Word: dalat
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...fewer opportunities to step back into the country's past. But the splendid Café Tung is an exception. With its retro skai-covered sofas and Jacques Brel posters, it looks more like a 1960s Parisian cellar than a coffee shop in the present-day Central Highlands town of Dalat. Not that there are any complaints from the clientele, who comprise a fair slice of Dalat's artists and intellectuals (the town is Vietnam's pre-eminent bohemian enclave). From early morning, they gather to read the papers and suck down potent glasses of ca phe sua da - espresso served...
...into the country's past. But the splendid Café Tung, tel: (84-63) 821 390, is an exception. With its retro skai-covered sofas and Jacques Brel posters, it looks more like a 1960s Parisian cellar than a coffee shop in the present-day Central Highlands town of Dalat. Not that there are any complaints from the clientele, who comprise a fair slice of Dalat's artists and intellectuals (the town is Vietnam's pre-eminent bohemian enclave). From early morning, they gather to read the papers and suck down potent glasses of ca phe sua da-espresso served...
...Southeast Asia's largest flower farm, Dalat Hasfarm, thrives in Vietnam's central highlands, producing 500,000 stems a day for export. But the farm's 300 flower varieties aren't all that's blossoming in the cool mountain clime. In downtown Dalat, love is almost always in the air. Dalat has evolved into Vietnam's honeymoon capital. At hot spots like the scenic Valley of Love park and crescent-shaped Xuan Huong Lake, you'll find a lot of Disneyesque diversion, such as swan-shaped paddleboats. They may not be to everyone's taste, but there's no denying...
...most of the group, the subsequent three-day excursion to Nha Trang and Dalat provides a calming change of pace. Route 1, the two-lane highway linking Saigon with Hanoi, dips toward and away from the South China Sea on its way 250 miles up the coast. The van passes through places remembered dimly as wartime datelines. Phan Thiet, Phan Rang and Cam Ranh Bay, now a Soviet naval base, appear then recede outside the van's windows. Frequent ambushes and well-placed mines rendered many sections of Route 1 impassable to U.S. forces and the French military before them...
...coast through Ngoan Muc Pass brings travelers to a plateau strewn magnificently with poinsettia trees the size of small maples, all in bloom. A thousand varieties of orchid are said to grow in the province, and mimosa vines with delicate, mauve flowers climb innumerable trellises. At the 52-room Dalat Palace Hotel, completed in 1923, Headwaiter Hoang Van Tu serves meals, as he has since 1942 to the likes of Charles de Gaulle, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu and even the Emperor, Bao Dai himself. There is nothing imperial about the hostelry today, but the mosquito netting hanging from the massive...