French Colonial Resort Town

After a few hours of research, we decided to make Da Lat our next stop. A couple short flights and a terrifying 30-min taxi ride and we arrived at our AirBnB in the old French colonial resort town.

Our host, Thomas, and his family are coffee roasters. They treated us more like family than guests and let us partake in their Tet (Lunar New Year) festivities. The only minor issue was the chicken farm outside our window. Good thing we have ear plugs.

On our first night, Thomas drove us into downtown, helped us negotiate the purchase of SIM cards, and dropped us off near the central market. 

We ate some delicious quail from a street vendor, and wandered around. There was a lot of casual campfire-building happening in the streets.

The market was wild. So many people buying everything you could possibly want.

From dried fruits and candy...

... to every type of fruit under the sun.

I haggled (with mediocre success) to buy my new favorite fruit: the sapodilla.   

After a long walk past the lake and the old Cathedral, we stumbled into an amazing BBQ restaurant (Mo Te BBQ) where we were the only non-Vietnamese. While cooking various meats on a grill at our table (Korean-barbeque-style), we were befriended by some non-English-speaking locals at the table next to us who started ordering us various sauces, feeding us dishes from their table so we could taste them, and showing us how to (properly) eat all the things we'd ordered. Beer and smiles overcame the language barrier and before long we were toasting, chugging beers with them, and exchanging Facebook information.