to the stunning breakfast on our last morning at Émai Homestay, and finally to the pizza at Chef’s Dalat that saves the day (and my marriage) after our impromptu, but nonetheless epic, ride through the hills that almost took us to the border of neighbouring Đắk Lắk.
And so it’s thank you Mr Yersin for the legacy you left behind.
Next time I’m in your neck of the woods on my motorbike getting lost again in the hills outside of Nha Trang, I’ll be sure to drop by your tomb if I can find it to pay my respects and to congratulate you on a job well done, but please accept my unreserved apologies in advance, because I think my wife will sit this one out.
***If you come across this article anywhere other than on thebureauasia.com, then it is in breach of copyright and the information provided may not be correct or in its original published form***
***This is NOT a sponsored post. The author paid his own way***
Related