Travels in Vietnam: Dalat

The next stop on our summer Vietnam tour was the mountain town of Dalat. The airport is currently closed (to reopen in late September 2026;we just missed it), so we hired a car to take us up into the mountains of central Vietnam, a five-hour car ride from Saigon. The driver was a young man, who started our trip with bumping club music first thing in the morning. We shrugged our shoulders, put in our headphones, and relaxed. We made one stop, at a rest area, that looks a lot like some we’ve seen in the US.

We ate some buns and had iced coffees, and strapped in for the last half of the drive. The driver then entered a race (against who, we were not sure), but he won, to the determent of our stomachs. We were looking forward to Dalat, as it is known as the city of Eternal Spring, and the temperature was so cool that we couldn’t believe it, after coming from the sweltering heat of Saigon.

We arrived in Dalat while rain drizzled at the Crazyhouse (also known as the Hang Nga guesthouse). The Crazyhouse has been open since 1990, and was designed by Vietnamese architect Dang Viet Nga to resemble a giant banyan tree, with lots of places to squeeze into, crawl under, bridges to cross and many ways to go. We’ve seen many huge banyan trees throughout our time in SE Asia, and even more bonsai banyan trees (which you’ll see more of during the posts on this trip). It was also inspired by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí, and we saw a lot of Gaudi’s buildings while living in Spain, and agree with the inspiration.

Jessica is a lover of whimsy and fairytale places, so she was super excited to visit. People can actually stay on the grounds, so we booked a few nights at one of the guestrooms, the honeymoon suite, actually.

It was a very eclectic room but very small, and the steps were quite steep to the bedroom (as you can see above). We weren’t sure it would work for us, but we decided to think about it and went to explore the grounds. For those that have been to both the City Museum and Venice Cafe in St Louis, it was like a combo of both of those places. There were a lot of tourists as its been a destination since it opened. The passages are often narrow, so while it felt a little crowded, we still had fun exploring.

We returned to the room, sat in the barely big enough for one person, only seat in the place, and decided this wasn’t going to work for four days. We returned to the hotel check-in desk, told them so, and booked another hotel, not too far away. We had to pay the first night (and received a refund for the remainder), but it was worth it. We arrived at the next hotel in about five minutes, and were welcomed by a lovely couple and their little girls. The view outside made us feel like we were in a Swiss mountain town, with a Vietnamese twist.

After unloading our bags we went looking for dinner, and found a ramen restaurant around the corner from the hotel, and it was great. Then we wandered a bit around our neighborhood; Dalat was already more walkable than our prior stops, Saigon and Da Nang, respectively.

We walked by a church, and while it wasn’t bright pink like many of the others we had seen so far in Vietnam, there were many people in nice dress clothes outside. A woman dressed in a fancy dress saw us looking around and invited us in. We took a seat in the last row, and were treated to a whole choir show. We saw the children’s choir sing, then a man and woman talk in between the singing (assuming these were the church leaders), all in Vietnamese. Then the adult choir really put on a show, and sounded wonderful, even if we couldn’t understand the words. We stayed for a while, and when we left the show was still going on. It was so interesting and unexpected. We walked back under purple and orange clouded skies, past a temple.

The next day, after a homemade breakfast by the husband owner of the hotel (he made eggs to order and some of the best Pho I’ve ever had) we took a five minute walk to Xuan Huong Lake. Xuan Huong Lake is basically the center of town, and there is a sidewalk so one can travel around the whole lake without worrying about cars or motorbikes.

Our plan this day was visiting the Dalat Flower Garden, which is right across the street from the Lake. On our route was the Tinh xa Ngoc Tin Buddhist Pagoda complex, so we stopped by to check it out.

Dalat is famous for its flowers, as there are many, many huge greenhouses that grow all kinds of beautiful flowers that are sent all over the country. Dalat is also the most popular honeymoon destination in Vietnam, as such, it is one of the most popular places for photoshoots. After reading all the Dalat posts, it will seem like I did a photshoot with Jessica all over Dalat, but it was just too easy to do so, there are so many picturesque spots all over and she’s beautiful.

We were surprised at the lack of people at the Flower Garden, as the flowers were in full bloom, the colors so bright and the sun was shining brightly. We explored the grounds, which were bigger than expected, almost by ourselves.

There are big bonsai trees all over, lining pathways as we walked.

There is a Japanese-style garden, some flower peacocks, a rose garden and separate rose greenhouse, a windmill, and statue garden, a pond, among many other things to see.

The highlight for me was the Bonsai garden, which was the most impressive garden we’ve seen so far. The forests were unbelievable.

The bonsai master who ran this garden even had his training trees and tiny bonsai (called Mame Bonsai) on display.

We were tired from spending a day at the park, so felt we earned the Mortadella and Pistachio pizza we ate for dinner.

It was really good, and we were able to enjoy a nice walk from the restaurant back to the hotel. The dusk blue sky really enhanced the neighborhood.

We spent two weeks in Dalat, so had lots of time to find more unique art places, flower parks, walks around the lake, temples, and a cable car ride (to an even bigger lake). The next day we visited the Dalat train station and took a quick train trip, where we visited a massive Cao Dai temple, which will be the subject of the next post, get ready!