Tuesday: Nha Trang to Dalat

Our bus trip today was about 4 hours on a winding mountain road, climbing to an altitude of about 5,000 feet to Dalat, a small but growing city originally developed by the French for an escape from the hot weather. The French influence is profound, with even new buildings built in the neoclassical style. They grow vegetables and flowers here and we saw endless greenhouses and fields of vegetables as we approached the hotel. We had lunch at a restaurant just outside of Dalat, and after our meal we enjoyed a musical performance by three members of a family who were dressed in their native garb and played instruments of their tribe. (There are 54 distinct tribes in Vietnam, with about 85% of the population being Viet). In the afternoon we toured the Crazy House - a fantastic house that’s also part hotel. It has three main “trunks”, with stairs going every which way and wild designs. It reminded me of Gaudi’s Casa Batllo in Barcelona. We saw much of it, but probably missed a lot too! It was built over a period of 30 years and the owner/designer still lives in it. Henry then gave us a short walking tour of the central part of the city, with drinks on the patio of the fanciest hotel, overtaking a large man-made lake. For dinner we were divided into groups of 5 with each group visiting a different family for a home cooked meal and conversation. I went to the home of a family consisting of a father who works at home for a company based in Canada, a mom who both writes and edits for a tv station and does beauty treatments, and an 8 yr son (Ethan) and 14 yr daughter (Helen). Helen was especially charming, and the best English speaker, having first picked it up from youtube as a small child. She also played the piano for us. The mother, Katie, does most of the cooking and told us she goes to local
markets every morning. She served us a delicious dinner of shrimp, stewed pork and eggs (typical for the lunar new year), eggplant, snow peas and a clear vegetable soup - no dessert.Leer más