Da Lat City - Flowers, Food and Crazy Mazes
High up in the hills of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, the city of Da Lat (or Dalat) sits around a large lake, with the town spiralling out into the forests and hills. Known as the “City of Eternal Spring” or “The Paris of Vietnam”, Dalat enjoys a cooler year round climate, as well as gardens bursting with flowers. This cooler climate combined with its famous attractions and delicious cuisine make Da Lat a very popular destination.
Famous for its architecture, fresh foods and coffee, Dalat has so much to offer. Its cooler temperatures and elevation make it the fresh fruit and vegetable capital of Vietnam, with the local restaurants making the most of the tasty produce.
Dalat is a perfect stop for any traveller from backpacker to luxury, with a wide range of accommodation, food and drink choices.
The Da Lat Flower Park is always full of beautiful colours!
We travelled there as part of our North to South backpacking trip through Vietnam and had an absolute blast! What did we get up to? What did we eat? How lost did we get in the Maze Bar? Read on to find out.
Note: We cannot find any definitive answer as to whether it is Da Lat or Dalat so we will be using both depending on our mood!
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In this article:
Da Lat - What is there to do?
The Crazy House
If ever there was an apt name for a place, this is it. Designed by the artist Đặng Việt Nga, daughter of a former president, the Crazy House looks like Salvador Dali and Gaudi had a love-child in a theme park. Corridors twist in on themselves, pathways arch, curve and melt into each other. A staircase becomes the claw of a dragon or the back of a giraffe, it is bizarre and beautiful.
Like we said, bizarre!
Located off of a small back road here, the Crazy House is one of the most famous and iconic attractions in Da Lat. The entrance is deceptively small but the labyrinth of corridors, flying walkways and passages actually covers quite a large area. We wandered, climbed and got lost in its knotty pathways for at least an hour and you could easily spend longer.
Three floors down and under the dome is the “deep sea” themed zone.
There is an expensive coffee shop and a souvenir stand in the grounds as well as toilets.
Entrance to the Crazy House costs 80,000 VND per person (£2.47 or $3.14). This was one of the more expensive things we did in Da Lat but it was worth it. The crazy architecture, gardens, views of the city and art displays are completely unique and should definitely be explored.
It is hard to explain how bizarre the Crazy House is - Its like architecture meets spaghetti!
The Maze Bar
Whilst we are on the subject of bizarre. The maze bar has taken the concept of the Crazy House, condensed it and added alcohol. The entrance is a small nondescript doorway on a street above the central market. Nothing outside gives any indication of what lies beneath, it looks small, unassuming and ordinary, right until you buy a drink and go down into the basement.
It looks small from the outside….
Through some clever redesign, or possibly magic, the small bar becomes a sprawling maze of themed rooms, tiny staircases, dead ends, secret doors and tight passages. You go down a floor into the basement to start but quickly lose track of where you are as there are far more floors and levels than a 3 story building should contain!
After clambering around, getting lost and attempting to balance a beer can whilst squeezing through a small hole at the top of a ladder, you will eventually find yourself in the top 2 floors where the upper bar, seating and balcony are. The upper bar marks the end of the maze and rewards you with a nice view of Da Lat.... and the KFC across the street.
Before coming to the Maze Bar we were prepared for disappointment, ready for it to be an overhyped expensive tourist gimmick. We were very happy to be proved wrong!
It is very hard to take photos inside the maze itself so we will leave it as a surprise!
Entrance is free but you have to buy a drink. The drinks cost more than buying from the street (beer was 45,000 VND) but nothing too bad. We had a great time getting lost before finding the actual main bars on the top floors. We highly recommend the Maze Bar, it was worthy of the hype.
A couple of tips for the maze bar:
The bar downstairs is open all day but the upper level bar (when you complete the maze) only serves drinks from 9pm onwards. The whole thing is open until midnight when they will then run a shuttle bus to the backpacker club - The Six Floor Bar.
If you do not like enclosed spaces, or have arrived earlier than 9pm and completed the maze, there is a quick way from the upper bar back to the entrance and lower bar. From the entrance just go up the stairs rather than down to the basement, you can then just go up one more floor to the bar. From the upper bar just do the reverse and spiral back down.
Honestly if you were only in Da Lat for one night and couldn’t get to the Crazy House, the Maze Bar would be a worthy substitute!
