Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [130]
The central highlands | Into the highlands | Bao Loc and around |
Dambri Waterfalls and north to Da Lat
Another interesting attraction of the area is the impressive drop (about 80m) of Dambri Waterfalls (daily 7am–5pm; small entrance fee), some 18km north of Bao Loc; a xe om should cost around 100,000đ return. The road to the falls, which branches north from Highway 20 just east of Bao Loc, bisects rolling countryside carpeted by coffee, tea and pineapple plantations. Once you arrive, there are two paths leading to the falls. The main one to the right leads to the top of the falls, where some ugly fencing stands between you and a precipice over which a torrent tumbles in the rainy season. From here, you can descend to the base of the falls by steep steps, or if you’re feeling lazy, there’s a lift available for 5000đ. A second path, to the left by a restaurant, leads down a steep stairway among towering trees to a superb view of the falls from in front. The two paths are linked by a bridge over the river, where you’re likely to get drenched in spray even during the dry season. The path continues downstream to a smaller cascade, Dasara Falls, but the trail can be slippery after rain. Surrounded as they are by dense forest, Dambri Falls are much more attractive than any of those in the vicinity of Da Lat, and the only ones worth visiting in the dry season.
More hummocky tea plantations abound along the road around Di Linh, the biggest town between Bao Loc and Da Lat. From here, Highway 28 branches right and heads down to Phan Thiet. Around 25km beyond Di Linh on Highway 20, pine trees begin to feature in the landscape. At this point you’ll see signs for two more of the region’s most impressive waterfalls, Pongour to the left, and Gougah to the right. The former are about 7km to the left off the main road, but the latter are just 400m to the right of the road, and are well worth stopping for a look in the wet season, when a thundering torrent pours over them. From here it’s about 40km to Da Lat, of which the final ten-kilometre stretch cuts steeply through heavily wooded slopes.
The central highlands | Into the highlands |
Da Lat and around
Hinged by the Cam Ly River, and nestled at an elevation of just under 1500m among the pitching hills of the Lang Bian Plateau, the city of DA LAT is Vietnam’s premier hill station, a beguiling amalgam of squiggly streets, picturesque churches, bounteous vegetable gardens and crashing waterfalls, all suffused with the intoxicating scents of pine trees and wood-smoke.
It was Dr Alexander Yersin who first divined the therapeutic properties of Da Lat’s temperate climate on an exploratory mission into Vietnam’s southern highlands, in 1893. His subsequent report on the area must have struck a chord: four years later Governor-General Paul Doumer of Indochina ordered the founding of a convalescent hill station, where Saigon’s hot-under-the-collar colons could recharge their batteries, and perhaps even take part in a day’s game-hunting. The city’s Gallic contingent had to pack up their winter coats after 1954’s Treaty of Geneva, but by then the cathedral, train station, villas and hotels had been erected, and the French connection well and truly forged. By tacit agreement during the American War, both Hanoi and Saigon refrained from bombing the city and it remains much as it was half a century ago.
It’s important to come to Da Lat with no illusions, though. With a population of around 200,000, the city is anything but an idyllic backwater: sighting its forlorn architecture for the first time in the 1950s, Norman Lewis found the place “a drab little resort”, and today its colonial relics and pagodas stand cheek by jowl with some of the dingiest examples of East European construction anywhere in Vietnam. Moreover, attractions here pander to the domestic tourist’s predilection for swan-shaped pedal-boats and pony-trek guides in full cowboy gear, while at night the city