A VERY SMALL EXHIBITION · ONE MORNING · DA LAT

I work as a graphic designer, which means I am physically unable to go somewhere nice without turning it into a project. My friend Mai booked us a Saturday morning art walk in Da Lat through TGROUP — four hours, on foot, starting before most cafés had taken their chairs down — and somewhere around the second stop I started writing museum wall labels in my head. So that is what this post is. A tiny exhibition catalogue of one morning. None of the works are for sale, and most of them cannot be moved anyway.

Context for anyone who has not been: Da Lat is the hill town in Vietnam everyone kept telling me about. Pine trees, fog, cool air. I nodded along and still packed for tropical Vietnam, so at 7:15am I was standing on Ly Tu Trong street in a t-shirt doing small jumps to stay warm. That one is entirely on me.

First stop after the studio intro was a music meet-up — not a show, nobody on a stage, just people who love piano and guitar sitting close together while the city outside was still grey. Someone played something I did not know and I have been trying to find it ever since. There was a drum on a mat and a lit candle and I remember thinking, it is 8am on a Saturday and this is already the best thing I have done in Vietnam before breakfast.

Next, a hidden little library devoted to Da Lat's architecture. I flipped through art books with my cold hands and learned that half the buildings I had walked past the day before have whole stories I never clocked. Then our guide smiled and asked the question printed on the tour flyer: are you ready to walk 5 km? I said yes with the confidence of a woman who had not yet seen how Da Lat feels about flat ground. My calves would like the record to show they were not consulted.

Dốc Nhà Làng is the part I had seen on other people's feeds — a steep lane where murals just appear mid-alley, between laundry lines and motorbikes. Then the walk loops through the Hoa Binh zone and Da Lat market, which at 9:15 is the city at full volume in the best way, and calms right back down along Xuan Huong Lake while the fog does its slow disappearing act. The rhythm of loud market into quiet lake is, I suspect, deliberate. It works.

Lunch is included, and it is the local one: artichoke beef noodle soup. Da Lat grows artichokes the way other towns grow traffic, and the broth is sweet in a vegetal, gentle way that made complete sense after three hours of cold air and slopes. I drank all of mine and then quietly finished the rest of Mai's. She has forgiven me. Mostly.

The morning ends with a postcard-painting workshop among the pine trees at Dinh Tinh Truong. I design things for a living, so naturally my sky turned to mud in the first five minutes while the person next to me produced something frameable without appearing to try. The teacher said mine had "character". Mai took it home and put it on her fridge, which is either love or evidence. Tour wraps at 11:30 and you are back in town for the rest of your day.

If you are in Da Lat on a weekend and you have exactly one morning to spend, spend it on this. It is the least touristy four hours I have had in Vietnam — no bus, no megaphone, just the city shown to you at walking speed by people who clearly adore it. We arranged ours by messaging TGROUP on WhatsApp (+84 93 830 1611) and they sorted everything, which at 7am is worth a lot.

★★★★☆

The missing star is entirely my postcard's fault, not the morning's.