Da Lat Train Station
Da Lat Train Station is not like Ho Chi Minh Central or Da Nang, it is a small pretty building with only one operating train line. This historic building however, is the oldest train station in Vietnam! Having been built by the French to join up hill communities, the station was never connected to the main railway of Vietnam. After the war it became a tourist attraction with the one remaining line ferrying passengers to and from the nearby town of Trai Mat.
These days you can visit the station, admire the architecture and take selfies with the old engines and carriages. The train still runs today, with two trains every day and up to seven in busy times! Tickets for a return journey depend on the train and range from 108,000 VND to 226,000 VND per person. We didn’t take the train this time but next time we visit we would like to maybe stay a night up in Trai Mat, it looks like there are a lot of good places to eat with views over Da Lat.
For train times, have a look at the schedule below:
The train station itself only cost 5,000 VND per person to visit and was a fun detour and an interesting piece of history on our wander around Da Lat’s central lake. Speaking of which...
Da Lat Lake - Xuan Huong Lake
If you have read any of our blogs you will know that we are walkers, if it is possible to go on foot we will do. We love just wandering around a new place or city and seeing what we stumble across. As soon as we landed in Da Lat we saw the large lake and thought, “yep lets walk around that!”
The walk is around 7 km without detours but takes you past or near several interesting places. It comes within 5 minutes of the Da Lat Railway station we mentioned above, brings you right next to the Flower Park (mentioned below) and walks you right alongside the Lam Vien Square.
The Lam Vien Square lies right on the lake's edge and is dominated by two very unique buildings.
The “Flower” building.
Made of glass, these large buildings are sculpted into the shape of a massive flower and an artichoke bud (artichokes being a Da Lat speciality). The square and buildings are used for exhibitions, public performances and pop up vendors. When we passed on our wanderings there were only a few vendors out and some extremely cute but hot looking Huskies who you could pay to take photos with.... honestly even in the cooler climbs of Da Lat we cannot think of a less appropriate dog than a Husky for Vietnam.
Hot dogs left behind we wandered on around the lake passing parks, memorials, shops and golf courses. It is a great way to stretch your legs and get out around the city. We ended up doing the full loop twice in our time in Da Lat, once when we first arrived as we wanted to have a look around and then a second time to visit the Railway Station, Flower Garden and....
Da Lat Lake Swan Boats
I gave in ok, I gave in. Ellie gave me the puppy eyes and wanted to have a float around on the lake. Before I knew it I had been relegated to being a motor whilst Ellie literally swanned about on the lake.
The swan boats are available for hire at a few points around the lake and cost us 70,000 VND for one hour. To be fair it was fun pedalling around on the lake and being enthusiastically waved at by a selection of Vietnamese families. I even got Ellie to pedal, eventually, in the end... for about five minutes...
Swan boats and tandems - Why do romantic couple activities always involve pedalling!
The Flower Park - Vườn hoa thành phố Đà Lạt
Sitting just around the northern tip of the lake is Da Lat’s Flower park. We were, like the Maze Bar, wary of this. We have been in quite a few flower parks and botanical gardens from Bogor in Indonesia to Pondicherry in India. Depending on when you go, they can be a little bit hit or miss. We also had spoken to some fellow travellers who had reported that the Flower Park currently lacked any flowers, which we thought was quite a fundamental flaw.
We are happy to report that our fears were unfounded. The Flower Park is definitely worth the hour or so it takes to walk about.
Entrance to the Flower Park costs 100,000 VND per person (£3.08 or $3.93). Once we paid and inside we wandered about the manicured gardens and water features. On the hill to the right of the entrance is the Japanese friendship garden, with tori gate framed views over the park as a whole. Despite some strange design decisions (why did they need to include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?) the park was very pretty and there were plenty of blooming flowers. On the left hand of the park (if you are walking in from the entrance), was a large field full of tall bright orange flowers. There were small pathways so you could wander right in and get lost amongst the flowers and bees, it was a great spot for photos!
We really liked the Flower Park, we were so ready for disappointment but were pleasantly surprised. 100,000 VND well spent!
