Da Lat is not a city you tick off, it is a base. Almost everything you want to see here is outside the centre, spread over winding mountain roads, so you really only do one thing properly per day. Two to three days sounds short, but it is plenty once you choose.
A few things really belong on the list: a day in the canyons, a morning on a scooter with mist over the valleys, and something off the grill at the night market in the evening. Others are on every list because they look great in photos, and you add those if you have a spare half day next to the mountains.
So where do your Da Lat days go, and what do you save for next time?
Still planning? How many days you need, where to sleep and how to get here is all on our Da Lat page.
Canyoning through the gorges
This is why Da Lat gets called the adventure capital of Vietnam, and for a lot of backpackers it is the absolute highlight of their visit. You abseil down waterfalls on a rope, slide over smooth rock, swim through gorges and jump off ledges into natural pools. You need no experience, just some nerve.
Count on a full day, from pick-up in the centre to getting back in the afternoon. So do not book it on the day you leave: the sleeper buses to Mui Ne, Nha Trang and Ho Chi Minh City run in the evening, but you do not want to climb on soaked and wrecked. The most popular tour here has a perfect five out of five from more than six hundred reviews.
And now the most important part. Canyoning is the most popular activity here and also the most dangerous, and there have been fatal accidents. Choose an operator with its own checked equipment and certified guides, pay those few euros extra, and check beforehand whether your travel insurance covers abseiling. If your hostel offers you the cheapest tour in town, that is the one to walk away from.
Our verdict: absolutely, and pick your operator on quality
The coffee fields towards Cau Dat at sunrise
This is our own favourite in Da Lat, and hardly anyone does it. You rent a scooter, head out before it gets light and ride about twenty kilometres southeast, past greenhouses, hills and endless coffee fields. There is often still mist hanging over the valleys and you have the road practically to yourself.
A scooter costs about €5 a day. At the plantations themselves you usually pay nothing to walk around, and a tasting starts at around €2. Give it half a day and you are back in time for the rest of yours.
Bring a jumper or a jacket. In the morning you are at over fifteen hundred metres in the wind, and that feels colder than the eighteen degrees on paper.
Our verdict: cold on the scooter and half a day gone, and that is exactly the right trade
The waterfalls by scooter: Datanla, Pongour and Elephant
Da Lat has more of them than you can do in one day, so pick two or three. Datanla is close to town and the easiest to reach, Pongour is the widest and most impressive, and at Elephant Falls you clamber over wet rocks to the spot where you see it from below.
Riding yourself is the most fun and the cheapest, but there is also a small group tour that takes in all three, with the Alpine Coaster thrown in. It scores 4.9 out of five from more than fifteen hundred reviews and is a great option if you would rather not take the bends yourself.
Stay on the marked routes and do not swim above a waterfall. The water looks calm, but the current pulls harder than you think. And ride back before dark, because there is no lighting on the mountain road.
Our verdict: a must, and pick two or three
The Alpine Coaster at Datanla
A toboggan track that winds through the forest down to the waterfall below, and you decide how fast you go. It is pure theme park and has nothing to do with the mountains, but it is also the kind of ten minutes you will still be banging on about to other backpackers weeks later.
It is at Datanla, so you fit it in on the day you are doing the waterfalls anyway. Want more of it? There is a tour that combines the coaster with a luge kart and a visit to Mongoland, rated 4.9 out of five from more than four hundred reviews.
Go early or late in the day. In the middle of the day this is where the coach tours queue.
Our verdict: fun if you are riding that way anyway
The night market and banh trang nuong
Every evening from about five, the market in the centre fills up, and it is the cosiest place in town. It is cold, everyone stands around the grills and you eat on your feet, with a cup of hot soy milk in your other hand.
There is nothing to pay except what you eat. What you come for is banh trang nuong: rice paper on the grill with egg, spring onion and paste on top, which tourists call Vietnamese pizza. Also good here: grilled skewers, nem nuong that you roll yourself at the table, and strawberries and avocado from the fields around town.
