Discover Dalat

Local Travel Guide to Da Lat, Vietnam

By: Elly Thuy Nguyen

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The weather is cool. The coffee is spectacular. And the tourists? They’re all stuck at the night market eating bad food.

Welcome to Dalat, the "City of Eternal Spring." It's where Saigonese people go to escape the heat, where Koreans go to escape the winter, and where Instagrammers go to take photos of fake swings and sedated dogs.

You need a friend to show you the real city. That’s me.

I’m Elly, a Saigonese girl who spends two months every year in Dalat. I wrote this comprehensive guidebook to save you from the tourist traps and show you the cool, quirky, and delicious side of this mountain town that most visitors miss completely.

Inside this guide, we are:

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• Hunting Clouds at 4 AM: I’ll show you exactly where to go for that magical san may experience before the sun (and the tour buses) ruins it.
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• Meeting the Coffee Professor: Skip the weasel-poop coffee scams. We’re going to Son Pacamara, a high-end farm where you’ll learn the science of arabica from a true obsessive.
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• Eating the Real "Pizza": Forget the street vendors. I’ll take you to Di Dinh, the undisputed champion of banh trang nuong, and show you where to get the best lau ga la e (lemon basil chicken soup) in town.
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• Riding the Rails: We’ll take a sunset train ride with live violinists to a temple made of recycled glass, and sip hot chocolate at a hidden cafe behind the station.
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• Dodging the Scams: I’ll steer you away from the waterfall that smells like sewage, the restaurant famous for assaulting its customers, and the "Alpine Coaster" entrance that charges you double.
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• Finding a Guy: Grab is great, but sometimes you need a local fixer. I’ll share the contact info for my personal English-speaking driver who can take you to the waterfalls no one else knows about.

I wrote this book for travelers who want to sit on a plastic stool eating the world's best grilled pork noodles for $2, sleep in a hotel with a mountain view for $30, and experience a Vietnam that hasn’t been paved over by mass tourism -- yet.

Come to Dalat before the secret gets out.

Grab your sweater, your umbrella, and your Google Translate. Let’s go!