Vietnam : Day 2 - Around Da Lat

Because there were so few guests at the hotel, there wasn't a buffet spread. Instead, breakfast would be cooked to order.  We were presented with a menu printed in English, of which we understood that we could either choose between an American or Asian breakfast set. All the four of us chose the Asian set which actually had the choice of a fried rice or noodle soup set. We ordered 1 rice and 3 noodles.

Fried rice

Tasty egg fried rice

In fact, the kitchen dished out 2 fried rice for us. We only accepted 1 plate because that was what we ordered. But then the noodles never came. And in place of the noodles, each one of us got a pork ribs stew served with a basket of French bread .... 

Hmn ... I did not like the stew at all and did not eat much of it. The bread was fantastic though. Freshly baked, it was so crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. 

Heh. Had we known there was no noodles, we would have gladly accepted that second plate of fried rice. The staff had really minimal knowledge of English ... we had trouble communicating. 

Fruits for us to share 

CV and mother came down for breakfast later than we did ... 

And they got hardboiled eggs which we did not get .... 

And they had bananas which we did not have too .... 

After what it seemed to be a confusing breakfast, we set off for the day. We went to a number of places that day : Da Lat Cable Car and pine forest, Truc Lam Pagoda, Datanla Waterfall, Bao Dai Villa, Crazy House, Flower Park, and Domaine de Marie.

View of Da Lat from the cable car station at Robin Hill 

The cable car 

Riding through the pine forest

Alighting at Thien Vien Truc Lam or Truc Lam Pagoda


The temple hall

The main prayer hall is open to the public

A monk maintaining the garden ... 

They've got very pretty flowers growing at the garden here, and all visitors busy themselves taking photos among the colourful blooms.

A pond within the temple compound

Our second stop was Datanla Waterfall.

At the entrance

Walking down the steps to the waterfall ... 

I was quite excited to see the waterfall 

Datanla Waterfall 

We took the Alpine coaster ride so that we did not have to walk up ...  

Next stop was lunch at a place called Eros. Heh. What a name.

 Artichoke soup 

  

Lovely lunch

Next we went to Bao Dai Villa ... where King Bao Dai lived when he came to Da Lat.

The reception area ... 

The dining area 

The crown prince's bedroom

The king's chamber 

The kitchen 

The villa from the outside ....

Next stop was Crazy House ... really, it was crazy.

Crazy House, Da Lat 

View of part of the house from the top

The steps were very narrow

It was interesting, and some might say it is artistic. I justfound the house absolutely tasteless and confusing. I wouldn't want to stay here. Next, we went to Domaine De Marie Church here at Da Lat, which was constructed in 1940.

Domaine de Marie

The church wasn't open, so we couldn't go inside. We only walked around the compound, before going to the Da Lat Flower Park. There were lots of beautiful and colourful flowers around the landscaped grounds .... 

A nice place to stroll whilst admiring the pretty blooms

Pretty hydrangeas are abundant here ..

Colourful flowers

Flowers surrounding a water fountain 

We stopped by the night market after that. It was still very early, so the vendors haven't really set up their stalls. We did buy some dried artichoke tea, and some avocados from the few permanent stalls by the roadside. 

We went back to our hotel to rest ... and at 7.00 p.m., we were brought to a local restaurant for dinner. The restaurant was called Trong Dong, apparently a recipient of some awards from Lonely Planet and Tripadvisor. 

So we were seated and soon, our dinner was served. 

Pumpkin soup

Spring roll
I actually liked this dish .... the minced paste had been rolled around the sugar cane stick and grilled; the server wrapped the spring roll for us at the table. Too bad each of us could only have 1 serving of the spring roll

Chicken salad was also very yummy

Crackers


These crackers could be eaten with the chicken salad

The vegetarian salad was also very yummy, with lots of textures coming from the mushrooms

Then came the main dishes to eat with rice ... 

Tofu, sweet and sour pork and spinach
We found the dishes to be so-so; I enjoyed the entrees more than the mains

Vegetarian fried noodles
The noodles tasted great! Better than the dishes for the rice ...

Yogurt for dessert

My friends found it too sweet, but I enjoyed the smooth sweet dairy.

After dinner, we headed back to the night market where we shopped for more Atiso tea.