#review | A recipe for one good day in Da Lat: 6.5 km of pine forest, a picnic, and two hours on the water | 베트남골프여행 다낭·달랏·나트랑 골프부킹 | 티그룹 현지여행사#review | A recipe for one good day in Da Lat: 6.5 km of pine forest, a picnic, and two hours on the water | 베트남골프여행 다낭·달랏·나트랑 골프부킹

I keep a box of index cards in the kitchen. Anything worth making twice gets written on one: ingredients down the left, method underneath, and a line at the bottom for the parts I got wrong. It is a silly habit and I have never managed to give it up.

So on the Tuesday evening, sunburnt in a neat stripe across the back of my neck and unable to lift my arms past shoulder height, I sat on the hotel balcony in Da Lat with a notebook. My husband asked what on earth I was doing. I said I was writing the day down so we could make it again.

Here it is, then, in the only format my brain accepts.

Setting off. The first hour is the easy hour, and nobody points that out while it is happening.

RECIPE CARD, DA LAT

One Good Day in Da Lat

a hill, a picnic, and a lake you can only reach on foot

SERVES

2 (that is the minimum)

PICK-UP

08:00, at your hotel

ON YOUR FEET

about 3.5 hours

ON THE WATER

about 2 hours

DONE BY

around 15:00

DIFFICULTY

moderate, they say

INGREDIENTS

• 6.5 km of trail, beginning at Bao Dai Fall
• 1 small village, walked through slowly
• 1 evergreen pine forest, then a thick broad-leaf jungle
• 1 summit — Samson mountain — served with a view of the town and of Langbiang further out
• 1 picnic lunch, built from whatever Da Lat grew that week
• 2 hours of flat water, and a kayak or a paddleboard (your choice)
• 1 English-speaking guide, permits, life jackets, and a first-aid kit you hope stays shut
• Fruit, and more drinking water than you think you need
• To be supplied by you: hat, sunscreen, repellent, and shoes you can actually walk in
• Cost, per person: a little over 1,000,000₫, which is roughly forty US dollars

METHOD

08:00 · COLLECT FROM THE HOTEL

The van TGROUP sent was outside at ten to eight, which is earlier than I am at my best. There were two of us and the guide, and that was the whole party. I had assumed a minibus of strangers. There was no minibus of strangers.

09:00 · BEGIN AT BAO DAI FALL

You start at the waterfall and walk out through a small village, and then the pines take over. This stretch is genuinely lovely and completely flat-feeling, which is how they get you. Six and a half kilometres, all told.

MID-MORNING · INTO THE BROAD-LEAF JUNGLE

The pine forest ends and something thicker begins — vines, hundred-year-old trees, a lot more humidity. Our guide kept stopping to point things out, which at the time I thought was for our benefit and now suspect was for mine.

ABOUT THREE HOURS IN · THE TOP OF SAMSON MOUNTAIN

Here is my one honest quarrel with the day, and it is with the word “moderate”. Moderate for whom? My calves filed a complaint somewhere around the last twenty minutes. Then you come out at the top and the whole town is lying there below you with Langbiang stacked up behind it, and the complaint is quietly withdrawn.

AROUND MIDDAY · LUNCH AT THE FAR END OF THE LAKE

You walk out to the lake and lunch appears: a picnic the guide had been carrying the entire time without mentioning it. Da Lat grows most of the vegetables in this country and you can taste that. I ate like someone who had just walked up a mountain, because I had.

EARLY AFTERNOON · ONTO THE WATER

The boards and kayaks live at a spot you can only get to on foot, which is the whole trick of this tour: two hours of paddling on water nobody else is on. I chose the paddleboard, stood up with enormous confidence, and was in the lake within ninety seconds. My husband took the kayak and has not stopped being smug about it since. The water is flatter than it looks and colder than it looks, and we poked around the inlets until my shoulders gave out.

Back at the hotel a little after three, which leaves the whole evening free — a fact I did not appreciate when I booked it and appreciated enormously afterwards.

NOTES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE CARD

• Shoes. Not trainers you like. Trainers you are prepared to lose.
• The back of your neck. You will put sunscreen everywhere except there. Ask me how I know.
• The paddling is adjustable. This is written in the small print and nobody reads the small print. If you would rather have longer on the water and a shorter lunch, say so when you book.
• Say something about food a day ahead. They ask for twenty-four hours’ notice on anything you cannot eat, and they mean it — there is no shop halfway up a mountain.
• Two people is the minimum, so unless you add to it, the day is yours. That was the best part and I did not know it was coming.

WOULD I MAKE IT AGAIN

★★★★☆

Four and a half, if the card had room for halves.

We had booked the week through TGROUP and this was the day we nearly cut to save money, which would have been the wrong economy. If you want the same one, it is their trekking-and-kayaking day in Da Lat — message them, tell them how much walking you actually want, and ask them to stretch the paddling. They will also tell you honestly whether the lake is behaving that week, which is more than the weather app managed.

The card is in the box now, filed under Vietnam. It has a water stain on it.