After a few days apart, Jess and I reconvened in the mountain city of Da Lat in central Vietnam. Recharged after our brief reprieve from each other, we were extremely excited to tackle our next great adventure: canyoning. As it’s located in the mountains, Da Lat is surrounded by forests, wonderful hiking and, most importantly, waterfalls. As a result, the prime activity in the city is to go on a canyoning expedition to hike through and rappel down these waterfalls. We did some research, booked a company through our hostel and hoped for the best.
The quaint mountain town of Da Lat
Canyoning
The next morning our tour company scooped us up bright and early and took us, along with 9 other folks from an array of countries (Israel, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, etc.), to the main dropoff point for the Da Lat Waterfall. At the visitor center, we were outfitted with wetsuits, harnesses, helmets and other equipment for the adventure ahead. Jess was pissed to learn that her fancy sandals were broken [Editor’s note: “fancy” only in the sense of “waterproof and supposed to be perfect for things like waterfall rappelling,” hence why I was annoyed], so she was forced to borrow a pair of shoes from the tour company. Unfortunately, this isn’t the last time that footwear would be a problem. We were given a full tutorial on how to properly rappel and did a couple of practice jumps (well, first you walk down the wall a bit, then you do big jumps down while running the rope through your hand) before finally setting out into the jungle.
All suited up and getting our safety demonstration
After a bit of hiking down a forest path, we eventually came upon the first rappelling site, which was a “dry” rappel off the side of a cliff into a fairly tranquil part of the river. One by one, people went with no problem, due partly to the fact that rappelling is fairly straightforward and partly to the extra assistance of our guides. I was the last one to take the plunge, and predictably it all went awry. At first I was able to walk down the cliff face with no problem, but all of the sudden my fancy sandals also snapped and completely disrupted my footing. With my sandal dangling from my ankle, my feet slipped terribly and I basically just bounced down the side of the cliff face (don’t worry, I was unhurt) until I reached the bottom. Awesome start. I was a bit demoralized, but our guides were fantastic in that they let me borrow their sandals and continue with the day. True studs. With new footwear in tow, we then jumped backwards off the side of river (it was more of a photo opp than anything) and then swam towards a waterfall for group pictures. [Editor’s note: Seeing Rorie basically hanging upside down off a cliff after something had clearly gone wrong was not awesome for me, but I quickly realized he was ok and that the only things hurt were his mood and ego. We were mostly just annoyed that the footwear I had extensively researched back home had broken so quickly.]
We then hiked along for a while to our next rappelling spot, which was structurally similar to the first one: a gentle decline that you’d walk backwards down, then a sharp dropoff where you’d jump a few times before landing down in a calm part of the river. Fortunately, this went off without a hitch and was a complete blast. The rush of the moment was great as we navigated the cliff’s uneven footing and put our faith in the harness and ropes before taking the plunge. We then trudged to a quiet patch on the opposite side of the river where we enjoyed a lunch of self-made banh mi sandwiches that our guides provided.
Rorie getting ready to rappel
Me on my way down the cliff
The group celebrating mid-river
Our riverside lunch spread
Fully satiated, we hiked further along until we got to another waterfall, but this one was different. Instead of rappelling down it, we were offered the opportunity to cliff jump instead. The options were to jump from 23 feet, 30 feet and 36 feet. Everyone was required to jump from 23 feet first, which was lots of fun! After that, they gave us the option, if we should so desire, to jump from either of the higher heights. Jess opted to not do another jump, but I decided to go for it because I’m a dumb boy. All of us who decided to jump again opted for the 36 feet jump, because why bother with half measures? The wrinkle to this was that the 36 foot jump required the participant to jump far enough to clear a cliff face that jutted out a decent distance. With that, I ran and jumped as far as I could, leaning as far forward as possible to ensure I’d clear the mark. While I apparently made it well past the problem spot, I was trying so hard to propel myself forward that I landed into the water leaning forward and taking the brunt of the blow with my head and arms. The water bottle went shooting out of my pocket and the force of the contact tore open my zipper of life vest. While a bit woozy from the head contact, I emerged unscathed and well enough to use words such as “unscathed” in subsequent blog posts. Hooray? [Editor’s note: Sigh, dumb boy indeed.]
Next we went to a smaller waterfall to do another alternative activity: sliding down a waterfall. Here, we would lay at the edge of a waterfall feet first and the guide would push us gently until the stream of the water caught us, propelling us down through a tiered, rocky waterfall and into the water below. It was exciting and kinda scary, since the path we’d take wasn’t readily apparent and once you passed the “go” threshold there was no controlling your trajectory – you just had to hope for the best and that you wouldn’t hit too hard on a rock. Once we conquered that obstacle, we were given the option to do it again with one slight wrinkle: we had to go headfirst. Perhaps our judgement was impaired from the headshots we [Editor’s note: he] suffered while cliff jumping, but we naturally decided to give it a go. Loads of fun! [Editor’s note: The harnesses we were wearing for the rappelling had thick rubber flaps over our butts that provided a bit of a seat, which meant that at least we weren’t hitting the rocks straight on. It was definitely a little scary, but I figured enough other groups had gone before us that they must know what they’re doing, right?….]
Rorie waterfall sliding! Looks safe, right?
