As soon as we stepped off the plane we felt the change in temperature. The climate in Dalat in May and June feels like English summer weather on a good day. It’s even cooler than Sapa is. At 1,500 metres it’s an old hill station where the French colonisers escaped in the summer months, like the English in India used to head for Shimla.

We were pleasantly surprised by the town. It felt more like a ‘real’ than Sapa which seemed to be primarily a tourist destination. There are a lot of things to see though and it’s popular with Vietnamese tourists as well as foreign visitors. We met a Vietnamese policeman in the airport. He was taking his kids and parents there from Danang for a weekend break.

Vietnamese schools are all breaking up for the summer. At An Bang beach and in Dalat we passed schools where loud music was blasting. We saw very young children performing dance moves or gymnastics, perfectly co-ordinating their movements. I think that UK schools would struggle to compete!

On our first day in Dalat we decided to do the tourist thing and take a ‘hop on hop off bus’. It’s the first time we’ve done that on our travels, but we were in the mood for it and it was going to all the destinations in town that we wanted to visit. We were the only people on board.

The first place we stopped was ‘Crazy House’. It was designed by Dang Viet Nga, the daughter of the Vietnamese General Secretary who took over from Ho Chi Minh. She gained a Phd in architecture in Moscow and her credentials as well as old photos and other information about her life are displayed in the house. It is enormous and surreal, with bridges and stairs twisting all over the place. It is easy to get lost inside. We met one panicking French tourist who begged us to help her find the way out! I took a video of it that I will upload to social media.

Exploring Crazy House felt like play for adults. It’s too unsafe for children unless they’re very closely supervised. I read online that Dang was influenced by nature in Dalat – she has incorporated models of trees, roots, a peaceful pond area and even an undersea area into the house. The undersea area in particular felt like I had stepped into a psychedelic trip that she was on!

Crazy House contrasts sharply with the formal French architecture that surrounds it. The catholic cathedral we visited is one example of that.

Our tour included a stop at the Bao Dai palace. I also made a short video on that which I’ll put on social media. It’s a classic 1930s building that the King and Queen of Vietnam used to retreat to during the hot summers. It felt like being back in the De La Warr pavilion – it’s built in a very similar style! It’s surrounded by the beautiful flower gardens that Dalat is famed for.

We had a short lunch break at a small local cafe where we ate buns filled with eggs and meat, together with a meatball soup to dip them in. We also tried some of the famous Dalat yoghurt made with condensed milk, which is delicious.

After that we headed for Dalat railway station which is another 1930s building. The only train that runs from here is a steam powered tourist model – a bit like the Kent and Sussex railway. My Dad would have loved it! It heads out to an eccentric Buddhist pagoda that I would have liked to have visited, but we didn’t have time to include it in our Dalat itinerary in the end.

There is a chocolate shop in the vicinity of the station, where tasting is available. Needless to say I took full advantage. The Vietnamese chocolate that I have previously tried has not been great, but that in this shop was delicious. Tim and I ordered chocolate milk shakes.

After all that we were ready for a rest so we missed our final stop on the jump on jump off tour, which was the flower garden. We did return there another day, but to be honest it was quite underwhelming. Lots of plants were displayed in pots and there were cartoon like models of bees and other Disney type characters.

We dodged the showers the day after our bus tour to visit the Chau Linh Son pagoda. The monks were tidying up after some sort of festival. We sat in a meditation hut by a pond near the pagoda until we had to withdraw due to mosquito attacks.

Tim and I also got a couples massage that second rainy day in Dalat. I had requested mine to be firm and although I felt it unknotted my muscles, it felt a bit too hard at times. Afterwards I discovered bruises on my back. Looking online this appears to be normal after Vietnamese massages! Tim had requested a medium massage and his masseuse was much gentler. Vietnam is the place to visit if you want any kind of beauty treatments. There are salons everywhere and the prices beat even those in Thailand.

On our last day in Dalat we took the cable car to another Buddhist monastery, Truc Lam, that lies next to a lake, Tuyen Lam, further out from the town centre. Dalat town centre has a lake at its heart, Xuan Hong, but sadly this is surrounded by a busy road which spoilt my enjoyment of it a bit. Truc Lam is much more peaceful.

The cable car was built by an Austrian company and despite Tim assuring me that it looked very safe I was terrified the whole fifteen minutes I was on it. I haven’t got a very good head for heights and I kept imagining the wire snapping and our pod crashing into the pine trees below. I have to admit that the views of Dalat were magnificent though. The monastery was serene despite the large number of Vietnamese tourists (it was a Sunday). We had a lovely walk round part of the lake before we took the cable car back.

Our travelling time is running out and so is the 42 days we are allowed to stay in the Vietnam without a visa. We had considered crossing to Cambodia but at the moment it is raining and very hot in the Mekong area. We debated whether to head for Ko Phan Ngan, Ko Samet or Chiang Mai – they are all potential options. In the end we decided to book a flight to Ho Chi Minh City and spend a few days sightseeing there. Then we will head to Chiang Mai and spend the last two weeks of this part of our trip in northern Thailand.