The Markets of Da Lat - The Central Market and Night Market
The markets of Da Lat were...odd... We visited the Central Market on a quiet afternoon and couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Every shop inside the large building sold exactly the same selection of dried fruits and sweets. We understand this is the speciality of the region but it was odd walking through repeating rows of, what was essentially, the same shop. The building is quite impressive with a high ceiling and a brutalist utilitarian vibe. The market would make a good place for souvenir shopping if you have relatives or friends who would appreciate Vietnamese dried fruit.
We visited the market late in the afternoon, so it may well be that the non-dried fruit vendors had already packed up and left. Let us know in the comments below.
Outside the covered market it is a whole different story. Flower vendors crowd the outer walls of the market with vibrant colours. Shops and street food spill out onto the pavements and all manner of goods are on sale.
In the districts behind the market (up the stairs) you can find every variety of food, drink and crafts for sale. If you explore a little further you will find a charming cluster of alleyways and cafes all decked out in incredible street art (location).
The Night Market
Da Lat night market is a major draw for tourists, both internally from Vietnam and internationally (it seemed to be very popular with Koreans). We are not completely sure why. The Da Lat night market is not like most South East Asian night markets which, despite usually being very similar to each other, still have plenty of food and drink along side a decent selection of tourist tat and trinket stalls. Da Lat night market seemed to specialise in woollen “designer” goods. If you wanted a Louis Vuitton scarf of questionable providence then this is the place. Variations on this one stall filled the high street, broken only by the occasional toy stand. It was not a very varied market.
The night market gets very busy at the weekend!
There is a large busy food court style restaurant on the right hand side (as you face the central market) and a few street food vendors clustered around the central market.
As cheesy as they tend to be, we usually love a night market in South East Asia but for some reason Da Lat’s just didn’t vibe with us. We visited on a busy night (Saturday) so presumably most of the stalls should have been present but there just wasn’t the variety to keep us exploring. We are not saying skip it, it is free and runs every night (some busier than others) so definitely go have a look, just don’t expect anything too exceptional.
Day trips from Da Lat - What to do outside the city?
As Da Lat is surrounded by hills, there is plenty to keep you busy outside of the city from hiking to coffee farms.
We had a great day out exploring the Elephant Waterfalls, the Linh Ẩn Pagoda and statue and, of course, the famous alpine roller coaster. You can read all about our trip, how to get there and what to expect here
Food and drink - Where to eat in Da Lat
Roast Chicken
Da Lat is famous for its roasted chickens, not your peas and gravy Sunday lunch variety, but a wonderful Vietnamese concoction. Roasted and grilled over flames and served with herbs, dipping sauce and bamboo steamed rice tubes Cơm lam gà nướng is chickeney perfection.
We found a fantastic little roadside place serving up a whole chicken for only 200,000 VND (£6.16 or $7.86). With only a couple of tables and a constant stream of Grab drivers getting deliveries, we knew we were in the right place!
The chicken arrived on a bamboo woven plate and chopped into chunks by cleaver. To say it was delicious is an insult. It was beyond tasty. It had been roasted once, then re-crisped on a rotisserie and, despite this double cook, was one of the juiciest chickens of our adventure so far! The chicken lay on a bed of herbs to refresh our pallets and the spicy sauce and sticky rice made for amazing accompaniments.
I’m now hungry just because of the memory this photo brought back!
The whole meal including chicken, herbs, dip and 2 tubes of bamboo rice, cost us 240,000, which for a treat for two people is seriously good value. You can find Cơm lam gà nướng everywhere in and around Da Lat, just look out for the rotisserie grills and roasting ovens. If you want to eat where we did (we definitely recommend it), the tiny shop is located here .
Wonton and Dumplings
Surprisingly, at least for us, Da Lat had lots of wonton noodle shops and dim sum / dumpling sellers. We love dumplings and wonton an unhealthy amount so there is no way we could resist.
Our favourite wonton noodles came from a little, permanently busy, shop near our accommodation. There is no google listing but it is around here.
This is the shop, just look for the piles of fresh wonton on the cart at the front!
The bowls here were piled high with char sui pork, bone in meltingly tender joints and of course, wonton. The egg noodles were perfectly firm with a wonderful snappy chew. All in all it was a fantastic bowl of noodles and a nice change from the more traditional Vietnamese food we had been having. Also, they were really cheap, the big bowl with everything in it only cost us 35,000 each (£1.08 or $1.37)!
