City for Lovers

One of many odes to love.

The other week I traveled to Dalat for work. Dalat is a rather unique Vietnamese city in the central highlands. Since it is situated on a mountain, it is much cooler than in Hanoi. It is also designed differently from other cities. It is built on the mountain, so it has lots of hills throughout the city and you are often sitting at a restaurant or cafe, looking down at the traffic below. Although I was there for a 3-day meeting, I had a chance to get out and explore a bit. My colleagues wanted to go to the Love Valley. It is a kind of park filled with flowers and declarations of love. There are statues symbolizing love and lovers, flower beds in the shape of hearts, and couple sitting on benches snuggling everywhere. Not the ideal place to spend with your colleagues needless to say. However, it was a nice area to walk around and take pictures of the scenery. I also visited a traditional village where they make beautiful silk embroidery. The needlework creations range in price from $30 to $3,000. The most expensive ones are amazing and must have taken months to create. They are very detailed and usually quite large, covering an entire wallspace, while the cheapest ones are closer to 5x7 size.

I had amazing food while in Dalat. I ate some new, interesting dishes that will probably go on my "things to say I've tried" list, but not that I'll necessarily ever eat again. I had pig's rectum. Yes, rectum. It was fried, so of course pretty tasty. I didn't actually know what it was when I ate it, except that it was pig and not an organ of any kind. After I ate it, my colleagues decided to tell me what it was. I had several different kinds of banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches), which were some of the best I've ever had in Vietnam, and spiciest. After eating my first pork meatball banh mi with chilies, we had to split another piece of bread to help reduce the burning on our lips from the chilies. After our meetings ended for the day, we'd go walk around the lake near the city center and enjoy the fresh, clean air (something that is hard to find in Hanoi) after being stuck inside all day. The weather was fabulous and we were quite shocked upon arriving back in Hanoi at 9:00 pm to 33 degrees Celsius after spending 5 days in 24 degree Celsius weather (that's going from about 75 F to 91 F). My first day back in Hanoi, it was 36 C (97 F), which really made me miss Dalat!

I hope you enjoy some of my photos of Dalat, from the scenery to the great food (and some not so great) that I tried!

Fabulous Vietnamese sandwich vendor we frequented.

Look closely. Those are teeth. The fish
head has been removed from the body.

Fried pig rectum. Mmmm....

Fried chicken head and claw. I didn't eat this though. It is
very common in Vietnam. They like to gnaw on the claws.

View of a central market area in Dalat. This place is
teaming with vendors and shoppers at night.

View of Dalat from my hotel balcony.

We saw the most beautiful rainbow one day.
I couldn't get my camera to do it justice.

Raw shrimp on the grill. We cooked our own food
at this famous street food place the last night. After these
little guys, my colleagues had ox tail. I just ate veggies.