Category: Vietnam

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 😉

The next stop on our journey south was the idyllic fishing village of An Bàng, located just a stone’s throw from the historic town of Hội An on Vietnam’s central coast.

The train ride from Huế to Đà Nẵng (An Bàng’s nearest train station) is widely regarded as one of the most spectacular sections of Vietnam’s North-South Reunification Express.

The route heads across lush fields and rice paddies before steadily climbing 500m in elevation to reach the Hải Vân pass, set out on a peninsula in the South China Sea. As the train crawls its way around the peninsula, the single track is squeezed between a rock face on one side and a vertical drop to the sea on the other. It certainly wasn’t the fastest route to Đà Nẵng, but it’s got to be the most scenic.

From Đà Nẵng station, the four of us crammed ourselves into a taxi to cover the remaining 25 km to An Bàng. We were delighted to find that the low-key vibe hadn’t changed from our last visit in 2014. There were just enough restaurants at the southwestern end of the village, where we were staying, to provide a bit of variety.

The beach itself was also pretty quiet, with about as many local fishermen as tourists sharing a narrow strip of white sand. Somehow, An Bàng still seems to hit the sweet spot between zero tourist infrastructure and becoming overrun.

A key reason for us returning to the region was a noodle dish called Cao lầu, which has haunted Sara’s dreams for the last nine years. Cao lầu consists of a bowl of roasted char siu pork, fresh mint and greens, sliced cucumber and flat noodles, sitting in a small amount of broth and topped with a teaspoon of chilli sauce, a slice of lime and crispy noodle-dough crackers. Crucially, the noodles are made from rice soaked in lye water (which is made using ash of local plants and water taken from a specific well in Hội An), giving them a unique springy texture and satisfying bite. However, this also means that Cao lầu can’t be found anywhere else in Vietnam, let alone the UK. To make up for this, we ate Cao lầu on each of three days we stayed in An Bàng, and weren’t even close to getting sick of it by the time we left.

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An Bàng is just a short cycle from Hội An, surely Vietnam’s most Instagrammable town. Our route took us through the Tra Que Vegetable Village, a beautiful (and very tourist friendly) farming area located halfway between the two towns. We enjoyed cycling along the narrow paths between rows of lettuces, mint, basil, coriander and countless other herbs and flowers. However, the heavens opened just as we exited the village, and we were forced to temporarily abandon our bikes and shelter under our umbrellas until the worst had passed.

We later bent our route through the countryside of Cẩm Thanh, along a network of dirt tracks between beautifully green rice paddies and palm forests.

On any other day, I’m sure Hội An’s ochre-walled French-colonial buildings would have been a feast for the eyes, but the day’s grey skies meant that we didn’t see the town at its most splendid. Still, after dark the Thu Bồn River is illuminated by hundreds of multicoloured lanterns, which more than made up for the daytime weather.

While walking through Hội An’s market that afternoon, we could hear a great commotion coming from the river. When we reached the riverbank, we found nine boats of eight rowers each racing up and down the water. Through some quick Internet research, we learned that this boat race is held annually to celebrate the lunar new year, and that each boat represents a different ward of Hội An. Despite the miserable weather, it seemed like half the town had come out to cheer on their respective ward, using cooking pots and utensils to make as much noise as possible. We had no idea that our visit to Hội An was going to coincide with this boat race, so felt very fortunate to be able to witness this local tradition.

But as often seems to be the case in the Vietnam, it was the food that was once again our highlight. We had fond memories of eating a mountain of delicious but baffling rice-paper rolls down a dark alley on the outskirts of Hội An, and so we were keen to drag Helen & Mick with us on our return. While the Bale Well Restaurant has since expanded into a huge garden adjacent to the original alley (which is by no means dark and hidden any longer), thankfully the food was exactly as we remembered.

Constructing the perfect roll was a little anxiety inducing, especially considering how closely we were being watched by the staff who didn’t hesitate to intervene when we inevitably got things wrong. Thankfully, they picked Mick as their main victim and so Helen, Sara and I were mostly left alone! After a couple of demonstrations and corrections, we learned to follow these steps:

1. Take two sheets of rice paper, overlap them slightly and lay them in the palm of your hand
2. Add either a deep fried spring roll or an unravelled yellow rice flour pancake
3. Arrange an assortment of fresh herbs, cucumber and pickled cabbage on top
4. Add a skewer of barbecued pork
5. Roll the whole thing up (assuming you haven’t overstuffed it) and grip it just firmly enough so that you can pull the barbequed pork from its skewer
6. Mix the satay sauce with your desired level of chilli sauce, dip the roll, and consume
7. Wash down with a chilled Larue beer

This really felt like Vietnamese cuisine at its finest.

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After a relaxing few days in An Bàng, it was time to move on to something quite different. Our next destination would be Đà Lạt, the temperate mountain retreat favoured by French colonists.