Secrets in Dalat

Dalat is where Vietnamese people go on vacation.  It’s known as the honeymoon spot.  The surrounding countryside is popular for canyoning and rappelling, but the city itself isn’t that special.

However, there’s a really interesting hotel, called the Crazy House that we visited.  Its peaked roofs, giraffe neck stairways, and dripping eaves seem misplaced in Vietnam, and better suited to “A Nightmare before Christmas”.  If Tim Burton and Gaudi collaborated to design a hotel, this would be the result.  It was fun to explore, with nooks and secret rooms and stairways to nowhere.

We learned more about Vietnamese culture while there.  For instance, families tend to celebrate death days rather than birthdays.  On the anniversary of a loved one’s passing, friends and family buy paper cars, cell phones, dresses, and wads of money.  These paper items look like piñatas and children’s toys, but are very serious.  They are burnt so that the deceased can enjoy the pleasures in heaven.  We also learned how local women use curry as makeup.

They smush the beans for lipstick, and can use the prickly green outside coating as fake eyelashes.  

 One custom we couldn’t welcome was the practice of eating dog.  Not everyone eats dog; it is reserved for the wealthy, and is more popular in the north.  What was even more shocking was that some people raise dogs as pets, take care of them, then eat them.  Unthinkable to us, but a cultural norm for some Vietnamese.  We both did a double take every time we saw a restaurant with signs advertising roasted dog.

A visit to a country market where foreigners are a rare sight was interesting.  We sampled  Vietnamese foods like pancake with carrot and quail egg, and donut with green bean paste.

In addition to the above mentioned foods, we also tried crickets.  Both of us expected them to be crispier and saltier, but they really just tasted like bad peanuts.  

Along the way, we stopped at a coffee farm.  As one of the world’s top exporters of robusta coffee, Vietnam treats coffee seriously, and nowhere more so than Dalat.

Starbucks even has a blend from Dalat.  Within this major business is a strange, boutique niche- that of weasel coffee.  Catering to a certain clientele, some producers feed coffee berries to weasels or squirrels.  The berries pass through the animals’ intestinal tracts, and are collected in the feces.  They are then washed and dried, and sold for a hefty sum.  Apparently, the reason for this is that the digestion process removes some bitterness associated with coffee.

The absolute highlight was “The Secret Tour”, with a man named Mr. Rot.  We are sworn to secrecy, but if you ask us in person, we may be able to divulge a few details.  Suffice it to say we had an incredible, authentic experience that was both shocking and heartwarming.  If anyone is planning to go to Vietnam, we can’t recommend this tour enough.

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Beer of choice: Saigon 333