Three days in a city 1,500 metres up: a Zen monastery above Tuyen Lam Lake, the old train to Trai Mat, the LangBiang summit and a morning on the Cau Dat plantation.
Photo: Thai Tong / Unsplash
Day 1
Your guide meets you at Lien Khuong Airport for the 30 km drive up the Prenn Pass into the city. In the afternoon we take the 2.3 km Robin cable car down to Truc Lam Zen Monastery, the largest in Lam Dong province, set on Phung Hoang hill looking straight out over Tuyen Lam Lake. The evening is yours at the Da Lat night market around Hoa Binh square, where the local snack is grilled rice paper and hot soy milk.
Day 2
The morning begins at Da Lat Railway Station, built in 1938 with three peaked roofs echoing the shape of LangBiang mountain, and continues on the heritage train that runs 7 km down the line to Trai Mat. There you visit Linh Phuoc Pagoda, whose every surface is covered in mosaic made from broken porcelain, with a 36-metre bell tower. In the afternoon a jeep takes the group up LangBiang to the Radar peak at 1,950 metres, with the Lat valley and Lac Duong township spread out below; on the way back we stop at the city flower gardens beside Xuan Huong Lake.
Day 3
We drive about 25 km east early in the morning to Cau Dat, a tea estate the French established in 1927 at 1,650 metres, which now grows arabica coffee as well. You walk between the tea rows, see how the leaf is processed and taste coffee at the farm itself. On the way to the airport we stop at Da Lat market for candied fruit, artichoke tea and dried flowers, and the programme ends at Lien Khuong Airport.
Da Lat is the one place in Vietnam where visitors put a jacket on in the evening in the middle of summer. The city sits at around 1,500 metres on the Lam Vien plateau; the French built it in the early twentieth century as somewhere to escape the heat, and it still has the steep-roofed villas, the pine slopes and a pace noticeably slower than the lowlands.
We keep the programme short — three places a day. A lot of what has opened in Da Lat over the past few years exists purely to be photographed, and chasing all of it means spending the day in the coach. What is in this itinerary are the places that still have a reason to exist: a railway station from 1938, a tea estate from 1927, and a mountain the K’Ho people still tell stories about.
The Cau Dat morning is deliberately on the last day, because that is when the mist is still sitting on the tea rows. The drive out of town runs past vegetable plots and greenhouses, which shows you what Da Lat actually lives on. The trip works well for families with children. Hotel category and group size are agreed before the contract is signed.
Vietnam ToursThree UNESCO World Heritage sites within 150 km of each other, unhurried over four days — Da Nang's coast, Hoi An's lantern-lit old town and the imperial capital of Hue.
Vietnam ToursA day above the clouds — a record-setting cable car to 1,487 metres, the Golden Bridge held up by two giant stone hands, and a French village built in 1919.
Vietnam ToursA morning in a bamboo basket boat among the water palms of Cam Thanh, then an afternoon in Hoi An's old town that lasts until the lanterns come on.