Da Lat

This is a longtime Vietnamese holiday spot, high in the hills, bigger and busier than expected but nice and cool. We stay 2km out of town so can hear kids laughing as they play rather than non-stop traffic. It's only $26 a night for our big room under the eaves, so we can easily afford the $2.50 taxi fare to the centre. We walk in this morning, then along the lake to our destination - after iced coffee - of a flower farm. There are roses, hydrangea, flowering cacti, strelitzia, agapanthus, azalea,petunia, salvia, asiatic lily, hellebore, cyclamen, clivia, orchid, callistomen ... Most are for sale, but no good for us. There are topiary teapots and dragons, statues of Snow White and the seven dwarfs, lakes and fountains.
We jump a taxi to the Crazy House, a 20 year old work in progress by a Vietnamese man who studied architecture in Moscow. It's all stairs and curves and whimsy, with cute rooms available for rent. Lunch is next and we brave the market. A lady grabs us and rubs her tummy to indicate how good her food is. She studies Kay's GF translation and brings us a $4 feast of rice paper, pork, noodles, bean shoots and sauces. We figure our systems must be a bit acclimatised by now and tuck into it. Very good.
We walk around town a bit, up and down lots of steps, then head back to the hotel for a rest.
Back into town again for dinner, we look at the night market but opt for a real restaurant with a glass of $2 local wine to accompany our delicious $3 meals.