For dumplings we headed to Há Cảo Trần Lê. Another small shop with big tastes. They do a full menu of cheap and delicious dumplings but we opted to have the special dumplings in soup. The wontons were delicious with wafer thin wrappers and peppery pork fillings. The special dumplings however were on another level. Lurking at the bottom of our bowls these enormous dumplings dwarfed any of the other offerings. A whole prawn was wrapped in minced pork before being encased in a delicate wrap. It was fantastic! A bowl of the special dumpling noodle soup costs 45,000 (£1.39 or $1.77).
How good does that look?!
Mi Quang
We love watching some foodtubers and took our next recommendation from the Vietnam based Max Mcfarlin. Mi Quang is a noodle dish (mi = noodles) from the Quang area of Central Vietnam. A rich broth spiced with turmeric (not very common in Vietnamese cooking) is filled with meat (usually pork and or beef but sometimes chicken), prawns, peanuts and sesame rice. Sounds good right? It tastes even better!
We, following Mr Mcfarlin's advice and ate at Loan’s Spicy Beef Noodle Soup. Despite its beef focused name, this side alley shop is renowned for its pork mi quang. It deserves its reputation! The broth was packed with flavour and meltingly soft pork, with the shrimps giving a savoury sea twang. The thick noodles were the perfect conveyor belt for the soup and the sesame cracker gave a wonderful crisp texture. On the table were sauces, chillies and other favour tweakers to really make the bowl your own. For those with an adventurous palate, or at least one now acclimatised to fermented flavours, we would recommend a little of the mam tom - fermented shrimp sauce, it gives such a depth of flavour. Just remember that a little goes a very long way!
The mi quang here was one of our favourite bowls in the whole of Vietnam. It is completely unique and unlike pho doesn't seem to have made it onto the international stage yet. You can find it everywhere across Central Vietnam, but if you are in Da Lat come to Loan’s as you won't find better!
A bowl of the mi quang from Loan’s only costs 40,000 (£1.23 or $1.57) so there is really no excuse not to try one!
Banh Mi
Banh Mi should come as no surprise to anyone, if you are in Da Lat you must have travelled through at least some of Vietnam and, unless you did this blindfolded, you cannot have avoided Banh Mi. Iconic throughout Vietnam and the rest of the world, the so-called “best sandwich in the world” is very well represented in Da Lat. In fact we found our favourite banh mi of the trip in this hilltop city.
A com tam (broken rice) shop had a little stall out front advertising banh mi heo quay, or roast pork banh mi. With no official Google listing (this is the place - Just look for the red and yellow cart) this little stall made us the best banh mi we have ever had. Chunks of crispy roast pork and slices char siu pork with chillies and pickles were sprinkled with sesame seeds and powdered peanuts, it was rich, fresh, crunchy and everything the world's best sandwich should be! It was also very reasonably priced at 20,000 VND (£0.61 or $0.77)!
It didn’t look like much but it really was the best banh mi of our three month trip!
Soy Milk
All over Da Lat, from noodle joints to street vendors, you will find Sua Dau Nanh - soy milk drink. Served hot or over ice it is either supremely refreshing or warming and comforting. It was nutty, creamy and very moreish! John is not a massive lover of milk drinks but even he admitted this was lovely.
Coffee
Da Lat is rightly famous for it’s coffee. From the ultra high end, prohibitively expensive (and dubiously ethical) Civet poop coffee, all the way to a cheap cup of bog standard joe, Da Lat does coffee well. There are literally hundreds of coffee shops in the city and the surrounding countryside. Here are two of our favourites in Dalat City itself:
Lyn Coffee and Tea
(location).
We stumbled into Lyn’s coffee at around 6 in the morning after getting off our overnight bus from Hoi An. We were in desperate need of caffeine and it was the closest coffee to us! Luckily for us Lyn’s was excellent, cheap and stylish! We knew we were in good hands as, even at this early hour, there was a steady stream of locals sitting down for their morning pick me up.
We found ourselves in Lyn’s on more than a few occasions and nearly always ordered the bac xiu or Vietnamese latte. Layers of condensed and fresh milk mixed with the rocket fuel coffee common in ‘Nam makes for a creamy, moreish, delicious wake up call.
