We arrived in Dalat at tea time and had a stroll around the city. Dalat is in the central highlands and has many evergreen forests and gardens. The climate is a lot cooler and so it was a nice chnage from the sticky city of HCMC.

It used to be known as Le Petit Paris, as the French came here to build a holiday town for them to relax in, during the hot summer, and there are still many French style villas and restaurants around the town now.

As we only had one full day in Dalat we decided to join a small tour around the area, to see as much as we could. We first headed to a beautiful pagoda set high in the hillside, surrounded by pine forests and overlooking a lake. It is a modern pagoda, built in 1993, but the gardens and its peaceful location has made it very popular with Buddhists and tourists. We then went to Pongour Falls, the largest waterfall in the Dalat area. In the wet season the falls form a full semi-circle, but even at this time of the year it was still quite impressive and a nice place to cool off! The falls got it's name from the Tribal people, who now live in huts on the hillside, just above the falls, who had 5 Rhino's, when each of them died they cut off their horns and put them into the falls - we're not too sure why though?!

After the falls we headed to the Chicken Village and this is where the stories get even stranger! Apparently, the Koho minority women of the village used to have to pay for her husband-to-be - in buffalo! This was decided by the size of the man, slim men cost 3 buffalos, whereas a strong man would cost 5 buffalos! A woman who lived there fell in love with a man, but she couldn't afford to pay for him! The man's family didn't want them to marry because she was poor and said that if she could find a chicken with 9 fingers (the little notches on the back of their feet, of which chickens do not usually have 9!) she could marry their son. So the woman searched for many years for such a chicken, but after spending so long in the forest with no food and water she died. It is said she died happy, as she died for love - ahhh! Anyway, the government donated the chicken statue to the village, which is now known as Chicken Village - they no longer practice buffalo for husbands though! The monority people still live here and live self-sufficiently; growing their own food, building their own houses and selling handicrafts to tourists. We saw them making some of their woven clothes, which was really interesting and complicated! After lunch we went to Bao Dai's Summer Palace which is the old King's holiday home and was constructed in 1933. It just looks like a big house, but Vietnam in the 30's was very poor and so it would have been very grand in those days. Everything inside is still as it was when the King lived there, he later emigrated to Paris, France. He wasn't very popular with the Vietnamese people as he very rarely spent time in Vietnam and didn't really do anything good for the country.

Last stop was the Crazy House, which is a hotel and Art Gallery. It was begun in 1990 and is hoped to be completed in 2010. The building is like a huge tree trunk and all the rooms have different themes and are all equally as strange! Imagine being inside an Alice in Wonderland book and you will be quite close. We'd definitely like to stay when it's completed, although there are many rooms with guests now! The architect is the daughter of the President Truong Chinh, Ho Chi Minh's successor. She also spends a lot of time at the hotel during its construction and lives in Dalat.