Day Tour In Da Lat, Vietnam (My Experience)

Da Lat is a mountain town about halfway between Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City. I stopped here for a few nights to break up the long bus rides, and to get some cooler temperatures.

Once I got there, I decided to book a day tour of the area. I booked it through my hostel, which also got me a free breakfast and pickup/dropoff. Score!

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Vietnam Travel Essentials

The absolute must-haves for your trip to Vietnam!

Go with an Airalo eSIM and stay connected
Don’t forget to get travel health insurance!
Check Hostelworld for discounted stays or Agoda for slightly nicer ones
Search Skyscanner for flights (domestic and int’l)
Use 12Go to book bus and train tickets
Take a guidebook for tips on where to go

What's In This Post

Da Lat Day Tour Info

The tour I booked was a small group tour with a minivan, English-speaking tour guide and free water. Lunch was NOT included, but there are some other tours where it is. This tour covered the highlights of Dalat, including a coffee farm, a silk farm, several waterfalls, a temple or two, and a local place for lunch (not included with tour price).

Here’s some tours which are similar to the one I went on:

Best Dalat Group Tour: Three Waterfall-Coffee-Silk-Pagoda (this looks exactly the same as my tour)
Dalat: Three Waterfalls tour ( Pongour, Datanla, Elephant )
Dalat Countryside Private Tour and Waterfall

Like all the other day tours I went on in Vietnam, it was VERY tourist-y (as in, they take you places specifically to sell you things), but because it was a small group size we at least didn’t have to rush from place to place like we might’ve done if we were in a big tour bus group.

Also, our tour guide was very good about taking us down side trails and whatnot so we could go to less busy viewpoints. Plus, he took photos for us!

Da Lat Day Tour Itinerary

Here’s where we stopped at on the tour and my thoughts of each stop:

Datanla Waterfall

A Buddha statue head, smiling, surrounded by flowers in Dalat, Vietnam. — Decor near Datanla waterfall

Our first stop! All the entry fees were covered (as far as I remember), except for this one which was (I think) 40,000 VND or slightly less than $2 USD.

I actually had to borrow some cash from the tour guide and a fellow traveler so I could both get in and pay for the alpine coaster– there are NO ATMs at the waterfall and they only accept cash, so just be aware of that.

Round trip price for the alpine coaster is 100,000 VND or about $4 USD. The view is much better going up than down, so if you want to save money then just pay for the coaster going up (50,000 VND) and walk back down the trail.

I think the draw of this place is the alpine coaster and maybe the hiking, but the coaster only lasts maybe 2 minutes. I recommend just hiking if you want to get your entry fee’s worth of experiences.

The park surrounding the falls had interesting statues and decorations throughout, kind of cheesy but good for photos.

Pongour Falls

Woman smiling in front of waterfalls in Dalat, Vietnam. — Pongour Falls

This was a pretty location and it was fun climbing around the rocks to get more views of the falls. Not very crowded compared to other waterfall locations I’ve been to, and there’s plenty of room to spread out and explore.

The tour guide took photos of us here and then had them printed out as a gift at the end of the tour. Cute!

Thác Voi Waterfall

We stopped at a viewpoint overlooking this waterfall right before going to lunch at the restaurant next door. Some of the trail nearby was closed for renovations, and there was an unfortunate amount of trash littering the ground.

Across from the waterfall you can see Quán Thế Âm Bồ Tát Nam Bàn.

Linh Ẩn Pagoda & Quán Thế Âm Bồ Tát Nam Bàn

You can climb up the stairs inside the temple and get a pretty good view of the surrounding area, so I did that. It reminded me a bit of the Chicken Church in Yogyakarta— a shaped temple with stairs and art inside leading to an observation desk.

The Pagoda is full of statues and nice places to sit, and there’s a small cafe nearby with snacks and drinks.

Cuong Hoan Silk Factory

This was much larger than the silk factory I visited in Phonsavan, with huge machines and dozens of people working. Unfortunately, it stunk a lot of chemicals.

We didn’t really get an explanation of how things worked in this factory but we were allowed to go basically everywhere and look at stuff. They have a shop attached with silk items for sale, of course.

Rice Wine Business

I’m not 100% sure where this is, but I think the owners have an agreement with the tour company for people to stop here. They make different kinds of rice wine, and we got to try some! It’s a tiny business and we were the only group to stop during our time there, so that was nice.

Me Linh Coffee Garden

One of the places that makes weasel coffee as well as regular coffee…I refuse to drink weasel coffee on principal, but the regular coffee is delicious and I got some at the attached cafe. We got to see different stages of coffee bean production and some of the machines used to process the beans.

Flower Farm

A small stop on the way back to the bus from the coffee farm. Dalat is famous for its flowers, and this farm was growing a bunch of them for an upcoming event.

Final thoughts

This tour was focused on the natural beauty around Dalat as well as some of its famous exports, and overall I really enjoyed it. We weren’t too rushed and we weren’t crowded into highly-trafficked areas with buses of other tour groups, and we had time to go wandering around by ourselves on some stops.

Overall, it was a good tour! If you’re in Da Lat for a day or two, I recommend doing this tour to see the area a bit more.