Places to visit in Da Lat

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Lam DOng Provincial Museum.

Located at the edge of the city on a small hill across from the Soviet Petrol Company hotel, this provincial museum is actually worth an afternoon or mornings visit. While they do have the mandatory Ho Chi Minh and war sections, these are not overly done and indeed tasteful compared to other provincial museums.

More importantly, they have some unique displays of the local peoples, particularly the Koho and Ma ethnicities, as well as examples of tribal textiles, woodwork, stone, and metal objects from various epochs. A lintel and votive offerings from a Hindu temple unearthed in Bao Loc district that dates back to the 7th Century is also on display. The site below gives an overview. It too shuts down at lunch time, so check before you travel out there.

The history of Vietnam and its peoples is being rewritten as we live, in part due to new discoveries showing that higher levels of civilization existed in the Central and Tonkinese Highlands than was previously believed, and in part because modern historians are giving the old histories a critical look as they strip away the nationalist ideologies that drove some of the earlier interpretations.

Of interest, slightly scaled down versions of Koho and Ma houses had been erected on the property, the only such examples I've seen.

Worth your time for half a day. I rode out and back on a Xe Om *huggy Motorcycle", but there is a bus that goes by.   

http://www.dalattrip.com/lamdong-museum/

The Valley of Love.

OK, If gangs of guys and girls going around getting their pictures taken with flowers is not your thing, the Valley of love is not for you. But if your Vietnamese princess came with a family, relatives, and retainers as most do, then you are going to go to the "Valley of Love" if you ever set foot in Dalat. (Recommendation: Tell your true love you always wanted to play golf on the Emperor's golf course, and you've found a local foursome to play with, and their tee time precludes you're going to the VoL with the family.)

On the plus side, walking up and down the hills is tiring, so good exercise. You can buy wine and Mnam Pay (Ruou Canh to the occupying powers) at the stone house below the band area. After a couple of bottles or thirty times on the Mnam Pay straw, you shouldn't mind anything. Just make sure you can get back up the hill. You can hear some very good music at the band area, sung in Koho,Ede, and I presume Ma. Don't worry if you don't understand it, neither do the Vietnamese. Of course, the band can play Vietnamese songs as well. On the plus side, you won't hear rap or hip hop.

That is as good a time as you will have there, unless you really like flowers, crude cement effigies of animals, and an army of (presumably Nguyen and Trinh) warriors below a not so great wall which I believe represents the one that separated northern Dang Ngoai from southern Dang Trong back in the day when the Nguyen Lords ruled. If I were a ten year old Vietnamese boy, I'd have loved it.

But it does keep all the in-laws entertained and makes the missus happy. Life in Vietnam can be hard, so don't begrudge them their simple pleasures. Smile, get in the pictures when they want you to. Snuggle up to the missus in the romance photos, and be gracious. They'll be bragging about it for the next year. Hey, it's cheaper than a single day for a kid at disneyland.

Crazy House or Hang Nga Guesthouse

The guesthouse also described as a "Fairy Tale House". It is a personal project of Vietnamese architecht Dang Viet Nga. She got a PHD in architecture from Moscow and designed several buildings around Dalat.

The Crazy House has been an imaginative work in progress since 1990. It has 10 themed guest rooms, each with decorations matching the theme: honey moon, termite, bamboo, ant room, tiger, kangaroo room, bear room, gourd, pheasant, land eagle. Room rates ranged from 25-60 USD per person. There is a fee for visits too.

It is one of the strangest buildings in the world.

You can take a ride to the elephant waterfall, pongour waterfall.
Take a food tour at night, locals hang out eating food and drinking at music cafe shops.
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