Author: Sara

After a couple of days eating all the Cao lầu we could lay our hands on in An Bàng, we were on the road again and heading south towards Đà Lạt, an old hill station in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It was a long journey (more than 700 km), so it was time for another Top Gear race!

🐢 Team Tortoise (Oli and Sara) opted to take an 9-hour daytime train down the coast to Nha Trang, stop there overnight and then take a further 3.5-hour bus through the mountains to Đà Lạt

🐇 Team Hare (Helen and Mick) sensibly chose to take a quick 45-minute flight from Đà Nẵng to Đà Lạt on Vietnam Airlines

The race was on!

	Team Hare 🐇	Team Tortoise 🐢
Time	5 hours	25 hours (inc. 7-hour stopover in a hotel in Nha Trang)
Cost	£85.50	£81.76
Carbon	240 kgCO2e	49 kgCO2e

Verdict: I think it’s fair to say that if carbon wasn’t a consideration, Team 🐇’s route was the winner. The cost was practically identical, but the journey took Team 🐢 more than four times as long. However, Team 🐇 did emit nearly five times as much carbon as Team 🐢! They also missed out on some truly beautiful countryside views from the train and didn’t get to ride on a sleeper bus (which we found unexpectedly exciting, although I’m not sure I’d actually want to spend a night on one…)

When we finally arrived, we were rewarded with some of the loveliest accommodation on our entire trip. Đà Lạt was built as a hill station for the French colonialists to escape the heat of Vietnamese summers, and we stayed on a beautiful estate in one of the original villas built during the 1920s or 1930s. The villas have been entirely (but very convincingly) restyled now, and even appeared in Architectural Digest when the resort first reopened in 2009! I later read that Đà Lạt is the Vietnamese capital for honeymoons, which made total sense – our hotel in particular really had that feel. I also read that there’s a widespread belief that if you visit Đà Lạt with your partner, you will break up. I’m not sure how these two co-exist – I like to think that all the newlyweds who visit Đà Lạt don’t have time for such superstition. Let’s hope they are right!

With only one full day in Đà Lạt, there wasn’t much time to laze by the pool as we had a list of offbeat attractions to visit, the first of which was appropriately named the Crazy House. Built by a Đặng Việt Nga, an architect who had studied in Moscow, it is a constant work in progress, with bits being added and transformed all the time. Part hotel, part house and part museum, with animal-themed rooms and a whole section built to look like it was under the sea, I’ve never seen anything quite like it! We attempted to follow a QR code walking tour but almost immediately lost the trail, so instead poked around by ourselves and met other people who were also lost and had been for some time! Our exploration culminated in a climb over a frankly-quite-alarming walkway that soared above the eaves and gave spectacular views of the city and surrounding mountains, as well as a brilliant view of just how far we’d fall if we lost our balance, since the handrails were rather lower than we would have preferred 😬

Our second stop was at Đà Lạt Railway Station, a beautiful art-deco style building that was constructed by the French in 1938.

Oli got very excited learning about the cog railway that used to connect Đà Lạt to the coast, so I’ll hand over to him for this part.

Đà Lạt used to be connected to the North-South mainline by steam train, which required 34 km of rack-railway to cover the 1,400m of elevation gain through the mountains, featuring a maximum incline of 12%! However, the railway was repeatedly attacked during the Vietnam-American War, and was partially dismantled after the war to use the parts for repairs to the North-South line. Most recently, plans have been made to restore the connection to the North-South line by 2030, once again allowing trains from Hanoi to run all the way to Đà Lạt. This would have been a faster and even more spectacular alternative to our train and bus combo, and would likely have convinced Mick & Helen out of flying this leg of the journey!

Oli

Meanwhile, Dad was busy climbing all over the trains that sat in the station. Mum and I were mainly searching for a cafe that would do us a nice cold drink!

There was so much more to Đà Lạt that we didn’t get a chance to visit on our all-too-brief stopover, including the pretty central lake that we passed briefly a couple of times (complete with swan pedalos that I was desperate to get Dad on), the Cát Tiên National Park (with elephants and gibbons) and even a winery (although I did try the wine elsewhere and it was…interesting)! But for now, we were adding our lovely hotel to our to-revisit-one-day list and were heading south to the happy chaos of Saigon.

Vietnam is famous for having some of the most intimidating roads in the world. Actually, the driving itself generally isn’t bad at all, but the traffic is something else!

We’re not exactly experts, but having survived two trips to Vietnam now, we think we’ve at least mastered enough to write a beginners’ guide! All I can say is that the following tips might sound obvious, but they’re easier said than done when faced with an unrelenting wall of motorbikes merrily weaving across the road 😬

Step 1: Take a deep breath and step off the kerb

You’re waiting for a gap, aren’t you? You’ll be there forever if so! So really, pick a moment when there are more motorbikes than cars (since they are more manouverable) and step out into the road.

Step 2: Walk slowly and deliberately across the road

The key is to maintain a predictable pace so that people can steer around you. Don’t run, try not to stop, and whatever you do, don’t backtrack. There’ll be a terrifying but very satisfying moment when all the traffic stops passing in front of you, starts to head straight toward you, and then begins to pass behind your back as you move across the road. Nearly there!