Finally, we made it to our last rappelling activity of the day. This one was a little different than the others. Dubbed the “Washing Machine,” we would start by walking down a gentle decline, then jump a bit down a straight cliff face, but then the cliff would disappear and all that would be left was a raging waterfall shooting into the void where we’d be hanging. We were instructed to just dangle in the waterfall as long as we want, getting turned around as the water pummeled us (hence the nickname), before lowering ourselves until the rope ran out and we dropped into the water below (the guides intentionally left the rope a few feet short of the water so we’d drop off into it). This was maybe the most fun activity of our day, since it was thrilling to lower ourselves into the incredible force of the waterfall and just felt overcome by its power. [Editor’s note: the scariest part of this was after dropping into the water, the force of the waterfall kept you under for about two seconds, before the buoyancy of the life vests would shoot you back to the surface. We knew that going in, but between trying to figure out where the rope was going to end, how fast to let yourself slide down the rope, the feeling of the water all over you, and deciding when to hold your breath, it was kind of a lot all at once. It just made coming up afterwards that much more of a relief.] Definitely a great activity. Having survived that, we trudged back along the trail (we hiked several kilometers that day, which we weren’t expecting at all) and wearily, but happily, returned to our hotel for the night.
Me going into the “washing machine”
The group in front of one of our waterfalls
Countryside Tour and Maze Bar
The next day we figured we’d take an efficient approach to enjoying a smattering of Da Lat activities by signing up for a $10 tour to take us to a bunch of surrounding activities. Some of them were fairly mundane, such as going to a flower plantation, but others were legitimately cool! They included the following:
Rose piles at the flower plantation that was too mundane for its own bullet point.
- Coffee plantation where they grow all types of coffee, in addition to making a “delicacy” coffee from beans that were consumed, and then pooped out, by weasels. [Editor’s note: though the locals call them weasels, they are in fact civets from the cat family, and this is indeed the famous ‘kopi luwak’ coffee.]
A totally normal sign that you would expect at a place that manufactures food products.
- Insect plantation which wasn’t quite as cool as the name indicates at first glance. However, this was also where we got to see the rice wine-making process, which was really interesting. As you can imagine, it is a pretty rudimentary procedure, but it was cool to learn more about it and to taste the different variations of rice wine. We also got to try roasted crickets (they were kinda burnt, so they were just crunchy and not that tasty) with our shot of rice wine at the end, so that’s a win.
Yum, crickets with a rice wine chaser.
- Silk factory, which was definitely a highlight of the day. It was incredibly interesting to see the massive machine that takes cocoons, extracts the defective strands of silk and otherwise pulls the silk into batches that can be used to make garments going forward. The result was dramatically different than we expected going into it and we probably could’ve spent hours just watching the process and talking with the workers about what each step entails.
The super cool machine for extracting silk from cocoons
Bins full of silkworm cocoons
- Linh Ah Pagoda, which is one of the largest Buddhist pagodas and statues in Vietnam. It frankly paled in comparison to some of the temples, pagodas and statues we saw in China, but was cool to see some of the variations in their respective versions of Buddhism and to see some monks just practice their regular routines.
Hi there, Mr. Buddha!
- Elephant Waterfall, which is a massive waterfall that was quite pretty to visit. Nobody warned us that we’d have to hike around and scramble over rocks in slippery situations, so Jess and I struggled a bit to navigate the footing in our sandals and flip flops. Frankly, our footwear was quite inadequate for the activity. In fact, a French guy in our group slipped while jumping across a river, fell in and banged his leg up pretty severely, so it was all quite eventful. But a pretty waterfall nonetheless.
Elephant Waterfall
- Crazy House, which is a concrete home that was designed and built by the daughter of a former vice president of Vietnam beginning in the 1980s. She designed it as a super whimsical structure – almost cartoon-esque – where several “treehouse” structures (made out of concrete) were connected weaving elevated bridges and walkways in a very creative, eccentric manner. It was fascinating to just wander through the buildings and grounds of this quirky structure that has become a hallmark of Da Lat.
Part of the Crazy House
At a doorway of the Crazy House
Finally, once the tour ended, we decided to go to another famous landmark in Da Lat to celebrate our 18 month(!) anniversary (well, I decided that it would be in honor of this occasion, since I’m the one who remembered our anniversary [Editor’s note: while this is true, I maintain that I remember lots of important things, ok?!]): The Maze Bar. This was similarly quirky to the Crazy House, but even more extreme. We don’t know the backstory of it at all, but I can’t explain why it’s set up as it is. But the fact of the matter is that it is massive bar, spanning approximately 7 floors, which has a crazy concrete maze of stairways, hidden doors, random rooms and secret enclaves woven throughout the structure. Jess basically squealed like an excited child, exclaiming every 3 minutes that she loved the place and thought it was both bizarre and amazing (which, to her credit, it totally was). We spent a couple of hours just wandering up, down, around and through this bar, before ultimately sitting back with our Vietnamese beers to celebrate the worthwhile occasion.
Deep in the Maze Bar, with a new mosaic octopus friend we discovered on the wall
Ultimately, while Da Lat wasn’t our favorite city in terms of its vibes and as a place to hang out, we really loved the range and uniqueness of activities that we were able enjoy for our few days there. Cities during our travels often tend to blend into each other, but Da Lat definitely stood out in interesting ways. I’m sincerely glad we went, which is all you can ask to be able to say about any city. With that, we caught another overnight bus (we’re getting to be pros at those) from Da Lat to our next exciting destination: Hoi An, the city of tailored markets and lantern-filled waterfronts!