Da Lat is the market garden of Vietnam, so everything you cannot get fresh anywhere else in the country is on the stalls here. Take a box of fresh strawberries back to your hostel at least once.
Our verdict: every evening you are here
Early morning around Xuan Huong Lake
The lake sits right in the centre and the loop around it is about five kilometres. Early in the morning the mist is still hanging over the water and the cafes along the edge are just opening, while the town slowly gets going. Later in the day it is just a lake.
It costs nothing and you can walk there from almost any hostel in the centre. Allow a good hour on foot, or borrow a bike if you want to do the loop faster.
Combine it with your first coffee. The beans come from the plantations a few kilometres away and you can taste it, even at the simplest place by the water.
Our verdict: do it on your first morning, free and a great start
The Crazy House
A guesthouse that looks like a tree that got out of hand: corridors, stairs and little bridges that twist through the walls and over the roofs, without a single right angle. It is one of the strangest buildings in Vietnam, and within two minutes you get why everyone has a photo of it.
Entry is about €2.50 and it is open daily from 8.30 to 19.00. It is about two kilometres from the lake, so ten minutes on a scooter or a short Grab ride.
Go early. The stairs are narrow and steep, and once a group comes in you mostly end up waiting for each other in a corridor.
Our verdict: an hour is enough, and go early, because on those narrow stairs you do not want a group in front of you
Got time to spare in Da Lat?
How to choose your canyoning operator
This is the one point in Da Lat where we are really strict. Canyoning is sold on every street corner in the centre, and the price difference is in the gear and the guides, exactly the two things you are hanging from. There have been fatal accidents here. So book with a company that has its own checked equipment and certified guides, and feel free to ask them about it. Do that and this is the best day of your visit.
The sunrise hike or the ride to Cau Dat
The guided sunrise hike is beautiful and the reviews do not lie, with breakfast and pick-up included. You see the same thing as from your scooter on the way to Cau Dat: mist between the hills and light slowly sliding across the valleys. Doing that ride anyway? Then you already have that view. Would you rather not ride yourself? Then the hike is a gorgeous way to start your day.
The heritage train to Trai Mat
Seven kilometres out, seven kilometres back, and a temple at the other end. The station itself is a picture and the ride is fun if you like old trains. If you have a third day in Da Lat, this is a nice easy outing between the active days.
Into the water with a guide
The rocks at the waterfalls look walkable, but they are slippery, after a shower the water rises faster than you expect, and above a waterfall the current always pulls harder than it looks. Want to get in the water? Book canyoning with a guide: you do exactly the same thing, with ropes and someone who knows the river.
Our top five in Da Lat
Only got a few days? These are the five we would do no matter what:
- Canyoning through the gorges, a full day, with an operator that has its own gear
- The scooter ride to the coffee fields of Cau Dat, leaving before sunrise
- The waterfalls: Datanla plus Pongour or Elephant
- The night market with banh trang nuong off the grill
- The five-kilometre loop around Xuan Huong Lake in the morning mist
Still got time after that? Add the Alpine Coaster to your waterfall day and spend an hour in the Crazy House. And if you really have days, climb on the back of an easy rider’s bike into the mountains: that is the most beautiful way to leave Da Lat.
So what do you really have to do in Da Lat?
Honestly? Nothing on this list is compulsory, and that goes for Da Lat more than most places. It is not a town of sights but of weather, light and altitude, and what people remember later is nearly always a moment on the road: a bend where the mist suddenly broke open, or a coffee on a terrace while the rest of the country was baking down below.
If we had to pick just one thing: head up into the mountains early on a scooter. Not to any particular spot, just take the road towards the coffee fields until you feel like stopping. It costs you €5 for the whole day, and it is the side of Da Lat most visitors ride straight past without seeing.
And only go canyoning if you do it properly. Find an operator you have a good feeling about, check that the gear looks well looked after, and check your insurance. Then it is the best day of your whole trip through Vietnam. Otherwise you have another coffee here, and that is fine too.