Bonus points if you manage not to even look at the traffic. This is a real power move and will earn you instant respect from drivers (honestly)! I’ve never managed this, though – apparently I like advance notice of when I’m about to be flattened…

Step 3: Hop back up on the opposite kerb but keep watching for motorbikes

You did it! Now don’t drop your guard, since there are normally about as many motorcycles travelling up and down the pavements as there are in the road 😉

To get to Huế, we took a sleeper train from Hanoi. The trains were still pretty booked up post-Tết, so we ended up in one of the private carriages that are allowed to couple onto the main train. Theoretically, these offer a bit more luxury but in practice the compartments are not much different – the photo below left makes it look way smarter than it actually was – and the toilets are still an experience (nothing on Uzbekistan trains though, and I hope nothing else will ever match them!). It was nice for once to travel in a four-person compartment with people we actually know, particularly when they were so happy to share their cold beer. And there was actual, working WiFi!! Unheard of.

Despite a positively arctic night on the train, we all slept surprisingly well so headed straight off to sample some Huế specialities at Quán Hanh for lunch. We’d read about royal rice cakes but we had no real idea of what they were, but we soon found out as we ended up with a five-course feast! Not every course was a type of rice cake, but they were all delicious. As is par for the course in Vietnam, each dish had its own dipping sauce and special method for ‘building’ and eating it, so we needed a tutorial for each one.

The next day, we headed to the Citadel, and spent most of our time within the Imperial Enclosure, described as a “citadel within a citadel” by the Lonely Planet. Indeed, the Citadel is enclosed by a moat and fortified walls, and then a further moat and walls surround the Imperial Enclosure. This area houses the royal residences, temples, palaces and gardens of ancient Huế (so called, but probably not as ancient as you have in mind – much of it was built around 1803). A lot of it was crumbling, but in a very aesthetically-pleasing way, and there were literally thousands of bonsai trees around the site, which were incredible. We were very tempted to ‘borrow’ one but never quite agreed on a plan for how we could send this on the plane with Mum and Dad without detection (although Mum was confident, having previously brought back chairs, Christmas trees and other assorted large items in her checked luggage…)

We’d read to allow a half day around the Citadel, but we spent nearly all day there and didn’t see everything – there really was a lot. But then again, our slow pace might partly be explained by the fact that Oli and I somehow managed to persuade Dad to dress up as an emperor. Mum wasn’t feeling well and we thought this might cheer her up, and I think it did a bit! The resulting photo also got rave reviews from Katie, who described it as “the best photo I have ever seen, apart from maybe Oli’s yukata outfit“. In a chilling illustration of how quickly power can go to someone’s head, Empie (as he requested we call him) threatened to throw us all down a well later that afternoon when none of us laughed at his ‘well, well, well’ joke. You think you know someone…

Spot the difference: Empie in his palanquin (left); Emperor Khai Dinh (right)

Having survived the day despite our benign ruler’s best efforts, Oli and I headed off to try another of Huế’s famous dishes. Bún bò Huế is another noodle soup, but unlike phở, it has a richer and spicier broth, contains mixed meats (usually pork and beef) and has cylindrical rice noodles rather than flat. It’s one of my standard orders from the wonderful Pho Ta at home, so I was super excited to try it in its birthplace. It wasn’t nearly as spicy as I expected (although there were plenty of chillies available in a pot on the table to liven it up) but was still so full of flavour, with a tasty shrimp ball in the broth, which was an added bonus I’ve not tried before.

The restaurant also served us up more rice cakes, this time wrapped in banana leaves. We weren’t very hungry but had to try them, and they were satisfyingly chewy with a mystery (but very tasty) filling. We didn’t order any of this by the way, it all tends to arrive unprompted and it’s normally best just to let it happen!

The star of the show was probably the coconut jelly served as dessert, using the tender green coconut flesh as a shell. Look how beautiful they are!

By this point, we were absolutely stuffed, but we’d found an excellent craft beer joint the previous evening and couldn’t resist going to try the other half of the menu.

The next day, we headed out into the countryside to explore Huế’s collection of royal tombs, which house the mauseoleums of emperors who ruled in the Nguyễn dynasty between 1802 and 1945. We began at the tomb of Minh Mạng, which was a huge, peaceful and highly symmetrical complex of many buildings set on the banks of the Perfume River. We spent an hour exploring but I still don’t think we saw it all in this time.

Our second stop was the tomb of Khải Định, which was much smaller but still impressive for its imposing terraced site. The exterior was quite plain (well, relatively speaking…) but the interior was totally encrusted in elaborate mosaic bas-reliefs, with painted lamps and motifs on the ceiling. It was a bit like the designers of each element had never met, but had each gone all out on making their part the most highly decorated of all. Nothing really matched and I was a big fan!

Our third and final royal tomb was that of Tự Đức – well, sort of (more on that in a moment). It was another enormous complex, set on the banks of a lake.

All three tombs that we visited were beautiful and very different, and we couldn’t agree on an overall favourite between us. However, one thing we could agree on was that the story of Tự Đức’s final resting place was totally horrendous! Apparently, through fear that his tomb would be targeted by grave robbers, Tự Đức was not buried in the lavish surrounds that we had explored, but instead had a hidden tomb in an undisclosed location. All 200 of those who were involved in his actual burial were beheaded so that the secret could never be revealed! Just imagine the level of paranoia and self-absorption that could lead you to thinking this was a reasonable plan…

After a busy couple of days exploring Huế, we were ready to hop back on the Reunification Express for the short(ish) journey south to Đà Nẵng.