A bac xiu (far from the cheapest coffee) from Lyn’s costs 25,000 (£0.77 or £0.98). This is brilliant value for money, in Hoi An you would be paying 50,000 for one of these!
Amélie Pâtisserie et Café
(location)
This achingly cool looking coffee shop serves up fantastic coffee and pastries. We had some very decadent treats here, a deliciously sticky cinnamon swirl bun and a camembert and walnut stuffed roll. They were as good as they sound! The shops website looks like this should be quite a pricey place but when we visited there was a range of deals for a coffee and a pastry. We paid 70,000 for a bac xui and bun / roll. Given the quality of the coffee and the deliciousness of the baked goods this was a very well priced treat! The cafe also offers some frankly stunning looking desserts, proper patisserie faire - sculpted eggs, edible candles, the whole shebang. These more ornate treats cost upwards of 120,000 each.
Where to stay in Da Lat
Da Lat is a popular city for both Vietnamese and international tourists. As such it has a wide range of accommodation to choose from. There is something for every budget from the most basic hostel through to the high end luxury.
When looking for somewhere to stay we would recommend concentrating on the areas around the central market, this way you should be within walking distance of all the town’s attractions.
Backpacker hostels
For those backpackers looking for a hostel with good sociable vibes we were recommended Mr Peace Backpacker’s House or the top rated place on hostelworld; Mooka’s Home. Both are a short walk into town and have dorms and private rooms on offer for reasonable hostel prices.
Budget guest house (our recommendation)
For us, we love staying in small guesthouses and found an absolute gem in the back alleys of Da Lat - The Lovely House. We had a massive double bedroom with a small balcony and great private bathroom, all for around £9.00 ($11.32) a night! It was down a quiet alley just off of a road chock full of great places to eat. The guest house also offered scooter rental at 150,000 (£4.65 or $5.85) a day, this appeared to be standard price across Da Lat. Lovely House was well named, we can highly recommend this as a great place to stay. Book a stay here.
Our lovely bed in our lovely room in the Lovely House!
High end accommodation
For those not on a backpacking budget Da Lat is full of higher end hotels and resorts to stay at. Click the button below to check out these 5 star well reviewed options:
Dalat accommodation map
For all of the accommodation available in the city, have a look at our handy map below, zoom in or out for all the choices:
Getting to Da Lat
Being on the Vietnamese tourist trail, Dalat / Da Lat is very well connected by road. You will be able to find a bus from any major town or city that will take you to Da Lat. We travelled to Dalat from Hoi An on a twelve hour overnight bus.
Most of our long bus journeys through Vietnam have been on sleeper buses and we think we have now had every level of luxury, from the very bottom (9 hours next to a non closing toilet door in a 42 person bus) to the most boujie (4 hours with a massive private capsule - why couldn’t these have been reversed!?).
Our bus from Hoi An to Da Lat was a pretty comfy 33 person sleeper bus booked through 12Go. You can easily get down from anywhere north on the same service and there are multiple buses per day from most locations:
Hanoi to Da Lat (flights)
When it came time for us to head south there was more than a bus an hour going to Ho Chi Minh City. Check out some of the routes below:
Da Lat to Phu Quoc (Flights)
Just reverse the destination and starting point if you are travelling from south to north!
For those with less patience or deeper pockets you could organise a private taxi to take you to Da Lat.
You can book an advance ticket on buses, trains taxi’s or planes from pretty much anywhere in Vietnam, just check out 12go:
Da Lat’s railway station is not connected to the mainline of Vietnam. You cannot get to Dalat via train.
Another option for those wanting to include Da Lat on their itinerary but don’t feel like using the buses, you could book yourself onto a tour that includes a stop in the hill city. Have a look at some of the options below.
Final thoughts on Da lat City
When we arrived in Da Lat we were not sure what to think. Tired and bus-lagged (definitely a thing after a sleeper bus in Vietnam), we initially had doubts on the city. It looked, at first, quite theme-parkey a little gimmicky and shallow. We were wrong. Dalat is wonderful, full of fantastic food and great things to explore and do. Make sure you delve a little deeper than just the roller coaster and night market when you visit Da Lat. Dive into its fantastic food scene, enjoy a walk around it's pretty lake and gardens and just enjoy the clean mountain air. Da Lat, you were a wonderful surprise.
Thanks for reading,
John & Ellie x
#adventuresofjellie
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