July 20th, 2018
Night market in Da Lat
WOW, so I’ve never quite seen anything like the night market in Da Lat. It is not nearly as well organized as the markets in Chiang Mai. And who would have thought you could ever describe the markets in Chiang Mai as “organized”?? The garbage created is just tossed in a pile in the middle of the street, no worries, it all gets cleaned up after apparently?? No need for a bin or anything…..There is raw fruits and vegetables in the same stand as shoes and parkas, many vendors over ghetto like charcoal barrels making ‘Da Lat pizza’ (which looks like eggs fried on a tortilla with pieces of chicken hot dog and green onions?) I don’t think I got a pic of that tonight, but I’ll go back tomorrow and either buy one to try or take a pic. We will see! About half the stands sell coats and toques and no kidding!! At these temps it’s a must have! I am literally the only person in this town wearing sleeveless dress. But it’s all I have. I was completely unprepared for this weather. I could buy a coat for $2-$3 and if tomorrow doesn’t go well temp wise, I’ll be back down there tomorrow night getting a new “north face” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I had an avocado shake – who knew??? It was actually good and I am going to try to replicate this at home.
The people sure sure come out at night here. It reminds me of Sappa last year. The days are relatively quiet and what I would consider normal amounts of people. Then as soon as the sun sets, literally thousands of people come out and walk and sit all over the benches, walls stairs and sidewalks. I tried to capture it in photos. The young people are just hanging out, visiting, laughing, flirting I suppose. Older people chatting drinking beer smoking…..
I’m not sure it shows in the pics…..but I tried. Also there are no other Caucasian people here other than Troy, Ritchie and I. I’m pretty sure. There were older two French men in the resto we went to for supper, but those are the only non Asian people I’ve seen since we got to Vietnam. 100s of thousands of people in Da Lat most tourists and no one looks like me. Speaking of supper, Ritchie picked a place off google maps and we found our way to the nearest little restaurant down a dark alley called Artist Alley. It was filled with oil paintings and run by three very attentive people, one of whom must have been an owner.
Here we are making our way down the ‘alley’. In a million years I would never have found and/or ventured to this place without knowing about it.
Here’s the main floor (very quaint) but we were ushered up these very steep stairs to second floor. I feel like this was a house remodeled into a restaurant? Just because of the way there were all the rooms with tables in each
The chairs had white fun fur covers on them and it was quite comfortable in fact. An acoustical guitar player came into our room and sat and serenaded us for our entire meal.
I had ginger chicken with rice and Troy had carmelized pork in a hot pot and rice. Both absolutely delicious we had a pop and a beer on our tab and it still came to 200,000 dong ($10 usd)
That is all for now! We will see what adventures await us tomorrow🎉
