The Đà Lạt of Khánh Hoà — 37 km of forest pass up to a 1,578 m cloud summit and Yersin's wooden house
Đà Lạt-cool air little more than an hour from the sea
Thirty-seven kilometres of mountain pass through old-growth forest
Yersin's hundred-year-old wooden house on a summit in the clouds
Take a manual bike or a car — the pass is long and steep; bring something warm (the summit can drop below 20°C), fill up at the foot of the mountain, and go up before noon to avoid the thick afternoon mist.
From the foot of the mountain at Suối Cát, a 37-kilometre pass winds up through old-growth forest and carries you out of the coastal heat to the 1,578-metre summit of Hòn Bà, where the temperature stays as cool as Đà Lạt all year and mist drifts through moss-covered dwarf forest. It is one of the most beautiful and least travelled mountain roads in south-central Vietnam, and riders treat it as a route you have to do once.
At the top stands the reconstructed wooden house of Dr Yersin — more than a century ago he set up a research station here and planted cinchona for malaria medicine. Visit the Yersin museum in town first and come up to Hòn Bà afterwards, and the story of "Ông Năm" runs from beginning to end.
Come to Nha Trang without eating gỏi cá mai and the trip is not complete
One family, one recipe, nearly 50 years. Fish landed that morning, rolled in rice paper and dipped in a secret fish sauce — the same taste since 1977.
